Therapists' ideas about the processes of change that occur before, during and after psychotherapy are important to their practice. Discussion and choice are difficult because of the abstract and complex nature of these ideas. Graphic visual aids can be used within a rigorous framework to facilitate their description. Using the construct of 'family morale', an example is offered in diagrammatic form to show a model that addresses these macro-processes and relates them to the theory for brief family therapy practice. This aims to show the flexibility, clarity and impact of the illustrative medium. An advantage is the possibility of bringing the seemingly qualitative ideas into the arena offhe potentially quantifiable.Therapy ought to be difficult to explain. If it is not, there is a distinct danger that the activity being described is no more than common-sense advice. Therapy is more complex than a simple 'take it or leave it' statement of opinion. It is also by nature an intangible topic, requiring the description of variations of changing processes of altering the pattern of fluid personal relationships: a noticeably high order of abstraction. These factors, the complexity and abstractness, should not deter us but should encourage us to cast around for help in the task.It is possible that since therapy is based primarily on conversation, the use of language to describe it may hinder rather than help on occasion. Theoretical and research literature is also linguistic. The danger is that the intended distinctions may get muddled up with semantic similarities, and unexpected inferences may cloud the original clarity of meaning. These dangers are well worth trying to avoid. The use of visual aids is a method of supplementing linguistic metaphor: it can be much more enlightening and can offer intuitive understandings of complex issues (Waddington, 1977). Indeed, de Bono (1967) suggests that an identifiable technique to escape old patterns and generate new ones is to think visually.
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