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 About the Editors

Monica McGoldrick, LCSW, PhD (h.c.), is Director of the Multicultural Fam-

ily Institute in Highland Park, New Jersey, and Adjunct Associate Profes-
sor of Clinical Psychiatry at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
Her videos on clinical work with diverse families are among the most widely
respected in the field. Her numerous books include Ethnicity and Family
Therapy, Third Edition. Ms. McGoldrick is a recipient of the Distinguished
Contribution to Family Therapy Theory and Practice Award from the Ameri-
can Family Therapy Academy. An internationally known author, she has lec-
tured around the world on such topics as culture, class, gender, the family life
cycle, and loss.

Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD, is Professor of Family Therapy at Drexel University

in Philadelphia and Director of the Eikenberg Institute for Relationships in
New York City. He is also President and Founder of the Eikenberg Academy
for Social Justice. Dr. Hardy is a recipient of honors including the Distin-
guished Contribution to Marriage and Family Counseling Award from the
International Association for Marriage and Family Counselors and the Dis-
tinguished Contribution to Social Justice Award from the American Family
Therapy Academy. He maintains a private practice in New York City special-
izing in family therapy.

vi
 Contributors

N. Norma Akamatsu, MSW, private practice, Northampton, Massachusetts

Kiran Shahreen Kaur Arora, PhD, School of Education, Long Island University,
Brooklyn, New York
Deidre Ashton, MSSW, private practice; The Therapy Center of Philadelphia;
The Race Institute for K–12 Educators; and Widener University,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Christiana I. Awosan, MFT, PhD, Department of Professional Psychology
and Family Therapy, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey
Saliha Bava, LMFT, PhD, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences,
Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, New York; Taos Institute, Chagrin Falls, Ohio;
Houston Galveston Institute, Houston, Texas
Joanne Bowen, PhD, Anthropology Department, The College of William and Mary,
Williamsburg, Virginia
Nollaig Byrne, MD, Department of Child and Family Psychiatry,
Mater Misericordia Hospital, Dublin, Ireland
Fernando Colón-López, PhD, Ann Arbor Center for the Family,
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Donna Dallal-Ferne, LMFT, private practice, Syracuse, New York
Sarita Kaya Davis, PhD, MSW, Department of African American Studies,
Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia
Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio, LMFT, SPHR, GreenGate Leadership, LLC,
Palmer, Massachusetts

vii
viii Contributors

Ken Epstein, PhD, Department of Psychiatry, University of California,

San Francisco, and Department of Public Health, San Francisco, California
Celia Jaes Falicov, PhD, Department of Family Medicine and Public Health,
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California
Linda Stone Fish, PhD, Department of Marriage and Family Therapy, Falk College,
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
John D. Folwarski, MSW, Raritan Bay Mental Health Center,
Perth Amboy, New Jersey
Nydia Garcia Preto, LCSW, Multicultural Family Institute,
Highland Park, New Jersey
Robert-Jay Green, PhD, Rockway Institute, California School
of Professional Psychology, San Francisco, California
MaryAnna Domokos-Cheng Ham, EdD, LCP, LMFT, College of Education
and Human Development, University of Massachusetts Boston,
Boston, Massachusetts
Kenneth V. Hardy, PhD, Eikenberg Institute for Relationships, New York,
New York; Department of Family Therapy, Drexel University,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Ana M. Hernandez, PhD, LMFT, Rising Ground, Inc., Yonkers, New York;
Seton Hall University, East Orange, New Jersey
Paulette Moore Hines, PhD, private practice, training, and consultation;
Center for Healthy Schools, Families, and Communities, Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey; Department of Psychiatry,
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, New Jersey
Evan Imber-Black, PhD, Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, New York; Center for Families
and Health, Ackerman Institute for the Family, New York, New York
Christian Jordal, PhD, LMFT, CST, Department of Counseling and Family Therapy,
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hugo Kamya, PhD, School of Social Work, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts
Jodie Kliman, PhD, Clinical Psychology Department, William James College,
Newton, Massachusetts; Boston Institute for Culturally Affirming Practices,
Boston, Massachusetts
Imelda Colgan McCarthy, MSW, PhD, private practice, Dublin, Ireland
Monica McGoldrick, LCSW, PhD (h.c.), Multicultural Family Institute,
Highland Park, New Jersey; Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School,
Piscataway, New Jersey
Peggy McIntosh, PhD, Wellesley College Centers for Research on Women,
Wellesley, Massachusetts
Marsha Pravder Mirkin, PhD, School of Social Sciences, Humanities,
and Education, Lasell College, Newton, Massachusetts
 Contributors ix

Matthew R. Mock, PhD, Counseling Psychology Program, John F. Kennedy

University, San Jose, California; private practice, Berkeley, California
Elijah C. Nealy, PhD, MDiv, LCSW, Department of Social Work and Equitable
Community Practice, University of St. Joseph, West Hartford, Connecticut
Elaine Pinderhughes, MSW, Boston College School of Social Work,
Boston, Massachusetts
Salome Raheim, PhD, ACSW, School of Social Welfare, State University
of New York at Albany, Albany, New York
Rockey Robbins, PhD, Department of Educational Psychology,
University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
Sharla Robbins, PhD, private practice, Norman, Oklahoma
Robert Shelby, LMFT, Men’s Center for Counseling and Psychotherapy,
Berkeley, California
Tazuko Shibusawa, PhD, LCSW, Silver School of Social Work, New York University,
New York, New York
Walter Howard Smith, Jr., PhD, Department of Human Services, Allegheny County,
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
David Trimble, PhD, Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology, Department
of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts
Froma Walsh, MSW, PhD, Chicago Center for Family Health;
and School of Social Service Administration and Department of Psychiatry,
Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Marlene F. Watson, PhD, Department of Counseling and Family Therapy,
Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hinda Winawer, MSW, LCSW, private practice; Princeton Family Institute,
Princeton, New Jersey; The Center for Family, Community, and Social Justice,
Princeton, New Jersey; Faculty Emerita, Ackerman Institute for the Family,
New York, New York
 Preface

The goal of this book is to transform the focus of our work beyond the inte-
rior of the family, offering an opportunity and invitation for our readers to
see how our clients’ lives are constrained by larger societal structures and to
develop new ways of working based on a more contextual understanding of
ourselves, our society, our history, and our clients’ lives.
We have long struggled to envision systemic theory and practice in ways
that transform our field to see our clients and ourselves more clearly and thus
more complexly and to provide services that are more trauma-informed and
healing. We have espoused approaches that take account of our connection to
each other and to all that has gone before and all that will come in the future.
Striving to build a sense of belonging for all who seek our help seems the only
way to pursue our work. Our original companion volume, Ethnicity and Fam-
ily Therapy, began with the lens of ethnicity in its exploration of culture; Re-
Visioning Family Therapy, Third Edition: Addressing Diversity in Clinical
Practice explores the intersections of multiple cultural perspectives (ethnicity,
social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion), attempting to view
families and family therapy from more inclusive cultural perspectives.
The aim of this book has been to provide in one relatively short, accessible
volume a broad range of brief contributions by many of those who have been
working to “re-vision” the family therapy field through a cultural lens. The
chapters in this volume are reflective of the authors’ efforts to make a truly
paradigmatic shift toward systemic thinking and practice, which we believe
is sorely needed in our field and in our world. We have worked assiduously to
include chapters that expand our definition of knowledge from an exclusive
reliance on evidence-based, scientifically tested practice to one that validates
also the “evidence” of subjective knowledge, creating space for the inclusion
of personal stories of suffering, subjugation, and strife born out of experiences

x
 Preface xi

with oppression, which honor a different kind of knowledge. There is great

wisdom in learning from the experiences of those relegated to the margins of
our society. This book includes many personal stories, a few of them known
over the years to some of us, but here available for a wider audience, which
help us pay attention to those who have been hidden from history. Creating a
space for personal stories and experiences enriches our work as therapists and
is central to our view of re-visioning family therapy. We have also included
chapters that expand the systemic perspective to larger systems in terms of
both conceptualization and intervention. We hope that these perspectives will
inspire future therapists to think as broadly as possible about the contextual
aspects of our work and our lives.
This new edition is appearing at a time when our world seems fraught
with polarities, discontinuities, and regression in the development of social
justice. Our search continues to strive toward finding ways to contain oppo-
sites, contradictions, and ambiguities—not oversimplifying the issues and at
the same time not obfuscating the prejudices and oppression that are increas-
ingly defining and destroying our world and us.
Each author was given frustratingly little space and asked to present a
few key ideas of clinical and theoretical relevance in a reader-friendly format
to contextualize the oppressions that are their work’s focus and to suggest
re-visions for our clinical work. We applaud the authors for their courage to
contend with these difficult issues and rejoice that they are our collaborators,
going through life with us, knowing we are not yet clear about how these
power dimensions operate on us, but striving with each other’s help to see the
road more clearly.
Re-Visioning Family Therapy is intended to be exciting and suggestive
rather than comprehensive in its articulation of where we need to go in our
work. Most of the material is intentionally personal. We want to make clear
how hidden aspects of our history have influenced our need to change the future.
Our ideas have evolved from our frustrations with the traditional boundaries of
clinical practice and our wish to expand our vision to see more clearly where we
must go to create a better world for everyone. This book has been an opportu-
nity to push our own and each other’s boundaries in hopes of helping to trans-
form clinical practice toward more contextual and systemic work with clients.
We trust readers will give us the benefit of the doubt, realizing that many of
these ideas are still in progress, awaiting the leavening of future conversations
to better see the issues. We know we have inadvertently left out or marginalized
some in this book and will continue to push ourselves to learn from our “sins of
omission” in the future. We hope, as we have expressed before, that this edition
will soon be out of date again, as the ideas expressed here become commonplace
and accepted practice. When this re-visioning occurs, we hope we will be in
the fortunate position of trying once again to reformulate the ideas to accom-
modate our evolving understanding and insights about change and healing and
that others will follow us to expand this endeavor. We hope this book will pro-
vide a small window into new possibilities.
xii Preface

