ABSTRACT
The ideas from the original Milan Associates underlie much of contemporary family therapy practice. They established a model for conducting a family therapy session and designed ways of encouraging a systemic perspective to emerge in family thinking. The main focus in this approach is on the rules of behaviour within relationships and the meaning of this behaviour within family life. The Milan Associates first used the one-way mirror as a technique in therapy because it provided the team with a different perspective. Many Postmodern or social constructionist practices developed out of the Milan approach. The founder of the Milan approach has always been credited as Mara Selvini Palazzoli. As a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist in Milan in the 1960s, she developed interventions for young people with anorexia. By 1971, the 'Milan Associates' had formed the Institute for Family Studies in Milan where the team began to use the ideas of P. Watzlawick to inform their family interventions.
