Family Process 1967

Heft 1

Feldman, Marvin J. (1967): Privacy and Conjoint Family Therapy. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 1–9.

Abstract: It is a Basic assumption of most forms of psychotherapy that the success of the endeavor is contingent upon a considerable degree of self exploration. In turn there is an implicit assumption that intensive self exploration is aided by a high degree of privacy. This view is so much taken for granted that a private confidential psychotherapeutic relationship is sanctioned by statutes in many states much as the model of confidential relationships, the lawyer-client relationship, is protected in common law.1

On the surface, then, the arguments favoring privacy in psychotherapy seem so self evident that seldom are questions even raised about the consequences of privacy in individual psychotherapy. Yet it is possible that the insistence on privacy as a prerequisite for psychotherapy is largely a traditional stance. Many forms of group therapy including conjoint family therapy, that is, simultaneous therapy of family members, afford a lesser order of privacy. It is pertinent to ask whether a greater or lesser degree of privacy affects the nature and significance of therapeutic disclosures. In this paper I will try to examine the effects of privacy by contrasting certain aspects of individual and conjoint family therapy.

Rabkin, Richard (1967): Uncoordinated Communication Between Marriage Partners. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 10–15.

Abstract: Different sociocultural systems generate different speech systems. These systems or “codes” are expressed, not in particular words in the sense of their established meanings, but in the way groups of words that could convey essentially the same meaning are combined to have more than that meaning. For instance, a wife may say to her husband, “I want to cross the street here,” or, “I think we could cross the street here.” The two statements seem to convey the same idea. Yet the latter formulation specifically avoids the former choice of words in which the wife would express her desire to cross at a particular spot. Inspection reveals that the wife is here dealing with what could be called dominance. In her language she avoids being the one to say what is to be done. It is not my object to analyze this example in detail, but rather to indicate through it that something about the relationship or transaction between these two individuals has been definitely “coded” in the choice of words. The therapy of couples has shown in this type of exchange between husband and wife that there is only one “correct” way to say what is to be said; that words must be carefully combined to convey aspects of the relationship.

To the extent that they are closed, all sociocultural systems tend to develop unique communication codes, in addition to unique slang and word meanings, whether in prisons, combat units, families, or adolescent gangs, or among close friends, or siblings. Bernstein has worked with communication codes as they apply to a system as large as that of class structure (1). Members of the British working class have, as he shows, a unique way of coding their speech; and when they meet therapists from a different class, there is almost insurmountable difficulty in mutual understanding, or what we might more formally call coordinating speech systems.

In family or couple therapy, even when husband and wife have similar class backgrounds, one discovers communication codes that are indigenous to individual family systems. Since husband and wife come from different families each having different communication codes in the sense already defined, they frequently get into trouble.

The following dialogues between four different couples are typical of their communication difficulties. All four examples presented, it must be kept in mind, have been deliberately selected for the triviality of their content to emphasize the formal aspects of the communication. Each example was obtained in discussion with newly married couples who reported dialogues as examples of their difficulty.

Bell, John Elderkin (1967): Contrasting Approaches in Marital Counseling. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 16–26.

Abstract: My Aim in this paper is to look at the therapist-marital couple relationship as a social system, and from this perspective to outline some aspects of the difference between treating a husband or wife as an individual patient and treating them together as a marital couple. I will try to differentiate individual treatment and treatment of the marital pair on two dimensions: their respective use as sources of data about the marital relationship, for both therapy and research, and their potentialities for changing the marital interaction.

Mayer, John E. (1967): People’s Imagery of Other Families. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 27–36.

Abstract: In the course of accounting for interaction within the family, sociologists have invoked, either implicitly or explicitly, a number of different explanatory variables. However, few efforts have been to survey and categorize, from a sociological point of view, the various explanatory factors in use. Below we shall categorize some of the main approaches as we see them, as a means of providing a background for our later remarks.

Kwiatkowska, Hanna Yaxa (1967): Family Art Therapy. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 37–55.

Abstract: Family art therapy originated as a natural development of the already well established technique of analytically oriented art therapy (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). With new theoretical development and concepts in psychiatry, the use of art in psychotherapy and research naturally follows and adjusts to the ideologies and goals of different schools of thought. During the last decade the increased interest in the role of the family in the etiology of mental illness generally, and schizophrenia specifically, opened a new and challenging fieldthe use of art with the whole family group.

