Science and Family Therapy

Abstract

Family therapists are being exhorted to adopt a social constructionist epistemology and to abandon science as a valid form of knowing. Epistemological objections to science are usually directed at ‘positivism’, an outmoded view that is largely discredited among practising scientists. Contemporary science, is rather, constructionist, differing from other constuctionist approaches only in ways of arbitrating between world views. Criticisms aimed at science apply to all forms of discourse, including family therapy. I conclude that science has failed family therapy at the practical, not the philosophical level.

How to be a postmodernist: a user’s guide to postmodern rhetorical practices

“…The shift to postmodernism may be read as a change in the forms of knowledge resulting from changes in the operation of power in contemporary society. The combination of the general crisis of legitimization (Lyotard, 1984) and a local failure to develop coherent legitimizing discourse within science (Legg, 1997) has diverted power from professional groups such as family therapists to clients acting as consumers. Cynics might think that postmodern discourse allows family therapists to retain their right to practise and society at large to retain their services to enforce what some might think to be a conservative social agenda (Hare-Mustin, 1994;Kogan, 1998).…”

Psychoanalysis and Family Systems Revisited: the Old, Old Story?

“…The phrase 'intuitive psychology' is not intended to be dismissive (and the ideas being referred to here are akin to those more extensively developed by Legge, 1997). Family systems therapy invokes ideas about the human condition which, like psychoanalytic psychotherapy, are based upon what can also be seen as a particular (now old-fashioned) version of scientific thinking and procedure.…”