You Can Go Home Again Book Mcgoldrick Audio Book

JS—I'm Judy Siegel, the new Editor-in-Chief of the Periodical of Family Social Work, and I'thou absolutely thrilled to exist hither today with Monica McGoldrick. This journal is published by Routledge, and the interview will exist available in audio equally well as print versions so check the journal website for access. It is such a pleasure to be able to introduce Monica McGoldrick today. Monica has had such a stellar and of import career, she's currently the director of the Multicultural Family Establish and is on the Clinical Faculty of Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical Schoolhouse. If I was to give y'all a list of all of her books and publications I think nosotros would exist spending the next half 60 minutes here, but some of her more of import books include Ethnicity and Family Therapy (Guilford), which is at present in its 3rd edition, The Expanded Family Life Cycle (Pearson) that is in its 5th edition, and I call back that if anyone hears the discussion genogram they immediately think Monica McGoldrick. So Monica, I'm going to welcome you lot today, and aid our readers understand some of the accomplishments, and some of your experiences in this field. What attracted you to the field Monica? How did you get started?

A Journal of Family unit Social Piece of work conversation with Monica McGoldrick, LCSW

Published online:

30 January 2016

Judith Siegel, PhD, LCSW. Monica McGoldrick, PhD, LCSW.

Judith Siegel, PhD, LCSW. Monica McGoldrick, PhD, LCSW.

MM—Well it's kind of an oddball story. I had been studying Russian, I had been in Russian Studies as an undergraduate, and also in a principal's program, and I was finishing the master's program and casting most for how to continue because there weren't really whatsoever jobs in Russian Studies, except working for the government which I didn't desire to do, and information technology was all very political. So I was in a diner and this guy picked me up who was studying psychology, and I thought wow at that place's something you could study that you would actually take a chore at the finish. That would be really nifty. The more than he told me the more it fit with everything that I was wondering about Russian which was generally Dostoyevsky. Then I recall I had already been studying psychology for a good long fourth dimension, and overnight I just decided on switching, and it happened to exist a really good time in the field. It was 1966, which was just the beginning of the mental health center move. Information technology was as well late to apply to a psychology program and I got a job working at a mental health eye as a psychiatric adjutant. My first boss was Jackie Robinson's wife. Jackie Robinson had been my hero in childhood I grew up in Brooklyn, and I was very fortunate to get to piece of work for his wife who was brilliant and amazing, and information technology was a really terrific time in the late sixties to exist in mental wellness.

JS—Well, Monica though, that leads me to my adjacent question. Tin you tell us a fiddling bit well-nigh what the field was similar when y'all first started?

MM—Aye, let me mention i more thing, which was the switch to social work. Considering at first I was thinking I was moving toward psychology and I didn't really know anything about social work. Merely working at this mental health center which was but opening, I was at that place, you know, the very month that it opened I was hired. I got to accept every possibility of seeing different services that were evolving and I became nigh attracted to social work considering of the attending to context and families and that's what fabricated me determine to switch into social work. Which I was really switching into family-oriented social work, because it was immediately apparent to me that families were where the activity was. And then information technology was the best fourth dimension always to come into the field. It was a very, very exciting period. All the boundaries were downwardly, there was a huge corporeality of collaboration across fields, the whole endeavor was, you know, let's find meliorate ways to help people who are in trouble and permit's work together to do it. You know, the sky was really the limit in terms of what you could think of that would be helpful to people. Information technology was a really great fourth dimension.

JS—Who were some of the family social workers or family therapists who influenced your early work?

MM—Well, they wouldn't exist known now so much. At that place was the original social worker who I worked with, I was in New Haven, I had been studying at Yale, and I was wanting to stay in New Haven at the mental wellness center there, and there was a social worker named Nea Norton. Now she's not really remembered, just she was my kickoff supervisor really. And and so I decided to go to Smith, the social work schoolhouse, merely I was really excited about family therapy. And amongst the people who most influenced me in those early years, Virginia Satir would be at the very peak. She was the only adult female amongst many many men, nearly of whom were psychiatrists, not social workers. She was bright, she was a great teacher and had a very positive attitude, she was very unthreatening in how she taught. She was very inclusive, she was a larger-than-life graphic symbol merely tremendously powerful. She had basically reinvented ways of thinking about psychology toward what we would at present think of as positive psychology and systems. She was simply remarkable. So any time I could I went to any conference that she did. Most of which took place at what was called the American Orthopsychiatric Association, which was the annual coming together that more or less everybody in the field went to. Psychiatrists, lawyers, educators, social workers, nurses, everybody went there.

