The Wild West of family therapy

In a way that, to some extent, reminds us of what happened in the distant days of the Wild West, the pioneers of family therapy had a vast field before them; there was room for everyone and no one seemed in any great hurry to put up fences or to register a claim. Most of the energy was devoted to exploring the new field and to the common struggle against psychiatrists, psychologists and other social workers of an individual, non-family orientation, who felt, not without reason, that their own territory was under threat. But once the field was established and the population had then grown by leaps and bounds, family therapists began to quarrel among themselves, throwing their rubbish onto the neighbour’s land, moving the fences during the night, branding the cattle, and other niceties of the same kind (one could, to some extent, draw a parallel with what happens in overcrowded rat cages). What is more, it seems that this critical threshold has now been crossed. The time has therefore come to reveal to all people of good will three secret (not so secret) strategies for successfully fencing in a territory of one’s own, hitherto practised by a chosen minority only.

Fencing off, in the field of family therapy, a plot of territory that you can call your own territory may at first sight seem a difficult task. Not so much, not so much. In this article you will find clear instructions which, if faithfully followed, will allow you, dear reader, to obtain your own domain in this vast territory in short order.

The question of whether, in fencing off a territory, one creates an artificial rather than a natural boundary, liable to increase confusion instead of dispelling doubts, need be no obstacle. If the leading world powers and other powerful organisations relentlessly pursue a policy of domination that consists in establishing artificial territories, creating conflicts, annihilating divergences and so forth, why should you, a mere individual, reject such strategies?

Lesson 1: how to shine with someone else’s glory

For your first move, you should proclaim yourself an expert in somebody. To that end, familiarise yourself with the ideas and the life of a seductive, creative and exceptional mentor or guide – whom we shall call here god (acronym for gnomic, omniscient, definitive) (1), and whose prophet you propose to become (2). This god should have to his credit an appreciable quantity of productions: writings, recordings, palimpsests, hieroglyphs or bodies of testimony equivalent to those just mentioned. The words of this god should be obscure enough to allow multiple interpretations which, should the need arise, could be branded literal if they were in fact metaphorical, or metaphorical if they were literal. Such a god should either be dead (do not miss the opportunity to write an in memoriam about yourself and, in passing, about the deceased), or reside very far away (especially if you choose to be a guru by proxy, a strategy discussed below), or at the very least should display the aversion peculiar to Zen masters to communicating in a simple and direct manner (especially if you opt for the prophetic strategy described in lesson 2).

Once familiar with your god, you will be ready to attain the status of guru by proxy. In order to establish your condition as a representative “by proxy”, you must, constantly and relentlessly, mention yourself and the god as forming a single package in all your lectures and all your writings. You must, for example, refer to the warm and intimate experiences you shared (whether or not they are relevant, since their purpose is to create in the listener or reader an effect of fusion), by resorting to quotations from personal communications between yourself and god (without pausing to consider the flimsiness of such quotations), or by referring to him by his first name or his nickname (as a method of connoting the intimacy you share), or simply by using the first person plural pronoun, which thereby includes you and god as if a quasi-mystical bond existed between you (which adds an interesting effect of transmigratory union in the event that god is already dead).

Lesson 2: how to become the keeper of the sacred texts

The second possible strategy, largely complementary to the one just described, consists in obtaining the status of prophet or translator of the sacred texts, so as to become the intermediary between the (obscure and infallible) truth of god and the masses (perhaps ignorant, but certainly eager). Allow me to be a little more precise about the above: it is not a matter of your building your own ideas out of the general models of your god (being able to see further because you are sitting on his shoulders, so to speak). No, that is not the point; what you are going to do is clarify for the public what god really said (it is he who will speak through your mouth). As a source of inspiration, you may take your lead from the example of the medieval churchmen, who stressed their rights of ownership and representation over the word of God, thus establishing a relation of inferiority of the faithful towards God, and consequently towards themselves. There is no doubt that you may hesitate for a moment as you recall the horrific stories you have read about the Inquisition, but hasten to think of the power and the glory they obtained.

In order to achieve a fitting prophetic stature, you should begin by defining the sources of your knowledge – namely the personal work of god – as too complicated for direct human consumption, and insist that your own words (yours) are the correct (an important word, use it frequently) translation of god’s ideas. Obviously, your statements must be at least as cryptic as the originals, but you must put them about as though their clarity went without saying. This style will create in your reader or listener the feeling that he is simply stupid, whereas you are exceptionally brilliant (since you take your cryptic assertions to be clear), thus securing even better the general objective: to induce a relation of inferiority in your listeners and readers. You may even argue that god is too difficult to understand: there you are, covered, and excused from having to clarify his ideas, confining yourself to divulging the implications that god’s words have for the lives of your listeners and readers.

It is only natural that you should wish, at this point, to write or speak in an authoritative style (although the use of a few humble ruses such as “in my opinion”, slipped into the discourse, never does any harm) and with a certain abundance of pronouncements as to what is “correct” and “appropriate”. This has the added advantage of conveying a veiled threat of excommunication to those who might refuse to adhere to the dogma.

Lesson 3: how to build a straw man

It is advisable, at least at the outset, not to launch headlong into a proselytising campaign, but rather to stick to a concrete objective – perhaps a perfectly well-established, even useful notion, of the kind that abound so plentifully in our field. Let me remind you that the din of battle, however useless, always attracts the press agencies and guarantees good media coverage. To proceed wisely, you may choose to create a false conceptual dichotomy (any concept can be cut in two, one of the pieces being labelled good or correct – the one you prefer – and the other bad or incorrect – the one you reject) and to set up a “let them fight it out among themselves” situation, which will undoubtedly bring you a certain amount of power. You may declare, for example, that “the efforts of strategic therapists are short-sighted and banal, since they take no account of what Wittgenstein and I (personal communication) agreed to call an epistaxic dimension, indispensable to a correct perspective on multidimensional reality”.

Better still, you might find a poor, weak or narrow definition of a key concept (an exhaustive literature search will provide you with an abundant harvest of inaccurate, limited and even stupid usages of many useful concepts), then argue that this usage has been the only one employed by all authors. That done, on the basis of the argument that unbridled abuse has contaminated the key concept beyond any possible redemption, and instead of suggesting an appropriate usage and definition of the key term, introduce a new word of your own coining, or else import one from another field (3).

Convincing, isn’t it? But please, dear reader, forget it. It is only an example, and its content will self-destruct in your head in five seconds. There is nothing wrong with the notion of boundary (apart from a few limited and erroneous usages here and there); in reality, for the definition of the term “frontier” I used a free version of Minuchin’s definition of “boundary” (or perhaps, come to think of it, may I invite you to my next lecture: “Beyond the notion of boundary: towards the concept of frontier”) (4).

In closing: your own fiefdom, banners flying

To finish, I should like to insist: if you plan to follow the strategies I have just listed, you should not be stopped by the suspicion that your god, an original thinker beyond doubt, wrote in that so peculiarly obscure style of his not unintentionally, but by choice. Refrain from entertaining the possibility that the god, following his Socratic – or Zen – method of teaching, sought to provoke in his readers intriguing ideas apt to create doubt, as a method of fostering and inducing creative thought, or of increasing the flexibility and versatility of their cognitive processes. By eliminating such considerations, you will avoid the dangerous swamp of ethical questioning that might undermine your determination to fence off your own territory in the field of family therapy. To motivate yourself still further, just imagine… your own fiefdom, banners flying, proudly displaying your coat of arms, a magenta field with two azure lions, and running across it diagonally your motto: vis primum, tum mores (5).