Heterosexual co-therapy relationship and its significance in family therapy

Abstract

This chapter represents an attempt to make a contribution toward an appreciation of the problems of technique in family therapy. It represents an examination of the co-therapy relationship in the early and late phase of family treatment with a schizophrenogenic family; it describes the working-out of our particular relationship in working with a particular family, the Ichabod family. (The Ichabod family and the first 40 weeks of their therapy have been described in detail in Chapter 7.) The therapists met with this family once a week for an hour and a half for a period of three and a half years, and no meetings were held unless both therapists and all four family members were present. At the time of termination, all participants and independent psychological testing gave evidence of marked improvement in total family and individual family member functioning. We have chosen this method because we feel that something would be lost if we presented our concepts without that setting. We hope the reader will be able to grasp the essence of the examination in this form and to use the concepts more universally.