ABSTRACT
The goals of a family interview are one of the factors that help to define how the therapist will conduct the session. The interviewers’ inputs were confined largely to accommodation and diagnostic probes. The family therapist expands the focus of exploration from the identified patient to different aspects of the family organization; the family swings the problem back to focus on the identified patient. The idiosyncrasies of an individual family and the style of a particular family therapist are the factors that lie between the goals of a first interview and the realities of a first interview. The therapist’s initial interventions are designed to affiliate with the scapegoated child and to move the parental child out of the conflict between mother and identified patient. The therapist listens to the content of the family’s presentation of the problem, but he also looks at the way in which the family behaves.
