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“EPISTEMOLOGY” AS A SEMANTIC POLLUTANT
Author(s) -
Bogdan Jeffrey
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
journal of marital and family therapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.868
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1752-0606
pISSN - 0194-472X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1752-0606.1987.tb00680.x
Subject(s) - cognitive reframing , nothing , epistemology , psychology , cognition , philosophy , social psychology , neuroscience
Some family therapists, following Bateson, use “epistemology” in a peculiar, non‐traditional way. Nothing is gained, and much appears to be lost, by this practice. Its main effect is to promote the idea that systemic and psychological modes of explanation are incompatible. In fact, a kind of cognitive psychology is implicit in what family therapists say about reframing. By appropriating the territory of psychology and calling it epistemology instead, family therapists merely pollute the semantic environment, 1 muddying the very things that theoretical terms are supposed to clear up.