www.psychspace.com心理学空间网The Therapist and the Postmodern Therapy Systemand the Postmodern Therapy System: A Way of Being with Others1
HARLENE ANDERSON, PH.D.
6th Congress of the European Family Therapy Association and
32nd Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice UK Conference
Glasgow, Scotland
October 5, 2007
Our world is shrinking as globalization and technology catalyze social, cultural, political, and economic transformations. Alongside these transformations is an ever-increasing spotlight on (1) democracy, social justice, and human rights, (2) the importance of the people’s voice, singular or plural, and (3) the necessity of collaboration. People increasingly want to have input into what affects their lives. People are losing faith in rigid institutions and their practices--where they are treated as numbers and where their humanness is ignored or worse yet violently violated. People are demanding systems and services that are more flexible and respectful of their needs. These contemporary local, societal and global shifts, the unavoidable complexities inherent in them, and the effects they have on our individual and communal lives and on our world challenge us as practitioners to reassess how we respond. This conference and today’s theme “Self and System” is a timely response to this challenge.
My response is situated in the broader dialogical movement in the social sciences and represents over 25 years of evolving thought and practice and a special interest in understanding the nature of successful therapy from the client’s perspective. Always on my mind is this question: “How can our theories and practices have relevance for people’s everyday lives in our fast changing world, what is this relevance, and who determines it?”
1 I dedicate this to the memory of Tom Andersen.
I situate my response in postmodern assumptions—and find that a growing community of therapists is increasingly becoming more curious about and interested in the usefulness of these assumptions for therapy. Other therapists in this community whose work you are familiar with and is somewhat similar are: Tom Andersen, Lynn Hoffman, Jaakko Seikkula, and Peggy Penn though they might not refer to themselves as postmodern. (As well, it shares common ground with narrative and solution-focused therapies).
Why do I favor the term postmodern and what do I mean by it? I use it because it as an umbrella term to cover a set of assumptions that I find valuable. Postmodern is a complex set of abstract assumptions that form a framework or perspective for the way we think about, create, use, and privilege knowledge. The central challenge of postmodernism is a call to reexamine and seek alternatives to the fundamentals of knowledge.
Assumptions
. The importance of maintaining a skeptical and questioning attitude toward knowledge in the form of grand or meta-narratives and universal truths which we have inherited.
. The impossibility that grand narratives or universal truths can be generalized or have applicability across peoples, cultures, or situations.
. The importance of local knowledge – the knowledge, expertise, truths, etc. that is created within a community of persons who have first-hand, personal understandings of themselves and their situation.
. Knowledge is an interactive process in which all parties contribute and what is created is unique and has relevancy and usefulness for that community of persons.
. Knowledge cannot be literally discovered or passed on to another person.
. Language, in its broadest sense—any means we use to try to communicate, articulate with ourselves and with others--is the vehicle through which we create knowledge.
. Language, therefore, is viewed as active and creative rather than as static or representational.
. Knowledge and language are relational and generative.
. Transformation is inherent in the inventive and creative aspects of knowledge and language--dialogue. The transformation is unpredictable as dialogue itself is unpredictable.
These assumptions do not suggest that postmodernism is an oppositional perspective, for instance, that our inherited knowledge (e.g., psychological theories) should be, or can be for that matter, discarded. The emphasis is on not taking these for granted and not assuming they hold universal truth. Nor do they suggest that postmodernism is a metanarrative or meta-perspective. Inherent in a postmodern view is a self-critique of postmodernism itself. Neither does postmodern define a school of therapy. Instead, it offers a different language, a set of assumptions useful for those of us whose work if often referred to as dialogical or conversational.(Andersen, Hoffman, Seikkula, Penn)
How do these assumptions influence the way that I think about the therapy process, and the client’s role and my role in it?
Collaborative Relationship and Dialogical Conversation
First, the assumptions that I mentioned about knowledge and language inform and form the kinds of relationships and conversations that I prefer to have with others. I refer to these as collaborative relationships and dialogical conversations.
Collaborative Relationship
. A particular way in which we orient ourselves to be, act, and respond “with” another person that invites the other into shared engagement, mutual inquiry, and joint action.
. The responses of people in conversation with each other create the context for their relationship.
HARLENE ANDERSON, PH.D.
6th Congress of the European Family Therapy Association and
32nd Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice UK Conference
Glasgow, Scotland
October 5, 2007
“Your attitude towards your life will be different according to which understanding you have.”
