Actually, focusing on the family member who has the symptoms is taking the hard path. In order for Johnny to overcome his catatonia directly, he will have to change a tremendous amount and in many ways, especially if the change is to survive when he returns to the original family system. However, if each member of the system changes only a small amount, in a few ways, then the result is that the changes will permeate the system, and Johnny's symptoms will become unnecessary. Checking this principle is easy if you review your own experience. If you have left home and gone to college or gone in the service, or even moved away and then returned to visit your original family or old friends, you can remember how all of you had evolved and changed. So, at first, it was an awkward situation for you, and, in some cases, it may have remained that way. You returned alien to the former system, and this is just what we must avoid in family therapy if the result is to be an environment in which every member can be nurtured and can grow from the foundation of support for each which the family system will provide.

Imagine that you are standing in front of a stack of glasses, water glasses, which have been carefully placed in a pyramid so that each row of glasses supports the row above it. The top row has one glass, the next row has four glasses, the next row has nine glasses, and the one underneath that row has sixteen glasses. Each row of glasses provides a structure to support all of the glasses above it. If you wanted to take these same glasses and build a new structure which would give you greater choices about how you approached the task of getting a glass, you would not start by pulling glasses from the bottom row; you would not even take all the ones on the left. You would have to start at the top, working down a row at a time, or you would have only destruction. This is somewhat similar to how a therapist should proceed through a family therapy session. Viewing the family through the metaphor of the pyramid of glasses will help to remind the therapist that he should not succumb to the temptation to remove the glass with the smudge on it without any reference to the possible effect of his action on the other glasses.

To organize this process, you can make a rule that every interaction which opens a door or breaks a calibration must be understood by all the family members who observed it. It goes something like this:

The therapist has an interchange with the husband/ father and breaks a calibrated loop which the father has about his son's communication. The therapist then turns to the son to make sure that the boy has also broken his part of the calibrated loop and understands that the father has changed (re-calibrated). The next step is for the therapist to address himself to the mother, who has been observing, and to assist her in understanding and accepting the change in the relationship between her husband and her son. This cycle goes on, each step leading to the next, and all members tuning in as changes occur. This process also accompanies moves to achieve perspective with respect to family process, rotating from person to person, breaking calibrated loops and then re-calibrating the rest of the system to this new part. The whole process of transformation then becomes, in a sense, a new chain in which each link now connects with the next one. This guides the therapist in establishing the best speed and direction for that particular family's system. It provides a safeguard against random jumps which might unbalance the system. Thus, breaking calibration, achieving perspective with respect to family process, and constant forging of new links in the family system are the structure and strategies which weave together the individual interventions to transformation of a family system. These constitute the second phase of a family therapy session, and they also build the road which leads to the third and final stage of a family endeavor. In a sense, we, as therapists, work to reclaim the banished parts, to awaken the sleeping parts, and to connect these newly available assets for greater energy and strength. Thus, we are not really adding anything to the family system; we are only making available to the family members for new uses the resources which were already there.

In the third and final phase of the family therapy session, the therapist works to consolidate the changes which the family members created as part of the model experience in Phase II. We have identified three parts to this phase:

1) Review of process of the family therapy session;

2) Getting feedback regarding the process from each member;

3) Developing and assigning homework.

This final phase is an important step in each session, whether or not the specific experience which the family members and the therapist identified in Phase I actually happened in full detail in Phase II. The fact that the family members and the therapist have been engaged in the process of working cooperatively to create something for themselves, is the foundation of every session. Again, the process is the foundation for change, not the specific content. Seen from this perspective, each interview session has a life of its own; it has a wholeness of its own. Continuity is established by developing new building blocks at each meeting of the therapist with the family.

The purpose of the therapist's actions in this, the final phase of the session, is to assist the family members in solidifying the gains which they secured for themselves in the session, in effect building a new family history, which now becomes a base for new confidence in taking risks to change and grow. Verily, family therapy occurs in the real world, with real time constraints. But, when a family therapy session is over, the family members have the opportunity to try their new wings on their own. The therapist works to create the conditions which will make it possible for the family to continue the process of change between sessions — the returning family will be different from the departing one.

Review of the Process of the Session

A family has just involved themselves in a therapeutic session whose announced purpose is to assist the family in change. As we emphasized in our presentation of Phases I and II, the key to effective intervention by the family therapist is identifying and breaking calibrated loops in the communication patterns existing among the family members — that is, supplying explicit, conscious feedback in the patterns of family communication where it no longer exists. This review has, essentially, the same elements of process, the process by which the therapist, again acting as a model of congruent communication, provides specific feedback about the session to the family members. This review of the therapeutic session by the therapist is consistent with the principle of assisting the family members in coming to understand the process by which they arrived at the place where they are now. The therapist begins his review by reminding the family members of the state which they were in when they first came to this therapy session, and then, step by step, he recounts the processes which have occurred: What happened during Phase I, the ways in which they all worked together to understand what they wanted, and then prepared to create a new experience in growth for themselves; what happened in Phase II, actions specific to the therapist and to each of the family members.

This review gives the therapist the opportunity to teach the family members his understanding of his experience in working together with them for change. He identifies the steps which he considers important in the process of family change, e.g., the identification of calibrated communication loops. He states how, in his perception of the process, the family members worked cooperatively to create new choices for themselves. He carefully enumerates the steps taken by the family in the process of gaining these new options. By this description of the process of the therapeutic session, the therapist makes explicit the tools and skills which the family needs to continue the process of growth and change which they have begun. In our experience, the most desirable outcome of a family therapy session is not simply achieving an experience which the family can use for future growth, but also is understanding that experience, and learning the specific tools which the therapist and the family members employed in the process of its creation. More desirable than just creating an experience of what they want is the explicit learning of the skills necessary to give them new ways of communicating as a family. When this last kind of learning occurs, they move to a truly open system, one which allows them to cope creatively and effectively with any disturbances which might arise, regardless of