1st Edition

Expansions of Feminist Family Theory Through Diversity

By Rhea Almeida Copyright 1995

    Expansions of Feminist Family Theory Through Diversity reconstructs feminist family therapy to include issues of race, class, gender, culture, and sexual orientation. The contributors assist you with creating possible solutions to mental health problems in all types of families. This will enable you to find specific working strategies to help solve the problems inherent in families of diversity. This book also provides you with several conceptual models for approaching the sociopolitical context of family therapy.

    This collection challenges family therapy as an existing context of power privilege and expands feminist principle and diversity into subject areas such as intimate violence among the racially and sexually different, heterosexual privilege in family life, homosexual and racial oppression, social inequalities within the therapeutic story, and, from Monica McGoldrick, reflections on self as viewed by the multiple social systems of oppression.

    Clinicians and practicing feminist therapists can find insight into many general topic areas relevant to daily practice, such as:

    • race as a social construct
    • culture in the context of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation
    • assessment and treatment of violence in heterosexual and homosexual families
    • a social critique of therapeutic inequalities addressing the social inequalities in the delivery of mental health
    • the politics of privilege and privacy in family life

      Expansions of Feminist Family Theory Through Diversity is organized in a way that makes it central to all clinical practice. It can be used as a guidebook for family therapists, social workers, counselors (guidance, clergy, and counseling programs) and psychologists who deal with diverse families and their problems.

    Contents Introduction
    • Deconstructing Race in Family Therapy
    • LatiNegra: Mental Health Issues of African Latinas
    • Social Inequalities and Therapeutic Relationships: Applying Freire’s Ideas to Clinical Practice
    • Violence in the Lives of the Racially and Sexually Different: A Public and Private Dilemma
    • Family Therapy: Having a Place Called Home
    • Reference Notes Included
    • Index

    Biography

    Rhea V. Almeida, ACSW, is Founder/Director of the Institute forFamily Services in Somerset, New Jersey. She is of Asian Indian descent,and grew up in Uganda and London before coming to theUnited States. She has written on family violence, Asian Indian families,mentoring, and unexamined assumptions in service delivery. Shehas served on the Gay/Lesbian Task Force for NAS W and is currentlyon the Credentialing Board for Domestic Violence. Her special interestsinclude: culture, gender and race in clinical training. She is on thefaculty of the Family Institute of New Jersey, Metuchen, New Jersey.