Refiguring Family Therapy

Abstract

Postmodernism involves the view that knowing is subjective or interpretive. Narrative therapy, which draws on this approach, places emphasis on the interpretation of the client’s subjective experience—the intrapsychic perspective. This perspective, which represents a return to an earlier development, is however not a logical or necessary consequence of postmodernism. In refiguring family therapy/psychology, and thus going beyond narrative therapy, what remains to be determined is how postmodernism as well as the phase of development from the intrapsychic to interpsychic perspective—as incorporated by general system theory (i.e., the interactional approach)—can be applied in a meaningful and integrative way.