At the National Institute of Mental Health, in the section on Family Studies of the Adult Psychiatry Branch, art therapy was initially conducted with patients individually. Occasional unscheduled participation of visiting family members led to new and promising avenues for further exploration. Therefore, all members of the family were included in the sessions and family art therapy became an integral part of the program.

As a psychotherapeutic technique, family art therapy is usefully distinguished from other psychotherapies in a number of ways. Families are here engaged in an expressive activity simultaneously, something which is impossible in verbal communication. The informal situation, the indirectness of the communication in art therapy, lessen superego defenses and controls. The symbolic images express unconscious feelings and gradually help to uncover and clarify ambivalent and confused attitudes within the family, feelings which are often too intense to express in words. Thus, in some instances, the therapeutic process can be accelerated by the family art therapy program.

Jensen, Gordon D. & John G. Wallace (1967): Family Mourning Process. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 56–66.

Abstract: Studies of the problems of bereavement have been oriented toward the intrapsychic aspects of the mourning process. These have emphasized the pre-existing personality structure and the individual’s reaction to the event (1, 2, 3, 4). This view likens mourning and grief reactions to the medical model of disease. However, the natural observation would be that mourning is not restricted to one individual of a family, but, as in all family crises, is reacted to by all members and affects family interactions. Two family cases are presented here to illustrate how mourning can be managed therapeutically as a family process.

Gehrke, Shirley & Martin Kirschenbaum (1967): Survival Patterns in Family Conjoint Therapy. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 67–80.

Abstract: This analysis began as an inquiry into Family Conjoint Therapy; who needs it, when it is most effective, and how it works out in combination with other therapeutic methods. The investigation covered twenty families who were studied for a period of a year at the Family Service Agency of Marin County.1 In each of these families, a child was the identified patient who precipitated therapy.

Haley, Jay (1967): Speech Sequences of Normal and Abnormal Families With Two Children Present. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 81–97.

Abstract: The Investigation reported here was an attempt to determine, with the most simple measurements possible, whether there are differences between “abnormal” and “normal” families and whether parents deal with a problem child in ways different from his sibling. A previous study examined a sample of 40 “normal” and 40 “abnormal” families where parents and one child were brought to the laboratory and engaged in a conversational task. Striking differences were found between the two groups when a measurement was made of the order in which family members spoke (3). In the study reported here, a similar sample of families was tested in the same way with parents and two children present. Few differences were found between the two groups. This report will contain the results of the present study, speculation about the differences found in the two investigations, and findings related to the ways parents deal with a problem child and with his sibling based upon this measurement of speech sequence.

Machotka, Pavel, Frank S. Pittman & Kalman Flomenhaft (1967): Incest as a Family Affair. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 98–116.

Abstract: The study of incest holds a special position in psychiatry. For Freud, initially, parental seduction of children was a reality and one of the causes of psychoneurosis. Later, Freud discovered that his patients’ reports were fantasies, and his interest shifted to the child’s incestuous wishes. This new focus became a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory and treatment but also drew attention away from cases where incest had actually occurred. Only in recent years has interest in actual incest been revived; it centered first on the individual pathology of the participants, but to some observers the participants’ pathology has become even less interesting than the strong involvement of the family member who does not overtly participate. Incestas much other behavior, pathological or notappears to be determined by an interpersonal triangle. The authors, members of the Family Treatment Unit, have studied three incestuous families and have become especially sensitive to the contribution of the non-participating member and, while recognizing the complex intrapsychic and inter-reactional determinants of incest, they will discuss that contribution here. In the presentation of the three cases the focus will be, first, on the non-participant’s role not only in the two cases of father-daughter incest but also in one of sibling incest and intrafamilial homosexuality; second, on the manner in which the pathological relationships are perpetuated by the nonparticipating member’s denial of the incest and the consequent “secret” it creates; and third, on a brief treatment method which uses the denial and the secret to motivate these families for change.

Jackson, Don D. (1967): Family Affairs. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 117–119.

Ferber, Andrew & Christian Beels (1967): Comment on Haley, Jay (1966): Review – Intensive Family Therapy: Theoretical and Practical Aspects, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy and James L. Framo (Eds.), Harper and Row, New York, 1965. In: Family Process, 5 (2), S. 281–283. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 120–120.

Haley, Jay (1967): Comment on the comment of Andrew Ferber and Christian Beels. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 120–122.

Abstracts of Literature. (1967): In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 125–128.