JS—Can you tell us a niggling bit, I mean if I had to break some of your work down, yous've contributed and so much about ethnicity and multicultural, information technology was interesting to hear about your initial attraction to studying Russian … tin y'all speak a little bit nigh that and the changes that you lot've witnessed in our recent activeness and awareness of multicultural influences?

MM—OK well, you know I grew up in what I now realize was a very privileged, very White, very nonethnic groundwork. I was built-in in Brooklyn, which is probably the nigh diverse city on the planet, but where we lived, which was Park Slope, was very White, very privileged, and even though I am Irish, I was raised not to pay any attention to that. And so I was simply, I thought of myself as a regular person. Then nosotros moved to Pennsylvania and lived in a identify called Bucks County, which was a very artsy expanse. Nosotros lived on a subcontract, and still, it was very White, it was a very privileged community, it was a great place to grow up but certainly wasn't an pedagogy in diversity by any means. So my whole awareness of culture, I guess studying Russian, came from an involvement in civilization. I thought of culture as something exotic that pertained to other people just non to me. And and then I as well met my husband, who's an immigrant from Greece, and I had to bargain with him and having a culture but I still thought of myself as regular. And it wasn't until years later, I was in my thirties, and I had long since finished social work school where culture was never mentioned, and I had gotten interested in genograms, and Murray Bowen's theory, and through that I had realized that I was actually Irish and that got me curious well what is Irish? What is that? And in 1975 my whole family went to Ireland, and that experience greatly changed my life. I realized that I was so Irish gaelic even though I didn't know it. So from that time on I guess I would have to say I've never stopped asking everybody most, y'all know, tell me near your cultural groundwork, what's your story? And it just inverse everything. And and so from that I guess I began gradually, and still simply gradually, to have an awareness about race and eventually social grade and the other factors that play into cultural issues, and that's all been an pedagogy very much of my developed life. I feel like the education of my childhood was, y'all could almost say, a systematic didactics in not paying attending to culture. It was a systematic mystification into the idea that this country treats all men as created equal, "men" being also … including besides women I suppose. It was really a very long time until I became aware of all the obfuscation of my babyhood education virtually history and who did what in history, and what psychologists' naming of diagnoses and development of treatments was really all near in terms of categorizing people in ways that really did not respect culture.

JS—Monica, your work has also really revisioned women and gender and power. Can you say a few words near that, about your awareness of how the field has shifted, mainly because of your contributions and some of your colleagues?

MM—OK well, I'm one of 3 sisters and I was basically raised in a family past what you would maybe need to characterize every bit two women. My father was … I oft think of it every bit a visiting dignitary into the family unit. He only came dwelling on weekends when we were living in Pennsylvania, and my mother and the person who raised me, Margaret Bush-league, who was our caretaker from the fourth dimension I was born, who was African American descended from slaves, they ran everything in my life. My father played very little role, though I loved him when he was in that location. What I saw was that women can do anything, but what I was existence taught by my mother, and I suppose Margaret, was that men are more special. And then you lot should do the best yous can and then you marry the best man ever and then deal with happily always after. I mean that was the ridiculous lesson I was taught, which eventually didn't work because you know when I was in Russian studies already it was like well where the hell am I going to find this prince? Who'southward going to want to travel with me, you know, around the earth? That's not going to happen, and then what the hell am I doing?

