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This work honors the work of the Mental Research Institute (MRI) in Palo Alto, California, upon the sale of the building it long occupied, and particularly the closing of the MRI Brief Therapy Center as a research and training center. The major position of the article is that the MRI was much more than a place, a name, or the people who have been part of it. Instead, the ideas and practices of those who have been part of the MRI are what endure and thrive. As a case in point, the author follows his own professional journey from his first contact with the MRI ideas as a “difference that made a difference” through his present day work.

This study explored the relationship between the level of systems collaboration with schools and outcomes for children diagnosed with serious emotional disorder and their families involved in integrative family and systems treatment, a home-based treatment program. Using data collected from 38 clients and their families, this study used a structural equation model to explore how systems collaboration with schools influenced children’s behavioral outcomes, parental competence, and family functioning. The squared multiple correlations from endogenous variables of the final model accounted for 31 percent of the variance in problem severity in children, 38 percent of the variance in level of functioning in children, 30 percent of the variance in parental competence with children, and 41 percent of the variance in family functioning. The final model indicated the following: Systems collaboration with schools positively influenced parental competence with children, which positively predicted level offunctioning in children and negatively predicted problem severity in children. Although the limited sample size of the study precludes any definitive conclusions, implications of the study on the potential role of systems collaboration with schools in treating families with at-risk children or adolescents are explored and discussed.

This article focuses on blueprints for developing primary care psychology training in graduate psychology programs. The rationale and the foundations for establishing primary care psychology as a generalist model in clinical programs are identified. An outline of a core curriculum for multiprofessional training and an introductory knowledge base for primary care psychology is presented. Finally, a developmental model for primary care practicum training and supervision is described and exemplified. Funding issues, faculty development, and student evaluations of this training are discussed. This article represents the ever-evolving model and lessons learned through 10 years of experience in collaborative programs among Wright State University's School of Professional Psychology, the School of Medicine, the College of Nursing and Health. and a set of urban community health centers.

This article seeks to provide an alternative approach to traditional point-of-contact crisis services for victims of domestic violence. This approach, based on a feminist Mental Research Institute brief therapy model, takes into account the many forces arrayed against battered women that influence their decisions about staying or leaving their batterers. Many service organizations provide services targeted to the woman who leaves, not the woman who stays. Thus, this approach provides a model with which to fit the services to each woman, not the woman to the services. In addition, by honoring and acknowledging the many forces that keep women from leaving, service providers may reduce their rates of burnout by redefining the meaning of successful intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

The MRI problem-solving and the recently popular solution-amplifying approaches to brief therapy are described as based upon the same process point of view. A process view is described in contrast to a structural view of human interactions. It is argued that an exclusive focus on amplifying perceived solutions without clearly defining problem patterns may become a problem. Clear articulation of a therapist's assumptions about human interaction, problems, and therapeutic solutions is strongly advocated. Creativity, flexibility, effectiveness, and efficiency are likely to be by-products of such clarity. Without it, our therapeutic zeal in searching for solutions is likely to become a problem. A Japanese coastal village was once threatened by a tidal wave, but the wave was sighted in advance, far out on the horizon, by a lone farmer in the rice fields on the hillside above the village. At once he set fire to the fields, and the villagers who came swarming up to save their crops were saved from the flood.

A moderate common factors approach is proposed as a synthesis or middle path to integrate common and specific factors in evidence-based approaches to high-risk youth and families. The debate in family therapy between common and specific factors camps is reviewed and followed by suggestions from the literature for synthesis and creative flexibility in manual development. A preliminary integrative model termed Integrative Family and Systems Treatment is offered as one option in developing and testing a moderate common factors approach. Such a model might then be studied in eventual clinical trials with other well-developed evidence-based protocols to further address the common versus specific factor debate. Implications for further research and practice are offered.

