Is the therapeutic alliance important for family therapy?

Although family therapy models tend not to formally incorporate the therapeutic alliance construct in their approach, most models rely on changing relational patterns within the family and consider the therapeutic relationship as a central tool for doing so. The acknowledged complexity of the therapist-family relationship as well as within-family relationships in conjoint family treatment suggests that the therapeutic alliance is a key construct for understanding the process and outcome of family therapy. In fact, although the therapeutic alliance is much less well studied in family therapy than in individual therapy, some recent investigations have found positive associations between therapeutic alliance and treatment retention or treatment success.