Family Therapy—An attempt to integrate models and modes into a structure of developing phases of therapy

There is a need experienced by most practitioners of family therapy to impose order and structure upon the considerable range of concepts currently used in the family process approach. This paper suggests a possible structure utilizing five phases which characteristically unfold during the treatment process. The structure provides a rationale so that seemingly divergent techniques of therapy may be seen to be appropriate to particular phases of therapy, rather than mutually contradictory or exclusive. The article further attempts to demonstrate that certain conceptual models and the techniques that arise from them, are called into play depending upon the nature of the family in treatment.