Dear Colleagues, The AFTNC Council is planning a new approach to choosing next year’s conference program.  Rather than the Council choosing the conference speaker, we are sending out this survey to find out which speaker would be most exciting for our membership. Please choose as many of the speakers you would like to see.  Only check off those speakers whose conference you would attend. You will notice that for the first time, we are open to inviting speakers from the past. We have included a brief description of their areas of specialty.  All of these speakers are leaders in the field. We don’t know if we can actually get them, but if the interest is high we can certainly approach them with a good […]

It was a great event! The students were quite involved, and had so many questions that there was not enough time to answer them all. It was a great networking event for students as well as an opportunity for students to connect on a personal level with family therapists. From left to right: Nalini Calamur, Robert-Jay Green, Debra Milinsky, Keith Sutton, Carla Vogel-Stone

It must have been in the early days of the organization, when I was a social worker for Contra Costa County, that I started going to meetings with my wife Jean simply because I enjoyed them. That was before I got an M.A. degree in Counseling and before I became a licensed MFC. The meetings were very informal, and one evening the Treasurer announced that she had to resign. The group looked around the room and I was asked if I would be the Treasurer, and I agreed.    Sometime later (days, weeks, months ?) Jean and I suddenly realized that I was the Treasurer but I wasn’t a member ! Subsequently someone recommended me, as was the required custom to […]

  Dr. Sheila Addison, president of AFTNC, will give a talk called “Beyond the Dyad: Couple and Family Therapy with Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships.”  Dr. Addison presented a version of this talk at AAMFT in 2017. Couple and family therapists are recognizing that intimate partner relationships today come in more forms than the monogamous couples we trained to work with.  Consensual non-monogamy (CNM) encompasses a variety of sexual and romantic styles, including polyamory; open relationships; and monogamous triads, quads, and more. In this talk, Dr. Addison will fill you in on what you need to know about CNM relationships and the families they form around themselves to help you with ethical decision-making and clinical effectiveness when working with these clients. Raised by a […]

We’re excited to be co-presenting “The Twinning Reaction” at the 38th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival which runs July 19 – August 5, 2018 throughout the Bay Area! Description: Many children fantasize about having an identical twin, a perfect carbon copy of themselves. Imagine finding out as an adult that you had been born an identical twin and were purposefully separated to be in a secret study to determine the impact of nature vs. nurture. Weaving interviews, archival footage and animation, filmmaker Lori Shinseki creates a moving and artistically rendered portrait of several families from New York whose lives are forever impacted and at times shattered as they discover that the Jewish adoption agency they used was covertly separating and […]

At Sports Basement, Community Room, 2727 Miliva, Berkeley.  Sunday, July 29th 2 – 4:30PM. Please come join us for an interesting afternoon with Marianne. She has been active in Family Therapy for over forty years, and has been writing and providing Family Therapy Trainings across the country. Marianne Ault-Riche, LCSW, has a private practice of Family, Couple and EMDR Therapy in Menlo Park, CA. Previously she worked for 20 years at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas where she was Curriculum Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Training Program. In Kansas she taught workshops with Harriet Lerner PhD upon which The Dance of Anger was based. Her 1985 book, Women and Family Therapy was the first family therapy text on […]

June 10, 2018 Dear members, First, I want to welcome the new members who have joined us this spring during our spring membership drive and our recent training events.  We are glad to have new folks join us! As a reminder, many long-time members have not renewed their membership in some time. With the transition to our new website this past winter, accounts for the AFTNC site have needed to be re-created.  If you do not have a login that works here, then you may not have kept your membership current.  Please consider re-activating your membership at this page, which will allow you to join either through October 1 of this year (our annual membership renewal date), or, at a discounted […]

When:  Sunday, June 3, 2-430pm Where:  Sports Basement Berkeley, 2727 Milvia St. You went to school to learn to be a therapist, not to learn to run a business. But a successful private practice is a business. Can you learn all the skills you need on your own? Or should you hire experts to do some things for you?  When do you need a Business Associate Agreement for HIPAA compliance? Do you need a confidentiality agreement if you use a bookkeeper? Join us on June 3, 2018, for “The Business of Your Private Practice,” and get all your questions answered in one place. This training will feature a variety of business professionals who support therapists in private practice.  Topics featured will […]

  Salvador Minuchin was one of the greats of family therapy. While his death in October 2017 was a loss for his family and friends a well as the field, fortunately he left us with his legacy of writing and video on Structural Family Therapy. We will meet to watch and discuss some of Minuchin’s classic family therapy moments from across the span of his career.  We’ll leave time at the end for a collegial group consultation on applying Structural Family Therapy to cases brought by attendees interested in feedback. The workshop will be led by Sheila Addison, PhD and will help you understand Structural Family Therapy, see Minuchin’s techniques and have examples of how to implement structural changes. AFTNC members […]

The future of AFTNC depends on membership.  And you are our best ambassadors to new members!  Announcing our 2018 Winter Membership Drive. Our goal:  For each existing member to recruit FOUR new members to join AFTNC.     Who could you talk to about joining? Coworkers Consultation group members Office or suitemates Students Supervisees Clinicians in your referral networks Members of professional mailing lists you belong to AFTNC is open to all mental health professionals, pre-licensed or licensed, who have an interest in family systems and conjoint therapy.  Whether they’re a seasoned family therapist, or an individual therapist who wants to learn how to leverage the power of relational systems to make change, AFTNC can offer a home for learning, […]