We believe that there is no universal model of a human being; we believe that each person has his own model of his own ideal. We are glad of it, and this uniqueness is what we strive for in our work. This is consistent with the biological fact that each human being is truly unique.

We want to emphasize that the model for family therapy which we present here is designed to create experience. It is our belief that much time and effort is wasted creating models which people then use to replace experience. The families — the people who come to therapists for help — are then squeezed into the categories contained in the model, rather than being sensed and responded to creatively. We offer our model as a way to assist you to fully participate in the moving experience of changing with families, participating in the process of growth, of creating experience, of the family's pain and the family's joy. Our model, essentially, is a way of helping people-helpers to tune themselves in to the ongoing processes for growth of the families with whom they are working — a way of seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, experiencing and responding clearly and creatively to the process of communication and change in family therapy.

Our conclusion from our experience and from our observation of the people we have known is that they have learned five personal "unfreedoms" which fetter them and bind them and which are mistakenly called civilized. We will list them in their corrected form, which will include that which was corrected:

(1) The freedom to see and to hear what is NOW instead of what should be, could be, was, or will be.

(2) The freedom to feel what is felt NOW instead of what should be, could be, was, or will be.