Johannsen, Walter J. (1967): Review – Review of Child Development Research, Vol. I, by Marvin, L. and Lois Wladis Hoffman, New York, Russell Sage Foundation, 1964. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 129–130.

Weiss, Robert L. (1967): Review – Ingratiation. A social psychological analysis, by Edward E. Jones, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1964. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 130–132.

Cavan, Sherri (1967): Review – Being Mentally Ill. A Sociological Theory, by Thomas J. Scheff, Chicago, Aldine Publishing Co., 1966. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 132–133.

Offer, Daniel (1967): Review – Family Treatment of Schizophrenics in the Home, by Alfred S. Friedman, Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, Jerome E. Jungreis, Geraldine Lincoln, Howard E. Mitchell, Ph.D., John C. Sonne, M.D., Ross V. Speck, M.D. and George Spivack, Ph.D., New York, Springer Publishing Co., 1965. In: Family Process, 6 (1), S. 133–134.

Heft 2

Jackson, Don D. (1967): The Individual and the Larger Contexts. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 139–147.

Abstract: We are on the edge of a new era in psychiatry and the related disciplines of psychology, social work, anthropology and sociology. In this new era we will come to look at human nature in a much more complex way than ever before. From this threshold the view is not of the individual in vitro but of the small or larger group within which any particular individual’s behavior is adaptive. We will move from individual assessment to analysis of the contexts, or more precisely, the system from which individual conduct is inseparable.

Now this is obviously a very recondite area, one in which a beginning is just being made in family research, utilizing a patchwork of systems theory, cybernetics and information theory, but I think there is a great promise that this group-oriented approach will tremendously enhance our knowledge of human behavior. Further, the conceptual problems we face in family study are shared by students of political, biological, and even artificial or inorganic systems, so there is a situation, rare and exciting in science, in which we can seek broad theoretical solutions of vital interest to incredibly diverse fields of study. At the moment, however, let us examine a few of the issues which arise when the family system of an individual is studied.

Vassiliou, George, Nathan B. Epstein, Lyman Wynne & Don D. Jackson (1967): Discussion of Don D. Jackson: „Individual and the Larger Contexts“. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 148–154.

Abstract: With this issue FAMILY PROCESS begins a policy of having certain articles followed by critical comment of invited discussants. We wish to thank Dr. Jackson for permitting publication of comment on his paper, and we are fortunate to have discussions from Dr. George Vassiliou, Dr. Nathan B. Epstein, and Dr. Lyman Wynne.

Winter, William D. & Antonio J. Ferreira (1967): Interaction Process Analysis of Family Decision-Making. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 155–172.

Abstract: It is evident to anyone reading the current literature in abnormal psychology that there has been an increasing emphasis on the importance of family dynamics as a factor in psychopathology. Numerous case studies have been published illustrating how the symptoms of an individual can be viewed as the end product of the interaction of a family system, and several theories have been advanced to account for the development of individual pathology in family interaction terms (15, 16). Although individual case histories are illuminating and often lead to fruitful generalizations regarding these cases, in the long run only systematic research can bring about validation of theories concerning family communication patterns. Haley (12) and Rabkin (16) have pointed out some of the methodological problems in doing research in this area, not the least of which are the problems involved in measuring the variables we wish to study.

Navran, Leslie (1967): Communication and Adjustment in Marriage. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 173–184.

Abstract: Common sense observation, newspaper reports, the works of novelists and playwrights, the statements of individuals receiving psychotherapy and research findings (6, 7) all converge to emphasize the positive relationship between communication and a good marital relationship. Certainly, when boy meets girl, there is a felt need to talk in order to get acquainted and learn more about each other. Each wants to know the other better, and communication goes forward by spoken word and by gestures, and later on, by letters and notes, pictures, gifts and by touch. “Tell me all about yourself” is the early theme, and this blends into a sharing experience (dating) in which the two do become better acquainted and the question of getting serious is entertained, evaluated and resolved.

When two people become serious and ultimately decide to marry, their joint communication history will reflect the nature and the duration of their relationship. The shorter the time they have known each other, the greater is the likelihood that their communication will have been employed primarily for the exchange of information about their past, their attitudes and interests in the matters relating to the here and now, and the expression of their mutual love and affection. Typically their interactions will have been spaced and will have allowed each to put his best foot forward as they focused on companionship and recreation.

