1 Introduction

I must admit I find myself in a rather odd position referring to deconstructing theory, having written about theory in family therapy over three decades, particularly in relation to heavy thinkers such as French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas (Larner 1994, 1995, 2004, 2010, 2011, 2022). But in one sense, I have come out the other end and possibly like other family therapists such as Peter Rober (2024), theory is there for me for sure but more in the background. In the end, practice is centrepiece but it is theory and deconstruction as the ethical relation that has largely taken me there. Let me explain.

A decade or so ago, I noticed an architect's placard near where I live in Freshwater, on the northern beaches of Sydney, Australia, outside a Returned Services League (RSL) club called the Harbord Diggers saying Deconstructed Diggers: Building Our Legacy. The idea was to pull down an old building and replace it with something better. What eventually emerged was a fantastic new facility¹ that included a club, gym, high-level seniors' accommodation and restaurants. Well and good! But I was curious as to how the complex philosophy of deconstruction, which had influenced numerous disciplines, including philosophy, literary studies, sociology and even architecture, had been reduced to a simple idea in the popular mind of taking things down to allow a rebuild especially when this was completely at odds with its originator Jacques Derrida.

Now family therapy, especially in its postmodern phase, for many still current today (Smoliak et al. 2026; Anderson and Gehart 2023), replicates this populist idea of deconstruction when it seeks to take down a modernist, scientific and realist idea of the world, self and knowledge and replace it with a postmodern epistemology like that based in social construction theory (McNamee and Gergen 1992; Gergen 2018). As Lynn Hoffman (1992) put it several decades ago, the goal of the postmodern project in therapy is ‘dismantling the philosophical foundations of Western thought’ with the implication ‘that modernism is now dead’ (p. 7). As I put it previously, this risks perpetuating, ‘the same divisive politics and hegemony of a theory position that marginalizes, excludes, and replaces alternative points of view, which is precisely what relational therapists critique about modern therapy’ (Larner 2011, 685). Likewise, Carmel Flaskas (2002), in her book Family Therapy: Beyond Postmodernism, notes the paradox that while the raison d'être of postmodern theory is to foster multiple perspectives, conversations and possibilities, it sets up ‘an oppositional dualism that leads to a dynamic of censorship of “modernist” conceptions’ (p. 91). Interestingly, Flaskas (2002) concludes by giving priority to ‘theory diversity’ and ‘the everyday realities of therapy practice’ (p. 185), which very much reflects the positioning in this article.

As part of a growing cohort of integrative family therapists (e.g., Dickerson 2010; Lebow 2019; Pinsof et al. 2011; Russell and Breunlin 2019; White and Owen 2022), I believe that adopting an exclusive strong postmodern sensibility unnecessarily restricts access to a broad range of modern theory, knowledge, models and approaches that can help to address the complexity of mental health needs in the contemporary world. A prime example is the need to consider the ‘reality’ of eating disorders that calls for a more nuanced appraisal of constructionist epistemology drawing on co-constructivist and critical realist perspectives (Donovan and Khor 2026). This sentiment is increasingly shared today as the field has adopted a more flexible and integrative approach to theory, research and practice (e.g., Lorås et al. 2023), which has brought ‘modern scientific and postmodern relational frameworks into a closer working relationship’ (Larner 2022, 57). It certainly fits working with mental health issues such as adolescent depression and suicidal risk that demand a multifaceted integrative approach combining individual and family therapy (Larner 2003, 2009a).

While some family therapists have developed formal models of integration, my approach has been to build a deconstructive theory bridge between the modern and postmodern I call paramodern based on an ethic of hospitality (Larner 1994, 2003, 2009b, 2010). This is grounded in Derrida's philosophy of deconstruction and the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, which I have understood as (paradoxically using theory) putting the ethical relation and practice before any prior commitment to epistemology or theory. This allows me to do whatever I can as a therapist to help another person's mental health suffering, whether this derives from a modern or postmodern therapy framework.

Nonetheless, I would like to emphasise that social constructionism forms an essential part of how I think and practice family therapy. I totally adhere to the idea that our knowledge of the world is socially constructed in diverse cultural and discourse communities and that we can conceive the self as a relational being based in narrative, language, dialogue and story (Gergen 1999). However, I also see the value of a modern scientific realist understanding of the world, and an independent self or subjectivity much as described by modern philosophy, psychology and neuroscience (Larner 2008), and like other family therapists in practice can sit with the dissonance. This very much takes me into a critical realist position like that of David Pocock (2024) in his recent excellent book, and I also see it as an ethical stance that follows from my reading of deconstructive philosophy. This positioning is also mindful of the ethical realism described by Bøe et al. (2024).

