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Whatever happened to biology? Reconnecting family therapy with its evolutionary origins
Author(s) -
Launer John
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.52
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-6427
pISSN - 0163-4445
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6427.00175
Subject(s) - postmodernism , ignorance , family therapy , distancing , epistemology , psychology , sociology , environmental ethics , psychotherapist , medicine , philosophy , covid-19 , pathology , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty)
This article argues for a rapprochement between family therapy and biological science. In spite of the prevailing tendency nowadays to write biology out of the story of family therapy, it has played a central historical and conceptual role in the origin of our discipline. Family therapists may have done themselves and their patients a disservice by distancing themselves from the discipline of biology; ignorance of modern biological ideas may be a serious handicap in the practice of therapy. The gap between contemporary biology and the kind of postmodern thinking currently favoured by many therapists is not as great as it appears, and may be bridged.