ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author reviews a way of thinking about opposites and dilemmas. He applies psychoanalytic thinking to parte of the history of family therapy and positions in the field. The attempt to create conceptual aids in one’s own practice can sometimes lead to a short-lived experience of having come across something new—short-lived, because a search in the literature quickly places the findings in an established therapy tradition. One perspective in the field of family therapy is that one of the driving forces in its development was antagonism towards psychoanalysis. The relationship between client and therapist places both in dilemmas. The experience of being in these dilemmas is characterized as existential fields of tension. The dichotomies represent existential fields of tension that can be lived in many different ways and in which some ways are more suitable, function better, or are easier to cope with for the person faced with the dilemma.
