ABSTRACT
Families who are so fearful of things in the future live their present life seemingly in an endless task of preventing future events from occurring. They continue as if there is no natural change process as development occurs. As the future seems to contain negatives, the possibility of doing something different is just not considered. Such is the overfocus on trying to hold things the same, that the range of present-day behaviour is severely hampered and the development of a range of behaviour that could extend into the future is just not seen as being possible. The therapist should therefore ask questions about future time, speci®cally linking it to present events as well as things that have happened in the past. In the way in which families conceive of time there are two future time dimensions:
1 Next week. Nearly all families will see next week as being potentially different from last week. Once a realistic description of what transpired last week has occurred, then it becomes useful to juxtapose that with questions about what may happen next week. Again, if in the process of re¯exive questioning the family acquires a sense of a problem being variable through time, then the straightforward question `what will you do next week? ' spontaneously introduces the notion of choice within a context that may change. One particular category of questioning that is important about `next week' is that which deals with the expectations that individuals may have about events following what transpires in the therapy session itself. For example, if two people have argued in the session or a family member has said something for the ®rst time, the question would be `since that happened here today, what do you think will happen about it when you go home or in the next day or two? '