First up, I would like to present a retrospective of my theory journey in family therapy and invite readers to do their own as a useful exercise. This describes my immersion in social constructionist thinking and practice as an illustration of how deconstruction works from within a text, theory or framework expanding meaning rather than dismantling it from without. As I will argue, this is an ethical movement that opens rather than closes down difference and makes available many theories, languages and metaphors in the practice of therapy, which very much captures the spirit of what it means to be systemic and integrative today.

2 Engaging with Social Constructionism

My therapy journey began in the mid-1970s with Kleinian play therapy and object relations family therapy, including a personal experience of psychoanalysis. At the same time, I was completing training in clinical psychology and also began to read the pioneers of family therapy, including Satir,² Minuchin, Haley, Bowen, Watzlawick, graduating to reading Bateson, de Shazer and Milan Systemic Therapy (Larner 2022). In 1990, I was fortunate to attend a 2-day workshop in Sydney with Harry Goolishian (1990) and left incredibly inspired, eagerly reading social constructionist authors such as Anderson and Goolishian (1988), McNamee and Gergen (1992), Harlene Anderson (1997) and John Shotter (1999). I found myself agreeing with McNamee and Gergen's (1992) critique of the modern scientist-therapist framework, which pathologised persons, promulgated an exclusive realist empiricist epistemology and discounted contextual, spiritual, Indigenous, feminist, social, cultural and community understandings of self, therapy and mental health.³

I ended up writing several articles applying narrative and social constructionist ideas to family therapy (Larner 1996, 2000) and co-edited a book on collaborative approaches to psychology and therapy (Pare and Larner 2004), which includes chapters from key figures in the social constructionist movement. And these ideas continue to inspire to the present day, especially as background to a contemporary dialogic approach in family therapy (Seikkula 2011; Larner 2015). I have a continuing interest in the writings of Ken Gergen, Sheila MacNamee and others at the Taos Institute, of which I am an associate (The Taos Institute https://www.taosinstitute.net/), as well as in contemporary applications of collaborative therapy by authors such as Anderson and Gehart (2007, 2023).

3 Deconstructing Postmodernism

Nonetheless, despite my proclivity towards moderate social constructionist ideas (Pocock 2024), I realised that simply taking down a modern scientific realist paradigm to replace it with a postmodern social constructionist edifice (much like the Diggers rebuild) risked repeating the hubris and violence of an exclusive modernism. It is what Derrida (1998) refers to as the politics of language, such as when colonial British rulers replaced Gaelic Street names in Ireland with English names.⁴ As I noted in a previous paper, ‘In his book Monolingualism of the Other, Derrida (1998) says, 'Every culture institutes itself through the unilateral imposition of some “politics” of language. Mastery begins, as we know, through the power of naming, of imposing and legitimating appellations’ (p. 39) (Larner 2015, 436).

In its time, modernism supplanted pre-scientific spiritual, religious, Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing, which a decolonised family therapy has more recently engaged with (cf. Johnston and Robinson (2026), in press), in favour of a rational, scientific-empirical zeitgeist. But on my reading, it looked like postmodernism expressed a similar imperialist zeal, which is why Derrida often denied being a postmodernist, arguing that it is impossible to step outside a modern reason-based Western philosophical framework without falling back into it in a bed of paradox and contradiction (Larner 1994, 2010). Simply put, we need reason, logic and argument in the Western logocentric tradition to deconstruct!

This inspired a paper called 'Paramodern Therapy: Deconstructing Postmodernism' (Larner 1994), which attempts to address the theory rupture between modernists and postmodernists, arguing that in practice, many family therapists take a more pragmatic stance where they are both modern and postmodern or both/and rather than either/or. As I put it,

The foregoing suggests a deconstructive third term in the family therapy literature to express the play between binaries like the modern/post-modem. The prefix “para” forms compounds meaning both “beside” and “beyond”, e.g., paramedical, paranormal (The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary 1984, 490). The para-modern is both the modern and the post-modern. It is neither one nor the other, but both/and’ (Larner 1994, 14).

So, while respecting a modernist framework, you reach forward to the postmodern as part of what we might today call a post-postmodern integrative theory approach, as I will describe below.

A similar process defines the contemporary arts. Thus, film director Peter Greenaway (2010) in his visionary multimedia installation of Leonardo's 'Last Supper' painting deconstructs and recontextualises the Renaissance classic for contemporary audiences using digital technologies such as film, light, music and projections. In music, Max Richter recomposes Baroque classic Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons' as a minimalist electronic piece that transports it into the contemporary era. Jazz musicians likewise take modern standards into free improvisational spaces while grounded in the original music. Eminent jazz bassist Christian McBride refers to the importance of heritage in having one foot in the tradition while allowing the music to move forward.

