A Handbook of Divorce and Custody: Forensic, Developmental, and Clinical Perspectives (Hardback)

Linda Gunsberg (editor), Paul Hymowitz (editor)

£145.00

Hardback 436 Pages
Published: 28/12/2004

We can order this from the publisher

UK delivery within 3-4 weeks

Quantity

This item has been added to your basket

View basket Checkout

Synopsis

The Handbook of Divorce and Custody brings together mental health professionals and forensic specialists dedicated to working in the legal arena with families in crisis. Section I provides the individual perspectives of experienced clinicians, all of whom share a psychodynamic and developmental purview, and supplements their accounts with the viewpoints of a lawyer and a judge. Section II examines parental psychopathology, which is often at the root of family conflict and turmoil. Section III deals with the nature and extent of the state's potential involvement with the family, from ensuring parents' rights to raise their children to identifying those circumstances that justify the termination of parental rights. The remaining three sections follow the progressive issues engaged by divorcing families as they work their way through the legal system: forensic evaluation, post-divorce legal arrangements, and the emotional aftermath of divorce, including indications for various types of therapeutic intervention.

Through the Handbook, contributors pay special attention to a set of core issues that underlie - and complicate - the evaluations, recommendations, and judicial determinations that enter into the divorce/custody process. Specifically, they focus on the inherent conflict between the family's right to privacy and the state's commitment to the best interest of children; the increasingly uncertain question of what constitutes a family and who has the right to legal standing; the problematic role of fathers in the lives of their children; the nature of the evaluation process and the role of the forensic expert in a "good enough" evaluation; the important differences between the role of therapist and the role of evaluator; and, finally, the impact of divorce itself on the lives of today's children.

Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISBN: 9780881634129
Number of pages: 436
Weight: 970 g
Dimensions: 229 x 152 x 33 mm

MEDIA REVIEWS

"This book is must reading for everyone - mental health professionals, attorneys, judges, policy makers - committed to understanding the psychology of child custody. It is unique in that the contributors share a clear focus on the central issues of child custody: the child's experiences and their role in the child's development. It includes succinct summaries of decades of work by many of the leaders in child custody research as well as insightful clinical discussions. Read it and come away with a clear picture of this rapidly developing field."

- Robert M. Galatzer-Levy, M.D., Lecturer in Psychiatry, University of Chicago

"A Handbook of Divorce and Custody: Forensic, Developmental, and Clinical Perspectives is a wonderful contribution to the literature dealing with the intersection of the courts, family law, and mental health issues. It serves as a vibrant reminder of how much psychodynamic and particularly psychoanalytic perspectives and insights have to offer those who work at these crossroads. I am particularly impressed with the breadth of the contributions to the volume. The chapters touch on practically every concern that one might encounter in thinking about how courts, parents, and children interact and the consequences of those interactions."

- Jesse A. Goldner, Professor of Law, Center for Health Law Studies, St. Louis University

"This book is an excellent resource that I highly recommend as a guide to help your patients navigate their way through the storm and stress of divorce."

- Kathleen Hushion, CSW, NMCOP Newsletter

"The insights and information proffered by this excellent road map tracing the evolution of research-centered as well as clinically directed advances germane to mental health and family law, should be most gratifying and edifying to researchers and practitioners in these interjoined fields, including psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, social workers, and judges."
-Canadian Journal of Psychiatry