ABSTRACT
In an ideal world home is where we start from, and that home is integrated into a stable and supportive community. For nearly a century in South Africa, most African children have been prevented, by poverty and by the legal and social turmoil of apartheid, from growing up in stable homes - emotionally, socially and physically tolerable. In South Africa, black-white relationships are still tainted by racism. The African friends and relations take this unusual family in their stride, accepting that we are living in two overlapping and interacting cultures. In a quasi-family the tensions of letting go of, and holding on to the family, are increased by its impermanence. Living as a family has also alerted to Ferenczi's dilemma: psychotherapy is either too hot or too cold. A family, like humanist psychotherapy, should be a Winnicottian 'facilitating environment' that sets individuals free to be themselves without the destruction of themselves or others.
