This book will make the brilliant work of Mara Selvini Palazzoli and her gifted team more widely known in this country. The internal consistency of their approach–combining a systemic theory of family with a systemic theory of change–results in a therapy that is elegant, powerful, and economic. Using their knowledge of families as natural, rule-governed systems, the team proposes a ... Read morehypothesis to explain the function of a problem in the family. They then base an intervention–paradoxical or otherwise–upon this hypothesis. The intervention serves to validate (or disprove) the hypothesis and to suggest further moves. The moves themselves are astoundingly compact. Palazzoli and her team are masters of the art of co-opting the resistance. They use the forces deployed by the family against change to produce change. It is as if one were to use the rules of Alice's Looking-Glass Kingdom to break the looking-glass. After the solemnity which surrounds the practice of the therapeutic art in this country, it is refreshing to find a practice which relies upon drama, wit, surprise, and (of course!) paradox. This is a book which should not only be acted upon but read.
Lynn Hoffman, A.C.S.W., Ackerman Institute of Family Therapy This volume is a treasure chest of new and interesting ideas. The most luminous jewel in the collection is a paradigm, a new epistemology that takes seriously the revolutionary perspectives on human behavior introduced by Gregory Bateson, Watzlawick, Jackson, Haley, and others...Mara Selvini Palazzoli and her Milanese colleagues have labored with courage and humility and have provided us with a book of stellar magnitude.
Donald A. Bloch, M.D. Show Less