ABSTRACT
This chapter builds upon the one-to-one skills in active listening and applies them to when the therapist is working with multiple individuals at the same time. Mutualizing is when the therapist brings together two or more perspectives so that one shared understanding occurs. The mutualization process is extremely important to prevent the therapy session being utilized as a forum to attack someone else. The first skill of the family therapist is the ability to join with the family. Reframing happens from the first moments of meeting the family where the therapist attempts to understand the family's frame of reality and then introduces the therapeutic frame. The family therapist tends to assume that what happens in the session— the family's process—is how they tend to be outside of the session. When family therapists deconstruct the symptom, they are engaging in a form of mutualization.
