The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy

Augustus Y. Napier is an American psychologist and current director of the Family Workshop in Georgia. Napier became interested in therapy after his own personal experience with it, and he interned with Carl A. Whitaker at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the 1970s, earning his PhD upon completion of the internship. Napier and Whitaker worked well as integrated co-therapists who understood and for the most part agreed with one another. Napier usually took the more fact-oriented, rational approach in his explanations, while Whitaker was more interested in aspects of the unconscious that, in his view, find expression in metaphor. Napier’s own style of therapy focuses more on the conscious mind and what is observable, but he isn’t afraid to delve into the underlying workings of the unconscious when it clearly plays a role. While Napier and Whitaker usually agree, Napier has a different way of explaining the same point, and their contrasting styles are often complementary, offering patients multiple ways to understand the same problems.

Napier is open about mistakes that he and Whitaker made as therapists while working with the Brice family, as well as the flaws within therapy itself, but he is overall a proponent of family therapy and a fierce advocate for its validity and effectiveness.