Behavior: The Family As Patient

In almost all traditional forms of psychotherapy, the patient meets alone with his therapist and is expected to tell no one—even his closest kin—about what goes on in his sessions. A major exception to that rule is family therapy, a fast-growing new specialty in which the patient is a whole family. Several relatives spanning two or three generations see their psychotherapist together for treatment, which does not always probe as deeply as individual therapy but costs less in both time and money.

Of the 1,000 or so psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers in the U.S. who now practice family therapy, one of...