Some Notes on the Use of Family Sculpture in Therapy

Therapists learning to use family sculpture as a tool often find difficulty in exploiting the technique to its fullest. This article, designed to encourage therapists to take the risks involved in using a technique new to them, describes how the author and his cotherapists used sculpture in three cases in different ways. In each case, the author explains how the therapists made the choices involved in directing the therapeutic process. He suggests that even when a sculpture itself seems to have failed to produce useful information, it can elicit from clients signals that will indicate opportunities for effective use of other techniques and that a sculpture, once used, can be restaged to reinforce client behavior change.