Draft:Monica McGoldrick

Monica McGoldrick, ACSW, PhD.(h.c), is an author and clinician who is best known for her revisioning of mental health and family therapy to include dimensions of ethnicity, gender, race, culture, social class.   She was one of the first in the field of family therapy to emphasize and write about the influence of these dimensions on family processes and implications for clinical treatment. At the time (1980) the leading family therapists rejected the ideas that ethnicity, gender, culture and race, or life cycle perspectives were of relevance.

Background
She has published many books and articles but some of her most relevant books which are seminal in the field include Ethnicity ''and Family Therapy, The Expanded Family Life Cycle, and Genograms. '' Her teaching videos have become among the most widely viewed in the field.

McGoldrick received the American Family Therapy Academy Award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy Theory and Practice in1988, and an award from the Journal of Family Business for an article on ethnicity and families in 1994. She was awarded an honorary Doctorate from Smith College School for Social Work (1991).

Born in Brooklyn, New York, McGoldrick grew up on a farm in Solebury, Pennsylvania. She is a fourth generation Irish American. She became interested in the role of culture and ethnicity on family patterns while she was at Brown, majoring in Russian Studies and she wrote a thesis on the role of children in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, especially regarding a common theme in his works of a child regenerating love in an adult who had become hardened or insensitive. McGoldrick has always viewed her interest in Dostoevsky as a good grounding for her study of family therapy, and in her work on transforming life narratives with genograms. Referred to as the Godmother of genograms by the British Journal of Psychiatry, McGoldrick has over the years published books, papers and videos on the use of genograms and with her colleagues has conducted research on genograms, ethnicity, and family patterns for many years.

She is a believer in working collaboratively to create systemic change, and is known for recommending that it is best to work in teams, or a “buddy” group.

Education and career
McGoldrick received her B.A. from Brown University in 1964 and a M A. in Russian Studies from Yale University in 1966, She then switched to social work and family therapy, receiving her M.S.W. from Smith College School for Social Work in 1969. She later received an Honorary Doctorate from Smith. McGoldrick is Director of the Multicultural Family Institute in Highland Park, NJ; and Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.