Moshe Lang
# Moshe Lang

Moshe Lang (born 1939) is an Australian family therapist, clinical psychologist (MAPS) and author. Born in Israel, Lang migrated to Australia as a young man and settled there in 1961. He is one of the pioneers of family therapy in Australia; one of the nation's best known family therapists. Lang has published and taught extensively in his professional area, both in Australia and worldwide.

## Education and career

Lang studied psychology at the University of Melbourne. From 1965 to 1979, he was senior psychologist at the Bouverie Clinic, as well as director of training. During a sabbatical, in 1975, Lang worked in Ramat-Chen Mental Health Clinic in Israel. In 1979, Lang founded Williams Road Family Therapy Centre – the first independent centre of its kind in Australia. He was co-director of the Centre, with Dr Brian Stagoll, from 1981 to 1997. Lang remained involved with the Centre until 2012, when he became director of Williams Road Psychotherapy Centre.

Lang was Foundation President of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy (ANZJFT) from 1979 to 1988 and President of the Victorian Association of Family Therapists (VAFT), now known as the Australian Association of Family Therapy (AAFT), from 1982 to 1984.

In 1994, Moshe was Recipient of the Inaugural Award of Special Services to Family Therapy from ANZJFT and, in 1992, he was awarded Life Membership from AAFT. In 1980, Moshe gave the keynote address at the Inaugural Family Therapy Conference in Melbourne 1980.

In addition to his clinical practice, Moshe is a prolific author and educator. His work includes a number of books, an educational DVD set, as well as radio and podcast interviews.

## Key interest areas

Moshe has published extensively on themes ranging from therapy with children and adolescents, couples therapy, depression, eating disorders, Holocaust Survivors and their families, trans-generational trauma, school refusal, suicide and teaching family therapy.

## Publications

Moshe has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, chapters in compilations, and books. His work has been translated and published in other languages. The Children's Depression Scale (CDS), co-authored with Miriam Tisher, has been used in many countries to research depression in children, and has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Hindu and Arabic. His other books are similarly highly regarded, having been extensively reviewed and on best seller lists, with some titles have been translated and published in other languages, such as Hebrew and French.

### Storytelling and critical appraisal

Much of Moshe's published work demonstrates two core values. The first being the value of storytelling as a medium for learning. In his books Corrupting the Young and Resilience, co-authored with his wife Tesse Lang, Moshe uses a collection of short to medium stories to give readers a view into the clinician's room and insight into how family therapy works. Moshe offers "a journeyman style of learning... the reader being left to come to their own construction; where the author, therapist and teacher facilitates rather than instructs". With the story format, Moshe "calls upon the imagination as well as the intellect and leads to deeper insight".

The other core value demonstrated in Moshe's work is the importance of exposing one's practice for critical appraisal. He was one of the pioneers in Australia of video recording his work and writing in some depth about the subtleties of doing family therapy. Further, he invited other psychotherapy professionals to provide commentary on his clinical practice, such as in his book A Family in Therapy, co-authored with Peter McCallum, and its updated republication The Answer Within. Moshe continued this practice of invited commentary for a number of his major journal articles. With the release of his highly praised DVD-set Behind Closed Doors, Moshe further expanded the format of making his work transparent by demonstration, and thereby open to review.

