Systemic prejudices

Could you develop your idea of prejudices in the systemic view, and of the way they work?

It is impossible not to look at reality through lenses, and those lenses are a series of prejudices one learns over the years: personal experiences, experiences of the family, of school, which begin to become the way one looks at reality. When you are a child, you learn to look through those lenses, to know what is good and what is bad, what is useful and what is useless, in order to distinguish reality. That distinction is constructed by our brain. But it is not precise, our machine is not precise; we merely interpret what we see, we give it a meaning. One of the characteristics of human beings is that we attribute meaning to things. If I touch this and everybody touches it, we shall probably agree that it exists; but the meaning is individual, it comes from each person. Of course, one learns to interpret life in conversation with other people. That is why, very often, prejudices are not personal: they are those of the group.

And what about “systemic prejudices”?

They are, essentially, the prejudices we use in order to do therapy systemically. Not thinking in terms of system implies thinking in terms of cause and effect, looking for the cause of something, for the truth or the reality. If one adopts “systemic prejudices”, one no longer believes one can find reality; the only thing one finds is patterns, relations, the way people relate to one another, and also their way of seeing things. The prejudice is the only way of looking at things, of looking at reality, so as to reflect the relations between things in each person’s reaction.

Are those systemic prejudices at the same level of prejudice as the others? For instance, is linear epistemology, or the epistemology that believes in truth, at the same level as an epistemology which posits that its own prejudices are temporary?

The prejudices through which people see reality are not called prejudices, most of the time. People call them “I know”. When one speaks of prejudices, one assumes at the same time that they are temporary, that they come from our own experience, that they are not real. A prejudice is something one has in one’s head; it is a prior judgement, one that comes before seeing things.

Is that why you use such provocative names?

It is a message, to myself and to others: this is not the true way of looking at things. For most people, their way of looking at reality is the right one. But if you call it a “prejudice”, you are already accepting that it is something personal. And it can sometimes be unpleasant, negative. For example, you decide that all black people are bad. And you cannot then realise that these people are excluded because you think in that way. So it is the prejudice itself that creates the problem.

The prejudice about prejudice versus “curiosity”

Might these prejudices be second-order prejudices? Since they are prejudices about prejudices…

Yes, I think so. It is a meta-explanation. The name itself is a way of pointing to a second order, reflexively.

You said during the conference that one of these prejudices, in the systemic view, consists in paying attention to the way the system works, and that curiosity is the means by which we enter into that working. How does curiosity work?

First of all, if one sees reality as a self-organising, autopoietic system, then one keeps one’s distance from the idea of change every time one sees a system. The only thing one can do is to exchange with it, to interact with it, to be curious about it. So, instead of claiming the neutrality one used to believe in, one knows one is going to interfere, and one does so by observing, by touching, by being there. The only position which, for me, makes sense is being curious. And being curious produces an effect: it means interfering with reality. One is seized with curiosity about how people work, without looking for what is good and what is bad, but seeing how it is. One is therefore systemic if one respects systems; if one wants to change them, one does not respect them: one thinks they should be different and, on top of that, one believes one knows which is the right system. And that is impossible, because we are part of systems, we cannot invent a system. Only God can, if he exists… To think that we can control systems is an epistemological error. The only thing we can do is to be aware, to observe, to be curious, and to have respect for what the system is: a “systemic respect”.

The dilemma of change in systemic therapy

The notion of change has been very important in the history of the systemic view. You maintain that the position of the therapist, at least at the beginning, must be not to try to change the system. Another provocative idea…

That is yet another prejudice: change always happens. Everything changes: the family, society, the physical world; everything is in permanent movement. The problem appears when the system stops moving. That is when people come to see us; very often, people have repetitive conducts, they repeat patterns of behaviour, and it makes them suffer because it is not natural. And our work consists in getting them to move again. Then change comes on its own. Change is the consequence of movement. I am not looking for change: I am looking for people not to stay still, for them to start moving again. Change is produced by the person, not by me.

How do you go about obtaining that movement?

If one follows this theory, the first thing is that, if one shows interest in and curiosity about them, that is already an intervention, because people need to make sure that what they are doing makes sense; from then on, if one shows interest, if one positively connotes what they are doing, there is a chance of being included, of not staying outside. We know blame. We know that blaming others or blaming oneself is a way of staying still. The idea, then, is to lower the level of blame, and curiosity about the way things work can help with that. Curiosity and positive connotation towards the system as it is make those movements happen. This is theory; in the last resort, it is still a prejudice to think that blame favours immobility. Blame is not a systemic idea, because one does not take responsibility: one blames the wife, the husband, the parents, society; it is always somebody else who is responsible. One can then never take part in creating the system in movement: one takes part by blocking the movement. If one lays the blame on another person, then nothing happens.

Circular questions are a powerful intervention…

Yes, that is true. One element is curiosity; another is lowering the level of blame; and yet another is the circular question, whose effect is to connect everything, because one of the non-systemic ideas is that people are separate from others, that each one is an individuality separate from the rest; the father, the mother, all of them are different personalities who find themselves together by mistake… Circular questions, on the contrary, connect people to one another in the present, in the past, in the future. That makes things circulate. Connection is the most natural thing there is, because that is how the system works. Circular questions show these things, they make people aware of the connections.