PART I. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Like the other institutions of our society, family therapy has been structured
in ways to support the dominant value system. And, again like the other insti-
tutions of our society, our field has evolved many conceptualizations and
practices that keep invisible certain hidden organizing principles of our lives,
including social class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. This book
aims to unpack some of these issues in hopes that they become easier to hold
in our minds and in our hearts so that we can better go about our work.
The chapters on theoretical perspectives, and, indeed, the book as a
whole, evolved out of the work many are doing to uncover those dimensions
of “home” and “family” that have been kept hidden and to transform our
definitions of home and family so that all families may feel safe and included.
These chapters offer a framework for the possibilities of re-visioning family
therapy toward a more contextual perspective.
In Chapter 1, we have tried to locate this re-visioning in the history of
the family therapy field in general. Following the path established by Peggy
McIntosh in the field of education, we try to contextualize the history and
possible future of our field. McIntosh’s framework has provided a practical
tool for assessing where our field is, as well as where we need to get to in this
re-visioning process. We have expanded our overview on issues of social class,
spirituality and religion, poverty, gender, and power, with new chapters by
Walsh, Hardy, and Ashton and Jordal to expand therapists’ awareness of the
centrality of these issues.
Froma Walsh and I (KVH), in our respective chapters (Chapters 3 and 4),
provide provocative discussions of these most poignant, volatile, and sensitive
issues that are integral to the process of re-visioning related to social class.
In Chapter 3, Walsh thoughtfully lays out the dimensions of class, one of the
essential and, until now, one of the most invisible elements of re-visioning
family therapy from a cultural perspective. It goes unacknowledged that many
groups in society are not represented in our institutions and do not have the
same entitlements to participate even in our world of family therapy. It goes
unsaid that where you come from does matter; that you cannot shed your past,
become whatever you want, or move up in class just through hard work and
desire. Walsh addresses directly the therapeutic implications of class relations
and invites us as therapists to consider the ways in which our work is shaped
by the nuances of class. In Chapter 4, I (KVH) discuss poverty as sociocul-
tural trauma, illustrating how the limitation of resources organizes the lives
of those in need, and the psychological fallout of the assaults of poverty on
dignity, the learned voicelessness, shame, stigma, secrecy, and silence that fol-
low. This chapter offers suggestions on ways of transforming this fallout and
empowering clients through our acknowledgment, countering the devaluation
that typically accompanies poverty and encouraging clients to lean in toward
transformative possibilities of their survivorship and their voices.
Deidre Ashton and Christian Jordal (Chapter 2) take on some of the
aspects of gender and gender nonconformance as they play out in our own
 Preface xiii

lives and in the lives of our clients and the intersectionality of race and sexual
orientation, offering helpful insights into the hidden dimensions of power as
they affect our views of gender. They both remind and caution us that we have
outgrown the traditional binary constructions of gender that leave so many
clients, therapists, family members, and other loved ones sentenced to a life
sentence of invisibility.
Religion and spirituality also play a powerfully influential role in virtu-
ally all areas of family life. Yet having a critical discussion about religion is not
only difficult to do, but it is often considered inappropriate, sacrilegious, and
taboo. Although seldom acknowledged overtly, religion is a major organizing
principle in our society. Chapter 5 by Walsh is a firm but gentle reminder of
the role that religion and spirituality play in our everyday lives. Race, like
religion, is also an important factor that must be placed at the forefront of the
agenda for re-visioning family therapy. We believe religion is a salient vari-
able because it influences many of the more controversial issues that we, as
a society, seem to grapple with passionately on a daily basis. Family-related
issues such as same-gender marriages, abortion, masturbation, premarital
sex, mother employment, and child-rearing practices ignite strong feelings,
even seemingly irreconcilable acrimony, because they are all connected to reli-
gion. Former President Barack Obama was forced to claim and reclaim his
Christian identity amid numerous allegations that he was really both foreign
and a Muslim. In a society that exalts “freedom of religion,” whether he was
Muslim, Christian, or Sikh should not have mattered, but it did, because reli-
gion matters. By denying its significance, we give its hidden power even more
significance.

PART II. SOCIOCULTURAL TRAUMA AND HOMELESSNESS

The authors in this section have given voice to experiences that have also gen-
erally been marginalized in the main cultural stories of our society. In a sense,
this section is devoted to all of our respective journeys to find home—that is,
a place of belonging and acceptance of our multiple identities. In so doing, we
share our triumphs and our tribulations. The process of finding home involves
each of us, as a fundamental part of the existential search, identifying and
claiming disavowed parts of ourselves that we have to make peace with as
part of the journey.
In a world that is often divided into the haves and have nots, the valued
and devalued, finding a sense of home can be a relentless and often futile
endeavor. The chapters in this section highlight how home, homelessness,
and trauma are intricately interwoven. As we pulled together our ideas for
this book, issues of immigration dominated the national news and raised an
array of thorny clinical issues regarding family therapy with populations who
are increasingly non–U.S. born, non–English speaking, non-white,1 and from
countries often considered “Third World” or whose citizenry is believed to
have little to offer this country. We have also been ever more conscious of the
xiv Preface

sense of anomie of those pushed to the margins of our society because of race,
gender, sexual orientation, religion, poverty, disability, and other disadvan-
tages. I (MM) have told aspects of my own story (Chapter 6), trying to sepa-
rate out some of the threads of privilege from those of oppression in my jour-
ney trying to dissect the complexities of racial and class privilege in relation
to a history of gender and ethnic oppression. This section includes a rich and
thoughtful chapter (Chapter 7) by Celia Jaes Falicov on issues of culture and
cultural identity in relation to migration and the complexities of transnational
families, including issues of loss, adaptation, and network reconstruction. The
ideas discussed by Falicov will be enormously helpful to all who work with
immigrant families, both documented and nondocumented.
Even though Obama made concerted efforts to avoid mentioning race,
it was still an integral part of our nation’s discourse and reality, sometimes
overtly but mostly by innuendo and the use of code words. Race is a prime
definer of all interactions in our society, with sharp differences that often exist
between the racially based perceptions of whites and African Americans. In
Chapter 9, I (KVH) remind us that race and other manifestations of oppres-
sion are always, at every moment, influencing our perceptions and ultimately
our relationships, both in and outside of the family.
In Chapter 8, Paulette Moore Hines discusses hope as a critical tool of
assessment and intervention. She examines issues of transcendence, spiritual-
ity, hope, and resilience, which have long been eschewed in our theory and
practice. For thousands of years such ideas have been the primary resources
for people in emotional distress. It is high time we reintegrate this dimension
into our conceptual formulations. The belief in something beyond our indi-
viduality and our personal self-interest is our only hope to have a future. We
trust that in the future this area will begin to receive the attention it deserves,
as more therapy incorporates transcendent ideas into our clinical assessment
of families under stress and in our approaches to healing.

PART III. RACIAL IDENTITY

Typically, discussions of culture and racism focus on the marginalized group as

the “other.” Whiteness, and the multitudinous ways in which it shapes interac-
tions, both inside and outside of families, almost always remains invisible. Re-
visioning our field requires that we explore most carefully and explicitly those
who see themselves as the norm and those who have established the norms.
The chapters included in this section are attempts to deconstruct race both for
those who have been historically subjugated and for the dominant group.
Rockey and Sharla Robbins’s discussion of Native American families and
culture is an eye-opening perspective on trauma, healing, and the meaning of
belonging and home. Their chapter (Chapter 10) reminds us how easy it is to “for-
get” and define people by their DSM numbers rather than by whom they belong
to. Instead, we should all be dedicated to remembering, and “re-membering,”
 Preface xv

shattered communities and bearing witness. Their illustrations offer invaluable

suggestions on possibilities for working with Native American families.
Peggy McIntosh’s classic challenge to our “invisible knapsack of white
privilege” is part of her crucial series of articles that have helped us to begin
re-visioning race as well as gender in the field of education. In Chapter 15,
McIntosh takes the lofty, virtually abstract concept of white privilege and
makes its impact visible through the most mundane everyday experiences.
Ken Dolan-Del Vecchio (Chapter 16) offers a critique of white male domi-
nance and considers what must change so that white men can be collaborative
partners with everyone else in families and communities in the 21st century.
In Chapter 17, Jodie Kliman, Hinda Winawer, and David Trimble examine
“the inevitable whiteness of being (white)” in family therapy training. These
authors make the pervasive invisibility of whiteness visible.
Nydia Garcia Preto, in Chapter 11, explores her own and her family’s
complex and multiple identities as they evolved over time and through the life
cycle. She illustrates, with her broad and inclusive perspective, a profound
openness to the complexity of building bridges to hold the sense of belonging
to what came before and building connections to what lies ahead of us, which
highlights a significant facet in the transformation of family therapy.
Marlene F. Watson (Chapter 14), Ana M. Hernandez (Chapter 13), and
MaryAnna Domokos-­ Cheng Ham (Chapter 12), each in her unique way,
discuss the powerful connections that exist between race and identity devel-
opment. Watson provides a gripping and heartfelt account of what it means
to grow up as an African American female in an oppressive society where
societal messages regarding race, class, and gender often collide. Ham offers
a critical and insightful examination of the life experiences of a multiracial
person searching for a sense of belonging. In a society that is obsessed with
binary notions of race, this chapter brings much-needed attention to the chal-
lenges of what it means to be a person of mixed-race heritage. Kiran Shahreen
Kaur Arora (Chapter 18) also asserts the importance of thinking about race
beyond the Black–white binary and how the experiences of those who identify
as Brown can be deemed not to belong.
The collective work and wisdom of the authors in this section remind us
how the toxic messages that emanate from racism can leave indelible scars on
the psyches and souls of people of color through the unconscious internaliza-
tion of debilitating negative racial messages.

