The Therapist's Inner Conversation in Family Therapy Practice: Struggling with the complexities of therapeutic encounters with families / Das innere Gespräch des Therapeuten in der familientherapeutischen Praxis: Schwierigkeiten mit der Komplexität therapeutischer Begegnungen mit Familien / Los diálogos internos del terapeuta en la práctica de terapia de familia: Luchando con las complejidades de los encuentros terapéuticos de familia / La

Abstract

Notwithstanding the complexity of family therapy practice, family therapists do not have a lot of concepts at their disposal to talk and reflect about their experiences in practice. Family therapy literature provides some general principles about the therapist's stance (for example, neutrality, curiosity, and notknowing), but these fail to deal with the full complexity of the relational processes within a family therapeutic encounter in practice. The concept of the therapist's inner conversation offers more promise than these general principles and guidelines, as it addresses the mutuality and shared activity of the therapist's self within the complexity of family therapy practice. In this paper the author first outlines a dialogical perspective on family therapy. Then the spotlight is put on the contribution that the notion of the therapist's inner conversation might make in dealing with issues of the person of the therapist in practice, and especially in addressing the complexity of what it means to be a family therapist in practice. In the last part of the paper a case history is presented that illustrates how the concept of the therapist's inner conversation can help practitioners to talk and reflect about some of the experienced, but unnoticed aspects of their self in therapy practice.