By means of a series of personal anecdotes, protocols, fables, and plays, the eminent family therapist probes and assesses the role of the individual within the family and the social, political, and legal contexts of the family.

[This book], the fruit of Dr. Minuchin's year off from clinic and classroom, presents several case studies, each making the same point about the primacy of the family… Family Kaleidoscope offers a radical departure in format. Dr. Minuchin breaks free of the typical pallidness of case reports and employs some experimental writing. He borrows from Ibsen and Pirandello, engaging an imaginary reader in dialogues and blurring fact and fantasy to present cases in the form of playlets… If Dr. Minuchin’s example were to inspire a new way of presenting clinical case histories, it would enhance the pleasures of psychiatry’s clinical literature.