Similarly, as I will argue, family therapists can ground a contemporary systemic, collaborative and dialogical approach in the modern tradition and science of family therapy. And this very much reflects where the discipline is at today where systemic, social constructionist, narrative and scientific evidence-based approaches sit beside each other as reading any contemporary family therapy journal like this one illustrates. Here, journals can play an important role in holding the wider field together against potentially splitting tendencies.

4 Post-Postmodernism: Return to Science

Ironically in the politics of today, a modern scientific paradigm is the very thing under threat and is precisely what requires protecting. As recently documented by sociologist Elizabeth Finkel (2025), the current attacks on truth and science in Trump's America have led to the dismantling of science across disciplines such as medicine and climate science where facts are no longer empirically tested but collective constructions on truth social media. As Finkel (2025) states, ‘The Trump administration seems to have declared war on every aspect of the scientific method. It has declared war on fact-checking, triggering a global pile-on’ and ‘… has also taken an axe to the workings of the scientific machine’. In a breathtaking example of Orwellian ‘double speak’, on 23 May, Trump issued an executive order to restore ‘gold standard science’. This was illustrated by a recent cartoon in the New Yorker Daily called ‘Remember Objective Truth’ (27 June 2025), which depicted two people in a sea of contrasting warped floating objects looking nostalgically back to a time of a clearer perspective and a way forward based in objective reality.

In today's world, we find that science is under siege from an ‘anti-science virus of weaponised disinformation’, as discussed in a recent book by two prominent scientists (Mann and Hotez 2025). The post-truth (can I say Trumpian) zeitgeist we find ourselves in, where emotions and personal belief take precedence over science in determining truth, was largely a reaction to the postmodern movement that put equality, diversity and inclusion at the forefront of left-political, university and institutional thinking. But ironically, post-truth is very much postmodern in spirit in its relativist approach to truth-telling.⁵ In other ways, it can be seen as pre-modern, reflecting a medieval time when powerful monarchical and religious figures defined the politics of truth. Such contradictions and paradoxes that Derrida (1993) calls 'aporias' or 'antimonies' capture the ambiguous play of meaning in language and cultural life and are very much what deconstruction is interested to explore.

On the other side, the political right, many would disagree, and the question arises: How is it possible to take this perspective into account if diversity and dialogue are at the forefront? I have addressed this recently in relation to my own personal and professional journey in working with family estrangement over a clash of values (Larner 2025).⁶

5 Knowing Not to Know: A Spectrum

In my writings, I tracked contradictions and paradoxes in relation to deconstructing power and knowledge in family therapy and critical psychology (Larner 1995, 1999) and came up with the idea of ‘knowing not to know’ (Larner 2000). This was like what Barry Mason (1993) calls ‘safe uncertainty’ where therapists utilise their knowledge and ‘expertise to open up space to allow new meaning to emerge’ (p. 37). Paradoxically, therapists know ‘not to know’, which expresses a stance of humility, being open and curious to facilitate dialogue, so others can evolve their knowing as part of a collaborative and dialogic process. But as I saw it this in no way need negate a therapist's prior professional knowledge whether garnered from modern or postmodern theory and practice frameworks.

In deconstructing the binary knowing/not-knowing, it becomes more fluid, allowing one to interact with and inform the other: knowing sits within not-knowing and vice versa. This allows not-knowing to be held up to a standard of what is real and an effective help for persons with mental health suffering, while at the same time, modern knowledge can be applied in a responsive, person-centred, collaborative and not-knowing way in the context of the therapeutic relationship. Here, knowing and not-knowing are cast on a spectrum rather than set in stone as either/or polarities. In this sense, therapists work between knowing and not-knowing in the ‘space between’ of the therapeutic relationship (Flaskas et al. 2005), where both realist and social constructionist perspectives can be utilised much as David Pocock (2024) proposes as a critical realist stance in family therapy.

Also, I have argued that in practice, therapists always carry an implicit ‘knowing’ and work from a position of power based on their professional training, expertise and years of experience, which provides a necessary background for a stance of ‘not-knowing’ to be possible (Larner 1995, 2000). As Flaskas (2002) puts it, ‘we moved to the idea of not-knowing being held together with knowing in the therapeutic process’ (p. 165). I wondered whether being collaborative and not-knowing is as much an attribute of the self, personality and style of the therapist rather than requiring a prior commitment to a social constructionist theory or epistemology? Thus, I found some of my modernist psychology colleagues without systemic training to be curious, conversational and kind of not-knowing as part of their natural therapy style.⁷ Also, some postmodern-informed systemic family therapists could come across as less collaborative and not-knowing than one might expect.

