ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns specifically with peer consultation and focuses primarily on aspects of team formation and team functioning. The advantages and disadvantages of working in teams considered based on the experiences of the authors at the Family Institute, Cardiff. An interesting development over the last few years in the field of family therapy has been the proliferation of therapeutic teams in which three or four therapists regularly work together, often with the more difficult and disturbed individuals and families. One or two therapists work directly in the therapy room; the other members of the team observe and in a variety of ways intervene, usually from behind a one-way mirror. Advice or observer messages can be conveyed to the therapists either by telephone or by calling them out of the interview for a consultation session. The evolution of the uses of one-way mirrors has been traced by Cade and Cornwell (1983).
