This article describes a complex multimodal intervention with a family where inappropriate sexual contact had occurred between Taro and his younger sister Lara, when they were young children. The family presented to clinical services when Lara was brought to hospital with suicidal ideation, traumatic flashbacks and regressed behaviour at 13 years of age. Treatment involved multiple components: family work with all members of the family, individual work with Lara, joint work with Lara and Taro, and finally, a brief intervention with Taro. This article focuses primarily on the therapist's work with Taro, the perpetrator of the inappropriate sexual contact. The Adult Attachment interview (AAI), a semi-structured interview, was used by the therapist to assess Taro's developmental experiences and psychological functioning. Information from the AAI helped the therapist identify both the relationship factors that had contributed to the perpetration of sexual abuse and the self-protective strategies Taro had come to use in order to elicit maximum comfort and protection from neglectful attachment figures. The therapist used the functional formulation derived from the AAI to structure a time-limited intervention.

Among the Maori of New Zealand, Aboriginals of Australia, and other Indigenous peoples, family dynamics strongly influence the ways that issues emerge in counseling. This study explores aspects of gender and power within the context of birth practices in rural Nepal. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 postpartum women, as well as family members, to collect narratives of birthing experiences that highlight issues of oppression, marginalisation, and power struggles. Implications for multicultural and social justice awareness in family therapy are discussed, especially with regard to the subtle, disguised ways that power operates behind the scenes, often sabotaging efforts by health and mental health professionals to be most helpful.

This article examines the stages of the refugee journey and the intersections of domestic violence with culture, trauma, resettlement and masculinity. Arguing that therapists must challenge aspects of culture that promote violations of women's human rights while understanding the unique situation of refugee families, the article concludes by identifying principles for therapeutic and community based interventions.

This article considers the impact on and therapeutic responses to families where there has been intra-familial sexual assault (IFSA) by an adolescent member of the family against another younger member of the family. In doing so, the article will specifically highlight the nexus between systemic family therapy ideas and an applied restorative justice response in the form of Youth Justice Conferencing (YJC), as experienced through working as a family therapist in the area of adolescent sexual offending.

This article explores the characteristics of open and closed relationships in 170 gay men according to their levels of satisfaction, their attachment styles, and the rules of having sex outside their relationships for open couples. We found no significant difference between open or closed relationships in levels of satisfaction or attachment styles. However, we found that gay men in open relationships who have explicit rules about having sex with other men are significantly more satisfied that those gay men with no rules. A content analysis of the rules is presented and implications for therapy are drawn from the findings.

Advances in brain research are increasingly having an impact on clinical interventions in all fields of psychotherapy. For adolescent family therapists it is important not only to understand the developing adolescent brain, but also how brain research can influence interventions aimed at interrupting problematic familial interactions. Interpersonal neurobiology and the ideas of Dr Daniel Siegel synthesise the interpersonal with the scientific, offering practical clinical methods of incorporating the research into everyday practice. This article incorporates a verbatim interview with Dr Siegel about the adolescent brain, interpersonal neurobiology and attachment with an outline of key concepts from interpersonal neurobiology including the hand model of the brain, nine functions of the prefrontal cortex, the triangle of wellbeing and eight domains of integration. Clinical applications are suggested using a common presenting problem of escalating conflict between teenagers and their parents.

In order to analyse the salience of race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and adoptive status for lesbian adoptive parents, this study examined the challenges and strengths described by 20 White lesbian couples (40 women) who were adopting racial/ethnic minority children from within the United States. Data from two time points (pre- and post-adoptive placement) were analysed qualitatively. Results indicated that the majority of women voiced concerns about raising racial/ethnic minority children in a ‘White privileged’ society. Many women reported facing a lack of understanding from others and were aware of multiple layers of stigma. However, having faced discrimination themselves as sexual minorities, many also perceived themselves as possessing unique strengths (e.g., experience coping with stigma). Many women expressed feeling that by drawing on support from their communities as well as their own awareness of and experience with diversity issues, they could prepare their children for the challenges they might face.