With marriage, their associations will become different in character and intensity. Not only will they be together more, but they will share mutual living quarters and enjoy greater physical intimacy. They will be required to deal with the functional issues of managing money, relating to in-laws, and deciding on the division of the labor associated with the state of matrimony. These issues and new areas of interaction bring to the couple new problems, and this in turn portends new and exacting demands on their capacities to communicatei.e., to listen, to understand each other and to express themselves clearly and accurately.

If these views are correct, it can be hypothesized that couples who make a good or “happy” marital adjustment are those whose communication skills have been expanded to deal effectively with the problems inherent in marriage. Conversely, those couples who make a poor marital adjustment are hypothesized to have developed significantly different communication styles and techniques which make for poor problem solving, need frustration, and the subjectively experienced anxiety, tension and anger which characterizes marital friction. The present paper presents objective test data bearing on this hypothesis, which is taken from a larger study investigating the nature of communication in marital problem solving.

Barcai, Avner (1967): An Adventure in Multiple Family Therapy. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 185–192.

Abstract: During its short but rather successful existence, the Baltimore Day Care Center’s staff was impressed with the relative speed of improvement in young male schizophrenics on their service. At the same time, they were distressed with the high recurrence rate seen in these same patients following discharge back to their families. It appeared that upon the patients’ return to their families, some processes were set in motion which interfered with their functioning and resulted in the patients’ deterioration. Therefore it was felt that in order to reverse this trend the unit for which exploration and treatment was indicated should include the family (3). Although the original goal was to treat each family individually, budgetary difficulties made it unfeasible. Instead, it was decided to approach this task through the model of Multiple Conjoint Family Therapy (4, 2). During the process of family therapy, the use of traditional approaches to the resolution of the problem of scapegoating of the schizophrenic son was found to be impossible. In this paper we would like to describe a facet of the difficulties encountered and how it was resolved.

Three male adolescent schizophrenics aged 19, 20 and 22 years old respectively, and their parents were assigned to the group. The group totalled nine “patient” members, ten with the therapist. The Day Center nurse functioned as an observer. She sat in the same room and took notes, but she did not participate in the verbal interaction. The group met once a week for 90 minutes for a period of a year. An evening hour was selected to insure parents’ attendance. Therapy with this group began while the sons were still in-patients of the Day Center and was continued on an out-patient basis. The group was open ended so that a family could be discharged when indicated and another family could then be taken in. An impasse occurred in treatment when the therapist could not realize a therapeutic goal for the group because an appropriate tactic was missing from his therapeutic armamentarium. At this point he had to resort to an unorthodox maneuver which potentialized the resolution of the “scapegoating” conflict.

Bentinck, Catherine (1967): Opinions About Mental Illness Held by Patients and Relatives. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 193–207.

Abstract: In the past two decades under the impact of the National Mental Health Act (1946), the work of the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health (1955-1960), and a variety of grant-in-aid funds, the treatment of the mentally ill in the United States has been intensively and extensively reevaluated (1). Especially since 1963, with funds made available by Congress, state level planning committees throughout the nation have been actively engaged in designing comprehensive mental health services which will meet eligibility criteria for federal financial assistance. A conspicuous change, reflected in this planning, is the movement toward community centered treatment facilities to supplement or replace the traditional services of mental hospitals (2). As a consequence, mentally ill persons, who formerly were “put away” and often at great distances from their homes, may now have an opportunity to remain in their own communities, with or near their families, while undergoing active psychiatric treatment. This shift in the structure and locale of treatment settings may be expected to result in decreased influence of the mental hospital atmosphere on mental patients and increased exposure to the attitudes and behaviors of family and community members.

Although conclusive evidence is lacking, there is strong conviction that the attitudinal climate of the treatment setting is importantly related to treatment outcome. Proceeding on this premise, investigators have studied both mental hospital employees and volunteers to ascertain their opinions about mental illness and to correlate these opinions with the variables of age, sex, education, and occupation (3). Their findings have disclosed widely divergent attitudes among hospital personnel, a condition which is thought to have a deleterious effect on patient welfare. More recently a related study has shown that mental hospital social atmosphere profiles are associated with the length of time spent in the community by released patients (4). Specifically, an atmosphere high in authoritarian restrictiveness was found to be negatively associated with the number of in-community days, while other atmosphere types were positively related to the same criterion. In still another study, relatives’ opinions about mental illness were shown to be correlated with the success or failure of psychiatric patients to achieve a 9-month uninterrupted community stay following hospital release (5). Low scores for authoritarian and restrictive attitudes and high scores for benevolent attitudes were significantly related to success.

