ABSTRACT
The South West Women's Project has been concerned to bridge the gap between feminist theory and the practice of family therapy. Family members are not free to organize their relationships in a way that they alone negotiate and decide upon. A woman's experience of therapy can be that she is made to feel punished: there are numerous examples in the family-therapy literature of purportedly exemplary sessions which are in fact little more than therapists giving women a hard time, while protecting men in efforts to seduce them into working. A family therapist can encourage a family to examine how its members came to be the way they are; to look at how they are influenced by both historical and current trends. Perhaps then family members will be in a stronger position to decide how to organize themselves and the extent to which they wish to challenge the patriarchal order that they are maintaining and protecting in their intimate relationships.