PART IV. CULTURAL LEGACIES AND STORIES: THERAPISTS’ EXPERIENCES

Personal narratives are a major part of our attempt to shift our paradigm to
re-vision families and family therapy. From Murray Bowen’s first account of
his own family at a 1967 research meeting, which stunned the field by break-
ing the rules of academic and professional discourse, we have gradually been
stretching and transforming the boundaries of our dialogues to create more
xvi Preface

inclusive ways of thinking about our work. The individualistic models of “sci-
entific” discourse have proven inadequate to the realm of healing and therapy.
These linear models are of limited relevance in a world where our lives are
so profoundly interconnected. It is often through personal narratives that we
learn most about those aspects of our experience that do not fit into our theo-
retical and clinical models. These stories may be key to liberating us toward
new visions of our work.
Elaine Pinderhughes’s classic chapter (Chapter 19) describing her research
on her own family explores the silenced history of white exploitation and
internalized racism in her Black and white ancestors. Her story is a remark-
able unpacking of the multigenerational traumatic impact of racism on a fam-
ily. Fernando Colón-López’s narrative in Chapter 21 about his search for his
past and his identity in his lost mother’s story is a remarkable example of the
hidden oppressions of colonized groups and of the power of uncovering the
submerged cultural dimensions of one’s history. It is also a striking example of
the interface of racial and cultural oppression and mental illness.
John D. Folwarski’s personal recollection (Chapter 22) of a childhood in
a Polish orphanage is a profound reflection of the effects of Polish subordina-
tion in European history, as well as a story of the impact of immigrant cultural
disruption. Folwarski’s narrative is also an indirect testimonial to other salient
themes that are replete in many of the stories told in this volume: stories of
belonging and disconnection, stories of home and homelessness, and stories
of suffering and survival.
The other authors in this section—Linda Stone Fish, Donna Dallal-
Ferne, Saliha Bava, Robert Shelby, and Elijah C. Nealy—all share stories of
cultural legacies and of their recurring efforts to integrate the frayed threads
of their histories into their contemporary lives. Shelby’s pathway to finding
home (Chapter 20) required him to come to terms with the white privilege,
pathological shame and guilt, and the perversion of morality often associated
with whiteness. Acknowledging and claiming this ugly part of his past was
in many ways a necessary precursor to the modern-day clarity that he brings
to his antiracism work. His story, along with other authors’ accounts of what
it meant to grow up in a racist family, should provide inspiration to other
white and majority-group therapists regarding how the process of embracing
disavowed parts of our cultural legacies can liberate and motivate us to be
advocates for social justice.
Linda Stone Fish, a gifted teacher and therapist, provides an in-depth
look at how issues associated with her Jewish identity and that of a Palestinian
graduate student, Donna Dallal-Ferne, managed to creep into the sacred space
of the classroom and graduate education. Their chapter (Chapter 24) provides
a poignant discussion of the importance of being able to see the world through
the eyes of those we consider “other.”
Elijah Nealy, in Chapter 25, examines the complexity of identity transi-
tions and transformations across the life cycle with a provocatively insightful
and transformative discussion.
 Preface xvii

All of the chapters in Part IV center the cultural experiences and legacies
of therapists who challenge the dominant narrative that suggests that their
stories are insignificant. Through the telling of their personal stories and hon-
oring the ways in which they are embedded in cultural legacies, the authors
help to shift the core values of our field away from “objectivity” and “profes-
sional distance” to values that acknowledge the role and significance of the
self-of-the-therapist.

PART V. IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

The chapters in this section focus on specific clinical issues for particular
cultural groups. They are meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive,
indicating the subtlety and complexity of our cases when considered through
a cultural filter. Each of the chapters in this section offers a re-visioning per-
spective by moving the subject under consideration “from margin to center,”
in bell hooks’s phrase. They use the group’s own frame of reference for assess-
ment and intervention, challenging our field’s dominant notions of clinical
practice. We believe the process of locating oneself and using one’s personal
story as a frame of reference for our clinical work is essential to the re-vision-
ing process.
In Chapter 26, Elijah C. Nealy examines the much-neglected area of les-
bian and gay family life and the need for therapists to understand the par-
ticular challenges facing those who live within a novel or marginalized family
configuration. Nealy invites the reader to see how critical it is for us as a field
and for society to rethink our traditional notions of family with questions
of who is included in such definitions and who remains invisible and mar-
ginalized. Robert-Jay Green, in Chapter 27 on gay and lesbian couples, also
provides a great deal of practical information that will be helpful for working
more effectively with lesbian and gay couples.
Chapter 28, by Hugo Kamya and Marsha Pravder Mirkin, addresses the
profound disruptions of migration when families belong to more than one cul-
ture, as most families in the United States do. They suggest some of the larger
implications of the complexity of biculturality, difference, and acculturation.
They can help all of us rethink the very nature of our identity. Instead of mea-
suring immigrants as “others,” we can use Kamya and Mirkin’s discussion to
re-vision our very notions of assessment and intervention.
We must also develop transformative intervention models based on a re-
visioning of families from a contextual perspective. Imelda Colgan McCarthy
and Nollaig Byrne have been developing their Fifth Province model for many
years. In Chapter 30, they illustrate their model and the creativity of their
thinking and work with a complex and tragic case example.
Tazuko Shibusawa’s chapter (Chapter 32), along with several others in
this section, encourage us to think more broadly about race as an integral
part of the re-visioning process. Her examination of biracial couples moves
xviii Preface

the discussion of race beyond the normal binary notions of Black and white
and provides an in-depth discussion of the salient factors to consider and to
challenge when providing couple treatment across racial boundaries. Her
discussion of biracial couples of Asian descent sheds light on a group that
is often invisible in conversations regarding race. She also raises important
issues about couple therapy in general, bringing light to the invisible, which
has to be a hallmark of the re-visioning of family therapy.
Salome Raheim, Christiana Awosan, and I (KVH) focus our attention
on the experiences of African Americans. Raheim (Chapter 31) delves into
the rich African American history with music to provide a poignant look at
the power of song as an instrument for promoting healing, hope, and justice.
Awosan and I (Chapter 29) examine the invisible wounds of racial trauma that
often underpins the day-to-day interactions of Black heterosexual couples,
offering an array of hands-on, step-by-step strategies that couple therapists
can employ with Black couples to enhance their clinical effectiveness.

PART VI. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING

The chapters in this section are devoted to providing cutting-edge ideas for
what graduate programs and training institutes must do to prepare the next
generation of family therapists, with an eye toward cultural competency. The
re-visioning of family therapy requires programs, faculty, and supervisors to
reject long-practiced training that has been ostensibly color blind, gender free,
classless, and oblivious to sexual orientation.
Evan Imber-Black, a masterful clinical educator and supervisor, exam-
ines the challenges, changes, certainties, and uncertainties that confront train-
ing family therapists in the 21st century in Chapter 36.
The chapters by N. Norma Akamatsu (Chapter 35) and Matthew R.
Mock (Chapter 34) both provide state-of-the-art strategies to invite trainees
to think critically about issues of social justice, power, and multiculturalism.
Our chapter in this section (Chapter 33) provides an overview of the
program and institutional domains that must be considered if we are going
to incorporate understanding of contextual issues and overcome the current
biases of our field. If our vision for the field is ever to be actualized, the train-
ing of the next generation of family therapists will be crucial.
In many respects, this book represents our concerted effort to practice
what we preach. Critical to the re-visioning process we envision is paying
acute attention to who is included and who isn’t. We appeal to our better
selves to be mindful and respectful of who is at the metaphorical table and
what is needed to keep us all actively engaged once we are there. Both our
hope and our renewed vision for the field rest on our optimism that each of us
will actively resist the “business as usual” mentality that has too often been
guiding the thinking and practice of our field. This book is very much about
such resistance. It is dedicated to recognition of our unique, culturally based
stories of suffering and survival, as well as our common humanity and the
 Preface xix

systemic connection of all human beings to each other and to our planet. We
hope you will share our belief that re-visioning of family therapy is ultimately
about the true inclusion of everyone in the definitions of “family,” “home,”
and the healing possibilities of therapy. We hope that you will read, reflect,
and heed our call to join us in the struggle to re-vision family therapy.

PART VII. IMPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

The chapters in this section expand notions of what constitutes good research.
The authors encourage new ways of thinking about research that challenge
the dominant order. Sarita Kaya Davis, in Chapter 37, tackles the taboo topic
of cultural bias in research and describes a number of pitfalls to avoid when
using research to inform clinical practice. Ken Epstein’s chapter (Chapter 38)
integrates principles of relational healing and a trauma-informed paradigm to
conduct a critical examination of organizational change in the era of evidence-­
based practices.

PART VIII. LARGER SYSTEMS WORK:

HOW TO BUILD BRIDGES ACROSS THE DIVIDE

The chapters in this section highlight our belief regarding the inextricable
connection between our psychology (individually oriented human system) and
ecology, how the number of larger systems within which we are embedded
profoundly shape our lives. Joanne Bowen (Chapter 39) encourages us to con-
sider our human connection with the environment. We believe the re-visioning
of family therapy requires all of us to be concerned about the environment
and our relationship to each other within the context of our connection to the
earth and to nature around us. In Chapter 40, Walter Howard Smith, Jr., an
experienced and gifted therapist and systems thinker, applies microlevel and
macrolevel family systems theory to a large, bureaucratic child welfare system
as an act of activism and transformation. Each of the authors in this section
reinforce our fundamental belief that the healing and transformation of the
human spirit cannot be achieved unless the lenses we use to understand com-
plex human problems are universally broad and systemic. Our vision, scope,
and reach must move well beyond the limits of our offices or of any individual
to include history, the societal and local context of our current world, and our
hopes for the future of our children and our universe.

