Strategies of Family Therapy: The Relationship to Styles of Family Functioning

The three major strategic therapies take different and often incompatible positions on major theoretical and practice issues. This paper suggests that these differences reflect the development of each model in different social contexts and with different family types. The original context and the examples used in the major publications of each model are examined to determine differences in presenting problems, developmental stage, and family characteristics of clientele. Differences between the models are analyzed in light of these results and hypotheses are suggested concerning the effectiveness of each approach with different problems and family types.