ABSTRACT
My favorite interventions all come under the broad category of rituals. Rituals differ from tasks whose intent is to address the behavioral level in the family, and address, rather, the behavioral, cognitive, and affective levels. Co-created by therapist and family, rituals rely less on concrete instructions and a specific direction for therapy and more on symbols and symbolic actions that invite a multiplicity of meanings and directions in the therapeutic system (Imber-Black, 1988; Imber-Black, Roberts, & Whiting, 1988). Rituals begin with ideas and actions that "fit" the family system as currently constituted, and carry the family and the therapist "to the new, the strange, the 'unfit,' which has the power to radically transform our previous notions of fitness" (Grainger, 1974, p. 11).
