Towards a common ground in psychoanalysis and family therapy: on knowing not to know

Abstract

In this paper a common ground between psychoanalysis and family therapy is discussed in terms of postmodern theorizing in both disciplines. Recent systemic, narrative or social constructionist thinking in psychoanalysis and a psychoanalytic turn in family therapy offers the possibility of a shared epistemology. This is described in terms of a critical not‐knowing stance which allows for the therapist’s/analyst’s contribution of meaning, interpretation and knowledge in therapeutic conversation. Here the holding of not knowing and knowing together provides a narrative container for personal meaning and thinking to develop. This ‘knowing not to know’ is what a postmodern psychoanalysis has in common with family therapy: both are ways of being with persons to help them develop and hold their own knowing. This therapeutic process is illustrated in a clinical vignette of narrative child family therapy. For what one knows does not belong to oneself. (Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, p. 898)

Colliding Intersubjectivites: Transparency in Analytic Couple Therapy

“…This experience of the coming together, of what appeared in the earlier years to be two diametrically opposing paradigms, is now not unique. The notion that analysts are working more systemically and relationally, and that couple therapists are turning to analytic ideas to enrich their work, is well addressed by Clulow (), Flaskas (, ), Glasgow (), and Larner (). These authors describe how contemporary family therapists and analysts share a common investment in core conceptual ideas such as constructionism; subjectivity and intersubjectivety; the capacity to tolerate doubt; the collaborative alliance; and the repetition compulsion.…”

Considerations for a discourse of collaboration in counseling

“…Anderson, 1997;Anderson & Goolishian, 1992;Guilfoyle, 2003;Laitila, 2009;Larner, 2000;Rober, 2005). Expertise, for those taking exception to this aphorism, is a clear marker of where real power lies in the counseling relationship, presumably because clients contract with counselors to proffer understandings and prescribe actions from their expertise.…”

Looking again at the team dimension in systemic psychotherapy: is attending to group process a critical context for practice?

“…Pocock (2006), in an attempt to correct what he terms ‘common active misunderstandings’ within the family therapy field, describes six key ideas from psychoanalytic psychotherapy, engagement with which, he argues, may ultimately enrich family therapy. In a similar vein Larner (2000) argues that the influence of postmodernism on both family therapy and psychoanalysis has led to a bringing together of the two approaches with a common emphasis on the therapeutic relationship, narrative and language. In addition, others have attempted to move to integrationalist models combining systemic and psychoanalytic ideas in practice; for example, the Group Relations approach pioneered by the Tavistock Institute among others.…”