ABSTRACT
Family therapy has used setting tasks for families as interventions in many forms. Helping trainees to experiment with setting tasks is always well received. "Pretend" refers to the therapist's request that a family member or family members pretend to have the symptom described. Trainees would be familiar with the notion of teams and their interaction with families. The task of debating is to share the family's dilemmas of change by articulating them out loud on their behalf. The different positions taken by the therapist push the family into selecting a position from which to evolve differently. Ordeal therapy refers to the attempt to set tasks which create more than, or an equal amount of stress produced by the symptom itself, thus addressing the losses and gains involved in maintaining the symptom.
