COLLABORATIVE THERAPY:RESPONDING TO THE TIMES心理学空间

COLLABORATIVE THERAPY:
RESPONDING TO THE TIMES

Harlene Anderson, PhD.

Houston Galveston Institute
Taos Institute

“How can our therapy practice have relevance for people’s everyday lives in our fast changing world, what is this relevance, and who determines it?” is a persistent question for collaborative therapists and a question that I think all therapists should be asking. Why?

We live in such a fast-changing world that is characterized by global and local shift--social, cultural, political, and economic transformations as well as the influence of the internet and media on the decentralization of information, knowledge, and expertise. Equally important, there is an international spotlight on democracy, social justice, and human rights; the importance of the people’s voice, singular or plural; and the need for collaboration. People around the world increasingly want input into what affects their lives; they have lost faith in rigid institutions and practices in which being treated as numbers and categories ignores their humanity or worse yet, violently violates it. They demand systems and services that are more flexible and respectful. These shifts, the unavoidable complexities inherent in them, and the effects they have on our individual and communal lives and on our world press therapists to reassess how we understand the world around us, our clients, and our roles as therapists. Collaborative therapy is a response that shares common ground with a growing international community of practitioners and clinical scholars including Tom Andersen, Vivien Burr, John Cromby, Kenneth Gergen, Mary Gergen, Lynn Hoffman, Lois Holzman, Imelda McCarthy, Susan McDaniel, Sheila McNamee, Robert Neimeyer, David Nightingale, Peggy Penn, Sallyann Roth, Jaakko Seikkula, John Shotter, Lois Shawver, and Michael White.

Though Collaborative Therapy and other approaches sometimes referred to as dialogical therapy, conversational therapy, open dialogue, and reflecting process therapy are often seen as new approaches to therapy, the assumptions about knowledge and language that they draw from have been present within philosophical discourses since the eighteenth century beginning with the historian Giambattista Vico’s notion that the observer is part of the description. Other seminal authors in this philosophical movement include Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Derrida, Hans George Gadamer Jean Francois Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Lev Vygotsky, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, to mention a few. In psychology, similar assumptions were introduced with George Kelley’s personal construct theory and other constructivists who disclaim a tangible, external reality. This direction in family therapy was strongly influenced by Gregory Bateson and his Palo Alto, California colleagues, along with others such as Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster, and Ernst von Glasersfeld: all challenge us to leave our current “thinking boxes” and to change the way that we “see” things and consequently our “way of being.”

Collaborative Therapy as presented in this article has evolved over time with its roots tracing back to the 1950’s Multiple Impact Therapy project in Galveston, Texas (MacGregor, Ritchie, Serrano, McDanald & Goolishian, 1964). Its evolution over the years has been continually influenced by the reflexive nature of theory and practice (Anderson, Goolishian, Pulliam & Winderman, 1986; Anderson & Goolishian, 1988, 1992; Anderson, 1997, 2006). Because a large percentage of the Galveston team’s clinical and consultation practice then--and that of the Houston Galveston Institute afterwards--included a large percentage of people who are commonly called “treatment failures,” we have continued to seek out how our therapy could have more relevant and effectiveness for these people. This ambition and curiosity have led to lessons learned from over 25 years of inquiry into client’s experiences, and descriptions of the nature of successful and unsuccessful therapy and the advice that clients—the true experts--have had for therapists (Anderson, 1996, 1997; Anderson & Goolishian, 1992). As well, we have been led to a therapy that is more spontaneous, flexible, and fitting to the uniqueness of each client that we meet and to their novel circumstances.