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This special edition has been long in the making and it is my honour and great pleasure to present it to you now.I will talk about the length of its making later since I would rather start with my excitement at its publication. This collection of articles showcases some of the complex work that has populated the world of family therapy in Latin America; 1 a work that, although aware of practices in the North, 2 has its own traditions and engagements with systemic ideas and its own unique geopolitical circumstances informing its own developments in theory and practice. In this sense then, and strictly speaking, this special issue is not just a post-colonial or a decolonial critique of the field since it also has a constructive element: it attempts to affirm difference by rescuing practices that, albeit highly complex and with a nuanced sense of what constitutes systemic work as I hope the reader will appreciate, it is grounded in a reality that is of the South, … of Latino America.

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This paper is the result of our increasing interest in the experience of illness in families and the concomitant reflections on how best to therapeutically support these families through this process. This interest led us to reflect on the nuanced way in which language establishes a play with the experience of illness, a play that can amplify or reduce its effects. Such an interplay in turn led us to consider the valuable role that family therapists have in helping families and treating practitioners to create a safe space for conversation about illness. Further questions are also explored in relation to whether there is a role for family therapists in facilitating the interface between our clinical practice with clients and the wider treating medical community. And, if so, what shape would such an interface take? Considerations at this level would include the anticipation of psychological reactions to diagnosis of chronic and life-threatening illnesses, in particular the importance of 'normalisation' of the psychological reactions to such chronic and/or life threatening diagnoses; the complex dynamics emerging from the interface between the effects of illness in the subjectivity of the ill person and the grief experienced by the other family members; different family members' narratives of the illness; relevant community contexts; and, lastly, ways to help the family members and/or the ill person navigate the medical system including the use of second opinions, cyberspace information, and other systems in their ecology, such as the spiritual dimension. Some aspects of children's narratives of illness are also identified. The paper has been organised around the dialogue that the authors had around one of their clinical cases.1 The article provides an in-depth discussion of a clinical case with direct relevance to practitioners. 2 The article provides a good example of reflective systemic practice. 3 The article provides a good application of social constructionist and narrative ideas. 4 The article also provides post-structural considerations on diagnosis and its limitations. 5 The article provides a number of practical implications relevant to the field.

This paper aims to introduce key Deleuzian concepts as they engage with the discipline of psychology. This will be done through an exploration of his work, in particular the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia co-written with Felix Guattari. As with Deleuze’s project itself, the paper has a critical element and a constructive one. Critically, it identifies the concerns that Deleuze alerts us in relation to the three main traditions within psychology (behaviourism, psychoanalysis and phenomenology) and provocatively introduces the notion of stupidity to signal the ways in which psychology has lost its intellectual horizon, by putting itself at the service of State and religious norms through a number of assumptions that are taken for granted, assumptions that constitute the silent and insidious common and good sense that holds the so called ‘rational project’ glued together in modern science.The second, more constructive, part aims to introduce key elements in Deleuze’s project as a way to engage with the possibilities that Deleuze brings to the discipline. The elements considered include a shift from an emphasis on epistemology to metaphysics, the centrality of difference (and variation) instead of identity (and stability), a shift to a relational type of knowledge rather than one that is representational and the articulation of the tensions between history and processes of emergence (becomings). Ultimately, the Deleuzian provocation to the discipline is to engage with a psychology to come through the articulation of a renewed and radical empiricism.