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The listening heart and the chi square: clinical and empirical perceptions in the family therapy of anorexia nervosa
Author(s) -
Dare Christopher,
Eisler Ivan,
Colahan Mireille,
Crowther Catherine,
Senior Rob,
Asen Eia
Publication year - 1995
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/j.1467-6427.1995.tb00003.x
Subject(s) - anorexia nervosa , active listening , family therapy , psychology , perception , psychotherapist , anorexia , developmental psychology , clinical psychology , audiology , medicine , eating disorders , neuroscience
Clinical and empirical methods are commonly considered to be complementary activities. However, many people in the fields of mental health and social welfare espouse a strong adherence to experimental, scientific methods for the evolution of theory and practice and consider only that which has been experimentally tested as‘really true”. Others would propose the clinical method as the main source of useful knowledge and are suspicious of enumeration and quantification as sources of useful information. Formal, empirical methodology is well and extensively described whilst there is less systematic exposition of the clinical method. Family therapy evolved in a context in which activity was visible and the emerging discipline was propelled by a theoretical framework with strongly scientific origins that was critical of the exclusive clinical method of pre‐existing psychotherapies. This paper describes some of the clinically based contributions to the family therapy of anorexia nervosa and compares this information with that which comes out of the Maudsley trials of psychotherapies in anorexia nervosa.