ABSTRACT
A group of our students once joked that they had a 50 percent chance of knowing the first thing we would say in response to any supervision question they asked us. Whenever they brought a stuck case to supervision, they said, we invariably asked one of two questions: “How good is your relationship with the family?” or “What is your contract?” We had to admit that their observation was accurate. Having a sound therapeutic relationship and a clear therapy contract are the bedrock of successful treatment, in our experience. When therapy gets stuck, attending to these two elements is the first place to start fixing things. In Chapters 3 and 4, we examined the importance of developing a strong therapeutic relationship, or joining with a family. In this chapter, we discuss how to develop a workable therapeutic contract.
