Mental Health professionals working in the field of family therapy usually hold an implicit if not explicit view of the characteristics of the normal family, which underlies their assessment of the families which enter therapy. Studies such as The Silent Majority (Westley & Epstein, 1969) and the Timbcrlawn family study by Beavers and colleagues have established a model of the ways in which optimal or effective families function (Lewis el al,
1976). In the 1/andbook of Famili• Therapy (Gurman & Kniskern, 1981 ), leading family th era pis ts describe not only their own theoretical paradigms of problematic families, but also their views of normal family functioning.......