In systemic therapy, the notion of the floating object was developed in the 1990s by Caillé and Rey (1993). The floating object introduces a playful, metaphorical third party into the therapeutic relationship. It supports the indirect expression of relational stakes and thereby allows a richer, less defensive reading of family interactions.

Why buttons? Sensory and metaphorical dimensions

The sewing button is a universal object, modest and familiar to everyone. It is precisely this apparent ordinariness that makes it such a powerful projective support: it carries no predefined symbolic charge. It is therefore open to every projection and every interpretation.

On the sensory level, the button engages touch, sight and sometimes even hearing. It can be smooth or rough, small or imposing, colourful or dull. Each choice becomes an emotional stance. Schön (2010) stresses how important it is to let patients handle the buttons: touch them, turn them over, compare them. This direct contact encourages bodily involvement, which is essential for reaching deeper affective material.

On the metaphorical level, the button becomes a mirror of family bonds. It can stand for a person, a relationship, an absence, a conflict, a loss. A patient may pick a shiny blue button to represent a brother seen as radiant, or a small black button to figure a distant parent. These associations are not interpreted by the therapist: they are explored in dialogue, through circular and open questions.

Clinical practice

With families

In family sessions, Marie-Jeanne Schön begins by inviting everyone to choose buttons representing the family members. A cork board or a wooden panel serves as the support. Patients lay out the buttons according to their perceptions: close or far apart, aligned or isolated.

This configuration then becomes a metaphorical sculpture of the family system. It makes it possible to explore alliances, exclusions, emotional distances. The therapist can invite participants to comment: why this button for dad? Why this distance between two members? What do you feel when you look at this configuration?

The exercise can then be worked through time: before a defining event (a birth, a death, a divorce), today, and then as a projection into the future. These narrative renderings support an elaboration of family trajectories, much as the family coat of arms does in its own way.

In bereavement

One of the most powerful contexts for using buttons is grief work. Marie-Jeanne Schön recounts several situations in which parents who had lost a child were able to represent the deceased through a button. This gesture, at once simple and heavily charged, allows the child to be reintegrated into the family constellation and given back a symbolic place.

In one case, a father chose a small white pearl to represent his baby, who had died of sudden infant death. The moment of putting the button away in the box was overwhelming: it became a ritualised way of acknowledging the loss. But that button could also remain visible, remain inside the box of the family story, as a symbolic presence. The flexibility of the tool thus allows the emotional complexity of grief to be accompanied.

In couple therapy

Couples can also benefit from this mediation. Each partner chooses a button for themselves, then for the other, and can add further elements representing the children, work, significant third parties. The spatial arrangement makes it possible to figure the couple’s dynamic: closeness, distance, imbalance.

Handling the buttons, moving them, discussing them: all of this makes it possible to work on the relationship without accusation or judgement. Partners can ask themselves what brings them together, what drives them apart, what they would like to change. This symbolic experimentation opens a space where adjustment becomes possible.

In supervision

Marie-Jeanne Schön also uses this tool in clinical supervision. Professionals can represent a situation, a team or a family they are working with using buttons. This makes the systemic stakes of a complex situation tangible and creates room to step back. The supervision group can then think from a shared support, which makes it easier to build circular, multi-positional hypotheses.

A therapeutic frame to respect

Marie-Jeanne Schön is insistent: the buttons are neither a game nor a test. They are a symbolic therapeutic tool, invested and containing. The frame is essential: the therapist must explain the use, reassure about the process and hold the experience.

One important element is the box that holds the buttons. For her, this box — often made of wood covered in cork — is a symbolic container. It stands for the therapeutic space, the frame, the limits. Each button can enter or leave it: that means something, and it can be discussed. The button that leaves the box is not rejected; it may symbolise a distancing, a transformation, an evolution of the system.

Strengths and limits

The strengths of button-based mediation are numerous.

• Accessibility and simplicity: buttons are easy to find, inexpensive, familiar.
• Sensory and symbolic dimension: they mobilise the senses while opening onto metaphor.
• Adaptability: they can be used individually, with couples, with families, in groups.
• Temporality: they can represent the past, the present and the future.
• Projective power: they reveal invisible dynamics and stir up deep emotions.

Three limits nonetheless call for caution.

• Risk of wild interpretation: the therapist must stay in exploration, without projecting their own meanings.
• A necessary frame: without a clear frame, the floating object loses its function.
• Unsuitability for some profiles: with psychotic patients or very young children, symbolisation may prove ineffective.

Simplicity can become depth

The use of sewing buttons as floating objects, as developed by Marie-Jeanne Schön, is a valuable contribution to contemporary systemic therapy. By combining meaning, creativity, touch and metaphor, this approach opens a transitional space in which families, couples and individuals can tell their story differently, put their representations into play and co-construct new narratives.

At a time when systemic therapy is looking to integrate sensitive, playful, meaning-bearing devices, buttons remind us that simplicity can become depth, and that the smallest of objects can sometimes hold the greatest of emotions.

References

Caillé, P. (1993). La construction de la réalité dans la thérapie familiale. ESF.

Rey, Y. (1994). Objets flottants: jeu, rituel et métaphore. Thérapie Familiale, 15(3), 33-46.

Schön, M.-J. (2010). L’histoire du bouton n’est pas cousue de fil blanc. Cahiers critiques de thérapie familiale et de pratiques de réseaux, 45, 71-92.

The full presentation of the tool — in French — can be watched below.