Training Tales in Family Therapy: Exploring the Alexandria Quartet

Abstract

Educatorsfrequently consider live supervision as the method of choice in facilitating an epistemological shift for family therapy graduate students. In this article, excerpts from a novel serve as an additional training tool to enhance graduate students' understanding of complex systemic approaches to therapeutic interaction. Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet reveals epistemological concepts relevant to family therapy in its portrayal of the richness of multiple voices and a lack of certainty about predictable outcomes. Family therapy doctoral students studied a didactic module based upon passages from the Quartet; descriptive evaluation of this particular training experience suggests how literature can be useful in facilitating an epistemological shift that is often a challenge to family therapy graduate students and educators.Once upon a time, in a freshman English class, my instructor turned me on to The Alexandria Quartet, a captivating tetralogy by Lawrence Durrell (1 961 a, 1961b, 1961c, 1961d). This intriguing story, told from multiple perspective and time sequences, became a prime source of enlightenment as I embarked upon my adult life. Little did I know that rereading the Quartet 20 years later would provide a relationship between literature and family therapy as I struggled to assimilate new epistemological concepts from course work and live supervision during my doctoral training. An integral part of my studies involved reading Gregory Bateson's (1972) ideas about the corrective aspect of aesthetic formats in Steps to an Ecology of Mind and seminar discussions about isolated versus integrated ways of knowing. I flashed back on the Quartet as an illustrative example of what I was learning, found gaps in my understanding, and thereby enhanced my grasp of family therapy. How and to what degree, I wondered afterward, would this and other literature benefit students similarly experiencing an epistemological shift.

Patterns of systemic interviewing in the investigation of a death: Using systemic family therapy concepts to illustrate how death investigators approach families in the aftermath of an unexpected death.

“…Family therapists have a history of borrowing or expanding metaphors from such diverse disciplines as physical science (de Shazer, 1991), cybernetics (Golann, 1987; Keeney, 1983), art (Johnson, 1992), and literature (Johnson, 1993; Kaufman, 1995; White & Epston, 1990), while also recognizing the basic importance of verbal skills and questioning ability in the training of clinicians (Fleuridas, Nelson, & Rosenthal, 1986; Rambo, 1989). Systemic clinicians appreciate the value of refined, creative, and effective interviewing skills which can be used in diverse settings.…”