ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book highlights the toxic nature of secrets, how this is compounded when the content of a secret includes past trauma and specify how Bowenian, structural and contextual family therapists may each conceptualize and approach secrecy. It emphasizes how secrets may intersect powerfully with therapists’ personal experiences, replicating relational patterns in isomorphic echoes across the client— family, therapist— client, therapist— family-of-origin and supervisor— supervisee subsystems. The book also highlights narrative and medical family therapy conceptualizations of external systems, power and collaboration and provides specific supervisory interventions for extending systemic thinking beyond the clients’ relationships. It offers a perspective on the contagious nature of anthologizing and the importance of enhancing therapy learners’ sensitivity to dominant, problem-saturated narratives that may be reinforced by other providers. The book promotes confidence in the fact that the growth experience of learning family therapy is bumpy.