In addition, in my work as a clinical psychologist in mental health settings, there was an expectation and need at times to adopt an interventive expert-driven modern therapy approach, for example, working with violence in families, trauma and suicidal risk, with parents who could benefit from psychoeducation and direct instruction or with depressed teenagers who could respond to approaches such as CBT. From several decades of working with young persons and families in a child and adolescent mental health service, I realised such expertise and knowing could sit within a not-knowing sensibility and be integrated based on what, following Derrida (2000), I termed an ethic of hospitality (Larner 2003). I saw this integration as an ethical positioning that respects, acknowledges and works systemically across and within multiple therapeutic languages and conversations at once (Larner 2009a). What this means is that you are open to whatever therapy discourses are helpful in a practice setting rather than closing off options because of theory. If you have a depressed teenager with serious clinical depression sitting before you with a family and mental health team on high alert you draw upon everything that may prove helpful and effective in terms of the modern science of psychology, therapy or psychiatry, but you aim to apply such knowledge in a systemic, collaborative and not-knowing way.

I argued that to be integrative, which means to ‘make whole’ is to be systemic in that it considers not one or the other but multiple voices as a polyphony of inner and external conversations about what works or is helpful in therapy (Rober 1999; Larner 2009a). As I put it, ‘In a spirit of hospitality, family therapy brings one part of the whole into conversation or dialogue with the other … Family therapy is the wider understanding, the relational movement towards the other, whether at the level of the personal, the theoretical or the political. It opens up not shuts down, borders’ (Larner 2003, 212). In terms of deconstructing theory, the borders include those that mark off and oppose different theory frameworks and what is allowed to be talked about as systemic and family therapy.

In an integrative systemic approach, I argued that modern knowledge could sit within a postmodern framework and vice versa, much like Matryoshka dolls where one doll nests inside the other (Larner 2009a). In this way, knowing can sit inside not-knowing and not-knowing within knowing, that is, a person-oriented, collaborative and dialogic approach that encourages others to have a voice can sit with and within a range of professional training and knowledge, so as therapists, we can be in the best position to be effective and healing in therapy. I believe that this very much captures the integrative approach many practitioners take in family therapy and beyond. A recent example is the realisation that a collaborative person-centred and recovery-focused approach to treating eating disorders is more likely to be helpful than a blanket or rigid application of an evidence-based family intervention such as the Maudsley model (Conti et al. 2017).

6 Deconstructing the Social Constructionist/Realism Binary

So in deconstructing knowledge, not-knowing requires much knowing and professional expertise⁸ and how therapists approach it can be seen in terms of a therapist's ethical positioning in the therapeutic relationship rather than prior commitment to a postmodern theory or epistemology that goes beyond a modern scientific framework: ‘The ethical challenge in psychotherapy is to minimize the therapist's potential to violate the other through therapy, which is an issue for the “post-modern” as much as the “modern” therapist. This is the potential violence of theory, authority, expertise and technology to override the client's contribution to their life narrative’ (Larner 1999, 48). I argued that it was ethics before epistemology where a not-knowing collaborative stance implies not the erasure or suspension of expertise and knowledge but an ethical prescription for how it is used, namely as a basis for dialogue, collaboration and open enquiry in the mutual exploration of meaning. Thus, ‘The therapist's knowledge is still there but deconstructed for the sake of the client's own knowing, power and agency in the therapeutic encounter’ (Larner 2000, 69). Following Derrida (2000), I began to see a collaborative not-knowing stance as an ethic of hospitality and practice (Larner 2003, 2009a) that could be applied to any therapy approach, modern or postmodern, where the therapist still thinks, knows and can be directive or interventive as required⁹ but in a way that is not an abuse of power and influence. As Rober and De Haene (2017) argue, there is an implicit power hierarchy involved in all therapy whether you are not-knowing or not.¹⁰

To be fair, social constructionists such as Harlene Anderson (1997, 2005) acknowledge that not-knowing sits on a bedrock of therapeutic expertise and knowledge. As Anderson (1997) states, ‘I do not challenge that therapists have prelearned knowledge – theoretical and experiential, professional and personal’ (p. 137). Nonetheless the conversation about how postmodern therapists utilise such ‘prelearned’ knowledge is yet to be had within the social constructionist community as far as I am aware. Also as David Pocock (2024) says, ‘… the paradox at the heart of strong social constructionism means that all attempts at such practice inevitably contain, embedded within them, forms of covert realism’ (p. 38). This is precisely what my readings of deconstruction had shown where Derrida emphasised that it is impossible to step outside modernity as we require reason and knowledge to deconstruct (Larner 2010).