NOTE
1. We have capitalized “Black” and lowercased “white,” in spite of the convention to
do the reverse, because it seems to us that “Black” is a word which at least to some
extent was chosen by African Americans to refer to themselves, while “white” does
not deserve the “specialness” of capitalization as an honor to the distinction.
 Acknowledgments

My deepest thanks go to my coeditor and coauthor, Ken Hardy, for his wis-
dom, dedication, creativity, and humor in working on this book. We have
been having deeply meaningful conversations for more than 35 years. Our
collaboration on this book for the past two editions has given us the chance to
push our thinking forward in ways I hope we can keep expanding. His ideas
and moral compass have been a profound inspiration to me. I thank him for
wonderful times we have had (not as many as I had hoped!) working through
the ideas and details and laughing together over the problems along the way
and at times arguing fiercely, as we are both strong-minded and do not give
up our positions lightly. I am in awe of his brilliance, creativity, and deep com-
mitment to the endeavor of re-visioning family therapy.
I am also in awe of the contributors to this volume who have found the
courage to write about their most painful life experiences and the wisdom
of their deepest ideas with trust that the readers will bring empathy to their
reading. For the pain and courage of so many whose experiences are acknowl-
edged in this book, I am profoundly grateful.
I thank also my mentor and companion Scott Joplin, whose music saw
me through the work on this book and through so many other endeavors in
my life. His magnificent music and the effort of his life to voice his intuitions,
love, and hope in his compositions have been an ongoing inspiration to me for
many years.
At The Guilford Press, Seymour Weingarten supported this book from
its first inception, Jim Nageotte offered good counsel and support throughout
the development of the last two editions, and Jeannie Tang has been a most
gracious, prompt, conscientious, and thoughtful production editor.

xx
 Acknowledgments xxi

I thank my life-mates: Nydia Garcia Preto, Paulette Moore Hines, Jayne

Mahboubi, Nollaig and Henry Byrne, Imelda McCarthy, Roberto Font, John
Folwarski, Fernando Colón-López, Robert-Jay Green, Froma Walsh, Elaine
Pinderhughes, Barbara Petkov, Charlee and Alex Sutton, Sueli Petry, Eliana
Gil, Nancy Boyd-Franklin, and A. J. Franklin have all offered help and inspi-
ration when needed. Their support is an ongoing richness to me every day.
And to my dearest colleagues and friends who have gone before, but who
live on always in my heart: Betty Carter, Carol Anderson, Evelyn Lee, and
Michael White.
My sisters, Morna Livingston and Neale McGoldrick, have been through-
out my life a major source of support and inspiration, both creative teachers
and authors in their own right. I feel I am never alone when I connect with
their belief in me and their efforts to promote the same kinds of cultural trans-
formation in their own lives and work.
My husband, another creative teacher and writer, supports me every
day in more ways than he realizes (and surely more ways than I fully real-
ize myself!). I am very grateful. I thank him for the many wonderful days we
worked in parallel on our books and for all that he has given me for so many
years. And I thank my son, John, for doing his thing and for expanding our
family with his wonderful and creative wife, Anna, their magnificent son,
Owen, and our creative and dedicated in-laws, Renee and Bill De Palma, who
have also pursued creativity and education in their own careers. I hope that
John, Anna, and Owen will have many life endeavors as gratifying as I have
had. My nephews, Guy and Hugh Livingston, have also inspired me with their
efforts to build cultural bridges in their music and artistic creativity, and I
thank them for their support and for what they are doing along similar lines in
their worlds to promote cultural understanding and transformation. I am also
grateful for my talented niece-in-law, Maria Sperling, whose work embraces a
similar effort to build cultural bridges. And I thank my grandnephew, Renzo
Robert Livingston, for having become such a wonderful part of my life for the
past 8 years.
Thanks also to Dan Morin for his creativity and dedication to develop-
ing genograms, including in this edition. Ken and I were committed to having
genograms included wherever possible in the text to illustrate our basic idea
that mapping out the cultural context, best done with genograms, is essential
for the work we believe in.
I thank my parents, Margaret Bush, and my Aunt Mamie Cahalane
for giving me the courage to face truths about our family and about myself,
which their strength helped me to acknowledge. They live in my heart and
make me stronger every day. They have made this book possible. Finally, I
want to thank my students and clients, who challenge and inspire me every
day.

—Monica McG oldrick

xxii Acknowledgments

My involvement in this important body of work would not have been possible
without the generosity, commitment, and dedication of my beloved friend,
colleague, and soul sister Monica McGoldrick. Whether on the streets of
Amsterdam, New York City, or Anaheim, I have appreciated immensely the
intense, vein-protruding conversations that we have had over the years about
matters of human indignities and social justice. As we both are well aware,
we have not always agreed with each other’s positions, yet we have always
genuinely respected each other. Thank you in the most heartfelt way for invit-
ing me to work with you on the third edition of Re-Visioning Family Therapy.
Our many conversations, collaborations, and brainstorming sessions regard-
ing this issue have been inspirational and life transforming. Thank you for
believing in me and for your foresight in using the collaborative spirit of our
relationship to demonstrate that working across vast cultural divides is pos-
sible.
I would like to thank Jim Nageotte of The Guilford Press for his guid-
ance, support, and sage advice throughout every phase of this project. I would
also like to thank Dhara Mehta-Desai for the tireless and dedicated assistance
she provided to this project throughout the entire process from start to finish.
A special thanks is also extended to our many friends, colleagues, and broth-
ers and sisters of the struggle who have contributed to the book. We thank you
for your tireless efforts, patience with short turnaround times, and willingness
to “go there with and for us” in the telling of your stories for the book. Obvi-
ously, without your contributions we have no book.
And, finally but not insignificantly, I would like to thank my family for
their unrelenting support and for being a tremendous source of inspiration,
motivation, and resolve in my life. I am so painfully aware virtually every day
of my life that every single accomplishment, accolade, and particle of privilege
that I enjoy has been achieved by standing firmly on your tired, weary, but
omnipresent shoulders. Please know that it is permanently etched in the walls
of my psyche and soul that your individual and collective sacrifices and suf-
fering have provided the pathway to my opportunities. I will never forget . . .
and I am eternally grateful. One of the reasons why this book has been so
important to me personally is because of the possibility that it promises for
the emergence of a new world order—an invitation for us to think differently
about each other, and because we think differently, to be able to act differ-
ently with each other. It is my hope and desire that the next generation of
Hardys and McGoldricks, as well as the descendants of the many others who
have contributed to this book, will inherit a different world where skin color,
the shape of one’s eyes, whom one loves romantically, or where one’s ances-
tral roots are buried will not determine access to opportunity, dignity, and
respect. This is the re-visioning that we envision with this book.

—K enneth V. H ardy
 Contents

I. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

1. The Power of Naming 3

Monica McGoldrick and Kenneth V. Hardy

2. Re‑Visioning Gender, Re‑Visioning Power: Equity, Accountability, 28

and Refusing to Silo
Deidre Ashton and Christian Jordal

3. Social Class, Rising Inequality, and the American Dream 37

Froma Walsh

4. The Sociocultural Trauma of Poverty: Theoretical and Clinical Considerations 57

for Working with Poor Families
Kenneth V. Hardy

5. Spirituality, Suffering, and Resilience 73

Froma Walsh

II. SOCIOCULTURAL TRAUMA AND HOMELESSNESS

6. Homelessness and the Spiritual Meaning of Home 93

Monica McGoldrick

7. Transnational Journeys 108

Celia Jaes Falicov

8. Climbing Up the Rough Side of the Mountain: Hope, Culture, and Therapy 123
Paulette Moore Hines

xxiii
xxiv Contents

9. Toward a Psychology of the Oppressed: 133

Understanding the Invisible Wounds of Trauma
Kenneth V. Hardy

III. RACIAL IDENTITY

10. Native American Identity Transformation: 151

Integrating a Naming Ceremony with Family Therapy
Rockey Robbins and Sharla Robbins

11. Letting My Spirits Guide Me: Multicultural and Multiracial Legacies 168
Nydia Garcia Preto

12. Moving toward Multiracial Legitimacy: A Personal Reflection 176

MaryAnna Domokos‑Cheng Ham

13. On Being a Black Dominican 191

Ana M. Hernandez

14. Facing the Black Shadow: Power from the Inside Out 200
Marlene F. Watson

15. White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming 215
to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies
Peggy McIntosh

16. Dismantling White Male Privilege within Family Therapy 226

Ken Dolan‑Del Vecchio

17. The Inevitable Whiteness of Being (White): Whiteness and Intersectionality 236
in Family Therapy Practice and Training
Jodie Kliman, Hinda Winawer, and David Trimble

18. Brown in America: Living with Racial and Religious Bias 251
Kiran Shahreen Kaur Arora

IV. CULTURAL LEGACIES AND STORIES:

THERAPISTS’ EXPERIENCES
19. Black Genealogy Revisited: Restorying an African American Family 261
Elaine Pinderhughes

20. White Privilege, Pathological Shame and Guilt, 283

and the Perversion of Morality
Robert Shelby

21. The Discovery of My Multicultural Identity 298

Fernando Colón‑López

22. Going Home: One Orphan’s Journey from Chicago to Poland and Back 308
John D. Folwarski
 Contents xxv

23. Hyperlinked Identity: A Generative Resource in a Divisive World 318

Saliha Bava

24. The Semitism Schism, Revisited: Jewish–Palestinian Legacies 336

in a Family Therapy Training Context
Linda Stone Fish and Donna Dallal‑Ferne

25. No Single‑Issue Lives: Identity Transitions and Transformations 348

across the Life Cycle
Elijah C. Nealy

V. IMPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

26. Working with LGBT Families 363

Elijah C. Nealy

27. Same‑Sex Couples: Successful Coping with Minority Stress 388

Robert‑Jay Green

28. Working with Immigrant and Refugee Families 403

Hugo Kamya and Marsha Pravder Mirkin

29. Therapy with Heterosexual Black Couples through a Racial Lens 419
Kenneth V. Hardy and Christiana I. Awosan

30. A Fifth‑Province Approach to Intracultural Issues in an Irish Context: 433

Marginal Illuminations
Imelda Colgan McCarthy and Nollaig Byrne

31. The Power of Song to Promote Healing, Hope, and Justice: 449
Lessons from the African American Experience
Salome Raheim

