Is there such a thing as one ‘family therapy'?

To an outsider, the number of `kinds' of family therapy can be bewildering. The literature is full of terms such as `structural family therapy', `Milan family therapy', `systemic family therapy' and `narrative family therapy', to name only a few. Here we wish to brie¯y outline the major developments in the history of family therapy, highlighting the major `schools'. We also want to summarise what unites these schools and emphasise what is common to them all.