ABSTRACT
There is, as yet, no authoritative history of family therapy, although Skynner (1969), Bell (1975) and Zuk (1971) have summarised aspects of the subject from their own different points of view. History requires a distance from its subject that is great enough for foreground to be discerned from background and chance features distinguished from central phenomena and it can be argued that the therapeutic practice of family interventions is of too short a duration to gain such a historical perspective. This makes it difficult to put family therapy and psychoanalysis into relationship with each other without entering into polemic.