It is heartening to see key postmodern therapists today, such as Harlene Anderson (2023) and Gergen and McNamee (2026), adopt a more conciliatory position of coexistence with more traditional modern therapy frameworks. As Gergen and McNamee (2026) recently commented, postmodern therapy ‘does not abolish traditional scientific work nor its various applications to practices of therapy’ but is ‘reflective’ and ‘pragmatic’ in questioning the impact of our theory constructions on ‘human and global well-being’ (p. 51). Likewise, Harlene Anderson (2026) recently described postmodernism as ‘only one perspective among many’ (p. 4), which ‘does not call for the abandonment of traditions that precede it’ but critically questions their assumptions. Similarly, Bergstrom et al. (2026) present open dialogue as an ‘integrative’ approach that ‘enables flexible integration of all existing treatment modalities’ including ‘psychopharmacological and individual therapy approaches’ (p. 303). This certainly fits with the theory perspective I am describing in this paper.

In a sense, this could be a first step to considering the virtues of a critical realist framework in family therapy as outlined by Pocock (2024), one which in no way detracts from a moderate social constructionism but preserves its insights while being more flexible and irreverent about realist assumptions. Against this backdrop, this paper contends that therapies grounded in modernist scientific realism (e.g., ACT, CBT, schema therapy), let alone a range of family therapy approaches with scientific evidential support, as regularly documented by researchers such as Alan Carr (2024, 2025), can and indeed should sit side by side with what Harlene Anderson (2026) identifies as ‘collaborative-dialogic practice’. Here, what requires deconstructing is not modernism but the carving out of theoretical territories that pits one against the other irrespective of the proven benefits to clients. In deconstructing theory, modern and postmodern traditions can sit together for the sake of practice, and this paper offers one integrative approach grounded in the ethics of deconstruction.

From my background in philosophy, I wondered whether the issue between social constructionists and realists arose from confusing epistemology as a theory of how we know the world with ontology, as the study of being or what exists. Thus, to say that the world is a social construction is to make a realist assertion about how the world really is, which is a category mistake that confuses knowledge with what we have knowledge about. Indeed, Roy Bhaskar (Collier 1998) describes this as the epistemic fallacy. This is where the distinction between a moderate and strong social constructionist position (Pocock 2024) is crucial, and it would be helpful to see it taken up and discussed by social constructionist scholars. To say that as relational and dialogic beings we construct our knowledge of the world through language (Anderson 1997; K. J. Gergen 1999) is not to say the world itself is a dialogue or construction. As I put it,

This reduction of ontology or reality to epistemology or knowledge is a form of idealism that pervades both positivist-empiricist and linguistic-poststructuralist philosophies. In its social constructionist form, it mistakes critical epistemology – that knowledge of the world is socially constructed – for ontological relativism – that the world is a social construction and not real in a transcendent or objective sense’ (Larner 2002, 14).

Thus, one would hope that engineers who built the jet you are flying in have tested their model scientifically in the real world and not just constructed it as part of a community sharing a common socially constructed language or theory. Ditto for the medical specialist treating you or a family member as discussed above! Interestingly, Diane Gehart's (2024) ‘unified integrated approach’ to family therapy very much considers the role of scientific evidence-based practice despite her co-editing two books on collaborative practice with Harlene Anderson (Anderson and Gehart 2007, 2023).

As Flaskas (1997) cogently argues, therapy practice confronts the actual lived experience of clients in the real world, which places it outside an exclusive postmodern social constructionist framework. Likewise, Rolf Sundet (2021) notes the postmodern move to language in family therapy neglects the reality of the physical world, including the experience of body: ‘There is something outside language that language feeds on and depends upon. I like to call it reality and although language is an important part of the real, the real is just as much filled with non-meaning, materiality, and causes’ (p. 41). Of course, now many family therapists acknowledge the importance of working beyond language when working with issues such as trauma and abuse from an integrative, body-centred and neuroscience perspective (White and Owen 2022).

