ABSTRACT
Strategic Family Therapy follows a problem-centred approach. It attends to communication patterns in families. Strategic Family Therapy designs strategies to change these patterns and the implicit meanings within these patterns. Strategic family therapists argue that attempted solutions often make problems worse. Reframing and the use of paradox are two of the gifts that Strategic Family Therapy has given to family therapy in general. There are various approaches within the broad 'strategic family therapy' wrapper. This chapter describes the approaches most often associated with a 'strategic' approach and outline some of the context in which they emerged. It provides the legacy of these models remains in a number of useful techniques, which are demonstrated on the film clip. The chapter suggests that a number of features of Strategic Family Therapy have continued, albeit with changes, within other family therapy traditions. It also describes the Mental Research Institute (MRI); and then Jay Haley's approaches separately.
