The Presence of the Absent

Carlos Sluzki brings a unique perspective as he shows how a therapist can reconcile the medical and mystical world by exercising cultural sensitivity and awareness. Important family therapy techniques, such as joining and anchoring, are discussed in rich and unique narratives that highlight some of the most traumatic events a family may be forced to go through.

Carlos E. Sluzki, M.D. is Professor Emeritus of Global and Community Health and of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, and Professor (Clinical) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University School of Medicine. He is an internationally renowned psychiatrist and family therapist who trained in both Argentina and the United States.

Foreword Salvador Minuchin 1. Ethereal Presences 2. Forbidden Words, Forbidden Thoughts: Semantic and Somatic Effects of Political Repression in a Family with a Hole in its Center 3. Rekindling the Experience of Freedom: Ghosts of a Dictatorship and Reverberations in a Liberating Process 4. House Taken Over: Culture, Migration and Developmental Cycle in a Moroccan Family Overtaken by Ghosts 5. The Ancient Cult of Madame: When Therapists Trade Curiousity for Certainty 6. The Naming: The Awakening of Two Ghost Children 7. Saudades at the Edge of the Self and the Merits of "Portable Families" 8. Wrap Up