ABSTRACT
A group of family therapy trainees is grappling with the question of what register of voice and language is serviceable in talking with client families. In this chapter, the author provides two vignettes to illustrate a couple of important things about metaphor. The first shows how engaging with a story so that it speaks about another situation, at an emotional as well as an intellectual level, can help to shift a predicament which has proved resistant to other sorts of remedies. Rosenblatt specifically excludes the study of family therapy as a system, readers might want to reflect for themselves on the relative implications of metaphorical descriptions such as "therapy as strategy", "therapy as co-evolution", "therapy as narrative", or even "therapy as reading". Therapeutic practice metaphors operate not only for direct participants but also in the minds of those who construct the context, our managers and the commissioners of our services.
