One way in which the feedback cycle differs from the calibrated cycle is that, whenever the receiver is confused or aware that a previous occurrence is intruding and distracting him from freshly experiencing the present, he immediately attends to that sensory experience to discover what is happening. By being able to immediately establish sensory contact with his present situation and, especially, with the communicator, he can use his experience of confusion or distraction to learn more about himself and the person with whom he is communicating. This allows him to detect any patterns which are distorting his experience by accepting a part of a message for the entire communication (Complex Equivalence) and patterns of "knowing" the inner experience of the communicator without checking it for accuracy with the communicator (Mind Reading). Thus, the generalizations which the receiver in a feedback cycle makes and uses are flexible guides for understanding which are constantly being up-dated and checked against sensory experience.

5. Response Behavior (receiver): If the communicator began this cycle with an incongruent communication, then either the receiver has detected the conflicting messages in awareness and has begun to explore this with the communicator, using feedback, or he has detected a sense of confusion and has begun to explore this. If neither of these have occurred, then, typically, the receiver's response behavior will reflect the incongruency — that is, the receiver himself will present the original communicator with an incongruent set of messages. If both the original communicator and the original receiver have the freedom to comment on and explore any confusion or incongruity without the interchange's becoming an issue of survival, then, before long, one or the other of the people involved, as they shift from communicator to receiver, will detect miscommunication patterns and begin to explore this opportunity to learn.

One way to clarify the usefulness of these two specific kinds of communication cycles (calibrated and feedback) is to understand that the therapist's task is to assist the family members in changing their patterns of communication from calibrated loops to feedback cycles. (See page 118.) Another way to use this model is for the therapist to check his own communication patterns with the family members to prevent himself from being incorporated into their destructive patterns of communication. These specific choices of effective intervention by the therapist are the focus of the remainder of Part II. We offer the five-step communication model for your use in understanding the way in which all of the specific intervention techniques fit together.

We move on now to present in more detail the intervention choices available to therapists, based on this communication model.

The most general level of patterning in our model for family therapy has three phases:

I. Gathering Information

II. Transforming the System

III. Consolidating Changes

I. GATHERING INFORMATION

In the first phase of family therapy, the therapist works with family members to gather information which will help him to create an initial experience with them (Phase II) which can then serve as a model for them in their future growth and change. The question

which the therapist must face is: Which introductory experience will best serve as this model for the family? One of the major purposes of the therapist's actions during this phase is to determine exactly which experience he will, in fact, initially use as a model. We call this set of actions by the therapist determining the desired state. Essentially, the desired state is a description of one condition of living for the family which would satisfy the desires of the individual family members. In other words, one of the ways by which the therapist organizes his activities during this phase is to seek out the information which identifies for him the way the family members themselves want the family experience of living to be.

In the process of determining this desired state for the family, the therapist is listening and watching, experiencing the family fully as they begin to make known their hopes and fears about themselves as individuals and about the family as a whole. This identifies the second category of information that the therapist is seeking: information regarding the present state of the family. In order to act effectively in Phase II, the therapist needs to know not only what the family wants — which we will call the desired state — but also what resources the family has presently developed.

We emphasize that what we are calling the present state and the desired state are nominalizations. These nominalizations are useful only to the extent that the therapist and the family members understand that the present state is actually not a state but a process — the ongoing interaction and communication. Furthermore, the desired state — the experience which the family members and the therapist will create in Phase II — is actually the first step in the process of opening up the family system to the possibilities of growth and change.

What we have learned in our experience is that the desired state identified by members of the family with the therapist's help, no matter how different are the families themselves, is always a state in which all family members come to behave more congruently than they do in their present situation. Again, for us, congruency is a process — the ongoing process of learning and integration.

Which of the patterns of coping which the family arid its members present to the therapist can best serve as resources to create an environment for growth and change — whether or not the family members regard these process patterns as resources in the beginning? To create an effective model experience, the therapist needs to understand both the direction of change and the currently available resources of the people with whom he is working.

The third characteristic of creative, effective family therapy occurs during this phase when the therapist is working with the family members to prepare them to actively participate in creating the model experience. The act of participating in originating this experience will require that the family members act in ways which are different from the ones they have been using in the past. In other words, they will be taking risks. There are several specific ways in which the therapist can systematically assist the family members in making these revisions. First, the therapist works to build up the family members' trust in him as an agent of change. The therapist acts as a model of congruency by communicating congruently himself — all of the messages which he presents must match. The way in which he moves must match the sound of his voice, which matches the words which he uses, which match .... In addition, the therapist must be alert to identify each family member's most used representational system. When he has determined this, he can increase the confidence of each family member in him by shifting his own process words (predicates) to the representational system of the person to whom he is speaking. Even more effective than simply shifting his process words (predicates) to those of the family member with whom he is communicating, is for the highly skilled family therapist to vary the emphasis which he places on the types of communication systems which he selects to use with a particular family member. For example, with a family member whose most used representational system is visual, the deft therapist will communicate by using his body, hand and arm movements — any set of signals which the family member can see. With a family member whose primary system is kinesthetic, the therapist will make frequent physical contact, touching to communicate or emphasize certain points he wants to be sure the family member understands. The therapist uses his skills in communication both to set an example and to make explicit the process of effective communication. So, for example, when a family member presents the therapist with a verbal communication with a deletion which renders it unintelligible, the therapist requests the missing information rather than hallucinating what it might be. Or, if a family member is Mind Reading or communicating incongruently, the therapist may gracefully comment on it — demonstrating both the importance of the freedom to comment and the equal importance of clear communication to other family members. As he communicates, the therapist leaves space for the family members to respond, using polite commands (conversational postulates) and embedded questions. He shows that he values the family members' abilities to understand and participate in the ongoing process by inviting them to comment on exchanges between himself and another family member. By these techniques, he makes individual contact with each family member to develop their confidence in the therapist's skill as a communicator and as an agent of change.