Conversation, Language and Possibilities. A Postmodern Approach to Therapy

Abstract

HARLENE ANDERSON: Conversation, Language and Possibilities. A Postmodern Approach to Therapy. New York: Basic Books, 1997, xIx + 307 pp., $38.00 ISBN 0-465-03805-0. We have looked for years to Houston Galveston Institute in Texas and its main authors Harlene Anderson and Harold A. Goolishian to demonstrate implications of postmodern thinking for process of psychotherapy. Harold Goolishian died recently and Anderson dedicates Conversation, Language and Possibilities, which summarizes their common work with its innovative ideas, to his memory, as her friend, colleague and mentor. It is a book worthy of his memory. Conversation-is framed by story of a family that had unsatisfactory family therapy and it could almost be viewed as an answer to challenges and criticisms raised by this family. Actually, all along, Anderson as a seasoned educator, poses questions and then proceeds to answer them, appropriately reflecting central importance of good questions in therapy, discussed later in book. Several important questions, as well as answers, are presented through client stories. The author solves difficult issues of confidentiality by using only cases that were already in public domain, such as videotapes of consultations and live interviews during conferences and workshops. Questions are chosen to lead us from one theoretical principle to next, in a welcome linear fashion, but many concepts also reappear several times in different contexts, adding some unnecessary redundancy, yet lending circular feeling of psychotherapy to book. Conversation, Language and Possibilities starts with an historical review of development of therapy within modernist paradigm. It leads us through gradual transformation of psychodynamic thinking, starting with radical innovations of systemic approach, giving a nod to communication theory and first- and second-order cybernetics until it lands at contemporary hermeneutics and social constructionism as two philosophical movements Anderson considers most representative of postmodern paradigm. In first 50 pages of Part I: Creating Space. The Give and Take of Theory and Practice, we are treated to entire context for new approach to helping people, yet another the medium is message move, since contextual understanding is a central postmodern axiom-[U]understanding is linguistically, historically, and culturally situated (p. 39) and meanings are context-dependent (p. 206). Part II-with a title that is too cumbersome to reproduce-introduces, or else re-emphasizes and carefully explains most important therapeutic ideas we have learned about through author's many articles. A tentative incomplete list includes concept of a problem-determined system with a shifting and fluid membership; approaching a client from a knowing position; therapy as a collaborative partnership; problems as linguistic events that are socially constructed; client as conversational partner and teacher; therapist as a welcome guest. Central is view of therapy as a process of internal and external conversations. Anderson defines a dialogical conversation ... [as] a generative process in which new meanings-different ways of understanding, making sense of, or punctuating one's lived experiences-emerge and are mutually constructed (p. 109). The author draws an interesting contrast between conversations in which new meaning emerges and monological conversations in which this is not case, a distinction that pervades all our social encounters. Important here is concept of shared inquiry (p. 112) and talking with . . . rather than to each other (p. 112). Part III, Searching for Meanings in Meanings returns to, and expands on, philosophical basis of this whole approach and its interface with psychotherapy. …