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Surprise is essentially destabilising and one might well think that the therapist would wish to dispense with it. Yet there are also good surprises. These can then open the way for change. Sometimes they emerge in the therapeutic process, without having been sought by the therapist. But those surprises that fit into a specific working approach are all the more interesting. Adopting a systemic perspective, the present paper investigates such situations. The author firstly recalls the principles for strategic therapies, aiming to suppress symptoms by attacking their function, using paradoxical interventions. But what transpires here is above all a therapeutic use of surprise in a constructive approach that seeks to provide an opening out to emotional life. This is addressed through clinical examples, both from the angle of intersubjectivity in the family and the angle of the resonances that can emerge between the therapist and the family unit.