title: Generation and gender: normative and covert hierarchies.
abstract: This essay argues that gender is an irreducible category of clinical observation and theorizing, as crucial to the family therapy paradigm as the concept of "generation." Gender, therefore, is not a secondary, mediating variable like race, class, or ethnicity, but, rather, a fundamental, organizing principle of all family systems. The author analyzes the history and politics of family therapy in order to explicate how gender, as a co-equal concept, was erased as a universal principle of family organization, leaving only generation. The theoretical and clinical implications of situating gender at the center of family therapy are then discussed.
authors.affiliation: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York NY 10010.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Goldner
mesh_terms: D003717:Denial, Psychological; D005190:Family; D005196:Family Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011908:Rationalization