Family Games: General Models of Psychotic Processes in the Family

What is the origin of psychosis? What is the complex relationship between so-called 'mental illness' and the problems which afflict families? The attempt to provide an answer to these questions began with the courageous decision to transform a professional practice into a centre for research.

To this end, Mara Selvini Palazzoli conducted family therapy sessions in a highly original context, characterized by the unusual length of time devoted to the sittings (half a day); by the presence of a team of therapists drawn from the different working backgrounds and orientations; by direct observation, made possible by the use of a one-way mirror; and by a systematic investigation of the effects of the therapies based on written transcriptions of all the sessions, in addition to audio and visual recordings.

'Game' is not meant to imply either competition or entertainment. Rather, as the authors write, 'Game, to us, is a metaphor and as such will forever remain intuitive and elusive. We have quite another purpose in mind, namely to come ever closer to defining exactly the processes that lead to a subject's psychotic behavior. To this end we are attempting to devise models of the psychotic processes that develop in a family.'