Dr. Salvador Minuchin works with a step family seeking assistance with their daughter’s habitual lying. Dr. Minuchin initiates a challenge to the family certainty that the symptom was the daughter’s lying. The shift from daughters as a carrier of lying to the father’s control over the daughter will change through the session, moving to the parent’s control and then to the mother’s control.
In 1992, Dr. Salvador Minuchin was invited to consult with a team of mental health professionals involved in the treatment of a 9 year old boy who had been institutionalized for 2 years in psychiatric hospitals. In this video, Dr. Minuchin asserts that the identity of young children is directly connected to their belonging to a group of people, specifically their family, who have created the child’s sense of reality.
Dr. Minuchin consults with the family of a 12 year old boy, who had been institutionalized for regressive behaviors, including an overwhelming fear of ghosts. Dr. Minuchin recommends changes to the family’s organization, so that the child can return home and maintain age appropriate behaviors.
In this session, Dr. Minuchin consults with a family consisting of a mother, father, and a 15-year-old son who is in treatment for depression. The session focuses on shifting the family’s sense of belonging to allow son to begin to become more autonomous. The social worker of the son’s treatment unit sits in on the session.
This session with Dr. Minuchin is with the family of a 12-year-old boy who has been hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for children. There are two disturbed systems that Dr. Minuchin addresses in this session. One is the family who needs to change. The other is the psychiatric unit where the child is hospitalized, that in hopes will be perturbed by the intervention.
A young man and his family enter a consultation session after the issue was raised of their son “rubbing his eyes”. The issue being that the young man had recently left a psychiatric hospital for attempting to gouge out his own eye. The intense involvement between mother and son is the matrix within which the son’s obsessive compulsive symptomatology has risen. The fathers evident disengagement from mother and son supports and maintains the over involvement between the young man and his mother.
Dr. Minuchin’s supervision of Wai-Yung Lee in her sessions with a family consisting of a father, mother, and two young men. The youngest was born with down-syndrome, and has recently shared his displeasure with the family by smearing feces in the bathroom.. Wai-Yung Lee follows up from their supervision 25 years later to reflect on the transformation of her style as a family therapist based on Minuchin’s supervision.
William and Carleen Glasser, authors of several books including Choice Theory, teach couples that relationships are a matter of choice not fate. They teach how to use the solving circle, help couples understand basic needs in a relationship, identify seven deadly habits, and show how to choose solutions over problems.
Here’s the premise: A relationship is an ongoing process of co-creation, for better or for worse. This important videotape takes this essential concept and shows couples how to put it into action – for better.
Working with real couples, Dr. Stuart demonstrates a series of exercises he has developed to help them clarify areas of discord and to acknowledge common ground. By delineating pockets of responsibility and forging a greater understanding of oneself and one’s partner, the process – and the promise – of co-creating begins to unfold.
Harville Hendrix, author of the bestseller Getting the Love That You Want, shows how to develop conscious communication. He teaches mirroring, validating one’s partner, empathy and requesting behavior change. He offers very clear guidelines as he helps couples master these essential relationship skills.