Point of View Matters: Seeing, Hearing and Acting in Systemic Practice

ABSTRACT

While systemic thinking permeates the fields of couple, family, behavioral, ecological, medical, government, business and political sciences, appreciation of the implications of fundamental presuppositions can be obscured with the passage of time, the emergence and resurgence of alternative approaches. Previously unpublished documents preserved in the Don D. Jackson Archive, will be used as points of reference to discuss elemental presuppositions of the MRI Interactional View from which much of current day systemic practice derive.

KEYWORDS:

• Defining the nature of relationships
• influence of therapist’s view point
• interaction

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wendel A. Ray

Wendel A. Ray, PhD, Hanna Spyker Eminent Scholar and Endowed Chair, and Professor of Family System Theory in the Marriage and Family Therapy Programs at The University of Louisiana – Monroe (ULM), and a Senior Research Fellow at the Mental Research Institute (MRI).

Eric Trappeniers

Eric Trappeniers is a therapist, supervisor and teacher of systemic couple and family therapy, Founder and Director of the Institut d’études de la famille, with offices in Toulouse and Lille France, and Luxembourg, Switzerland.

David Hale

David Hale, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Interim Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program(s) at the University of Louisiana – Monroe (ULM).