Shadows and Stories: Lessons from the Wayang Kulit for Therapy with an Anglo-Indonesian Family*

Therapy with families from ethnic and cultural backgrounds different from the therapist's own represents a particular challenge. How can the therapist be sufficiently mindful of ethnocultural factors and harness these to promote change, while at the same time avoiding the traps of stereotyping and labelling families? In this paper I hope to demonstrate, in addition to the worth of the case study approach, that information about cultural differences can be employed in a creative way by using it metaphorically rather than literally. A cultural artefact, the wayang kulit, the shadow theatre of Indonesia, is introduced as a metaphor for the process of therapy itself with a very stuck Anglo-Indonesian family.