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Family Therapy: Out from Behind the Hero Narrative
Author(s) -
Gibney Paul
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
australian and new zealand journal of family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.297
H-Index - 19
eISSN - 1467-8438
pISSN - 0814-723X
DOI - 10.1111/j.0814-723x.1999.00091.x
Subject(s) - family therapy , hero , narrative , narrative therapy , rigour , dysfunctional family , publishing , motif (music) , nexus (standard) , sociology , mythology , value (mathematics) , psychoanalysis , aesthetics , psychology , psychotherapist , epistemology , literature , law , political science , art , philosophy , machine learning , computer science , embedded system
Schools of family therapy have been highly selective in their presentation of the theory/practice nexus. Family therapy's method of teaching (the infamous workshop format) has hampered it's growth as a practice and academic discipline. An inadvertent, unhelpful legacy of Gregory Bateson has been that lesser scholars have aped his capacity to draw on other fields of knowledge without his rigour, or his propriety. Family therapy's cavalier dealings with bodies of knowledge and its reliance on miraculous case studies has resulted in the bypassing of individual suffering. The heroic narrative that has dominated family therapy has precluded other styles of stories for therapists, theorists and clients. Family therapy has been dominated by the myth of the hero, with its accompanying motif of the puer eternus (the eternal youth). Family therapy has been forever reinventing itself, forever the ‘new kid on the block’. This fascination with newness has interfered with family therapy's capacity, at times, to consolidate its genuine value as a therapeutic entity.