The ABA Family Law Section has chosen The Family Law Professional's Field Guide to High-Conflict Litigation: Dynamics, Not Diagnoses as its January book of the month.
 
Authored by my colleague in Child Custody, Dr. Benjamin Garber, and his co-authors Drs. Dana E Prescott, and Chris Mulchay, “Dynamics, Not Diagnoses” is the first book to capture the full spectrum of our contemporary understanding of high conflict family dynamics
 
Well researched, and better written (in non-technical language) the authors bring their experience of almost one hundred years of combined professional experience conducting therapy, evaluating, mediating, and litigating high conflict families around the globe to provide a unique and invaluable road map to working with “high conflict families” in divorce.
 
In the same way that Audubon first catalogued birds, “Dynamics, Not Diagnoses” catalogues the dynamics of the high conflict family.
 
The authors urge family law professionals of every stripe to move away from the medical model of individual assessment and diagnosis and toward a rich understanding of relationship fit and the pressures that can disrupt and distort that fit.
 
Familiar and frequently misused labels such as “alienation,” “enmeshment,” “triangulation” and “polarization” are carefully defined in the context of comprehensive literature reviews and relevant case law references.
“Our goal in writing this book,” says Garber, “is to give every family law professional a common language so as to improve our communication, better recognize and serve the child’s best interests, and create a foundation upon which further research and case law can be built”.