ABSTRACT
The idea that family therapists have viewed the `family' as a rei®ed concept has also fuelled another criticism of this form of therapy. Many who have previously been trained in one of the individual focused therapies have argued that family therapists lack an understanding of the role of the therapeutic self within the therapeutic context (Baldwin 2000). The argument is that the `family' is seen as an objective set of relationships that an objective `outsider' can in¯uence via therapy with no reference to the internal workings of that outsider.
