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The assumption that the family as an institution is experiencing a continuous and rapid loss of functions is challenged. Instead, the institution is seen as assuming newsets of responsibilities in the areas of sexual intercourse, recreation, and therapeutic services. These responsibilities are conceptualized as new roles in the positions of parent and spouse. The reverse process is seen in the decline of the norms ascribing housekeeper and kinship duties to family members. Initial data from a sample of 210 couples, parents of children in the third grade, provide support for the above thesis of changes in the family institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the positive outcome of social research conducted within a group of mentally ill children and their families. The success of casework is assessed in terms of improvement in family relationships and, necessarily, took into account the work with the children, whether they participated in the groups or not. However no family was included where a child's problem, if it had caused the referral, was not to some extent alleviated. The fact that three children were at the end referred to a child guidance clinic, one placed in a home for maladjusted children, and another offered psychotherapy if he could accept it, did not exclude these families from being included in the improved category. All these children had such severe problems that family and group therapy was insufficient. It was some measure of success that the family relationships were improved and the child's problem could be differentiated. The parents could turn from negative attitudes towards a positive plan for getting help for their child.

This paper surveys the recently emerging fields of marital and family therapy in terms of their developments in research, theory and clinical practice. The parallel, but unrelated, developments of these two fields are described. A system framework was developed for categorizing the various clinical approaches in marital and family therapy. Neither field has yet developed a solid theoretical base nor tested their major assumptions or principles. However, both fields have recently become more concerned about conceptual and methodological issues. Several ways of bridging the professional gap between therapists and researchers are suggested. Recommendations for interdisciplinary borrowing are indicated and exemplary projects giving new direction to the fields are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The family therapy approach to psychological disorders in children is distinguished from traditional therapy approaches on the basis of (1) viewing the child's symptomatic behavior as representative of disturbed family relationships and (2) emphasis on parental responsibility and involvement in the therapeutic process. The significance of the family approach for developing ill new ways of conceptualizing psychopathology within the child is discussed, and some aspects of the therapeutic task are delineated. The therapist is portrayed as an active teacher whose main concern is that of inducing change in the family's rigid and stereotyped pattern of interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study using a system previously devised to code therapist behavior from transcripts of conjoint family therapy sessions to study therapists' responses to a series of family situations portrayed on a video-tape of a simulated family. In this study of family therapists' responses, it was found that coding whole speeches from an audiotape is not consistently equivalent to coding sentences or sentence equivalents from a unitized transcript. However, it is possible to achieve reliable results when one codes the therapist's behavior directly from an audiotape if the material is coded in 10-second intervals.

The author reflects on a case that deals with treatment aspects of one drug addict, covering a period of nearly four years. Sessions were sometimes held weekly, and sometimes discontinued for six months to be resumed at irregular intervals. When this writer first met the patient, she was an eighteen year old girl from a middle-class family, the older of two children, her brother was four years her junior and the good child of the family. But Dinah always seemed to have difficulties with her family. Dinah had started her career in heroin while a freshman in high school. From then on, the writer's contacts with Dinah can be viewed in three steps: direct therapeutic sessions with the patient, family-centered contacts and indirect contacts with the patient. In an attempt to learn about the fate of a boy-friend who had supplied her with heroin at a police station, she was re-arrested because the officers found numerous fresh needle-marks on her. There was one episode, when her husband was released from state prison and the couple was united again, for less than a month, when Rickey became addicted again. This time Dinah's newly gained strength manifested itself by breaking completely and finally with her husband, and by filing a formal suit for divorce. To sum up: most patients, and the drug-addict in particular, should be treated through a frontal attack on all sides, enlisting the relatives to a maximal degree, and through reaching out, that is, being permissive and being available at all times, if necessary.

A list of the publications received by the Journal of Marriage and the Family, is presented. This includes "Family Therapy," by Nathan W. Ackerman, Frances L. Beatman, and Sanford N. Sherman, "The Sex Game," by Jessie Bernard and "The Laughter and Tears of Children," by Marilyn Bonham among others.

This section provides information on national regional and state conferences of the National Conference on Family Relations, as of November 1945. President Sidney E. Goldstein and the other members of the Executive Committee have decided to hold the 1946 Annual meeting of the Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel during the weekend of April 6 to 8. The exact days for conference sessions will be announced later. The central topic of the conference as tentatively chosen will be New Foundations for Marriage and the Family. The program committee planning for the conference will consist of the Executive Committee of the society and the chairmen of the standing committees of the Conference. Meanwhile, a meeting of the Southern California Conference on Family Relations was held on October 20, 1945 in Los Angeles, California on The Veteran and the Family. Addresses at the session on Available Veterans Services were given by Samuel Futterman. A session was devoted to the topic Reestablishing the Home Through Basic Democratic Institutions with talks on The Challenge to Education by Ray E. Baber, The Challenge to Religion by Gordon C. Chapman, The Challenge to Recreation by Melvin Chase and The Challenge to Employment by John MacGillvray.