My position is simple: working with a person is always working with a system. The question is not “can we?”, but how to do it rigorously.

What struck me about Ivy is the way she fully takes on this tension without betraying it. She states it as a clinical self-evidence: if a system is a set of interactions, changing the position of one element means triggering adjustments across the whole. And this work can begin here and now, with the person present… and with everyone who accompanies them in absentia.

Communication, relationship, context

For me, the answer lies in a simple compass, one Ivy and I share: communication, relationship, context. These are the fundamentals of the systemic approach, and they do not switch off when the waiting room empties.

From the very first phone call, the music is already there: how is this story told, to whom, with which words, with which silences? Which gestures come back, who allies with whom, who sacrifices themselves, who keeps quiet “so as not to make a fuss” and yet makes one? In what setting is all this anchored — family of origin, work, institutions, culture, bereavements and births — and in what way does that setting constrain and authorise at the same time?

Introducing yourself as a reader of relationships

In practice, I welcome a person and introduce myself as a reader of relationships. I say it plainly: “Here, we will talk about you and about your relationships. The effects will show in you, and around you.” That already changes something: we leave behind the logic of “fixing someone” for a finer ecology — caring for bonds.

A pencil, sometimes, a sketch in the margin of the notebook: a mini-genogram taking shape, not for decoration, but to give a face to the very present absentees. I want to know who counts, who is missing, who weighs, who protects. I want to hear how places are named and how people settle into them.

The heart of the work: a way of asking

The heart of the work then lies in a way of asking. Circular questions have this delicacy: they subtly move the camera. “If I asked your sister what she has noticed about you these past few weeks, what would she say?” In a single sentence, we move from “I am suffering” to a field of interactions.

The answers weave a cartography: who alerts whom, who soothes, who cancels the alert in the name of soothing — and produces the opposite effect. The symptom then stops being “my problem” and appears as a function within a network, an attempt (sometimes a costly one) to regulate something larger.

Thinking out loud, then testing it in real life

I also like to think out loud. Not as one who knows, but as a companion in thought. I put forward hypotheses, cautiously, reversibly, with the humility to lay them on the table so that we can turn them over together. When a hypothesis lands, it moves the body: a sigh, an “ah, there it is”, a sad laugh.

Then we put it to the test in real life — a message to send, a conversation to try differently, a tiny ritual to introduce into the week. Nothing spectacular; relational concreteness. And we come back to see what it produced in the person, and around them. That is what matters: keeping an eye on the systemic effects of the smallest step.

The courage of caring confrontation

There are moments when this work demands courage — the courage of caring confrontation. Being systemic one to one does not mean aligning with the version of the absent person brought by the one who is present. It means holding an alliance with the system as much as with the person — which sometimes obliges me to name the blind spot. I then set myself three very simple questions before speaking.

• Can this be heard by them right now?
• Is this the right timing, in their life and in our therapeutic bond?
• What is my real intention in saying it?

If it is to shine, I keep quiet. If it is to protect a child, to lift a dangerous dynamic, I go ahead — with tact. Systemic practice demands this ethics of speech: to speak is already to act within the system.

When relatives refuse to come

Sometimes relatives refuse to come. For a long time I experienced that as a dead end; today I see it as a side door. I willingly use what I call loyal feedback: the person announces that they are attending sessions, then shares back a chosen element of what we have worked on. It is a gesture of transparency, an outstretched hand.

Strangely — or logically — this simple ritual reopens communication where it had frozen. Sometimes, one thing leading to another, the family does turn up. Other times it does not, but the system moves anyway: fewer misunderstandings, less escalation, a gentler arrangement of everyone’s place. I welcome these modest shifts; they are often the ones that keep houses standing.

I never receive a “pure” individual

When I think back to the supposed controversy — can systemic therapy be done individually? — I realise it dies out by itself if we stay as close as possible to what is alive. What I meet, session after session, are people inhabited by relationships: loyalties visible or secret, tacit pacts, wounds and treasures passed down.

I never receive a “pure” individual, without ties or context; I receive a person-in-relationship. Working with them is already working with the others. By capillary action, by threshold effect, by gradual regulation. And when the time comes to open the door to a partner, a parent, a child, that step falls naturally into a path that was already systemic.

This text is not a plea for “doing individual rather than family work”. It is an invitation to hold together respect for the tradition and the boldness of the present. To stay faithful to the spirit — thinking in terms of interactions, loops and contexts — rather than to a single form. To accept that systemic practice, if it wants to remain accurate, must remain mobile. Like life. Like us.

I thank Ivy for her quiet clarity. She reminded me that systemic thinking is not a fortress but a house with doors. Some open onto a room where the family gathers. Others lead to a more intimate room, with a single chair occupied. In either case, our task does not change: caring for the bond. Our conversation — in French — can be watched below.