32. Interracial Asian Couples: Beyond Black and White 464

Tazuko Shibusawa

VI. IMPLICATIONS FOR TRAINING

33. Re‑Visioning Family Therapy Training 477

Kenneth V. Hardy and Monica McGoldrick

34. Social Justice in Family Therapy Training: The Power of Personal 496
and Family Narratives
Matthew R. Mock

35. Teaching about Racism and the Implications for Practice 512
N. Norma Akamatsu

36. A Letter to Family Therapists in the 21st Century 526

Evan Imber‑Black
xxvi Contents

VII. IMPLICATIONS OF RESEARCH FOR CLINICAL PRACTICE

37. Ways of Knowing: Cultural Bias Pitfalls to Avoid 539

When Using Research to Inform Practice
Sarita Kaya Davis

38. Relational Healing and Organizational Change in the Time of Evidence 553
Ken Epstein

VIII. LARGER SYSTEMS WORK:

HOW TO BUILD BRIDGES ACROSS THE DIVIDE
39. Expanding Bowen’s Concept of Societal Emotional Processes 569
through Historic Ethnography: An Anthropological Exploration
of the Human Connection with the Environment
Joanne Bowen

40. An Application of Bowen Family Systems Theory in Child Welfare 588

Walter Howard Smith, Jr.

Index 597
 PA RT I

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
 CHAPTER 1

The Power of Naming

Monica McGoldrick
Kenneth V. Hardy

Treasure the approaches and ways of thinking that you have learned more
than the facts you have accumulated. . . . Facts will be presented in such
a way as to veil the ways of thinking embedded in them. And so to reveal
these hidden ways of thinking, to suggest alternate frameworks, to imagine
better ways of living in evolving worlds, to imagine new human relations
that are freed from persisting hierarchies, whether they be racial or sexual
or geopolitical—­yes, I think this is the work of educated human beings. I
might then ask you to think about education as the practice of freedom.
—A ngela Davis , Grinnell College Graduation (2007, p. 34)

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

—L in-­M anuel M iranda , Hamilton (2016, p. 180)

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up
and so the door of my heart can be left open.
—Thich Nhat H anh , “Please Call Me by My True Names”
(1991, pp. 123–124)

We have recently received the shock of major backlash (or should we use
Van Jones’s term and call it “whitelash”) to what had just begun to seem
like an emerging appreciation of our nation’s diversity. The dramatic increase
of immigrants in the United States and of nonwhite1, non-­European citizens
altogether, has been forcing us to come to terms with our multiculturality.
We have always been a nation of immigrants, but never before, despite previ-
ous waves of immigration and increasing rates of cultural intermarriage, has
our nation been as diverse as it is today. Our diversity is expanding expo-
nentially, although the change is much more apparent on the coasts and the
southern border of the United States than in the large but less populated areas
of the interior of the country. The population changes of the past 50 years,
along with the communication revolution with the Internet and social media,
have been changing our nation dramatically and forcing us to challenge our
unquestioned assumptions about who we are and what our values should be.

3
4 T heoretical P erspectives

The true multicultural richness and complexity of our nation offer us

the greatest possibilities for re-­visioning who we are and who we can be. Our
diversity can become our greatest strength. On the other hand, when we fear
our diversity, our prejudices and rigidities as a nation are highlighted, and our
systemic appreciation and potential to lead the way toward a future for our
planet disappear. Our fears can bring out a pernicious ability to exclude and
dehumanize those who are considered not to belong. Ultimately, this dehu-
manization would mean death to our civilization. As Bryan Stevenson (2015)
so touchingly puts it:

We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. An

absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state,
a nation. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and
unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn our-
selves as much as we victimize others. The closer we get to mass incarcera-
tion and extreme levels of punishment, the more I believe it is necessary to
recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—­perhaps—­we all
need some measure of unmerited grace. (p. 18)

Those who are not of the dominant culture have always tended to experi-
ence our society from a multicultural perspective, which more easily appreci-
ates the need for mercy and compassion. But the dominant culture, from the
inception of our nation, has tended to deny and mystify our multiculturalism,
articulating the magnificent promise of “liberty and justice for all” only for a
very strict minority—­white men—and obscuring at every level the insidious
hidden misrepresentations of whom “all” would include.
But a multicultural lens can be the model for the ideals our forefathers set
out, the model for the cultural flexibility we require as systemic therapists in
this, the most culturally diverse society that has ever existed, for times when
vindictiveness and cutoff are increasingly coming to the fore and trampling
the ideals of democracy.
Appreciating our diversity as a nation transforms our awareness of what
it means to be American. Except for Native Americans who immigrated here
thousands of years before the thoughts of our nation began, the rest of us are
all relatively recent immigrants. But the ideology put forth by all our govern-
mental institutions has generally included a denial of our more complex heri-
tage of injustice to those not part of the dominant group. To appreciate who
we really are requires expanding our awareness of the truths of our heritage.
As Sanford Ungar (1995) wrote about becoming conscious of the meaning
of his family’s migration for him, a third-­generation grandchild of Eastern
European Jewish immigrant ancestors, “I was no less American than ever
before, of course, but now, in middle age, I had discovered my own immi-
grant consciousness. Indeed, in that sense, I could now feel more authentically
American” (p. 18).
Only by attending to the multiplicitous voices that have until now been
silenced in the dominant story of who we are as a nation can we become
 The Power of Naming 5

“more authentically American.” Although African Americans, Hmong refu-

gees, and recent immigrants from Sri Lanka or Syria have their own cultures
of origin and particular experiences of migration and dislocation, they need
equally to feel themselves included in the definition of “American.”
But our clinical models, training, and practice have ignored this multi-
cultural dimension of our society. We have developed theories and conducted
research to define working models for intervention without accounting for
their cultural limitations. We have done research on the absurd assumption
that we could manualize intervention and apply it to any clients, no matter
what their history or context, on the assumption that everyone should be able
to fit into the universalized category of middle-­class white people (primarily
men) in the United States. That is the standard by which we measure all oth-
ers and usually find them failing. We have not even noticed that families from
many cultural groups rarely come to our therapy and that, if they do, they
do not find our techniques helpful. It is we who must change and expand to
include them, not they who must learn to fit into our schemas.
The failure of our society to embrace and respect diversity is the great-
est single threat to the survival of our civilization. We must break the con-
straints of our traditional monocular vision of families as white, heterosex-
ual, and middle class. The boundaries of our field must be redefined to take
into account our country’s ever-­expanding diversity and the way that societal
oppression has silenced the voices and constrained the lives of individuals,
families, and whole communities since our nation was founded. Racist, sex-
ist, ethnocentric, classist, and heterosexist power hierarchies constrain our
clients’ lives and determine what gets defined as a problem and what services
our society will support in response.
Systemic practice, like any set of ideas and practices, is always evolving,
but it originally developed mostly in reaction to Freudian psychology, which
had focused primarily on intrapsychic processes as the core of human psy-
chology. Systemic theory and practice provided a kind of corrective perspec-
tive, focusing attention on interpersonal processes among family members as
central to understanding psychological functioning. Although some family
therapists eschewed any other level of analysis than the interpersonal/fam-
ily level, most came to think in terms of multiple systemic levels, from the
biological to the familial to the cultural and societal. However, it has been
difficult to shift our thinking about therapy beyond the family to consider the
therapeutic implications of the cultural context in which families are embed-
ded, given that our dominant ideology about who defines the parameters of
conversation in our society has not been seriously open to challenge or revi-
sion.
This third edition of this book continues our attempt to re-­vision the
dominant discourses within family therapy. We must examine the ways in
which we have organized our theory and practice and analyze how they rep-
licate the dominant value systems of our society. Such re-­visioning will be a
slow and difficult evolution and will not take place without a backlash.
6 T heoretical P erspectives

In this introductory chapter, we want to map out a series of phases that

describe both the past and the possible future of family therapy, a framework
we hope will contribute to the transformation of theory and practice.
Our society is still organized to accommodate a type of family struc-
ture that represents a very small percentage of U.S. households—­ nuclear
family units with employed fathers and homemaker mothers who devote
themselves to the care of husbands and children. Family therapy, like our
dominant social ideology in general, has tended toward a view of families as
self-­sufficient, nuclear units. However, our definition that two parents are
critical for child development has always been a euphemism for a mother who
is perpetually on call for everyone emotionally and physically and a distant,
money-­providing father. Families with such a structure cannot help being
problematic.
Although poor families are the only ones seen as deficient, because of
their obvious and critical dependence on systems beyond themselves for their
survival, the reality is that all families are dependent for their survival on sys-
tems beyond themselves.
But those of us who are of the dominant groups fail to realize this because
of the unseen ways the government and others support us. Our needs are
met and taken for granted and thus rendered invisible to us (Coontz, 2016).
Schools, courts, the police, and all other institutions of the society operate
for the protection and benefit of the dominant groups. Thus those of us who
make the rules and definitions are kept blind to our privilege (see McIntosh,
Chapter 15, this volume) and to our dependence on those who take care of us.
The problem is not the dependence of certain people on the society, but the
delusion of autonomy of the rest of us.
The dominant groups are using up the world’s resources with no aware-
ness or accountability (Worldwatch Institute, 2017). The economic system,
the prison system, the drug rehabilitation industry, the gun industry, and the
legal and governmental systems make money for the dominant groups of our
society on the backs of the poor and the disenfranchised, who serve us in
our homes and factories, making our clothing and supplies, while we remain
blind to our connection to them, not seeing our exploitation or the bias in
our behavior. We seldom recognize the invisible workforce of the poor toil-
ing tirelessly for our comfort. They come at night to hospitals, hotels, and the
halls of academia. They are commissioned essentially to be our caretakers
and to “keep America clean.” We never even notice that they, like us, are par-
ents, grandparents, beloved children, aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews; they
remain objectified, invisible, and known only by the services that they provide
for us, such as “the janitor” or “the maid.”
Paradoxically, the ideals stated, but not meant, in our Constitution could
be the foundation of a truly egalitarian society, perhaps the first in human
history, but only if we acknowledge the pernicious, unspoken exclusions on
which it was founded. To do this, we must admit that our founders built
slavery and the disenfranchisement of people of color and women into the
 The Power of Naming 7

