Book Interview: Core Focused Family Therapy

Are you a therapist or counseling student in search of a form of therapy to use with clients? If you answered, "yes" then you could be interested in reading Core Focused Family Therapy by Psychologist and author Judye Hess and co-author Ross Cohen. To help understand what Core Focused Family Therapy is all about I have interviewed Judye Hess.

Tell me a little bit about yourself.
"I am a licensed clinical psychologist originally from NY, but have been out here in Berkeley since the late 70's. I teach at a unique school called the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and have been there since 1984. I teach Family Dynamics, Group Dynamics and Marriage and Couple Counseling. It is a holistically-oriented school that includes body, mind and spirit, and integrates eastern philosophical and western psychological approaches to counseling. I live with my two cats, Shakti and Sabrina and my long term partner, Simon, lives around the corner."

What made you decide to write the book "Core Focused Family Therapy"?
"Ross Cohen, LPC, my co-author of this book, was a student in my class in about 2003. He really wanted to learn the kind of family therapy I was doing and took an Independent Study with me to learn this in a disciplined way. We met each week and he asked me questions and we recorded our conversations. From this, he discerned the major tenets of my theory and practice and then applied these to transcripts of live family sessions that I had facilitated in class. He wrote a paper for me outlining this and we decided to make it into a book. I discovered that the book needed to be 150 pages to have it published and it was only 35 pages. So I wrote the rest of the book, using examples from these live sessions in class to articulate the theory and practice of this approach. Idyll Arbor, Inc published it in 2008."

What is "Core Focused Family Therapy " about?
"Core Focused Family Therapy is a humanistic, experiential approach that is based on relational connections in the here and now, rather than a technique -oriented approach. It is a balanced method that includes thinking and feeling, head and heart, intuition and structure, right brain and left brain , compassion and directness and finally love and truth. It is deep in focus, yet short term in application. Transformation can occur rapidly once family members are able to SEE the family dynamics with more clarity, experience their CORE truths on a bodily level, EXPRESS these truths to other members of the family and be WITNESSED by the family and the therapist. The role of the therapist is to help bridge the chasms of hurt, mistrust and disappointment that have built up over the years among family members and to guide them to honest, direct and deep conversation in the here and now. By doing this, they can define a structure for a continuing relationship with family members."

Who can benefit from reading the book "Core Focused Family Therapy"?
"Core -Focused Family Therapy integrates ideas from other schools of family therapy/therapists such as Virgina Satir, Carl Whitaker , Murray Bowen , and Salvador Minuchin . This unique approach to family therapy is particularly appropriate for students and practitioners who favor a humanistic, experiential approach to working with families but lack the guidance to put this kind of approach into practice. The book guides the individual practitioner into making the paradigm shift to working with a systemic model by explaining this shift in a clear and specific way that can be easily understood. The book can also be helpful for the lay person considering going to family therapy."

Thank you Judye for doing the interview on Core -Focused Family Therapy. For more information on Judye Hess or her book you can check out her website on psychotherapist.com/judyehess .

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