Description:
The Pathological Family examines how family therapy developed against the intellectual and cultural landscape of postwar America.
Brief description: Deborah Weinstein is Assistant Director of the Pembroke Center at Brown University, where she also teaches in Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Review Quotes:
At first glanceDeborah Weinstein's study of family therapy traces a very familiar path. Mental health specialists leave the institutional treatment of severe mental illness for the more accessible and profitable needs of middle-class families. Weinsteinhowevertakes us through new and interesting territories along the way. She demonstrates both the distinctiveness of her subjects' therapeutic approach and how that approach reflects important elements of postwar American society. Weinstein locates the genesis of family therapy in the same widespread postwar interest in systems that spurred the study of ecosystemscomputer scienceand urban planning.
--Theresa E. Runstedtler, American University "Journal of American History"