In social work school, which was almost entirely female … I went to Smith, actually so that I could stay in New Oasis because I wanted to stay in New Haven. There was no discussion of gender, and I had I think missed the early women's movement by having been at Yale, which had a ratio fourteen to 1, men to women and I was trying to make it there and so I … my consciousness about a gender was depression. So it wasn't actually until the early 1980s, I would say, that a few of us began to actually go it, that, expect a minute, families are non but made up of people, they're made up of men and women, and it really matters which ane y'all are considering the rules are completely different, and how come up we oasis't been talking about that? So, I recall I was slow to get in that location. I'yard all the same struggling to get in that location in terms of all of these issues, but information technology was information technology in the early and mid-1980s that nosotros began to try to sort things out and, you know, think of what does gender actually hateful in lodge and that took a long time and I was, I suppose especially slow, because I was working in a medical schoolhouse that was completely male dominated, and family unit therapy was itself male dominated, and I was living in a family unit that was male person dominated, and I had a son in 1985, which was just when I was condign enlightened of these problems. My hubby kept telling me I wasn't doing plenty, considering the raising the kid was my job and dinners were my job and all these things, and it was like information technology … I kept thinking in that location'due south something incorrect with all this, merely I couldn't argue the example very well, and he kept thinking I was ruining the human relationship every time I would bring it up. Just luckily I had groovy friends, I mean we were nosotros were together on that, which was fantastic. So in 1984 and 1986, nosotros set upwardly 2 very special meetings of family unit therapists, something called Stonehenge, in Connecticut, which was well-nigh twoscore women met for 3 days and idea about the implications of gender for family therapy and for families and for thinking systemically. And it was a profoundly life-irresolute feel, I think, for well-nigh of us, because we became a network from so on. Wherever we went we were mostly people who really didn't know each other and all of a sudden it was girl's night out and we adult tremendous bonds among all of us and were able to aid each other'southward professional and personal development so information technology was very major.

JS—As y'all say that I'm thinking of Froma Walsh and Ballad Anderson.

MM—They're the ones I did it with, those are the two.

JS—… and Betty Carter.

MM—Betty Carter was my life partner in the work. She was part of Stonehenge, but she wasn't i of the ones who adult it, but she was certainly … she and the other women from the women's project were very major in irresolute the consciousness in the field.

JS—Virginia Goldner, and …

MM—Virginia Goldner, Peggy Pap, Olga Silverstein, Marianne Walters, Rachel Hare-Mustin. There were quite a few people who were very instrumental in shifting the consciousness in the field.

JS—Monica, information technology may non be fair, but if I had to enquire y'all, you've achieved and then many important things in your career, but if you expect back, what is the thing you're peculiarly proud of?

MM—I hateful, I guess that's hard to answer because, you know, I love all the things I do, I feel very very blessed that I take … to this moment I observe clinical practice endlessly fascinating, and then all the things. Genograms, which were not my idea, I recall are an incredibly rich tool, and anything that I've washed to promote their use I see equally major, considering I also think information technology'southward potentially a slap-up enquiry tool, and one of the things on my bucket listing would be to accept things beyond where they've gotten and then that we really can apply genograms for family enquiry. And I think shifting awareness of culture, to whatsoever extent I've contributed to that, I consider that essential to saving our planet. I think if we don't change where nosotros are now, still, in thinking about civilization and race and social course and social location and gender and sexual orientation, we won't make it. Then I think our lives depend on it.

JS—Yous are definitely very involved in the field currently. Can you tell u.s. a niggling flake more near what your days are like, and what projects you accept on the table right now?

MM—OK, well I am very excitedly at work at this moment on trying to encourage the development of some much better computer software for genograms, and I'm very excited about that because I think that could assist us do a really different kind of research, where we would exist able to take these kinds of factors much ameliorate into account, how does gender play out, and sexual orientation and social class and ethnicity and race, then forth. Then that'due south exciting, and I have been increasingly interested in trying to put together some films to illustrate clinical ideas and clinical practice. I'm working away at that, I fabricated a small film last twelvemonth about some of the ideas of Norman Paul, including genogram ideas nearly the power of loss … Norman Paul is a psychiatrist who is being rapidly forgotten, but he did some really brilliant work on issues of unresolved mourning and ideas that I call up should not be forgotten. There's a lot of … we're in a really difficult time in terms of family therapy because the influence of insurance companies and drug companies and the whole, what I say "increasing of the silos," creating unlike guilds and proprietary operations in mental wellness. I encounter all of that as completely unhelpful. I hateful not that drugs are unhelpful, merely I retrieve the drug industry is unhelpful and the insurance industry makes it very hard for people to do systemic work. And then given all those things I think we are in jeopardy of non paying attention to family unit patterns and non paying attention to things that nosotros patently need to exercise to improve people's lives. I mean, I was lucky that I came into the field at a fourth dimension when the questions were "what can we do?" Considering at present nosotros're not asking those questions anymore, nosotros're trying to embrace our asses and limit what we do, and I'm that's a really dreadful turn of events in my book. I gauge the films that I'm most interested in making are kind of to agree open some of these very heady ideas that I think all the same need to exist explored and expanded and we need to really see what works in helping people.

