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BRODERICK, Carlfred B, Understanding Family Process: Basics of Family Systems Theory. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1993, 269 pp., $48.00 hardcover, $23.95 softcover.
JAMES M. WHITE*
The intellectual inheritance for family process theory is indeed diverse. Listed among the progenitors would be Shannon and Weaver's mathematical theory of communication, Weiner's cybernetics, the influence of Gregory Bateson, the writings of the Palo Alto group such as Jackson and Watzlawick, and David Olson's Circumplex model. Broderick's book attempts to "congeal" these rather amorphous strains of thinking into one systematic perspective. This is a most ambitious book and, for the most part, it is successful.
Broderick occupies a unique 'niche' in the academic world. He is a Professor in n large Sociology department, chairs a family and marriage therapy program, and is one of the past presidents of the multidisciplinary National Council on Family Relations. His academic training was multidisciplinary having attended Social Relations at Harvard and child and family studies at Cornell. His coauthored chapter (with Smith) on Systems theory in volume two of Contemporary Theories About the...