The Use of Teaching Stories in Conjoint Family Therapy

Two general factors have been singled out as being held in common by all types of psychotherapy: an educational, rational factor (often called "content") and a factor operative in the relationship between the therapist and his patient (often called "process"). In the field of family therapy, the non-educational aspects of intervention are sometimes presented in the form of "therapeutic, paradoxical communications" (Haley, Bateson, Jackson, Weakland) or the 'therapy of the absurd" (Whitaker, Malone). In the present paper, I wish to present a form of therapeutic communication, the teaching story, that embodies a unique mixture of both the educational and the paradox, or absurd.