Family therapy inauguratedaradical change in the way many emotional and psychiatric problems are understood. ‘Systems thinking’ dictated that the individual needed to be seen withinalarger systemic context if his/her behaviour was to be understood and effective intervention carried out. The logical extension of this way of thinking is to argue that the family itself must be viewed within a wider context. This perspective has appearedanumber of times in the family therapy literature, particularly in the ‘ecological’ tradition. Utilising an ecological perspective can, however, lead to a new and less clearly defined role for the therapist, and there are thus good pragmatic reasons working against its a