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Family Therapy: An Intimate History

FAMILY THERAPY: AN INTIMATE HISTORY - A Book Review By John Walter By involving herself in the cutting edge developments within the field of family therapy over the last forty years, Lynn Hoffman provides us with a personal and experiential narrative of the field's development. Her stated intention is a reflective conversation - a revisiting of experiences, ideas, and influential relationships that informed her journey as both a budding and mature family therapist. She does this from two vantage points - as she perceived them at the time and as she perceives them looking back. The journey begins and ends with a Bateson, Gregory Bateson, the anthropologist and theoretician at the beginning, and Mary Catherine Bateson, his daughter at the end. In 1963, Ms. Hoffman became involved with the Mental Research Group in Palo Alto, California, where new work was evolving with Bateson's ideas and concepts from cybernetics and ecology. Working as an editor, she met and worked with Satir, Haley, and Jackson as they struggled to put their ideas in order and in print. Taking inspiration from this ground-breaking work, she followed her husband's career to New York where she initially felt adrift in the rather traditional atmosphere of New York's therapists. She then worked with Edgar Auerswald in his ecosystemic approach to community psychiatry and then Harry Aponte in Philadelphia in Structural Family Therapy. What is enriching about these accounts is how she includes case stories along her journey that give you a full experience of what it was like to work with these innovators and how she experienced their ideas in the therapy room. Ms. Hoffman then describes her experience with the Ackerman Group and how they were experimenting with the Milan Systemic Approach. In describing her using and witnessing this approach, she shares her doubts and questions as well as her excitement with her client's successes. The next turn in development is her exposure to feminism which stirs doubt in the strategizing and expert stance of most family therapy approaches. Specifically, Carol Gilligan, calls into question the theory of a rational-oriented moral development and brings forth an ethic of caring and connectedness. This influence leads Hoffman into constructivism, then to social constructionism and the more collaborative approaches of the late Harry Goolishian and Harlene Anderson as well as the reflecting team of Tom Andersen. The final chapters include her reflections on the new developments of Michael White and David Epston as well as the implications of John Shotter's "knowing of a third kind". This knowing Hoffman describes as a knowing from within a situation, group or social institution. Different from knowing that or knowing how, this knowing comes from sensed feelings and emotions. This latter knowing seems to fit Hoffman's preference for metaphor and poetics rather than strictly linear language. This advancement also allows her to conceptualize emotion as performance and interaction rather than as a state of an individual or one-way expression of something from within. Hoffman also cites her enthusiasm for the current concepts of "generous listening" from Lois Shawver, embracement in place of positive connotation, relational responsibility from Gergen and McNamee, and communal practice. Comments: As I said before, what makes this book an experience rather than an historical account is Lynn Hoffman's making this a personal narrative. The stories of her experiences working with different leaders of the field, as well as the stories of the differences new ideas brought to her cases makes the last forty years come alive. The changes in the field over the past forty years become not just an intellectual development but a personal change. As someone who early on became devoted to the Bateson's ideas and systemic thinking, I read her account as an exciting mystery to see how she struggled out of cybernetics and structuralism to new ways of describing her work. Unlike other personal recollections, Ms. Hoffman does not use her history to aggrandize herself. On the contrary, she cites her gratitude to so many others for their conversations along the way. While the norm in commentaries is to come up with some negative critique, I cannot think of any. I heartily recommend this book. Feedback to www.johnlwalter.com

- A Book Review By John Walter

By involving herself in the cutting edge developments within the field of family therapy over the last forty years, Lynn Hoffman provides us with a personal and experiential narrative of the field's development. Her stated intention is a reflective conversation - a revisiting of experiences, ideas, and influential relationships that informed her journey as both a budding and mature family therapist. She does this from two vantage points - as she perceived them at the time and as she perceives them looking back.

The journey begins and ends with a Bateson, Gregory Bateson, the anthropologist and theoretician at the beginning, and Mary Catherine Bateson, his daughter at the end. In 1963, Ms. Hoffman became involved with the Mental Research Group in Palo Alto, California, where new work was evolving with Bateson's ideas and concepts from cybernetics and ecology. Working as an editor, she met and worked with Satir, Haley, and Jackson as they struggled to put their ideas in order and in print. Taking inspiration from this ground-breaking work, she followed her husband's career to New York where she initially felt adrift in the rather traditional atmosphere of New York's therapists. She then worked with Edgar Auerswald in his ecosystemic approach to community psychiatry and then Harry Aponte in Philadelphia in Structural Family Therapy.

What is enriching about these accounts is how she includes case stories along her journey that give you a full experience of what it was like to work with these innovators and how she experienced their ideas in the therapy room.

Ms. Hoffman then describes her experience with the Ackerman Group and how they were experimenting with the Milan Systemic Approach. In describing her using and witnessing this approach, she shares her doubts and questions as well as her excitement with her client's successes.

The next turn in development is her exposure to feminism which stirs doubt in the strategizing and expert stance of most family therapy approaches. Specifically, Carol Gilligan, calls into question the theory of a rational-oriented moral development and brings forth an ethic of caring and connectedness. This influence leads Hoffman into constructivism, then to social constructionism and the more collaborative approaches of the late Harry Goolishian and Harlene Anderson as well as the reflecting team of Tom Andersen.

The final chapters include her reflections on the new developments of Michael White and David Epston as well as the implications of John Shotter's "knowing of a third kind". This knowing Hoffman describes as a knowing from within a situation, group or social institution. Different from knowing that or knowing how, this knowing comes from sensed feelings and emotions. This latter knowing seems to fit Hoffman's preference for metaphor and poetics rather than strictly linear language. This advancement also allows her to conceptualize emotion as performance and interaction rather than as a state of an individual or one-way expression of something from within. Hoffman also cites her enthusiasm for the current concepts of "generous listening" from Lois Shawver, embracement in place of positive connotation, relational responsibility from Gergen and McNamee, and communal practice.

Comments:

As I said before, what makes this book an experience rather than an historical account is Lynn Hoffman's making this a personal narrative. The stories of her experiences working with different leaders of the field, as well as the stories of the differences new ideas brought to her cases makes the last forty years come alive. The changes in the field over the past forty years become not just an intellectual development but a personal change. As someone who early on became devoted to the Bateson's ideas and systemic thinking, I read her account as an exciting mystery to see how she struggled out of cybernetics and structuralism to new ways of describing her work. Unlike other personal recollections, Ms. Hoffman does not use her history to aggrandize herself. On the contrary, she cites her gratitude to so many others for their conversations along the way.

While the norm in commentaries is to come up with some negative critique, I cannot think of any. I heartily recommend this book. Feedback to www.johnlwalter.com