Systems collaboration has repeatedly been cited as a component of successful social service delivery. Through qualitative data, this study explored the process involved in inter-agency collaboration when providing Integrative Family and Systems Treatment (I-FAST) for families with severely emotionally or behaviorally disturbed children. Data were collected through a series of eight focus groups with 26 agency collaborators across 11 counties in Ohio. Data analysis revealed two emergent phenomena: the process of developing collaboration, consisting of making initial contact, a trial period and developing trust; and the key ingredients of collaboration, focusing on interpersonal and professional qualities. Implications of each theme are discussed.

Community mental health agencies are consistently challenged to provide realistic and effective home-based family-centered treatment that meets local needs and can realistically fit within available budget and resource capabilities. Integrated Family and Systems Treatment (I-FAST) is developed based on existing evidence-based approaches for working with at-risk children, adolescents, and families and a strengths perspective. I-FAST identified 3 evidence-based, core treatment components and integrated them into a coherent treatment protocol; this is done in a way that builds on and is integrated with mental health agencies' existing expertise in home-based treatment. This is an intervention development study in which we conducted an initial feasibility trial of I-FAST for treating families with children at risk of out-of-home placement. The outcomes of the study provide initial empirical evidence that supports the effectiveness of I-FAST. Findings indicate that there were significant improvements in child behavior, significant increases in parental competency, and significant increases in the level of cohesion and adaptability in these families. All observed changes were significant from pre- to posttreatment with the families able to maintain these positive changes at 6-month follow-up. A more rigorous and robust research design, however, will be needed to establish definitive evidence of the effectiveness of I-FAST.

The revised edition of Jerome Frank's (1975) seminal text Persuasion and Healing: A Complete Study of Psychotherapy that I own is badly worn. It is yellowed, the pages are dog-eared, and the binding has long been broken, so much so that I keep the book in a plastic bag so that I will not lose any of the pages. I have purchased updated editions over the years; indeed I own a copy of the updated edition (Frank & Frank, 1991) that he revised with his daughter. But I preserve this original book because it opened me up to the notion of healing as an art as well as a science. A professor of mine, a rigidly trained psychoanalyst, made the book required reading because, as he said, it showed him that it was OK to speak to behaviorists.

In reaction to a current move toward eclecticism in family therapy, the Structural and Strategic schools of therapy are examined. Both a conceptual and practical framework for relating these two, often contradictory, schools to one another is presented through the use of some of Gregory Bateson's recently presented views. The therapist's dilemma in trying to integrate these two approaches is discussed in the light of self-fulfilling prophecies and the necessity for second-order change as related to the therapist's actions. A conclusion is reached that conceptual integration of the approaches may be possible at a higher level, yet practical integration of the two by the practitioner may be difficult, if not impossible, due to the different units of analysis and subsequent action commanded by each approach.

This paper builds an argument for the use of a set of process level assumptions to guide selective integration of structural and strategic approaches to therapy. While the use of these two views conceptually to construct a case may add -richness and perspective similar to binocular vision; therapist attempts to act simultaneously on these two views is compared to operating on the world as seen through a pair of glasses with mismatched lenses. In this case, contradiction, confusion, stumbling or paralysis may result. The two views are compared to alternate levels of system description, and the problems of using biologically based assumptions in a process dominated social system domain are reviewed. The increased facility of adopting process level assumptions to selectively integrate the metaphors and tactics of alternate views is strongly recommended.

A systemic view of the nature of crisis is presented, followed by descriptions of generic and specific elements of crises. A rationale and an interview model is presented to guide the phases of a Strategic Rapid Intervention approach following a process/constructive model and an MRI stance on intervention. The phases of the interview process are discussed, and the approach is recommended as a general model to structure any crisis contact.

An interactional basis for the evolution of a paranoid cycle is presented, followed by its implications for clinical intervention. Treatment strategies and tactics are delineated along with a set of clinical examples. The major therapeutic principle advocated is for the therapist to help to build new action based upon old labels and premises. The danger of using static labels of pathology is clarified through the example of the paranoid cycle. Finally, the interactional view of the paranoid cycle is briefly related to the paradigm shift within our field. True to strategic intervention tactics, the reframing of traditional labels used by the field in general is advocated as the best pathway to change.