Systemic family therapy skills sit at the centre of this professional text, with a clear focus on how relationships can be used as a resource for healing psychological difficulties across the life cycle. The book introduces family therapy as an evidence-informed approach and then moves into practical areas such as assessing a family, building a therapeutic relationship with several family members at once, and using interventions that help families notice and shift patterns of interaction.
The contents show a structured route through major family therapy approaches, including integrative family therapy, structural family therapy, strategic family therapy, the Milan and Post-Milan approach, narrative therapy, systemic work with individuals and systemic supervision. Practitioners searching for family therapy training material, systemic psychotherapy techniques, counselling skills for families, family assessment tools or therapeutic questioning examples are likely to find relevant material here.
Practical techniques named in the book include enactment, reframing, circular questions, externalising the problem and reflective supervision. The description also notes the use of film examples and transcripts, which suggests the text is designed to help readers see how interventions sound and unfold in practice rather than only reading theory. That makes it particularly relevant for family therapy students, newly qualified systemic practitioners, mental health clinicians, social workers and counsellors developing confidence in family sessions.
Chapters can be used for study, supervision preparation, clinical reflection or skills development when working with children, teenagers, parents, couples and wider family networks. A practitioner might use the assessment chapter to plan early sessions, the narrative therapy chapter to think about externalising language, or the systemic supervision chapter to reflect on their own practice and improve outcomes. The book is by Mark Rivett and Joanne Buchmüller, with Karon Oliver.