system and that these inequities remain in place today. Our history books
still brag about the foundation of our nation, minimizing the slaughter, slav-
ery, and forced invisibility of more than two-­thirds of the population. This is
hard to see, because what we espouse overtly mystifies the underlying facts of
exclusion. Our society makes it difficult to notice the intersection between the
spoken and the unspoken. So we continue to invest in the ideal that we are
“the land of the free,” even though some of us are and have always been free
on the backs of others. We continue to believe that escaping the walls of pov-
erty is simply a matter of personal will and hard work, denying that wealth
and class are well-­elaborated systems that negate the individual efforts of the
poor while inflating the opportunities of the structurally, economically, and
racially privileged.
We therapists need to revise our books to take into account the unspoken
structures, the cultural, racial, and class- and gender-­biased hierarchies that
limit the lives of many of our potential or real clients and are the underpin-
nings of our society. It goes unacknowledged that African Americans, Latinos,
Asians, and other racially oppressed people do not have the same entitlements
to participate in our institutions, including in our world of family therapy.
Just as our history books have told primarily the history of heterosexual white
men, our family therapy models have been researched and developed by and
for therapy primarily addressed to families of the dominant groups. Thera-
pists must begin to think of families in terms of the communities they live in.
We have ignored community, focusing on the interior of the nuclear family,
while ignoring the larger context, as well as all the history of social exclu-
sion of whole groups from participation in our institutions. It is impossible
to understand or treat poor families without a comprehensive understanding
of how stigma and limited access to resources affect their symptoms and pre-
sentation. We continually turn a blind eye to the pervasive impact of oppres-
sion on the poor, the racially subjugated, and other marginalized groups who
behave in predictable ways, not because of who they are but because they
have been forced to live in a context of ongoing devaluation and discrimina-
tion. Delivering more culturally competent services will require our field to
consider the broader ecology in which families are embedded. Widening our
lenses to take history, context, and community into account will require us to
reconsider many of our assumptions.
Children need more than one or even two adults to raise them, and adults
need more than one or two close relationships to get them through life. As
therapists, we need to encourage our clients to go beyond the dominant cul-
ture’s definitions of family, to pay attention to relationships with siblings,
nieces and nephews, grandchildren, aunts, and uncles. And beyond this we
must attend to friendships and to the health and safety of neighborhoods and
community contexts in which families live. We need to consider the role of
caretakers, housekeepers, maids, and nannies, as well as godparents, teachers,
and other mentors, in the rearing of children and the care of the disabled and
the elderly.
Another random document with
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form, as he was in his court, and Gabriel said to him: “This fellow
here possesses ninety and nine sheep, but I have only one, and that
I love, and cherish in my bosom. This man claims my little ewe lamb,
and will take it from me, and, if I will not give it him, he says that he
will slay me; and take my lamb from me by force.”
Then David’s anger was kindled against Michael, and he said, “Thou
who hast so many sheep, wherefore lustest thou after the poor
man’s ewe lamb? Thou hast an evil heart and an insatiable spirit.”
Then Michael exclaimed, “Thou hast given judgment against thyself;
what thou rebukest in this man, thou hast allowed thyself to do!”[653]
And David knew that God had sent His angels to rebuke him, and he
fell upon his face to the ground. But, some say, he drew his sword
and rushed upon Michael: then Gabriel held him back, and said,
“Thou didst ask to be tried; now thou hast fallen under the
temptation.”[654]
Then the angels vanished, and David fell to the ground, tore off his
purple robe, cast aside his golden crown, and wept for forty days and
forty nights. And his tears flowed in such abundance, that every now
and then he plunged a cup into them and drank it off.
At the expiration of forty days Gabriel came to him, and said, “The
Lord salutes thee!” But David felt this was an additional reproach,
and he wept still more. It is said that during the ensuing forty days
and nights David shed more tears than Adam and all his
descendants had, and will, shed from the day of the Fall to the day of
the Resurrection.
Then God sent Gabriel to him again, and Gabriel said, “The Lord
salutes thee!” But David lifted his tearful face and said, “O Gabriel,
what will Uriah say to me on the day of the general Resurrection?”
Gabriel answered, “The Lord will give him so great an inheritance in
Paradise, that he will not have the heart to reproach thee.”
Then David knew that he was pardoned, and he rejoiced greatly. But
he never forgot his sins. He wrote them on the palm of his hand, that
he might have them always before him; therefore he says, “My
shame is ever before mine eyes.”
Nevertheless David’s heart was lifted up with pride, when he
considered that he was a king, a prophet, and a great general. And
one day he said to Nathan, “I think I am perfect, I have everything.”
“Not so,” answered Nathan, “thou exercisest no handicraft.”
Then David was ashamed, and he asked God to teach him a craft;
and God made him skilful in fabricating coats of mail of rings twined
together; his trade therefore was that of an armourer, and his
disgrace was wiped away.
After his judgment between the two angels, David had no confidence
in giving sentence in cases pleaded before him; therefore God sent
him, by the hand of Gabriel, a reed of iron and a little bell, and the
angel said to him, “God is pleased with thy humility, and He has sent
thee this reed and this bell to assist thee in giving judgment. Place
this reed in thy judgment-hall, and hang up the bell in the middle,
and place the accuser on one side, and the accused on the other,
and give sentence in favour of him who makes the bell to tinkle when
he touches the reed.”
David was highly pleased with this gift, and he gave such righteous
judgment, that men feared, throughout the land, to do wrong to one
another.
One day, two men came before David, and one said, “I left a goodly
pearl in the charge of this man, and when I asked for it again, he
denied it me.”
But the other said, “I have returned it to him.”
Then David bade each lay his hand on the reed, but the bell gave
the same indication for both. Then David thought, “They both speak
the truth, and yet that cannot be; the gift of God must err.”
Then he bade the men try again, and the result was the same.
However, he observed that the defendant, when he went up to the
reed to lay his hand upon it, gave his walking staff to the plaintiff to
hold, and this he did each time, so that David’s suspicion was
awakened, and he took the staff, and examined it, and found that it
was hollow, and the stolen pearl was concealed in the handle. Thus
the bell had given right judgment, for when the accused touched the
reed, he had returned the pearl into the hand of the accuser; but
David by his doubt in the reed displeased Him who gave it, and the
reed and the bell were taken from him.
After that, David often gave wrong judgment, till Solomon, his son,
was of age to advise him.
One day, when Solomon was aged thirteen, there came two men
before the king. The first said, “I sold a house and cellar to this man,
and on digging in the cellar he found a treasure hidden there by my
forefathers. I sold him the house and cellar, but not the treasure. Bid
him restore to me what he has found.”
But the other said, “Not so. He sold me the house, the cellar, and all
its contents.”
Then King David said, “Let the treasure be divided, and let half go to
one, and half go to the other.”
But Solomon stood up and said to the plaintiff, “Hast thou not a
son?” He said, “I have.”
Then said Solomon to the defendant, “Hast thou not a daughter?” He
answered, “I have.”
“Then,” said Solomon, “give thy daughter to the son of this man who
sold thee the house, and let the treasure go as a marriage gift to thy
daughter and his son.” And all applauded this judgment.
On another occasion, a husbandman came before the judgment-seat
to lay complaint against a herdsman, whose sheep had broken into
his field, and had pastured on his young wheat.
Then King David said, “Let some of the sheep be given to the
husbandman.”
But Solomon stood up, and said, “Not so; let the husbandman have
the wool, and the milk of the flock, till the wheat is grown up again as
it was before the sheep destroyed it.”
And all wondered at his wisdom.
But the king’s elders and councillors were filled with envy, because
this child’s opinion was preferred before theirs; and they complained
to King David.
Then David said, “Call an assembly of the people, and prove
Solomon before them, whether he be learned in the Law, and
whether he have understanding and wit.”
So the people were assembled, and the elders took council together
how they might perplex him with hard questions. But or ever they
asked him, he answered what they had devised, and they were
greatly confounded, so that the people supposed this was a
preconcerted scene arranged by the king. Then, when the elders
were silenced, Solomon turned to their chief, and said, “I too will
prove you with questions. What you have asked me have been trials
of my learning, but what I will ask you shall put to proof the readiness
of your wits. What is all, and what is nothing? What is something,
and what is naught?”
The elder was silent; he thought, but he knew not what was the
answer. And all the people perplexed themselves to discover the
riddle, but they could not. Then said Solomon, “God is all, and the
world He made is as nothing before Him. The faithful is something,
but the hypocrite is naught.”
Thereupon he turned to a second, and he said: “What are most, and
what are fewest? What is the sweetest, and what is the bitterest?”
But when the second could find no solution to these questions,
Solomon answered, “Most men are unbelievers, the fewest have true
faith. The sweetest thing is the possession of a virtuous wife, good
children, and a competence; the bitterest thing is to have a
disreputable wife, disorderly children, and penury.”
Then Solomon turned to a third elder and asked: “What is the most
odious sight, and what is the most beautiful sight? What is the surest
thing, and what is that which is most insecure?”
And when this elder also was unable to give an answer, Solomon
interpreted his riddle once more, “The most odious sight is to see a
righteous man fall away; the most beautiful sight is to see a sinner
repent. The surest thing is death, the most insecure thing is life.”
After that Solomon said to all the people, “Ye see that the oldest and
the most learned men are not always the wisest. True wisdom
comes not with years, nor is derived from books, but is a gift of God
the All-wise.”
Solomon by his words threw the whole assembly into astonishment,
and all the heads of the people cried with one voice, “Praised be the
Lord, who has given to our king a son who surpasses all in wisdom,
and who is worthy to ascend the throne of his father David.”
And David thanked God that He had given him such a wise son, and
now he desired but one thing further of God, and that was to see him
who was to be his companion in Paradise; for to every man is
allotted by God one man to be his friend and comrade in the Land of
Bliss.
So David prayed to God, and his prayer was heard, and a voice fell
from heaven and bade him confer the kingdom upon his son
Solomon, and then to go forth, and the Lord would lead him to the
place where his companion dwelt.
David therefore had his son Solomon crowned king, and then he
went forth out of Jerusalem, and he was in pilgrim’s garb, with a staff
in his hand; and he went from city to city, and from village to village,
but he found not the man whom he sought. One day, after the lapse
of many weeks, he drew near to a village upon the borders of the
Mediterranean Sea, and alongside of him walked a poorly dressed
man laden with a heavy bundle of faggots. This man was very old
and reverend of aspect, and David watched him. He saw him
dispose of his wood and then give half the money he had obtained
by the sale of it to a poor person. After that he bought a piece of
bread and retired from the town. As he went, there passed a blind
woman, and the old man broke his bread in half, and gave one
portion to the woman; and he continued his course till he reached
the mountains from which he had brought his load in the morning.
David thought, “This man well deserves to be my companion for
eternity, for he is pious, charitable, and reverend of aspect: I must
ask his name.”
He went after the old man, and he found him in a cave among the
rocks, which was lighted by a rent above. David stood without and
heard the hermit pray, and read the Tora and the Psalms, till the sun
went down. Then he lighted a lamp and began his evening prayers;
and when they were finished, he drew forth the piece of bread, and
ate the half of it.
David, who had not ventured to interrupt the devotions of the old
hermit, now entered the cave and saluted him.
The hermit asked, “Who art thou? I have seen no man here before,
save only Mata, son of Johanna, the companion destined to King
David in Paradise.”
David told his name, and asked after this Mata. But the aged man
could give him no information of his whereabouts. “But,” said he, “go
over these mountains, and observe well what thou lightest upon, and
it may be thou wilt find Mata.”
David thanked him, and continued his search. For long it was
profitless. He traversed the stony dales and the barren mountains,
and saw no trace of human foot. At last, just as hope was
abandoning him, on the summit of a rugged peak he saw a wet spot.
Then he stood still in surprise. “How comes there to be a patch of
soft and sloppy ground here?” he asked; “the topmost peak of a
stony mountain is not the place where springs bubble up.”
As he thus mused, an aged man came up the other side of the
mountain. His eyes were depressed to the earth, so that he saw not
David. And when he came to the wet patch, he stood still, and
prayed with such fervour, that rivulets of tears flowed out of his eyes,
and sank into the soil; and thus David learnt how it was that the
mountain-top was wet.
Then David thought, “Surely this man, whose eyes are such copious
fountains of tears, must be my companion in Paradise.”
Yet he ventured not to interrupt him in his prayer, till he heard him
ask, “O my God! pardon King David his sins, and save him from
further trespass! for my sake be merciful to him, for Thou hast
destined him to be my comrade for all eternity!”
Then David ran towards him, but the old man tottered and fell, and
before the king reached him he was dead.
So David dug into the ground which had been moistened by the
tears of Mata, and laid him there, and said the funeral prayer over
him, and covered him with the earth, and then returned to
Jerusalem.
And when he came into his harem, the Angel of Death stood there
and greeted him with the words, “God has heard thy supplications;
now has thy life reached its end.”
Then David said, “The Lord’s will be done!” and he fell down upon
the ground, and expired.
Gabriel descended to comfort Solomon, and to give him a heavenly
shroud in which to wrap David. And all Israel followed the bier to
Machpelah, where Solomon laid him by the side of Abraham and
Joseph.[655]
It will doubtless interest the reader to have an English version of the
Psalm supposed to have been composed by David after the slaying
of Goliath, which is not included in the Psalter, as it is supposed to
be apocryphal.

