ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the family album in a way that will continue the development of the therapist’s skills in using and learning to ‘read’ photographs. It provides the ground for an understanding, through photographs, of such interactional patterns in therapy. The family album functions as a precious record, a unique chronicle of the family’s life cycle and its history. The family album assists the therapist in her assessment of patients; it can serve as a way to explain and illustrate personal, marital and family history to the therapist during the initial stages of therapy. Family photographs may be brought into therapy in many ways: in shoeboxes, plastic bags, biscuit tins, neat albums, or even in large suitcases. Powerful responses from the significant figures in the patient’s life are communicated in a variety of ways; the photograph records them and shows, sometimes quite graphically, how the child was treated within the family.