To address another myth about deconstruction used to justify an exclusive strong social constructionism, when Derrida (2016) says infamously 'there is nothing outside the text', this does not mean the world is a text, rather that our knowledge of the world is contextual and mediated by an endless play of language, signs, metaphors and deferral of meaning. It is not a statement about ontology or whether the world exists outside our knowing or languaging it. As Christopher Norris, the British literary critic and philosopher and a leading scholar on deconstruction, notes, Derrida was indeed a critical realist (Norris 1997).¹¹ Similarly, philosopher Tim Mooney (1999) recently argued, far from being a textual idealist, Derrida was an empirical realist acknowledging the other as a reality encountered outside language. As Derrida (1984) commented: ‘Every week I receive critical commentaries and studies on deconstruction which operate on the assumption that what they call “post-structuralism” amounts to saying that there is nothing beyond language, that we are submerged in words – and other stupidities of that sort’ (cited in Mooney 1999, 9).

So here, I was both a realist and a social constructionist and as for Pocock (2013, 2024) investigated the writings of Roy Bahskar on critical realism, which like deconstruction offered an opportunity to bridge the two (Larner 2002). Now if hidden within social constructionism is an unstated implicit belief in a real world that exists and stands apart from how we know and construct it through language, then what is deconstructed is not realism or social constructionism but the radical binary of real/socially constructed that keeps them in opposition as either/or rather than seeing them as both/and. This derives from an institutional politics of power requiring us to choose one or the other. Rather, ‘Deconstructing psychotherapy takes place at the level of practice, where it addresses issues of power, justice and ethics in relation to clients, and at the level of theory, where it deconstructs its own power and authority as an institution of psychotherapy’ (Larner 1999, 41).

So, from an ethics first perspective, what is deconstructed is precisely the institutional politics of theory where one language or framework (like modernity or the postmodern or the premodern) seeks to violently replace what has come before it. This idea of many languages being available to family therapy is reflected in Wittgenstein's notion of philosophy as therapy (Kenny 1972), which challenges the idea that words (like ‘family therapy’) stand for a single essence or thing; rather, they point to the many language games in which they occur. It is interesting that while Wittgenstein is used to justify an exclusive social constructionist perspective (Shotter 1999), some philosophers argue he recognised ‘facts of nature’ and describe him as a ‘common sense realist’ (Nyiri 2017).

Quite apart from theory considerations, in my work as a clinical psychologist and family therapy practitioner, I asked myself where posting a modern therapy paradigm into irrelevance would leave my non-family therapy clinical psychology colleagues I worked with every day, let alone most of the psychology profession who remain committed to a modern scientific-realist evidence-based philosophy of therapy (Larner 2011). Also, in my everyday practice, I very much valued what mainstream modern psychological therapy approaches such as CBT, schema therapy, mindfulness and the like could offer clients (Larner 2003, 2022). As mentioned, the field of family therapy appears to be in a post-postmodern phase, we can call integrative (Larner 2022; Lebow 2019; White and Owen 2022), which acknowledges the contribution of a diversity of approaches, theories and epistemologies as part of a broad church or spectrum of ideas.

This still very much includes postmodernist approaches as the recent publication of The Routledge International Handbook of Postmodern Therapies (Smoliak et al. 2026) illustrates. It is inclusive of both modern realist-scientific and postmodern-collaborative therapy approaches where how we think and theorise about systemic and family therapy is systemically moulded to the demands of practice and what our clients need. Thus, Lorås et al. (2023) recently provided a research map for family therapy that draws on both modern scientific quantitative and postmodern qualitative methodologies. What this points to is the need for a both/and approach that recognises the value of both modern and postmodern perspectives in family therapy.

7 Deconstruction as Ethical Irreverence

An essential background to reading Derrida's later work is his definition of deconstruction as justice and ethics under the influence of compatriot Emmanuel Levinas (Critchley 2002; Critchley and Bernasconi 2003; Larner 2008, 2010). Levinas's ethical philosophy was a response to his experience of the reality of the Holocaust where the use of theory as ideology denied the other's ‘right to exist’ (Pollefeyt 2022) and Derrida followed Levinas in adopting an ethical reading of deconstruction (Critchley 2002). For Derrida, deconstruction ‘is hospitality, ethics, or justice, etc.’ (Larner 2011, 831), and as for Levinas, this requires belief in an ontological reality, as to be ethical requires us to respond in the best way possible to the suffering of others, and to do so one is required to know:

In this way the ethical writings of Derrida and Levinas have significant implications for the theory and practice of therapy. As therapists we are obliged to relieve human psychological suffering using the best means and knowledge at our disposal. This doesn't preclude modern scientific knowledge but requires it! Here we do not go beyond a scientific therapy so much as ethically work within it. Instead of seeing a relational paradigm as opposed to a scientific therapy, the idea of the paramodern suggests a way for therapists to radically work within both at the same time. Rather than relational therapists abandoning a scientist-practitioner model, they can point to something else required in the complex equation of therapy, namely, language, dialogue, story, context, and relationship’ (Larner 2011, 835).