Suzuki
“. . . not to solve what had been seen as a problem, but to develop from our new reactions new socially intelligible ways forward, in which the old problems become irrelevant.”
Shotter
“Problems are not solved but dissolved in language.”
Anderson & Goolishian
Suzuki
“. . . not to solve what had been seen as a problem, but to develop from our new reactions new socially intelligible ways forward, in which the old problems become irrelevant.”
Shotter
“Problems are not solved but dissolved in language.”
Anderson & Goolishian
Our world is shrinking as globalization and technology catalyze social, cultural, political, and economic transformations. Alongside these transformations is an ever-increasing spotlight on (1) democracy, social justice, and human rights, (2) the importance of the people’s voice, singular or plural, and (3) the necessity of collaboration. People increasingly want to have input into what affects their lives. People are losing faith in rigid institutions and their practices--where they are treated as numbers and where their humanness is ignored or worse yet violently violated. People are demanding systems and services that are more flexible and respectful of their needs. These contemporary local, societal and global shifts, the unavoidable complexities inherent in them, and the effects they have on our individual and communal lives and on our world challenge us as practitioners to reassess how we respond. This conference and today’s theme “Self and System” is a timely response to this challenge.
My response is situated in the broader dialogical movement in the social sciences and represents over 25 years of evolving thought and practice and a special interest in understanding the nature of successful therapy from the client’s perspective. Always on my mind is this question: “How can our theories and practices have relevance for people’s everyday lives in our fast changing world, what is this relevance, and who determines it?”
1 I dedicate this to the memory of Tom Andersen.
I situate my response in postmodern assumptions—and find that a growing community of therapists is increasingly becoming more curious about and interested in the usefulness of these assumptions for therapy. Other therapists in this community whose work you are familiar with and is somewhat similar are: Tom Andersen, Lynn Hoffman, Jaakko Seikkula, and Peggy Penn though they might not refer to themselves as postmodern. (As well, it shares common ground with narrative and solution-focused therapies).
Why do I favor the term postmodern and what do I mean by it? I use it because it as an umbrella term to cover a set of assumptions that I find valuable. Postmodern is a complex set of abstract assumptions that form a framework or perspective for the way we think about, create, use, and privilege knowledge. The central challenge of postmodernism is a call to reexamine and seek alternatives to the fundamentals of knowledge.
Assumptions
. The importance of maintaining a skeptical and questioning attitude toward knowledge in the form of grand or meta-narratives and universal truths which we have inherited.
. The impossibility that grand narratives or universal truths can be generalized or have applicability across peoples, cultures, or situations.
. The importance of local knowledge – the knowledge, expertise, truths, etc. that is created within a community of persons who have first-hand, personal understandings of themselves and their situation.
. Knowledge is an interactive process in which all parties contribute and what is created is unique and has relevancy and usefulness for that community of persons.
. Knowledge cannot be literally discovered or passed on to another person.
. Language, in its broadest sense—any means we use to try to communicate, articulate with ourselves and with others--is the vehicle through which we create knowledge.
. Language, therefore, is viewed as active and creative rather than as static or representational.
. Knowledge and language are relational and generative.
. Transformation is inherent in the inventive and creative aspects of knowledge and language--dialogue. The transformation is unpredictable as dialogue itself is unpredictable.
These assumptions do not suggest that postmodernism is an oppositional perspective, for instance, that our inherited knowledge (e.g., psychological theories) should be, or can be for that matter, discarded. The emphasis is on not taking these for granted and not assuming they hold universal truth. Nor do they suggest that postmodernism is a metanarrative or meta-perspective. Inherent in a postmodern view is a self-critique of postmodernism itself. Neither does postmodern define a school of therapy. Instead, it offers a different language, a set of assumptions useful for those of us whose work if often referred to as dialogical or conversational.(Andersen, Hoffman, Seikkula, Penn)
How do these assumptions influence the way that I think about the therapy process, and the client’s role and my role in it?
Collaborative Relationship and Dialogical Conversation
First, the assumptions that I mentioned about knowledge and language inform and form the kinds of relationships and conversations that I prefer to have with others. I refer to these as collaborative relationships and dialogical conversations.
Collaborative Relationship
. A particular way in which we orient ourselves to be, act, and respond “with” another person that invites the other into shared engagement, mutual inquiry, and joint action.
. The responses of people in conversation with each other create the context for their relationship.