With family or home attitudinal atmosphere tending to replace mental hospital atmosphere for many patients under psychiatric treatment, it would seem important to investigate mental illness opinions of both patients and their relatives. This information would be of interest to all mental health professionals, whether they practice in local community based facilities or in more remote mental hospitals. Also, an awareness of the mental illness opinions of patients and their relatives would have special significance for therapists engaged in family centered treatment, which will become increasingly feasible as facilities and families are brought into closer geographical proximity. Finally, social workers would find such knowledge helpful in view of their responsibility for assessing the patient’s family milieu and for enhancing his family and community interaction and social functioning.

Speck, Ross V. (1967): Psychotherapy of the Social Network of a Schizophrenic Family. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 208–214.

Abstract: After working for a number of years in the psychotherapy of schizophrenic family units, my colleagues and I at Philadelphia Psychiatric Center1 became increasingly aware of the role of the absent person in a schizophrenic family as a

resistance to the psychotherapy of the family system. Our paper in 1962 (1) developed some of the theoretical and conceptual implications of working with a partial family system. As we began to include members of the extended family, friends, advisors, and various significant others, in the conjoint family therapy, it became obvious that other significant persons could also be absent from the family therapy and thus impair, impede or render impossible, further change in the schizophrenic family system. In one case, a lawyer who referred the “schizophrenic” family for treatment and who made numerous decisions for this particular family, refused to jeopardize his status position with the family by siding with the therapist even on concrete and practical matters. We attempted, without success, to get him to attend the family therapy sessions. In another case, a priest promised to encourage one of his parishioners to continue in family treatment, but when the priest did attend the family interviews, he took the position that the Catholic Church was opposed to psychotherapy. In yet another case, a brother-in-law paid for the family treatment with the proviso that the family would come and discuss what happened in each session with him, and he reserved the right to tell the family what to accept from the therapist and what not to accept. He would exchange messages with the therapist via the family, but took the precaution, prior to treatment, of having himself referred to, by the family members, by a pseudonym so that when I tried to reach him by telephone he could not be traced. At one point this man did agree, however, to meet me on a plane while he went on a business trip. Before this materialized, however, he backed out of it and I never did get a chance to talk to him about the family I was treating. In a few months he advised them to terminate family therapy, against my advice.

The above experiences have multiplied many times in our work with other families at Hahnemann Medical College. It has been both frustrating and fascinating. At one point, I drafted a pilot study research proposal to develop a new type of professional role as that of a mediator between the schizophrenic family and the therapist, between the therapist and social organizations or society, and between the family and society. We are dealing with the interface between society and the family. One might speak of dealing with the surrounds of families. My clinical work over the years has convinced me that the organization of social structures and society plays a larger role in the alienation of a person from himself and others than most clinicians are willing to accept at the moment. This is not to refute the role of intrapsychic factors, but these have been studied and dealt with as though external and interpersonal or social factors were of relatively little importance. If all members of the schizophrenic family system have a socially shared psychopathology, as I believe, would it not then be likely that there is a shared psychopathology in the social field around the family of a schizophrenic as well?

Sigal, John J., Vivian Rakoff & Nathan B. Epstein (1967): Indicators of Therapeutic Outcome in Conjoint Family Therapy. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 215–226.

Abstract: Clinicians are continually searching for clues observable in the early stages of treatment that will give some indication of the outcome of therapy. Although objective measures of the process during clinical interviews are undoubtedly much more precise and may eventually provide the key to the problem, for the moment the psychotherapist working in most clinical settings depends upon his subjective, clinical impressions. In order to increase the validity and, hence, the usefulness of clinical observations, they should be compared in some systematic way, with the variables to which they claim to be related. This paper is a report of such an attempt. It deals with the predictive value for the eventual success of conjoint family therapy of the degree of the family interaction and emotional involvement as described by therapists in the initial stages of treatment.

