Family Therapy and Serious Mental Disorders: A Retrospective and Prospective View

This is a response to Malcolm MacFarlane's gracious and intriguing invitation to describe family therapy's role in the treatment of serious mental disorders at the start of my career and today. It is intriguing to look at things “then and now” from one's personal perspective and also challenging because of the necessity to be clear, comprehensive, and concise at the same time. My chosen point of departure for this saga is 1955–1956, a period in which I worked part-time as a psychiatric aide in the psychiatric unit of an upscale private hospital and subsequently worked with acute and chronic schizophrenic patients in a state mental hospital as part of a degree program. My account is necessarily illustrative, rather than comprehensive; therefore, discussion of important events is brief and the work of many pioneering and contemporary figures is not included.