The Family Crucible is a work dedicated to promoting and explaining the purposes and benefits of family therapy. Family therapy began as a practice in the 1960s and gained wider popularity in the 1970s and beyond. Whitaker and Napier were part of the original movement that helped the field gain traction and legitimacy. They challenged traditional therapies that focus on the individual, believing that all mental health crises can be traced back to the family.

Napier and Whitaker argue that family issues are never the fault of one individual, and a core goal of family therapy is to help all family members realize the roles they play in the conflicts that arise. This means that all family members must be prepared to challenge themselves. As Napier admits, the relationship between the family and the therapist is usually adversarial at first. Over their years together, the family has unconsciously built a system governing their relationships, and by entering therapy they have tacitly admitted that “their model for living has at least temporarily failed” (80). Family structures must be altered, and this process is often as unconscious and unpredictable as the processes that formed these structures in the first place. Families will test therapists to see if they are truly up to the challenge of family therapy: “They simply had to know that we could withstand the stress if they dared open it up” (11).