Unresolved family-of-origin issues can play a powerful but covert role in here-and-now family interactions, and can contribute to the generation and maintenance of childhood psychopathology and illness behaviour. This article describes an intervention with a family where the children frequently presented to local health services with a baffling array of psychological and somatic symptoms. The therapist was unable to pinpoint where the problem lay. In a final effort to understand family functioning she used the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) in order to better understand parental state of mind and how parental anxieties and behaviours contributed to current family functioning. This information was used to plan a treatment intervention.

In this article I would like to investigate the place of the couple in family therapy intervention. Within this I will look at the usefulness of the concepts of triangulation and triangles in families and as to whether it is a theory that translates to be useful in practice and in technique. Attention will be paid to both the experience of this phenomena and emerging theories of the mind which casts new light on the concept of the emotional triangle.

The current study examined whether there are differences between gay father families (n = 36) and heterosexual families (n = 36) on father–child relationship, fathers' experiences of parental stress and children's wellbeing. The gay fathers in this study all became parents while in same-sex relationships. They donated sperm to lesbian couples and then shared the child-rearing with them in kinship arrangements. It was also examined whether aspects that are related specifically to gay fathers (i.e., experiences of rejection, having to defend their family situation, with whom the children live, and conflicts with the children's mothers) are also related to the father–child relationship, parental stress and children's wellbeing. Data were collected by means of questionnaires filled in by the fathers. No significant differences between the family types were found on emotional involvement and parental concern in the father–child relationship, parental burden (as an aspect of parental stress) or the children's wellbeing. However, gay fathers felt less competent in their child-rearing role than heterosexual fathers. For gay fathers especially, experiences of rejection and the feeling that they have to defend their situation were significantly related to father–child relationship, parental stress and children's wellbeing.

The following article was written by Dr Michael Kerr in response to questions put to him by Barbara Fraser, Linda Mackay and Lu Pease when he visited Australia two years ago. These three family therapists took it upon themselves to prepare this interview in recognition of Dr Kerr's unique vantage point on Bowen Theory and family therapy. Michael Kerr was trained by Murray Bowen in the 1970s and subsequently went on to work as faculty at the Georgetown Family centre. He succeeded Bowen as director of the centre where he has devoted his professional life to the understanding, application and extension of theory. He is the co-author with Dr Bowen of Family Evaluation: An Approach Based on Bowen Theory (Kerr & Bowen, 1988), which remains the most esteemed text on this theory. He is also the editor of Family Systems: A Journal of Natural Systems Thinking in Psychiatry and The Sciences. Bowen's Family Systems Theory grew out of years of research from the 1950s–1970s, which included observations of inpatient families with a schizophrenic member and using data from Bowen's own interactions with his family of origin (Bowen, 1978). The theory continues to be influential in family therapy, with its most well-known contributions being the process of triangling, the intergenerational transmission of family patterns and the concept of differentiation of self. (Brown, 1999). The following discussion from Dr Kerr brings a fresh perspective on the current applications and developments of this systems theory.

In this article we present findings from the Work, Love and Play (WLP) study: a survey completed by 445 same-sex attracted parents across Australia and New Zealand. Comparisons of household division of labour are made between a sub-sample of WLP participants, who were currently cohabiting with a same-sex partner (n = 317), and 958 cohabiting opposite-sex parents surveyed as part of a major Australian study, Negotiating the Life Course. This comparison showed that same-sex couples divided household labour significantly more equally than heterosexual parents, and lesbian couples also shared parenting tasks more equally. Qualitative findings from the WLP study indicate that, for many same-sex couples, major decisions around who gives up paid work and how many hours parents choose to work, as well as decisions around work/family balance, are negotiated on the basis of couple's preferences and circumstance rather than an assumption that one parent will be the primary child carer. It is speculated that this finding highlights an important point of difference between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples where the division of household labour is often based on the assumption that the mother will almost always be the primary child carer and homemaker. The research is a collaborative partnership between La Trobe University, Deakin University, The University of Melbourne, and Relationships Australia Victoria.