LEAVING HOME: THE THERAPY OF DISTURBED YOUNG PEOPLE
Jay Haley
Condition: Very good. Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, some toning to jacket edges and endpapers, otherwise clean and sound.
About the Book:
In Leaving Home, family therapist Jay Haley turns his keen systemic insight toward one of the most crucial and often troubled transitions in human development: the movement from adolescence to adulthood.
Leaving home, Haley writes, is the final act in the drama of family life. When this process fails, young people may remain entangled emotionally, psychologically, or materially with their families, resulting in dependency, rebellion, or dysfunction. This failure to separate, he argues, underlies many forms of emotional disturbance, from drug addiction and delinquency to chronic depression and institutionalization.
Haley provides an innovative therapeutic framework that focuses not on the isolated individual, but on the family as a system. His interventions seek to reconfigure communication, redefine roles, and restore autonomy. Practical, vivid, and rooted in years of clinical experience, the book covers:
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The malfunctioning family and ideas that hinder therapy
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Techniques for gaining cooperation and managing apathy or resistance
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Helping parents act effectively without reinforcing pathology
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Dealing with social control systems institutions, courts, and schools
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The therapists role as both strategist and participant-observer
Drawing on numerous case histories and real therapy sessions, Haley demonstrates how effective intervention requires both tactical precision and human empathy.
About the Author:
Jay Haley (19232007) was one of the most influential figures in family therapy and strategic psychotherapy. Trained in communication theory and clinical psychology, he collaborated with Milton H. Erickson and Gregory Bateson, helping to establish the Palo Alto Mental Research Institute as a center for systems-oriented psychotherapy.
A prolific author and theorist, his works include Uncommon Therapy, Strategies of Psychotherapy, Problem-Solving Therapy, and The Power Tactics of Jesus Christ and Other Essays. Haleys approach emphasizes pragmatism, communication, and the therapists active role in changing systems rather than merely interpreting them.
