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?”
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?”