The speaker will illustrate his main ideas in working with diversity, by introducing a cultural dimension in family therapy. Starting from a systemic-relational point of view he will describe:

1.How to identify prejudice and rigidity in health services delivery for immigrants and minority groups.

2.How to work on mutual prejudice and how to define a space – the third planet – where building up a positive therapeutic relationship.

3.How to elicit social and cultural resources for families in distress by entering their own context of belonging (through genograms, home visits, community meetings, etc.). 4.How to shift from a medical-psychiatric model to study the family in a developmental perspective (symptoms are guidelines, not just problems to fix up).

Family life cycle, family myths, intergenerational differentiation or immaturity, emotional cut off become author's basic parameters to understand the psychodynamics of the family relationship. Through 30 years of clinical experience in working with families of different cultural and ethnic background in many different countries, the speaker became aware of the limitations of medicine, psychiatry and family therapy too, to enter the culture of suffering of people; to enter in the pain of many families it is required to be less occupied in curing illnesses and to find the curiosity and courage to explore profound areas of the unknown without prejudice and worries. The active use of metaphors, of playing and humour in therapy, together with the profound respect for family values and traditions, allows the therapist to create a context of collaboration, where the family feels competent and capable to be the main protagonist in the search for a better life.