ABSTRACT
Throughout history the genders have been perceived in a polarized way, although both have also been regarded as possessing contradictory attributes. Women have been seen as the source of all goodness, as the origin of knowledge, wisdom, or life itself; they have also been seen as dangerous, morally and sexually polluted, superstitious, and capricious. From the nineteenth century onwards, the State's preoccupation with the family was primarily focused on the child and the mother. The paradoxical aspect of the progressive intervention of the various professionals on the family throughout the twentieth century, however, lies in the fact that the mother has become both an ally of those professionals and the person whom they must reform. Although family therapy has challenged the manicheistic way in which the relationship between mental illness and the family has been perceived, it has not challenged the way professionals have approached the genders in the clinic.
