My practice areas are:
Consultation to individuals and to professionals
Individual Psychotherapy, Family Therapy
Assessment, including Psychological Testing
Mediation
Through the many years that I practiced as a clinical child therapist, I gradually developed a specialty in the area of divorce. I now provide services doing consultation, assessment, mediation, teaching and research on divorce-related issues, both clinically and forensically.
My clinical work includes divorce-related individual psychotherapy, parent counseling, co-parenting counseling, custody/time-share mediation and family therapy for parent/child re-connection--for families in which a child has shown resistance or refusal to visit one parent. I also do broader, non-divorce-related psychological assessments of adults and children that include psychological testing.
My forensic work includes child custody evaluations, consultation to attorneys about child/divorce issues, and child custody evaluation reviews. I have given court testimony as an expert witness in many Bay Area counties.
In several research projects, I have studied the characteristics of parents and children in high-conflict divorcing families, and the various components of situations that involve allegations of alienation. The results of these studies have been published in various journals and presented at various national professional meetings with my co-authors.
I currently lead a bi-monthly consultation group for experienced clinicians working with families of divorce. In recent journal articles my co-author and I discuss clinical interventions for families in which a child rejects a parent. I consult and confer about these interventions (the MMFI model) with various psychotherapists and attorneys nationally.
Selected Publications about the MMFI:
Walters, M.G. & Friedlander, S. (2010). Finding a tenable middle space: Understanding the role of clinical interventions when a child refuses contact with a parent. Journal of Child Custody, 7(4), 287-328.
Friedlander, S. & Walters, M.G. (2010). When a child rejects a parent: Tailoring the intervention to fit the problem. Family Court Review, 48(1), 98-111.
Johnston, J.R., Walters, M. & Friedlander, S., (July, 2001) Therapeutic work with alienated children and their families. Family Court Review, 39(3), 316-333.
