Acknowledgements 

I would like to thank my family, colleagues, and patients for supporting the development of my work over the last four decades that has led to this website. 

The website is dedicated to my family who, as all families do, presented me with challenges that helped me become my best person and clinician, and through it all have supported me with love and respect. I want to start with a special thank you to my two daughters who made this work more accessible to my readers--Shannon White Burns, for providing the graphics for the website, and Allison Jean White for her editing. And deep gratitude for their dad, John White, who supported my becoming a psychologist and remains one of my dearest friends.

Any project of this depth is a product of collaboration. I hope to acknowledge many of my sources, teachers, mentors, and colleagues, but many of you will remain unnamed. Please know your influence was deeply felt and you are always in my heart though your names may not all be on the page.

I was extremely fortunate to do my graduate work at the University of Connecticut under the guidance of Dr. Julian Rotter who taught his students to study and evaluate theoretical systems, and to generate and test our own working models. Without this grounding I would not have been prepared to integrate the research, theory, and clinical approaches that led to the development of the Blueprint. I am also deeply grateful to Dr. George Allen, my clinical supervisor and dissertation chair at UConn, for his guidance and collaboration as well as his support of so many clinicians’ development as caring, inquisitive professionals who keep respect for their clients their top priority. 

I was equally blessed to be accepted to the clinical psychology internship program at the VA Medical Center, Palo Alto, one of the three birthplaces of family therapy, pioneered by British anthropologist and social scientist Gregory Bateson. At the VA, I studied at the Family Therapy Training Program under the direction of Dr. Sheldon Starr who, along with Nancy Koch, CNS, introduced me to the nuances of Family Systems theory, which focuses more on the interactions between family members than on the individuals. I also had the opportunity to learn from master therapists from the Mental Research Institute, an innovative center of systems therapy and brief therapy, who provided a lecture series at the Family Program.

While at the VA, I completed my doctoral work, which focused on an analysis of marital interaction at a behavioral level that revealed an anomalous pattern of gender differences, setting me on a journey of study that resulted in the development of the theoretical model, the Blueprint. I joined the faculty of the Family Program where I had the good fortune to combine research, teaching, and supervision with a clinical practice that focused on supporting veterans of three wars and their families to deal with issues associated with their military service. This work underscored the importance of understanding couples’ dynamics within a larger social context. 

With the support of grants from the VA Medical Center and collaboration with students from Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, I directed a ten year-long research program aimed at validating the theoretical model. I am forever grateful to my research team, Gail Ironson, M.D., Kathe Gibboney, CNP, Margie Stivers, Ph.D, and Sheela Stocks Storie, Ph.D, for their tireless and invaluable contributions to this work. I also could not have carried out the program without the support of the faculty and interns at the Family Therapy Training Program, other colleagues in the Department of Psychology, and the willingness of patients in the program to participate in the studies. The knowledge and skills I learned during these years formed the bedrock of my teaching and clinical work for the next three decades.

After working at the Family Therapy Training Program for fifteen years, I left the VA and moved into a full-time private practice in Silicon Valley where I have been able to further develop the clinical applications of the Blueprint with a more diverse population. Over the years I have kept up my supervision and consultation at Stanford and have maintained close consultation with a number of colleagues who have supported my work. Notably Dr. Cheryl Gore-Felton and Dr. Judith Stewart have been invaluable in discussing the development of my theoretical work and its clinical applications. In addition, many colleagues, friends, and patients have contributed hours of time reading my chapter drafts over the last decade. In particular, I appreciate the efforts of Nancy Bardwell, Meghan Barrager, Mary Humphries, Emily Newman, MD, Michael O’Connor Ph.D, Sara Bunce LCSW, Evonne Davis, LCSW, and Patricia Bennett, MS. Finally, I want to acknowledge my website developer, Katie Wood for whom I have enormous gratitude. Katie not only directed the development of the site in an extremely short period of time to make the information available as soon as possible, but she was also a compassionate support to me as I faced some of my own struggles in sheltering myself.