ABSTRACT
Family therapy looks at the system as it appears to the therapist and to the family members as they interact in a session. Systemic family therapy seeks to enable the family to define itself in such a way as is congruent for the individual members. For a family system to survive and develop, it needs to have access to, and to utilize information from, the wider social system of which it is a part and which itself is subject to flux. The ideal family model for systemic therapists includes a shared belief about allowing for or encouraging individuality within a framework of members belonging together but respecting differences. Psychodrama is usually a stranger-group activity, even though it is very often about families, whereas family therapy involves people who already belong to a well-organized and long-established human group. The psychodramatist is again a psychiatrist, but one who attempts to adapt his observation point to the area of the problem at hand.