Psalm CLI. (Pusillus eram).

1. I was small among my brethren; and growing up in my father’s
house I kept my father’s sheep.
2. My hands made the organ: and my fingers shaped the
psaltery.
3. And who declared unto my Lord! He, the Lord, He heard all
things.
4. He sent His angel, and He took me from my father’s sheep:
He anointed me in mercy with His unction.
5. Great and goodly are my brethren: but with them the Lord was
not well pleased.
6. I went to meet the stranger: and he cursed me by all his idols.
 7. But I smote off his head with his own drawn sword: and I
blotted out the reproach of Israel.

This simple and beautiful psalm does not exist in Hebrew, but is
found, in Greek, in some psalters of the Septuagint version, headed
“A Psalm of David when he had slain Goliath.” S. Athanasius
mentions it with praise, in his address to Marcellinus on the
Interpretation of the Psalms, and in the Synopsis of Holy Scripture. It
was versified in Greek in A.D. 360, by Apollinarius Alexandrinus.[656]
The subjoined shield of David is given in a Hebrew book on the
properties and medicaments of things. It is said to be a certain
protection against fire. A cake of bread must be made, and on it
must be impressed the seal or shield of David, having in the corner
the word ‫ ט״יר‬and in the middle ‫( אנ״לא‬Thou art mighty to everlasting,
O Jehovah); and it must be cast aside into the fire with the words of
Psalm cvi. 30, “Then stood up Phinees and prayed; and so the
plague ceased;” and also Exod. xii. 27, “It is the sacrifice of the
Lord’s pass-over, who passed over the houses of the children of
Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our
homes.”[657]
 XXXVIII.
SOLOMON.[658]
 1. HOW SOLOMON OBTAINED POWER.

After Solomon had executed the last offices for his father, he rested
in a dale betwixt Hebron and Jerusalem, and fell asleep. As he
returned to himself, there stood before him eight angels, each with
countless wings, diverse in kinds and colours; and the angels bowed
themselves before him three times.
“Who are ye?” asked Solomon, with eyes still closed.
“We are the angels ruling over the eight winds of heaven,” was their
reply. “God hath sent us to give thee dominion over ourselves and
over the winds subject to us. They will storm and bluster, or breathe
softly, at thy pleasure. At thy command they will swoop down on
earth, and bear thee over the highest mountains.”
The greatest of the angels gave him a jewel inscribed with “God is
Power and Greatness,” and said, “When thou hast a command for
us, then raise this stone towards heaven, and we shall appear before
thee as thy servants.”
When these angels had taken their departure, there appeared four
more, of whom each was unlike the other. One was in fashion as a
great whale, another as an eagle, the third as a lion, and the fourth
as a serpent. And they said, “We are they who rule over all the
creatures that move in the earth, and air, and water; and God hath
sent us to give thee dominion over all creatures, that they may serve
thee and thy friends with all good, and fight against thine enemies
with all their force.”
The angel who ruled over the winged fowls extended to Solomon a
precious stone, with the inscription, “Let all creatures praise the
Lord!” and said, “By virtue of this stone, raised above thy head, canst
thou call us to thy assistance, and to fulfil thy desire.”
Solomon immediately ordered the angels to bring before him a pair
of every living creature that moves in the water, flies in the air, and
walks or glides or creeps on the earth.
The angels vanished, and in an instant they were before Solomon
once more, and there were assembled in his sight pairs of every
creature, from the elephant to the smallest fly.
Solomon conversed with the angels, and was instructed by them in
the habits, virtues, and names of all living creatures; he listened to
the complaints of the beasts, birds, and fishes, and by his wisdom he
rectified many evil customs amongst them.
He entertained himself longest with the birds, both on account of
their beautiful speech, which he understood, and also because of the
wise sentences which they uttered.
This is the signification of the cry of the peacock: “With what
measure thou judgest others, thou shalt thyself be judged.”
This is the song of the nightingale: “Contentment is the greatest
happiness.”
The turtle dove calls, “Better were it for some created things that
they had never been created.”
The peewit pipes, “He that hath no mercy, will not find mercy
himself.”
The bird syrdar cries, “Turn to the Lord, ye sinners!”
The swallow screams, “Do good, and ye shall receive a reward.”
This is the pelican’s note: “Praise the Lord in heaven and earth.”
The dove chants, “The fashion of this world passeth away, but God
remaineth eternal.”
The kata says, “Silence is the best safeguard.”
The cry of the eagle is, “However long life may be, yet its inevitable
term is death.”
The croak of the raven is, “The further from man, the happier I.”
The cock crows before the dawn and in the day, “Remember thy
Creator, O thoughtless man!”
Solomon chose the cock and the peewit to be his constant
companions—the first because of its cry, and the second because it
can see through the earth as through glass, and could therefore tell
him where fountains of water were to be found.
After he had stroked the dove, he bade her dwell with her young in
the temple he was about to build to the honour of the Most High.
This pair of doves, in a few years, multiplied to such an extent, that
all who sought the temple moved through the quarter of the town it
occupied under the shadow of the wings of doves.
When Solomon was again alone, an angel appeared to him, whose
upper half was like to earth, and whose lower half was like to water.
He bowed himself before the king and said, “I am created by God to
do His will on the dry land and in the watery sea. Now, God has sent
me to serve thee, and thou canst rule over earth and water. At thy
command the highest mountains will be made plain, and the level
land will rise into steep heights. Rivers and seas will dry up, and the
desert will stream with water at thy command.” Then he gave to him
a precious stone, with the legend engraved thereon, “Heaven and
earth serve God.”
Finally, an angel presented to him another stone, whereon was cut,
“There is no God save God, and Mohammed is the messenger of
God.”
“By means of this stone,” said the angel, “thou shalt have dominion
over the whole world of spirits, which is far greater than that of men
and beasts, and occupies the space between earth and heaven. One
portion of the spirits is faithful, and praises the One only God; the
other portion is unfaithful: some adore fire, others the sun, others
worship the planets, many revere winter. The good spirits surround
the true believers among men, and protect them from all evil; the evil
spirits seek to injure them and deceive them.”
Solomon asked to see the Jinns in their natural and original shape.
The angel shot like a column of flame into heaven, and shortly
returned with the Satans and Jinns in great hosts: and Solomon,
though he had power over them, shuddered with disgust at their
loathsome appearance. He saw men’s heads attached to the necks
of horses, whose feet were those of an ass; the wings of an eagle
attached to the hump of a dromedary; the horns of a gazelle on the
head of a peacock.[659]
 2. HOW SOLOMON FEASTED ALL FLESH.

