Prescribing the Families Own Dysfunctional Rules as a Therapeutic Strategy*

The use of paradox-strategy in therapy is motivated by the fact that many families request help but at the same time seem to reject all offers of help. The therapist may be drawn into a game in which every effort on his part to act as an agent of change is nullified by the family group. In systemic terms these contradictory attitudes derive from the dynamic equilibrium existing between the tendency toward change, which is implicit in the request for help at one level, and the tendency toward homeostasis which at another level imposes the repetition of the family's habitual rules of interaction. The coexistence of these forces can entangle the therapist in the family's paradoxical logic of “help me to change, but without changing anything.” By accepting the contradiction facing him and by “uniting” himself with this within the family, the therapist puts himself into a position opposite to that which the family expects. His response to the family's paradoxical request is a paradox, or counterparadox, because it creates the contradictory communication typical of rigid family systems. By prescribing its own dysfunctional rules to the family, the therapist can stimulate the tendencies toward change present in the family system.