Muddles, Bewilderment, and Practice Theory

Abstract

"Useful distinctions in conceptual schemes lead to explanatory or descriptive metaphors that have a clear form. Muddles, on the other hand, are created when useful distinctions that could be drawn are not[,] or when an unnecessary distinction is drawn" (5, p. 71; italics omitted), or when when a useful distinction is minimized or blurred. The field of family therapy (particularly its theories), as a whole, has various muddles of each kind. The purpose of this essay is to describe some of these muddles (in the field and its theories) and to suggest that the distinctions (a) between descriptions of doing therapy that exclude the therapist and descriptions of doing therapy that include the therapist (1, 5-9, 11), (b) between explanation and description, and (c) between ideology and grounded theory, are useful, and that in de-radicalizing and minimizing these distinctions, these differences creates mayhem and muddle--a veritable fog of non-clarity.