A boy had been refusing to attend school pathologically for a long time, to which an ordinary therapy was not effectual. Then his mother was given a peculiar advice by the therapist. It was that she should pretend to be ill and take a day off work. Surprisingly, this pretense resulted in a triggering effect on solution of the whole complicated problem. There must be many therapists who have had the same kind of experinces.

　　I consider these experiences to suggest a kind of therapeutic approach we should take for treating difficult cases. Such retreating approaches as mentioned above may have very effective therapeutic value. I call them ‘escape’ strategies as a whole.

　　Now I have realized that the solution-focused therapy, such as the family therapy, shares all the important features with our escape strategies. The solution-focused therapy was designed and has been developed as an antithesis to the problem-focused therapy, in such a way that all its therapeutic contexts consist in the retreat of various kinds from those contexts for the problem-focused therapy.

　　The solution-focused therapy was successful in evading those various hard tasks which the problem-focused therapy had been struggling to overcome. The tasks which may be evadable involve: to use complicated techniques, to interpret a client’s unconsciousness, to identify inexplicable causal relations, to regard a therapist's role as a problem solver, to contrive a scenario for therapy, to explicate solution process, to set a ‘true’ therapeutic goal and/or to get a ‘perfect’ solution, etc.

　　The escape strategies which can be adopted for the solution-focused therapy are as follows. Let the client (IP him/herself or other related persons):

　　(1) stay away from the problem-situation for a while in one way or another (physically and/or psychogically); or

　　(2) leave the direct and difficult problem as it is, and find a problem which is less direct and easier to cope with as a therapeutic substitute; or

　　(3) shift the meaning of the problem, most simply by paradoxically reversing it, for example; or

　　(4) leave the problem as it is, and try to find the situation in which he/she can operate better, by reframing it, for example.

　　The purpose of the present study is to make clear the mourning process of wives or mothers after being bereaved of their husbands or sons due to sudden death from ‘KAROSHI’.

　　Twelve bereaved wives and three bereaved mothers were interviewed. Their average age was 53.2 (ranging in age from 40 to 69). On average five years and one month had passed since they experienced the deaths of their husbands or sons.

　　The results of this study show that the mourning process of the interviewees can be divided into three phases.

　　The first phase, the week immediately following the death, is a period of panic, mental confusion and mourning.

　　The second phase proceeds to the point marked by the third anniversary of the death. This point is two years after the death and is marked by the women beginning to participate in the activities of a ‘family group’ for bereaved families. Seeking the recognition of this work-related death, the women take the starting of a movement as an opportunity to join the social actctivites. Moreover, through their get-togethers with friends, they begin to take a forward-looking view of life after the deaths of their husbands or sons, taking into consideration not only their saddness but the aim of raising the children left behind.

　　The third phase is the present (the time of this interview). This period is characterized by social actities with an attempt to take a positive view of the bereavement experience. Moreover, they participate in the ‘family group’ activities in order to acquire the compensation for the work-related deaths not only for themselves but for those people in similar circumstances.

　　It is therefore clear that the third anniversary of death (two years after the deaths of their husbands or sons) is a turning point in the bereavement process of the people in question. At and beyond this point of time, it is possible to say that bereaved women of middle age being to take their bereavement experience as a positive thing and developing socialization of their personalities. Moreover, it becomes clear that children, as a type of the support systems, are a great help in the recovery process of the wives.

　　The problems of school maladjustment, such as school refusal have been increasing in number. However, little has been done to solve these problems. The first step to understand school maladjustment is to identify the factors influencing the students’ perception of how well they adjust to the school environment.

　　In our study, the Family Assessment Inventory was administered to 267 junior highschool students and their fathers and mothers. In addition, the School Environment Adjustment Scale was administered to the students. The data were analyzed using covariance structure analysis to examine the two hypotheses about the relationship between each family member’s perception of family function and the students’ perception of school adjustment. The following two hypotheses were tested: 1) The parents’ perception of family function with respect to familial communication, satisfaction and cohesion affect the child’s perception of family functioning consisting of the same three variables that are linear relationship with children’s perception of school adjustment; 2) The parents’ perception of the family flexibility and family rules has an influence on the childrens’ perception of the same two variables that, at the same time, have a parabolic relationship with the children’s perception of school adjustment. The pathmodel based on the first hypothesis was supported by the satisfactory goodness of fit with the covariance matrix. As for the second hypothesis, the observed variables and the latent variables showed a good match, However, the covariance structure as a whole did not fit well with the hypothesized model.

　　The present study clarified the relationship between the perception of family function and school adjustment.

　　Post-divorce therapy was investigated through a case study of a man who divorced in about a half year after marriage due to psychogenic impotence. The therapy was terminated with seventy five sessions in two years and nine months. As a result, the following have been clarified:

1. Factors contributed to divorce;

　　There were several problems in the intrapsychic process of the client. These were: narcissistic vulnerability; indifference toward other people's feelings and himself; avoidant tendency toward intimate interpersonal relationships; lack of establishment of identity as man. The ex-wife also was weak in emotional expressions and her identity as woman was not established. In intergenerational relationships with their families of origin, the client pursued his mother image in his ex-wife, while the ex-wife projected weak and unreliable father image onto the client. Both were insufficient in differentiation of self from families of origin. Thus, they had intimacy anxieties with each other in their relationship as a couple, and in consequence, it was difficult for them to form the marital system.

2. Mourning work and process of self restoration-Meaning of post-divorce therapy;

　　By means of post-divorce therapy, the client expressed lonliness and hatred associated with divorce, then recoverd self-esteem and became capable of self acceptance. He could reestablish his own identity without relying on others’ evaluations. Furthermore, the problems of emotional expressions and intimate interpersonal relationships existed in pre-marital days have been reduced, making it possible to start of his own growth in such relationships.

3. The meaning of divorce in beginning marital period and therapeutic goals in relation to the developmental tasks of life cycle;

　　Divorce in beginning marital period is considered to be a loss of oneself rather than a loss of marital relationship. Accordingly, in addition to recovery of self-esteem and re-establishment of identity, improvement in the following three areas are suggested to be important.

　　These three areas are intrapsychic processes, intergenerational relationship with one’s own family of origin, and interpersonal relationships in general before marriage.