This study concerned the extent to which systemic and nonsystemic clinicians differ in their diagnostic processes. Experienced therapists, identified either with a family systems or a psychodynamic orientation, viewed a stimulus film of a family session and individual interviews with each parent and identified patient. Subjects listed “clinically relevant factors” and formulated hypotheses. Content analyses showed that the systemic clinicians, in contrast to the nonsystemic ones, identified as relevant a greater number of different subsystems, more triads, and fewer monads. Whereas they formulated more functional and fewer temporal hypotheses, almost no explicitly circular hypotheses were developed by either group of therapi