The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy [Paperback]

Augustus Y. Napier (Author), Carl Whitaker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 1988

This extraordinary book presents scenarios of one family's therapy experience and explains what underlies each encounter. You will discover the general patterns that are common to all families-stress, polarization and escalation, scapegoating, triangulation, blaming, and the diffusion of identity--and you will gain a vivid understanding of the intriguing field of family therapy.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A thoughtful, well-written book for the general reader." -- -- The Milwaukee Journal

"Highly absorbing and readable." -- -- American Journal of Psychiatry

About the Author

Augustus Y. Napier was born in Decatur, Georgia, in 1938 and graduated from Wesleyan University with a B.A. in English. After deciding to become a therapist through a personal therapy experience, he earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina. During an internship in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he began to work with Dr. Whitaker as a student co-therapist, an experience which formed the basis of this book. Dr. Napier later served on the faculties of the Psychiatry Department and the Child and Family Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin. He now directs The Family Workshop, a family therapy training institute in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works frequently with his wife, Margaret, who is also a family therapist. A frequent consultant, he is the author of numerous papers and of The Fragile Bond, published by Harper & Row in 1988. The Napiers have three children.

Product Details

• Paperback: 301 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (May 25, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060914890
• ISBN-13: 978-0060914899
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Family Crucible, May 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy (Paperback)

The authors have succeeded in writing a serious treatise about marriage and family therapy with the characteristics of an, hard to put down, emotion packed real life drama. I felt as if I were the "fly-on-the-wall" watching as a two caring and skillful therapists worked with a seriously disfunctional familly listening, helping, supporting, cajolling, teasing, pushing. I saw problems of scapegoating the children fall one by one by the wayside until the parents and the parent's parents faced the hard issues they had so skillfully avoided through the dynamics they set up among themselves. This book best illustrates why sometimes familly therapy and not individual therapy can be the right solution. Add to that a "hold-on-to-your-chair" style of writing made this book impossible to put down.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very pertinent, June 9, 2003

By 

Darwin Perkins (Gilbert, AZ) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy (Paperback)

First, let me say that I've never been a proponent of Therapy. This book, however, has made me re-think that stance.

I'm recently divorced. I was very surprised how this book explained, in detail, the process I went through. It provided an insight into family and relationship dynamics that I had not considered at all. While obstensively, it documents a therapy process with a single family, the side notes, theory, and author's comments provide a fuller explanation of the dynamice of relationships that makes this book a "must read" if you are interested in why you do things and how you work within your relationships.

I find myself wondering if I had read this before my divorce if there would have been a different outcome. I definitely would have looked at the entire process and relationship differently.

I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to get a better understanding of relationship dynamics, especially in a family setting.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful view from a different perspective, December 6, 2000

By 

"hautboisr" (Evansville, IN, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy (Paperback)

I read this book for a university abnormal psychology class, and it provided a welcome contrast to the way we viewed human behaviour for most of the semester. Typically, psychology classes at my college have focused on individual factors causing psychological distress, but of course, family systems therapy views problems within the family system. Napier describes in depth his therapy with one family from beginning to end, and supplements his explanations of the family systems model and his and Whitaker's therapy techniques with examples from other families they have had in therapy. The book actually reads like a novel, and Napier's explanations make the entire process seem clear and reasonable. Even if you don't agree with the family system model, by the time you finish reading this book, you will at least have a much better understanding of it.