Of Families and Other Cultures: The Shifting Paradigm of Family Therapy
- 1 March 1995
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Wiley in Family Process
- Vol. 34 (1), 1-19
- https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1545-5300.1995.00001.x
Abstract
This essay proposes that family therapy is currently undergoing a paradigm shift as a result of the ascendance of an epistemological focus absent in the foundational works that gave rise to the field's dominant clinical approaches. While systemic metaphors for the family are based on mechanistic, biological, and linguistic models primarily concerned with how the world is (ontology), postmodernism's social constructionist Leanings give primacy to meaning, interpretation, and the intersubjectivity of knowledge (epistemology). Thus, the metaphor of the family as a system is gradually being subsumed by a metaphor that construes families as interpretive communities, or storying cultures. It is suggested that this largely implicit transformation be made explicit in order to explore more fully the clinical implications of the new epistemology.Keywords
This publication has 37 references indexed in Scilit:
- TEMPATIONS OF POWER AND CERTAINTYJournal of Marital and Family Therapy, 1993
- DOING THERAPY: A POST‐STRUCTURAL RE‐VISION*Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 1992
- The application of Michel Foucault's philosophy in the problem externalizing discourse of Michael WhiteJournal of Family Therapy, 1992
- Culture tales: A narrative approach to thinking, cross-cultural psychology, and psychotherapy.American Psychologist, 1991
- The Therapeutic Use of Self in Constructionist/Systemic TherapyFamily Process, 1990
- Further Thoughts on Second‐Order Family Therapy — This Time It's PersonalFamily Process, 1990
- Psychology as StorytellingInternational Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 1988
- Feminism and Family TherapyFamily Process, 1985
- Beyond power and control: Toward a "second order" family systems therapy.Family Systems Medicine, 1985
- The social constructionist movement in modern psychology.American Psychologist, 1985