ABSTRACT
W h e n a family comes in we try to get them talking to each other rather than to us, and we set up encouragement and interruptions in the process to help test the strength of the set patterns of interaction that emerge. For instance, a coup le came in recently and the wife had been cry ing just before the session. W e are going to show a tape of this coup le later when we look into induct ion and reorientation, but we just want to show with this example how a pattern emerges and then is tested. The wife had the day off and had planned to go horseback r iding wh i l e the baby was in the nursery. But it rained and she didn' t go r id ing. Consequent ly , she saved eight dol lars. So she planned to take her husband out for dinner when he got home and , I guess, she planned to do it on eight dol lars! She took over an hour getting " f i xed u p , " as she put it, and she d id not tell h im anything about her p lan.
