ABSTRACT
There may be many moments in therapy when therapists feel that the narratives that are being articulated by a family, couple, or individual are very different to how they see what is going on. The concept of family myth has tended to imply that the motivation for the distortion is internal to the family. By constructing a "myth" of normality, the family members may have tried to avoid confronting these painful narratives. Possible each of them was personally aware of the "reality" of the situation but continued the pretence in order to protect the others. It has been suggested that families internalize the processes of mystification and distortion inherent in the society in which they are located. An alternative view is that families not only absorb dominant societal narratives, but that forms of distortions and fabrications are inherent in some of these narratives.
