The Therapeutic Relationship in Systemic Therapy

'Anyone following the recent developments of systemic thinking will be aware that activity has not been restricted to Europe and America. Systemic therapists and writers from both Australia and New Zealand are now making a major impact on the field, particularly in the way they explore therapy as an exchange between "real" people; with gender and with ethical values; and embedded within specific cultural experiences. These people are challenging the traditional way we see clients and the context of therapy. Over the years, systemic therapists have theorized extensively about the client family as a system and have more recently addressed the use of self in therapy, but there has been very little attention paid to the therapeutic relationship between the two.'Flaskas and Perlesz recognized this gap in the field, and they have assembled here a collection of papers that all focus on this central theme.'- David Campbell and Ros Draper, Series Editors'I welcome the Editors' initiative in bringing the issue of the therapeutic relationship in family systems therapy into focus. The therapeutic relationship was given no attention at the inception of family systems therapy and has remained its Cinderella since. This neglect has to be seen in the wider historical context in which systems-based therapy had its beginnings, and in the more immediate context of its own short history.'- From the Foreword by Eleanor S. Wertheim