In deconstructing theory, whether our thinking is modern, postmodern or post-postmodern (as we can now say) what matters most is the ethics of our knowing, that is, whether we apply our preferred knowledge or theory, modern or otherwise, in a way that does not impose it on others or exclude other voices in the conversation. What we know is less significant than how we know, where the ethics of our knowing is put before epistemology or theory. Whatever the theory, the ethical requirement is to hold it lightly, politely and irreverently and here I linked the systemic idea of irreverence (Cecchin et al. 1992, 1993) to deconstruction as an ethical stance in therapy: ‘The implication of irreverence and deconstruction as more than one language is not that we abandon theory but our prejudices and dogmas and embrace diverse ways of thinking family therapy’ (Larner 2005, 40).

Likewise, contemporary Milan systemic therapy as described by Telfener et al. (2025) puts irreverence as an ethical stance towards theory at the centre of its approach: ‘Ethical, in the sense that it pursues and nurtures biodiversity and plurality of thought, actions, experiences, and points of view, attributing to its own the status of partiality and the awareness of inescapable blindness’ (p. 17). In terms of the ethics of irreverence and deconstruction, whether one identifies as a scientific realist, a critical realist, a social constructionist, a constructivist, a cybernetic theorist or a post-postmodernist and so on, what is crucial is how we hold and use theory in relation to others. This allows a wide net of possible therapy approaches to draw upon and an ecology of parallel theory universes that reflect the complexity of what astrophysics tells us about the world we live in (Larner 2024).

My argument is that in deconstructing theory, we engage practice, as an ethical positioning where a collaborative therapy approach grounded in language and not-knowing (Gergen and McNamee 2026) that sees humans as ‘dialogic beings’ and therapy as a ‘conversational partnership’ (Anderson 2026) can sit with modernist ideas and practices that may be helpful in addressing mental health suffering. And I would say many family therapists particularly those informed by integrative family therapy approaches (Loras and Whittaker 2026) and critical realist perspectives (Pocock 2024) do exactly that.

8 Engaging Practice

To deconstruct theory and engage practice is to hold theory in abeyance whether it is modern, postmodern or post-postmodern, Deleuzian, posthumanist, new materialism, critical realism or even deconstruction. Where theory is open to scrutiny and held lightly or irreverently (Cecchin et al. 1993), practice and the therapeutic relationship are engaged as the main driver of therapy. This assumes a systemic interest and curiosity about all theory positions and frameworks and a willingness to engage in conversation about how each is similar or different. It concerns metatheory or theory about theory in the philosophy of science or how as systemic therapists we position ourselves in relation to theory itself. It allows therapists to test a theory or model in terms of its application to practice as the laboratory to test what treatment approaches, evidence-based or otherwise, fit for which clients (Larner 2004). This deconstructs theory and engages practice in the ethical relation where we apply what is most likely to assist the clients we see and how we can be in the world as ethically responsive beings and therapists. This requires integrating or holding a modern and postmodern theory perspective together as part of a wider conversation about theory.

Where family therapy is open to considering diverse theory frameworks and approaches it acts in the best interests of the profession:

Here narrative and science, qualitative and quantitative research, modern and postmodern perspectives sit together as a necessary tension, sharing an investigative, ethical and pragmatic curiosity about what is helpful in the difficult work of therapy. This collaborative stance does not reject a modern science of psychology and therapy, which would merely perpetuate a relational violence towards what is different or other, but seeks to critique, deconstruct and enrich its institution from within (Larner 2004, 34).

Before concluding, mindful of my own therapy beginnings with which I began this paper, I would like to say something about where this discussion might leave novice family therapists yet to address complex theory differences and still to evolve an integrative approach. As a novice some 5 decades ago, I recall my fascination with the process of learning how to be a therapist, whatever the theory or model. I engaged in multiple therapy approaches at once, including psychoanalytic, gestalt, object relations, structural and experiential family therapy, as well as behavioural psychology approaches. I could dip into and out of these various models depending on the circumstance and wanted to learn them all. I am not sure much has changed, especially as the range of therapies available to the practitioner expands both from within family therapy (think open dialogue) and in the wider mental health field (think trauma-focused work, schema therapy or parts therapy). In some ways, I am still a novice therapist but perhaps a little wiser and grateful for the seminal contributions of authors such as Carmel Flaskas (2002) and Peter Rober (2024) in placing the therapeutic relationship as a central focus, whatever the model. In many ways, it is a collaborative-dialogic approach of authors such as Harlene Anderson (2023, 2026) that offers the best example of this relational focus and offers an excellent opportunity for learning about the therapy process.

