Counselling techniques that can help families regain control and causes of families breaking up are among the topics explored in this ethnographic account of therapeutic sessions. Two very different views of what a family is and how it becomes 'out of control' emerge, resulting in vastly different therapeutic approaches. Gubrium compares two family counselling facilities - a community outpatient centre and a private family-focused psychiatric hospital - which have radically different concepts of the family. One setting examines a family's system including hidden structures, power relations,...

The Self We Live By addresses the major trends in the sociological ana lysis of the self. Taking issue with contemporary trivializations of t he self, the book traces a course of development from the early pragma tists who formulated what they called the "empirical self," to contemp orary constructionist views of the storied self. Presenting an institu tional context for the increasing complexity and ubiquity of narrative identity, the authors illustrate the "everyday technology of self con struction" and discuss the resulting moral climate.