When Solomon returned home, he placed the four stones, which the
angels had given him, in a ring, so that he might at any moment
exercise his authority over the realms of spirits and beasts, the earth,
the winds, and the sea.
His first care was to subject the Jinns. He made them all appear
before him, with the exception of the mighty Sachr, who kept himself
in concealment on an unknown island in the ocean, and the great
Eblis, the master of all evil spirits, to whom God had promised
complete liberty till the day of the last Judgment.
When all the demons were assembled, Solomon pressed his seal
upon their necks, to mark them as his slaves. Then he commanded
all the male Jinns to collect every sort of material for the construction
of the temple he was about to build. He bade also the female Jinns
cook, bake, wash, weave, and carry water; and what they made he
distributed amongst the poor. The meats they cooked were placed
on tables, which covered an area of four square miles; and daily
thirty thousand portions of beef, as many portions of mutton, and
very many birds and fishes were devoured. The Jinns and devils sat
at iron tables, the poor at tables of wood, the heads of the people at
silver tables, the wise and pious at tables of gold; and these latter
were served by Solomon in person.
One day, when all spirits, men, beasts, and birds rose satisfied from
the tables, Solomon besought God to permit him to feed to the full all
created animals at once. God replied that he demanded an
impossibility. “But,” said he, “try, to-morrow, what thou canst do to
satisfy the dwellers in the sea.”
On the morrow, accordingly, Solomon bade the Jinns lade a hundred
thousand camels and the same number of mules with corn, and lead
them to the sea-shore. He then cried to the fishes and said: “Come,
ye dwellers in the water, eat and be satisfied!”
Then came all manner of fishes to the surface of the water, and
Solomon cast the corn to them, and they ate and were satisfied, and
dived out of sight. But all at once a whale lifted his head above the
surface, and it was like a mountain. Solomon bade the spirits pour
one sack of corn after another down the throat of the monster, till all
the store was exhausted, there remained not a single grain. But the
whale cried, “Feed me, Solomon! feed me! never have I suffered
from hunger as I have this day!”
Solomon asked the whale if there were any more in the deep like
him. The fish answered: “There are of my race as many as a
thousand kinds, and the smallest is so large that thou wouldst seem
in its belly to be but a sand-grain in the desert.”
Solomon cast himself upon the earth, and began to weep, and
prayed to God to pardon him for his presumption.
“My kingdom,” called to him the Most High, “is far greater than thine.
Stand up, and behold one creature over which no man has yet
obtained the mastery.”
Then the sea began to foam and toss, as though churned by the
eight winds raging against it, and out of the tumbling brine rose the
Leviathan, so great that it could easily have swallowed seven
thousand whales such as that which Solomon had attempted to feed;
and the Leviathan cried, with a voice like the roar of thunder:
“Praised be God, who by His mighty power preserves me from
perishing by hunger.”[660]
 3. THE BUILDING OF THE TEMPLE.[661]

When Solomon returned from the sea-shore to Jerusalem, he heard

the noise of the hammers, and saws, and axes of the Jinns who
were engaged in the building of the temple; and the noise was so
great that the inhabitants of Jerusalem could not hear one another
speak. Therefore he commanded the Jinns to cease from their work,
and he asked them if there was no means whereby the metals and
stones could be shaped and cut without making so much noise.
Then one of the spirits stepped forth and said: “The means is known
only to the mighty Sachr, who has hitherto escaped your authority.”
“Is it impossible to capture this Sachr?” asked Solomon.
“Sachr,” replied the Jinn, “is stronger than all the rest of us together,
and he excels us in speed as he does in strength. However, I know
that once every month he goes to drink of a fountain in the land of
Hidjr; by this, O king, thou mayest be able to bring him under thy
sceptre.”
Solomon, thereupon, commanded a Jinn to fly to Hidjr, and to empty
the well of water, and to fill it up with strong wine. He bade other
Jinns remain in ambush beside the well and watch the result.[662]
After some weeks, when Solomon was pacing his terrace before his
palace, he saw a Jinn flying, swifter than the wind, from the direction
of Hidjr, and he asked, “What news of Sachr?”
“Sachr lies drunk on the edge of the fountain,” said the Jinn; “and we
have bound him with chains as thick as the pillars of the temple;
nevertheless, he will snap them as the hair of a maiden, when he
wakes from his drunken sleep.”
Solomon instantly mounted the winged Jinn and bade him transport
him to the well at Hidjr. In less than an hour he stood beside the
intoxicated demon. He was not a moment too soon, for the fumes of
the wine were passing off, and, if Sachr had opened his eyes,
Solomon would have been unable to constrain him. But now he
pressed his signet upon the nape of his neck: Sachr uttered a cry so
that the earth rocked on its foundations.
“Fear not,” said Solomon, “mighty Jinn; I will restore thee to liberty if
thou wilt tell me how I may without noise cut and shape the hardest
metals.”
“I myself know no means,” answered the demon; “but the raven can
tell thee how to do this. Take the eggs out of the raven’s nest and
place a crystal cover upon them, and thou shalt see how the raven
will break it.”
Solomon followed the advice of Sachr. A raven came, and fluttered
some time round the cover, and seeing that she could not reach her
eggs, she vanished, and returned shortly with a stone in her beak,
named Samur or Schamir; and no sooner had she touched the
crystal therewith, than it clave asunder.
“Whence hast thou this stone?” asked Solomon of the raven.
“It comes from a mountain in the far west,” replied the bird.
Solomon commanded a Jinn to follow the raven to the mountain, and
to bring him more of these stones. Then he released Sachr as he
had promised. When the chains were taken off him, he uttered a
loud cry of joy, which, in Solomon’s ears, bore an ominous sound as
of mocking laughter.
When the Jinn returned with the stone Schamir, Solomon mounted a
Jinn and was borne back to Jerusalem, where he distributed the
stones amongst the Jinns, and they were able to cut the rocks for the
temple without noise.[663]
Solomon also made an ark of the covenant ten ells square, and he
sought to bring it into the Holy of Holies that he had made; and when
he sought to bring the ark through the door of the temple, the door
was ten ells wide. Now, that was the width of the ark, and ten ells will
not go through ten ells. Then, when Solomon saw that the ark would
not pass through the door, he was ashamed and cried, “Lift up your
heads, O ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in!” Then the
gates tottered, and would have fallen on his head to punish what
they supposed to be a blasphemy, for the doors thought that by “the
King of Glory” he meant himself; and they cried to him in anger,
“Who is the King of Glory?” and he answered, “It is the Lord of
Hosts, He is the King of Glory.” And because the doors were so
zealous for the honour of God, the Lord promised them that they
should never fall into the hands of the enemies of Israel. Therefore,
when the temple was burnt and the treasures were carried into
Babylon, the gates sank into the earth and vanished. And to this the
prophet Jeremiah refers (Lament, ii. 9).[664]
Solomon also built him a palace, with great riches in gold, and silver,
and precious stones, like no king that was before him. Many of the
halls had crystal floors and crystal roofs. He had a fountain of liquid
brass.[665] He had also a carpet five hundred parasangs in length;
and whenever the carpet was spread, three hundred thrones of gold
and silver were placed on it, and Solomon bade the birds of the air
spread their wings over them for a shade.[666] He built a throne for
himself of sandal wood, encrusted with gold and precious stones.
 4. THE TRAVELS OF SOLOMON.

Whilst the palace was being built, Solomon made a journey to

Damascus. The Jinn, on whose back he flew, carried him directly
over the valley of ants, which is surrounded by such crags and
precipices, that no man had hitherto seen it. The king was much
astonished to see such a host of ants under him, which were as big
as wolves, and which, on account of their grey eyes and grey feet,
looked from a distance like a cloud. The queen of the ants, who, till
this moment, had not seen a man, was filled with fear when she
beheld Solomon, and she cried to her host, “Hie to your holes, fly!”
But God commanded her not to fear, and to summon all her
subjects, and to anoint Solomon king of all insects. Solomon, who
heard the words of God, and the answer of the queen from a
distance of many miles, borne to him upon the wind, descended into
the valley beside the queen. Immediately the whole valley was filled
with ants, as far as the eye could see.
Solomon asked the queen, “Why didst thou fear me, being
surrounded with such a countless and mighty host?”
“I fear God alone,” answered the queen; “if any danger were to
threaten my subjects, at a sign from me seven times as many would
instantly appear.”
“Wherefore then didst thou command the ants to fly to their holes
when I appeared?”
“Because I feared they would look with wonder and reverence on
thee, and thereby for a moment forget their Creator.”
“I am greater than thou,” added the queen of the ants.
“How so?” asked Solomon in surprise.
“Because thou hast a metal throne, but my throne is thy hand, on
which I now repose,” said the ant.