It sometimes happens that formidable tensions between the protagonists — conflicts, arguments, disagreements, quarrels — colonise everyone’s time and energy, at the expense of the objective set beforehand. This is not merely uncomfortable: the session itself has changed hands.

The professional is then faced with a few very concrete questions.

• How do you stay on course towards the objective when the quarrel takes up the whole space?
• How do you remain in the position of pilot of the interview, without being enlisted into the conflict?
• What can be done with the energy everyone is pouring into the dispute, rather than simply enduring it?

For these configurations there exist specific interview techniques, developed over years of practice — notably by Carlos Sluzki. They cannot be improvised: like everything to do with conducting interviews, they are worked on and refined with experience.

Other landmarks already covered here can serve as points of support: the three phases of the interview, the basket of problems for first family meetings, or inductive questioning.