However, my advice to novice therapists would be to see theory as a temporary scaffold for the practice of therapy to evolve while staying open to a range of lenses without trying to resolve or integrate them. Rather, to sit with a particular theory as a much-needed structure for learning a therapy approach whether it be systemic family therapy, narrative therapy or collaborative-dialogic practice. This puts engaging practice and learning how to do therapy front of mind where the focus is the therapeutic relationship rather than final commitment to a theory model. Integrative practice can build as one responds to the demands of therapy practice such as evidence-informed work in the contemporary world. This requires sitting with contradictory and competing claims while learning how to feel grounded and comfortable with the therapy process where different theory lenses provide opportunities for learning and being responsive to clients in the best way possible. Here, sitting with complexity and tolerance for difference and multiple viewpoints, as part of the integrative journey of the therapist, may not be that different to the therapeutic journey we invite clients to go on. Here, we invite clients to open their theory about their life journey to scrutiny and the possibility of change where knowing sits with not-knowing and being flexible, irreverent, curious and open to different ways of thinking allows us and them to be in the world in a more ethical and other-oriented way.

This raises the question of what responsibilities trainers, supervisors and more experienced therapists have to encourage beginning therapists to make informed decisions about how they theorise practice at an early stage of their career. The approach to theory as in this symposium can be respectful of competing traditions rather than being prescriptive of one or the other. Theory can be seen as a resource to enhance practice where we tolerate uncertainty and not-knowing as sitting beside therapeutic knowing so that one informs the other. This grounds therapy in the ethics of the therapeutic relationship rather than doctrine, where to deconstruct theory is not to take down and replace one framework with another but to enact an ethic of hospitality that, following Derrida (2000) speaks many languages of therapy and no more just the One. Finally, to teach deconstructive awareness where trainees are taught to critique different theoretical models without rejecting the value within each tradition, whether modern or postmodern.

9 Conclusion

In their book on collaborative-dialogic practices, Anderson and Gehart (2023) invite readers to ask the following question: ‘what does any orientation permit you to do and not do’ (p. 4). In brief, my answer is that while I fully appreciate and value a collaborative-dialogic, social constructionist and narrative perspective of therapy, at the same time I value what a positivist or scientific-realist perspective has to offer for family therapy, and this for what it allows me to do and for the following reasons:

1. I no longer see different philosophical or theory frameworks as being in competition with each other where one replaces or deconstructs the other in the Diggers popular sense outlined at the beginning of this paper.
2. I embrace a multiplicity of theoretical and therapeutic frameworks both within and without family therapy for the sake of engaging practice.
3. Following the ethical philosophy of Derrida and Levinas, I put the ethical relation to the other before theory or epistemology and in terms of practice, this translates to what I can best do to help another person's suffering as I stand face to face with their person in the therapeutic relationship.
4. To deconstruct theory is not to abandon one framework in favour of another or to post anything but to celebrate the multiplicity and diversity of ways of knowing and not-knowing. This is not dissimilar to the idea of systemic and family therapy participating in multiple parallel universes of discourse at once (Larner 2024).
5. I can locate a collaborative-dialogic approach within a modernist realist scientific approach to therapy and live with the dissonance and indeed see such theoretical tension or aporia following Derrida as a part of life and defining of human existence and subjectivity, which reflects the complexity of the work we do as therapists.
6. I accept the contribution of both quantitative and qualitative research in pointing to what is effective in therapy, as outlined by authors such as Lorås et al. (2023).
7. I value an integrated approach to systemic family therapy that is open to what is useful and effective and works across other therapy approaches and frameworks as required.

Harlene Anderson (2023) notes that, 'postmodernism is simply one perspective among many' (p. 4) and does not ‘call for the abandonment of the traditions that precede it’ (p. 4) but is subject to the same critical enquiry as it applies to a modernist realist theory of knowledge and the self. This spirit of open dialogue is exactly what this paper aspires to in referring to deconstructing theory, engaging practice.

10 Postscript

I would like to finish where I began, namely understanding deconstruction in the popular imagination. On the very morning of completing this article, I went out for breakfast ordering Moroccan mushrooms with poached eggs on sourdough but asked for the toast on the side. When the waitress brought it out, she asked whether I ordered a ‘deconstructed’ breakfast (her words not mine). I asked what she meant and she explained the toast on the side instead of everything on top. Marvelling at the coincidence and irony I wondered whether my scholarly work on deconstruction had come back to bite me. I then realised what an excellent metaphor and recipe: modern therapy with postmodern therapy on the side or, if you like, scientific realism with a moderate social construction on the side, and of course both vice versa.