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Family Therapy + Social Justice + Daily Practices = Transforming Therapy

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Family Therapy as Socially Transformative Practice

Part of the book series: AFTA SpringerBriefs in Family Therapy ((BRIEFSFAT))

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Abstract

We explain our “equation” of adjusting family therapy clinical practices to include explicit talk of social justice issues (“unfairnesses”) experienced by our clients on a daily basis. We concentrate more on the everyday ways that injustices are enacted and experienced than on the macro-discourses of social injustices. This adjustment to see social injustice as behavioral and specific permits us to see injustice in action in everyday lives and affords us the opportunity to act locally and immediately. We advocate for and demonstrate expanding our usual activities of research and supervision to attend to social justice in order to help with transforming our therapeutic processes. These efforts can grow and be applied outside the therapy room, both by clients and their therapists. This chapter concludes with an articulation of our common purpose as authors in coming together to write this series and a brief introduction of each of the contributors/teams and their innovations.

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Correspondence to Sally St. George .

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© 2016 The American Family Therapy Academy

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St. George, S., Wulff, D. (2016). Family Therapy + Social Justice + Daily Practices = Transforming Therapy. In: St. George, S., Wulff, D. (eds) Family Therapy as Socially Transformative Practice. AFTA SpringerBriefs in Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29188-8_1

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