Reflections on Feminist Family Therapy Training

Book excerpt: Although feminist family therapy has been gaining recognition and followers in recent years, little is known about the variety of experiences, philosophies, and private learnings of feminist practitioners. Reflections on Feminist Family Therapy Training utilizes first-person accounts, theory, and commentary to explore the challenges feminist teachers and practitioners face and the aspects of their practice that are seldom considered. Readers of Reflections on Feminist Family Therapy Training acquire effective teaching strategies and a sensitivity to the intersection of cultural diversity and feminism. Students are introduced to several contextual factors that shape personal and professional experiences, as well as techniques that address predictable patterns of behavior and attitudes toward feminist family therapy in a variety of settings. The book presents innovative ideas and strategies from experienced trainers for tolerating, working with, and resolving gaps between theory and practice and for confronting hostility or tension within specific institutional contexts. Aimed at building bridges between teachers and practitioners of family therapy from a feminist perspective, Reflections on Feminist Family Therapy Training explores and helps you answer the following questions: What similarities and differences exist between American and European feminist family therapists? What special challenges does the feminist therapist face in a conventional training institute? Does a feminist or liberal context attend adequately to the needs of the multicultural student body? How does a trainer’s national standing or tenure status promote or harm her freedom to practice openly in a specifically feminist way? What new directions and opportunities exist for feminist family therapists? Reflections on Feminist Family Therapy Training looks at the difficulties women practitioners face in convincing family therapy to recognize the significance of gender as a variable factor. In doing so, it offers specific classroom applications and general approaches to the feminist task of getting unheard and repressed voices acknowledged. Finally, the book outlines future directions for expanding and improving feminist-informed training and for giving it a more central and integrated position in the curricula.