Eternal love and marital happiness

Jack Dikian

September 2011

Family therapists began to look at new ways of understanding and explaining human behavior - proposing that psychological problems were developed and maintained in the social context of the family.

This shifted the contextual perspective, relocating the responsibility for the problems and the focus of treatment from the internal world of the individual patient to the entire family. Family therapy is today not only a household term, but a popular and effective intervention.

There is in nature a strange delicate flower that in some cultures, such as to the Japanese, symbolises eternal love and marital happiness - The Venus flower basket.

This is a creature that only grows on the deep ocean floor in the warm tropical waters and seldom seen. This extremely beautiful, intricate, and dainty has the shape of a tube and made of an intricate fine lace expertly spun in glass fibers no thicker than human hair. The smaller, tapered end is anchored to the ocean floor by a multitude of fine glass-like fibers. The larger end has a lacey looking cap over it.

When the Venus flower basket is small, tiny shrimp swim in and out of it. However, as the Venus Flower Basket grows it seals off the open upper end, and at the same time the shrimps grow so that they cannot swim through the side of the Venus flower basket. As this happens, a pair of shrimps, one male and one female, will stay inside the Venus flower basket and become trapped there. This pair of shrimps will spend the rest of their lives inside that Venus flower basket x.