The Reception of Family Therapy: a View From the Psychiatric Journals

An analysis of the reviews of books on family studies and therapy in psychiatric jour nals was done to determine how mental health professionals perceived the family therapy movement and how they responded to its basic theoretical and clinical tenets. The reviews published in leading psychiatric journals from 1955 to 1970 illustrate the rich debate that accompanied the family therapy movement in the first fifteen years of its history in the U.S. Concern over efficacy, theory, limits and affiliation dominated the reviews. The reviewers' responses evolved in a fluctuating pattern from an early acceptance of family therapy to a middle phase of resistance and con testation when family treatment seemed to challenge the domination of the individual approach in the field of psychiatry and, finally, a renewed support of the family approach as an addition to the expanding psychotherapeutic armamentarium. This paper challenges the prevailing view among family therapists and others that family therapy developed in a hostile psychiatric environment.