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The social withdrawal of a young adult into the parental home is a symptom that can be encountered in different clinical pictures: mood disorders, psychosis, personality disorders etc. This symptom may be the source of a request for family therapy, often after a long period of individual care. The family will then come to therapy asking for help in developing the young adult’s personal autonomy. The purpose of this article is to explore the value of family therapy in these situations of social withdrawal. We give a systemic reading that takes into account the function of the symptom in the family system via the identification of its own life cycle. Systemic tools such as co-construction and circularity, which we consider useful in our clinical practice, are also described.