Paradoxical Psychotherapy: Theroy and Practice with Individuals, Couples, and Families. Gerald R. Weeks and Luciano L'Abate. New York:  Brunner/Mazel, 1982.  288 pp.

“Paradoxical interventions” are much in the air now. They have been discovered, for example, by The New York Times, which recently devoted an article to the methods of the Milan group headed by Mara Selvini Palazzoli. They have, however, long been used by therapists under varying conditions, and have an even longer history in other areas. Japanese labor disputes have long been characterized by the use of paradoxical tactics (strength through weakness). For example, striking Japanese railroad employees would lie down on the tracks in front of an oncoming train to force the train to stop; this tactic of weakness was responded to by a management counter maneuver, which consisted of the engineer slowing the train to a crawl, jumping off and running alongside, yelling to the striker that he was now incapable of stopping the train; which was further responded to by the strikers' having themselves tied down so that they could not move, thereby forcing the engineers (who could see the strikers' condition) to jump back onto the train and stop it! Each of these maneuvers was intended to force the other side to make a move by exploiting their perception of one's own helplessness.

This is the nub of paradoxical interventions. You take an action (counting speech as action, of course) which has a clear apparent goal in order actually to achieve its opposite.

For psychotherapists, the questions are: with what kind of patients, and under what conditions, should or can paradoxical interventions be used? What kind of paradoxical interventions are there? And when should they be avoided?

Gerald Weeks and Luciano L'Abate offer, in their new book, at least the beginnings of answers to these questions. The first section of the book, dealing with the theory underlying