ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the way the style of not-speaking in the patient was generalised and ultimately understood as a family style of communication. It discusses the clinical examples from family therapy with a family in which the fifteen-year-old son, Barry, had stopped talking, walking, drinking, or caring for himself. The aim of family therapy is to understand communication within the family, not just verbal communication, but communication through gestures, facial expressions, play, actions and interactions. The family therapy session can serve as a model of thinking together, helping the parents to be available to their children on an emotional level. Barry's use of his body to express emotional distress and his somatising when stressed was similar to something father did when his work unhappiness was expressed through migraines, which gradually declined during the family therapy. Barry's emotional conflicts diminished his capacity to think in the same way that unacknowledged family conflicts diminished the thinking and coping mechanisms of individual members.