Then, all the ideas I started out with I nonetheless think are very important, and nosotros have a lot to practice but we're living in a time when yous have to fight for everything, and it volition or always challenging your so-chosen evidence that is just evidence in the about ridiculously short-sighted manner of numbers. As if numbers are the but thing that count in the universe, it's just cool. And then we alive in a difficult time in terms of these kinds of things that that I experience are essential to our very survival as human beings.

JS—Given that, what communication can you offer to social workers or clinicians from other areas who share your deep devotion to the well-being of families and children, and want to continue the work? What advice can you give in terms of the training they could get or the outlook, or even as you said before, authors like Norman Paul, whose work shouldn't exist forgotten?

MM—Well the first matter is, don't permit yourself be lonely. Ever discover a buddy group of people you can actually talk to, because alone you'll get picked off. Somebody will tell you you're wrong and, you lot know, what are you trying to do there, that's stupid. They'll get y'all unless you lot accept buddies who can help y'all hold onto your own conventionalities arrangement, then you have to be able to remember it out for yourselves, of like "well what practise I actually believe matters in life?" If I believe relationships matter and if nosotros are not supporting families and communities to support each other than we demand to exist working at that.

Well, I think didactics is likewise about creating supportive communities, and we've got really wrong values going, and that if people don't take talking to each other and having people to collaborate with they will lose their fashion. To me that's the nigh of import matter. I think there's lots of adept systemic data out there, only it's just a affair of holding onto it. Finding it and holding onto it. And so nosotros also take to tell each other. And so I want to practise whatsoever I tin do to remind people of the important things that … information technology shouldn't exist forgotten, that came up in my lifetime. And not to be afraid to draw and ideas from other fields, and to attend each other's fields. I retrieve social workers take an advantage in the breadth of the thinking, but it's too, then, in my view, weak in terms of the theoretical practice. Simply I think the main thing is to draw on good ideas wherever they come from, and not only take to have ideas from social work or just from psychology or only from … well psychology's not offering as much anymore … merely from 1 field or some other, we should just take good ideas wherever we can then try to apply them.

Some other part of what I'm quite interested in is systemic ideas that accept been used in organizational development. The work of Peter Senge, and other people in Boston, that I think has very interesting implications for family therapy; and I'm working with my friend Nydia Garcia-Preto, she and I have worked together for many years and where we're trying to put things together about that, which is I think other people think we're kind of nuts similar "why are you going from at that place," you know, "what does that have to practise information technology?" But my thought is that if y'all observe a skillful idea, hold on to it! Expand it, tell others about it.

JS—Well, as we conclude our chat today, I do see this journal as a vehicle of providing a forum for like-minded people to hear and share new ideas, and in that manner offering each other back up. And then in the spirit of something that you have wisely brash that us to hold onto, are there whatever last words that yous would like to offer the readers of this periodical?

MM—Well they should get it and read it and contribute to information technology. I think it's a very a very positive development. I think social work made a big fault not to have endemic systems thinking and family therapy in the first identify, because they were the largest contributors to information technology, certainly practically speaking. I think there were a lot of political mistakes fabricated, in my limited understanding of how it happened, so I'one thousand very excited about your periodical and I really hope that you're able to push the ideas, considering nosotros need all the help we tin can get to find means to exist helpful to people and family unit is the nearly of import system really ever belong to, most of united states.

JS—Monica, thanks and then very much for your thoughts today, this has just been a wonderful chat.

MM—Well I cheers very much and I and I thanks for what you lot are endeavoring to practice. I recollect it's very important.

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Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10522158.2015.1133954

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