Para‐Modern Family Therapy: Deconstructing Post‐Modernism

Abstract

As in the arts and humanities and other social sciences, post‐modernism is quickly gaining orthodoxy in family therapy. This paper presents a social‐realist and deconstructive critique of recent post‐modern thought in family therapy. From the perspective of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, it suggests that family therapy is neither modern nor post‐modern, but both/and these alternatives, that is, para‐modern. In deconstructive thought, philosophical dualities like realism/social constructionism, cybernetic/post‐cybernetic, systemic/narrative co‐exist in an absurd double logic. Like writers of literature, the para‐modern family therapy ‘puts forward’ a theory or method not as an ideology of truth, but as a play of irony. She/he works simultaneously inside and outside family therapy discourse, open to a wide range of images and metaphors.

The real as illusion: deconstructing power in family therapy

“…Unlike poststructuralist attempts to deconstruct, i.e. take apart, the foundations of Western culture, Derrida's work does not destroy anything (Larner, 1994a). The dominant order is not simply reversed, but opened up to ambiguity and indecidability (Gane, 1989).…”

“…Elsewhere (Larner, 1994a) , or narrative for that matter (Gergen and Kaye, 1992), is deconstructed into the availability of 'a wide range of metaphors' (Larner, 1994a). As Bateson (1979) said: 'two descriptions are better than one' (p. 209).…”

“…Paradoxically, the very desire of postmodernists to break with modernism takes them further into it (Larner, 1994a). After all, the modern (from Latin mod0 meaning 'just now') was defined as a break with past medieval and pre-modern ways of thinking (Borgmann, 1992).…”

“…It is both real and illusory. Like * Similarly, the discourse of social constructionists is inevitably contaminated by talk of what is real (Larner, 1994a). As D. Johnson (1993) notes, all theories of knowledge -social constructivism included -presuppose an ontology or metaphysics of the real.…”

“…Simply put, I have great respect for and utilize all metaphors and approaches to family therapy (Larner, 1994a). My work is motivated by a belief that change is a 'many-sided', even miraculous, affair that can come from therapy as from life (Larner, 1994b).…”