Helping Families in Distress (by Stephen Murgatroyed and Ray Woolfe)

I’m not entirely sure how or when this book arrived on our shelves. I don’t think I’d heard of the authors, Stephen Murgatroyd and Ray Woolfe before. Perhaps it was recommended to me somewhere; our copy looks as though it came from a second-hand shop, or perhaps Amazon Marketplace. In any case, I decided that ‘Helping Families in Distress’ could be an interesting book to read, and started it a little over a month ago.

It’s quite heavy going, despite being written for ordinary people rather than professional counsellors. The subtitle is, ‘An Introduction to Family Focussed Helping’. The aim is to advise anyone working with - or befriending - families going through a difficult patch, circumstances which they consider stressful. More than once I remembered ‘Families and how to survive them’, the excellent book by Robin Skynner and John Cleese, while reading it, although the style is totally different.

Each chapter of the book looks at different aspects of helping. It starts by discussing the ways in which people - and families - can become stressed. It points out, helpfully, that what stresses one family may be no problem at all to a different one; that it’s the sensation of distress which is significant not necessarily the circumstances themselves. Having said that, some events such as bereavement or divorce are likely to cause serious stress for almost anyone.

The assumption is made that people reading the book are likely to agree to help a family for a set period; later in the book there is discussion of ‘contracts’. These are not intended in the sense of legally binding documents, but setting out timeframes, expectations and boundaries. Much is made of boundaries in the book: the importance of having them in any relationship, and the ways in which helpers must determine how much - or how little - they will become involved with each family member, and with the family as a whole.

Examples are given of the ways in which families function, and what can add to or reduce distress. The style is friendly but, in places, technical. Some of the jargon - transference, projection, and so on - was familiar to me already, but it was interesting reading from a new perspective.

I found I couldn’t read more than three or four pages at a time; although it’s not a long book, the typeface is fairly small and the lines close together. I was particularly interested in some of the examples given of stressful situations and what was done to solve, or at least find a starting point to solve the problems. But it wasn’t written in a way that stuck; each day when I picked the book up, I had to re-read the previous page to remind myself of what was said.

I think it’s a useful book, on the whole. For anyone in the situation of wanting to help a family in crisis, without any professional training and with no knowledge of the topic, this could provide a good starting point. But it is quite academic in style, and as it was published in 1985 it’s quite dated too. Family stresses don’t change, but expectations do, and some of the suggestions and ideas may no longer be appropriate.

Long out of print, but this book can probably be found in second-hand shops, or in online marketplaces.

Review by Sue F copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews