Paradox of Mental Health

Raphael J. Becvar, PhD, retired endowed chair in marital and family therapy, was a licensed psychologist, licensed marriage and family therapist, and an approved supervisor with many years of experience in both academic and private practice contexts. He has authored and coauthored many books and articles in professional journals. His particular focus is on philosophical/metaperspectives on mental health and the practice of therapy and a widely recognized teacher of systems theory and family therapy.Dorothy Stroh Becvar, PhD, professor emerita in the School of Social Work at St. Louis University, was a licensed marital and family therapist and a licensed clinical social worker. She published extensively and presented workshops and taught courses, both nationally and internationally, on a wide variety of topics. She was also president/CEO of the Haelan Centers(R), a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to promoting growth and wholeness in body, mind, and spirit. Dorothy died on August 31, 2021.Lynne V. Reif, MA, licensed professional counselor, began her career working with at-risk youth in the foster care system. In 2000 she became a middle school counselor and continued in that role until 2023, when she shifted her focus from counseling in schools to writing and training in the areas of systems theory, family therapy, and parent education. Lynne has extensive background in working with children and families and was part of the leadership team that created and ran the Empowering Young Women conferences hosted by the University of Missouri St. Louis for twenty years. In 2012 she traveled to Uganda to coteach a first of its kind course in school counseling to educators there and to work with girls in the schools. This experience significantly expanded her cultural awareness and understanding of the significance of context in the lives of children and families.

• Foreword by Benjamin J. Evans, Johnny Faulkner, and Amy SmithAcknowledgmentsIntroductionPart I: Paradoxes of Mental Health/Illness: Philosophy and TheoryChapter 1: The Paradox of Mental Health: On the Limits of Living ConsciouslyChapter 2: Believing is Seeing: Exploring the Limits of KnowingChapter 3: Before the BeginningChapter 4: Contributions from Social Science and Mental Health ProfessionalsChapter 5: On the Clinical BiasChapter 6: Conceptual Bites in Summary of the ParadoxChapter 7: WonderingPart II: Systemic and Social Constructionist Concepts for TherapyChapter 8: About Systems Theory, Constructivism, and Social Constructionism.Chapter 9: Requiem for Systemic Marital and Family TherapyChapter 10: The Ecosystemic Story: Implications for TherapistsChapter 11: Reflections on Values in Systems Theory and Social ConstructionismChapter 12: A Story about Systemic and Social Constructionist TherapyChapter 13: AfterwordReferencesIndexAbout the Authors

This book beautifully elucidates and illuminates a vital, but too often unseen or misunderstood truth about the relationship between mind and body and the relationship between problems and attempted solutions: how we make sense of troubling experience affects how we attempt to change it, and both efforts—to understand and to intervene—instantly circle back and become inextricably woven into the experience itself. This truth pervades the world of psychotherapy, where models for healing or curing can inadvertently and tragically contribute to the creation and exacerbation of the very 'illnesses' they define and seek to ameliorate. Liberation from this paradoxical knot is no easy feat; it requires the kind of systemic wisdom offered in this collection of essays by the Becvars and their co-author, Lynne Reif. Their capacity for clear recursive thinking and warm-hearted caring never wavers.