Regardless of whether a patient's health-care provider works from a traditional biomedical or a new biopsychosocial model, therapists and counselors need to work with patients and their families challenged by the onset of a serious illness. This book addresses this need and outlines the five goals of medical family therapy: (1) help the family accept the illness and then develop a manageable treatment plan; (2) strengthen the patient's healing potential; (3) help maintain an individual and family identity apart from the illness; (4) open lines of communication; and (5) resolve old conflicts in new ways. Essays include: (1) "Opening the Door to Collaboration with Physicians" (Rae J. Schilling and David L. Stoller); (2) "Collaboration between Family Therapists and Physicians: An Interview with Thomas L. Campbell, M.D." (Susan H. McDaniel); (3) "Families and AIDS: The Medical Family Therapy Approach" (Jeri Hepworth and others); (4) "Language, Silence, and Somatic Fixation" (David B. Seaburn); (5) "Ethical Issues in the Treatment of Families with Chronically Ill Members" (Michael C. Gottlieb); and (6) "Personal Ease, Physical Disease, and Intergenerational Family Experience" (Donald S. Williamson). (RJM)