You maintain that blame is one of the issues that produces suffering. The idea of blame implies that somebody is in the wrong inside the system. And when one believes somebody is in the wrong, one usually lays the fault on them…

It also implies making somebody responsible for what is happening to the system, and thereby releasing you from your own responsibility. To blame means to attribute responsibilities, to consider that somebody is the cause of something. The systemic idea is: “what good does it do you to waste your time laying the blame on others?”. One can ask questions of the type: “how much time do you spend blaming? What do people think of you when you lay the blame on others? What effects does that produce?” And the person realises it.

Do you have a definition of what a circular question is?

“Circular” is not the right word. We would need another word. They are questions that create connections. One creates connections through those questions, without making assertions. And, fundamentally, one does not expect answers: it hardly matters whether you are answered or not.

“Why doesn’t the therapy end, Dr Cecchin?”

That is very interesting. People get very angry when they are asked to speak in the first person, to say “I”. It then becomes very difficult to lay the blame on others. How do you handle situations in which patients ask for changes in one part of the system?

Take for example a mother who asks her son to change. We then ask her: “when did you begin asking him all the time to do this or that?” And we ask the son: “when did you decide to disobey your mother?” In that way we give responsibility to the child: he is the one who decided to disobey. And to the mother: “when did you decide never to give up getting something?” I am interested in the interaction, I do not want him to change; one must not become obsessed with change. Let us suppose we do not get him to change: what happens? Fundamentally, the real change is to get the mother to stop asking her son to change. It is the same question: we do not have to demand that they change. The problem is that children demand that parents change, and that parents demand that children change. In reality, in some therapies, the systemic prejudice is introduced into the patient’s head. One cannot change people; one must respect them. If one tries to change somebody, one does not realise that one is contributing to their not changing.

Can this process, this systemic prejudice, be introduced into a brief therapy?

Yes, unless you become obsessed with the idea that people change quickly. We are in a comfortable position, because we can tell them: “come back in six months, come back in a year”. But, in accordance with this prejudice, mobility usually happens very fast. Not always: sometimes it takes longer, because one makes mistakes, because one lays the blame on somebody, or because one pushes somebody too hard; in other words, it is we ourselves who immobilise the situation. But if one is curious, if one takes an interest in connections, then there is a good chance that brief therapy will work. Only, one must not become obsessed with the idea that it has to be brief, because then we shall no longer be paid…

One has to take one’s time in order to be brief…

Yes, it is comfortable. Take for example a case I had: the woman had been coming for two years, her son was schizophrenic and was already doing better, and the group of students asked me: “why don’t you end the therapy?” I answered them: “I cannot find out how. Let us ask them to come.” So we called the family, we put them behind the mirror, and one of the members of the group said to them: “my colleague has a problem. Why doesn’t he end the therapy? What is going on?” We then began to interact with that idea, and my colleague asked: “what is Cecchin doing wrong, that he cannot end the therapy?” The problem was that my colleague was coming to study brief therapy… The woman, for her part, was saying: “no, I need to talk”. The problem arises when one becomes part of the system. That is where the group helps. I told them: “I have a problem with this therapy that never ends”, because our theory says that, if it does not end, something is wrong. We can discuss it, can we not? We can drop it for a year, then start again with another brief therapy…

Temporality and diagnosis

Time is a very important variable in this scheme…

Of course. There are brief therapies, there are long therapies; it depends on how much time you need in order to get better. You have to punish yourself… But how many years of punishment do you think you deserve? Two years, three years? If you think it is two years, I can help you suffer for those two years (laughter)… No, seriously… Very often, the patient really does suffer for two years. It seems mad to suffer for two years, but… If they laugh, it means that in truth they are getting better. Humour is very important.

I would like you to comment on something you said during the conference, when, in one case, you told that woman: “I believe you: you will be an incompetent mother for the next five months”.

The idea is: “I believe you. You have shown me so far that you were incompetent, you have behaved in an incompetent way.” Consequently, I believe you. I gave you a few months; now I believe you, I believe that you are incompetent. You have convinced me. Congratulations. You are the one responsible for making me believe it. You are still in time to stop behaving in an incompetent way and to do something else. And I am responsible for believing. So there are two responsibilities. I am not here to cure you; each of us has the responsibility that falls to them. It is an interesting connection. Time is important: three or four months, for example. The idea of a temporality is important for the prejudice. I have here a real case of abuse, or of violence, or of suicide: for the time being, then, I believe it. I take responsibility for it, but it is temporary, because afterwards I am going to discuss it. If I stay in that diagnosis forever, then I become dangerous, don’t I?

“Being free…”

That is a good concept for therapists…

It means being free. Not believing that, when one discovers something, it will always be so. The problem, in therapy, is that when one makes the diagnosis at the beginning, one tends to keep the same idea right to the end.