As part of a larger study of the process of conjoint family therapy, therapists were asked, among other things, to describe the patterns of collaboration of the families they were treating at predetermined intervals during the course of therapy. Trial runs on a questionnaire used in a preliminary study suggested closed-ended questions to be more suitable for our purposes. However, we felt some provision should be made for therapists to give impressions of the family in treatment free of an externally imposed structure. The question on collaboration was worded so as to permit a therapist considerable freedom in describing his impressions of a family’s course in treatment. Probably as a result of our approach to conjoint family therapy, all therapists, in their description of these patterns of collaboration, made some mention of the interaction and emotional involvement of the various members of the families they were treating. The families were independently rated for improvement in a number of areas of family functioning some 14 months after treatment began. On the basis of these ratings they were divided into: high improvement ( + + ), moderate improvement ( + ), (and no improvement (0 and -) groups. The initial patterns of interaction were then compared with the amount of change in family and individual functioning in the search for early prognostic indicators.

Strean, Herbert S. (1967): A Family Therapist Looks At ‘Little Hans’. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 227–234.

Abstract: One of the classics of psychoanalysis is the story of “Little Hans.” Hans, a five-year old boy, was so paralyzed by his phobia of horses that he was forced to stay at home and not risk going outdoors for fear that he would be confronted by the animals. His father, a student of Sigmund Freud, decided that he would attempt to rid Hans of his phobia by utilizing the prescribed interpretive interventions of classical psychoanalytic technique developed by Freud for the psychotherapy of neurotics. Under Dr. Freud’s guidance, the father met with Hans almost daily over a period of a few months and explained to the boy the reasons for his fear. Little Hans was told that his phobia emanated from his oedipal wisheshis strong erotic attachment to his mother coupled with his wish to displace his father and penetrate mother with his own “widdler.” Because Hans was convinced that his sexual desires towards mother and competitive drives towards father were taboo, he had to pay a penalty, namely, castration at the hands of his father. Unable to cope with his strong ambivalence towards his father, Hans repressed the hateful feelings, displaced them on to horses and then feared the horses’ hostile retaliation rather than that of his father.

Hans’ recovery, according to Freud, was due to the boy’s assimilation and integration of his father’s interpretations which were mainly focused on Hans’ oedipal difficulties. Recognizing that his father would not punish him for his libidinal and aggressive wishes, Hans was free to resume his energetic life outdoors and enter areas where he previously feared to tread (3).

The case of Little Hans has remained a classic; not only has it been utilized to demonstrate the metapsychology of anxiety hysteria, but it reveals poignantly the universal oedipal struggle which all children are alleged to experience. In addition, the case has provided a colorful means of attempting to understand how psychoanalytic interpretations may lead to the uncovering and overcoming of a neurosis, particularly a childhood neurosis.

Aldous, Joan (1967): Intergenerational Visiting Patterns: Variation in Boundary Maintenance as an Explanation. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 235–251.

Abstract: Sociologists can now quite fairly be said to have recognized the importance of kinship in a modern industrial society. Beginning with Sussman’s study of intergenerational helping patterns in the middle class (22), an increasing number of investigators have documented the importance of kindred to the city dweller’s existence. These findings are contrary to the Simmel-Wirth picture of the urbanite as an isolated individual cut off from extended family contacts (19, 24). The trend in the literature is now so firmly against this thesis that a scholarly textbook in the area of family sociology has recently appeared in which the theoretical focus is on intergenerational ties (8). The present article is in the same vein. The first section is devoted to developing a theoretical rationale concerning factors influencing frequency of kinship contacts based on the phenomenon of boundary setting and maintenance that characterizes primary groups. The second section concerns an examination of hypotheses derived from the rationale using data from a sample of three generation lineages.

Jackson, Don D. (1967): Family Affairs. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 252–253.

Bell, John E. (1967): Comment: Family Group TherapyA New Treatment Method for Children. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 254–263.

Abstract: The paper presented here is quite possibly the first description of family therapy as a method of treatment where the whole family is seen consistently together. It was read at a meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Boston, April 24, 1953. At that time Dr. Bell was Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Psychological Clinic at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. He is currently Program Director, NIMH, Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, Region IX, San Francisco, California.

Glick, Ira (1967): Abstracts of Literature. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 264–266.

Watson, Andrew S. (1967): Review – Cases and Materials on Family Law, by Caleb Foote, Robert J. Levy Frank, E. A. Sander, Little Brown & Co., Boston, 1966. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 267–268.

Aldous, Joan (1967): Review – The Family in Perspective, by William F. Kenkel, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1966. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 268–269.

Haley, Jay (1967): Review – International Bibliography of Research in Marriage and the Family 1900-1964, by Joan Aldous and Reuben Hill, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minn., 1967. In: Family Process, 6 (2), S. 269–270.

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