The practice of family therapy grew out of diverse influences within mental health, marital counseling and social sciences. The movement criticized “traditional mental health as placing too much emphasis on the individual as the site of the problem, too much emphasis on history to explain causality, too much emphasis on pathology to construct treatment strategies, and too much emphasis on objectivity.” The history and classic family therapy models will be introduced in the first semester of this course. In addition to the general system theory, the postmodern movement continues to gain momentum within family therapy in early 90s. Solution-oriented brief family therapy and narrative therapy are the two major family therapy approaches deprived from the postmodern shift. In the second part of this course, the assumptions, concepts and hallmark techniques of these social constructionist family therapies will be intensively examined and drilled. The application and conceptual underpinnings of different family therapy approaches relevant to Hong Kong will also be examined.