Family Belief Systemspb

Rudi Dallos discusses the understandings, beliefs, explanations and the constructs that people use in order to manage their relationships in families. "Family" here is a shorthand form for a group of people who are intimately involved over an extended period - and includes one-parent families, step-families, couples without children, homosexual relationships and communal structures. Dallos considers how families construct shared systems of beliefs which serve to guide their percieved options. His argument is illustrated by material drawn from both clinical practice and research into families and employs theories originally formulated in terms of individuals - especially personal construct theory. His aim is to explore intimate relationships in families from the standpoint of people inside them, and to link this exploration to the substantial body of literature which examines families from the outside. In short, this book aims to bridge the gap between system theory (as applied to families) and Kelly's personal construct theory and, in so doing, aims to encourage new ways of seeing and doing therapy. It reveals how a family's problems are related to its shared beliefs and how we can use therapy to challenge those beliefs and help with those problems.