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Ustfedni knihovna FSS N1U Brno
4240757701
Family Therapy An Intimate History
Books by Lynn Hoffman
1968: Techniques of Family Therapy (with Jay Haley) 1981: Foundations of Family Therapy
1987: Milan Systemic Family Therapy (with L. Boscolo, G. Cecchin, and P. Penn)
1993: Exchanging Voices: A Collaborative Approach to Family Therapy
A NORTON PROFESSIONAL BOOK
Family Therapy An Intimate History
Lynn Hoffman
W.W. Norton & Company New York • London
f
To My Family
.....^Aum\s
Copyr^^b 2002 by Lynn HorBnan
All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Composition and book design by Ecomhnks, Inc. Manufacturing by Haddon Craftsman Production Manager: Leeann Graham
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hoffman, Lynn
Family therapy: an intimate history/Lynn Hoflman. p. cm. "A Norton professional book."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-393-70380-0
1. Family psycholotherapy. I.Title. RC488.5 .H599 2001 616.89'156-dc21 2001044331
WW. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110 www.wwnorton.com
W.W. Norton & Company, Ltd., Casde House, 75/76 Wells Street, London WIT 3QT
4 5 6 7890
Contents
Acknowledgments.......................ix
Introduction..........................xi
1. The Mermaid Tavern...................1
2. Outdoor Therapy....................17
3. The Year of the Rabbit.................37
4. The Ugly Duckling....................53
5. Magnificent Obsessions.................71
6. A Magic Happening....................91
7. The Continental Divide................ Ill
8. The New Paradigm...................129
9. The Reflecting Team..................149
10. You Tell without Telling...............169
11. Sharevision........................185
12. Unforeseen Speech...................201
j Acknowledgments
fJSHow does one acknowledge an entire field? I feel that my book repre-Jc^sents "a great cloud of witnesses," as it says in the Bible: pioneering psychotherapists who insisted on working against our most persistent illusion, the stand-alone self. I wanted particularly to honor three people who are no longer with us: Virginia Satir, whose boldness started me off, E.H. Auerswald, who offered me protection along the way, and Harry Goolishian, who drew me into his enthusiasm for postmodern ideas. I also acknowledge my debt to the mentors who led me through difficult terrain, and the families and couples who helped me to critique my own myths. This book is composed of their stories. In a way, it is a version of my earlier book, Foundations of Family Therapy, except that it is written from a much more personal point of view.
Thanks also to Mary and Kenneth Gergen and Sheila McNamee for their encouragement, and to Mary Catherine Bateson for her inspiring example. I must also mention the American Society of Cybernetics, which has continued Bateson *s tradition of inquiry under the aegis of its three wise men: Heinz von Foerster, Humberto Maturana, and Ernst von Glasersfeld. Other inspirers include artist Richard Baldwin, who was a longtime partner in unorthodoxy; Cathy Taylor and the MOSAIC mothers; Michael White, a tender therapist but a tough theorist; and Tom Andersen, Peggy Penn, and Judith Davis, wonderful practitioners, beloved colleagues, and
x Acknowledgments
unfailing friends. Readers of this book will meet many other unusual talents who contributed to my education. An alternative subtide for the book would be A Family Therapist Learns How.
As for the people in publishing who helped me, I want to thank Jo Ann Miller for keeping a place at the table for me at Basic Books until that place expired, and Susan Munro, for leading me to Norton, and being my editor. As for the process of putting the book into print, let me thank Professional Books director Deborah Malmud, associate editor Regina Dahlgren Ardini, and editorial assistant Anne Hellman, who have managed to compress the bookmaking time to a fast six months. I also want to thank my writer friend Jane O'Reilly for leading me to computer wizard Craig Smith, who created the original idea for the cover design, and poet/painter Cooper Edens, who gave permission to use one of his pictures.
Lasdy, I want to thank my daughters, Martha and Livia Hoffman, who read parts of the manuscript and gave me good advice, and my ex-husband, Ted Hoffinan, for his unceasing moral support. I have one more daughter, Joanna, who is estranged from me, but her clear spirit lives at the heart of this book and gives me hope.
—Lynn Hoffman, Northampton, Mass.
Introduction
My Mother's Ashes
This book traces my journey from an instrumental, causal approach to family therapy to a collaborative, communal one. When I first became acquainted with the field in 1963,1 assumed that a therapist was supposed to fix a system that was in trouble. Over the course of time, the description of the problem changed from a maladaptive behavior to a dysfunctional family structure to an outmoded belief. In all these cases, however, the therapist placed herself outside the arrangement in question.This assumption of objectivity led to a therapist stance that was aloof and distancing, but it was congruent with the rational, scientific norms of the day.
By the seventies, I became aware of a shift in the Zeitgeist. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1972) had already cast aspersions on the Newtonian mind-set, with its dreams of controlling the physical universe. Cognitive researchers like Humberto Maturana, Heinz von Foerster, and Ernst von Glasersfeld went on to challenge the idea that we can ever know what is really "out there," because our perceptions are filtered through the sensory screens of the nervous system. Paul Watzlawick (1984), one of the early researchers in family communication, summed up this situation by describing the knower as the pilot of a ship that is navigating a difficult channel at night. If he gets through successfully, he does not know what was really there, only that he has not hit a rock.