Twenty Years on – Water under the Bridge

My paper in the first issue of the Journal of Family Therapy outlined some ideas which have continued to form the basis of my practice of family therapy ever since. Using the psychoanalytic concept of ‘counter‐transference’ I suggested that opening themselves to the emotional interaction of the family will usually lead to a reproduction of the essential basic family conflict within the therapists' own psyches. In this way the therapist takes on the role assumed by many ‘family scapegoats’, expressing some emotion ‘for’ the family which other members dare not articulate or even entertain.