ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the most important instrument in all of therapy-the therapist which has presented many different models of family therapy and ways to conceptualize clients and families and the various issues they are dealing with. The family therapist must also be able to move beyond the content of what the client is saying and be able to observe, the transactional patterns between the various family members, as well as between the family and the therapist. Being a family therapist utilizes the skills of the individual therapist as well as other skills of being able to contextualize problems within their social contexts. In the field of family therapy there may be more particular common factors, which include a relational conceptualization, the expanded direct treatment system, and the expanded therapeutic alliance. Being an addictions therapist requires the therapist to understand how substances impact individual functioning, but the familial and relational interchanges that promote and maintain those symptoms.
