Creating therapeutic realities via responsibility messages

This paper proposes that operating from an ecosystemic epistemology does not preclude a family therapist from focusing on the individual responsibility of each family member. Rather, a systemic therapist can examine the family's pattern of distributing responsibility and map how this perpetuates the presenting problem. Examples from early, middle, and late therapy illustrate how a clinician can design interventions to encourage responsible behavior on the part of each individual, while being mindful of typical transactional patterns in the system