Cybernetics of Prejudices in the Practice of Psychotherapy

Gianfranco Cecchin, Gerry Lane, Wendel A. Ray, Gianfranco Cecchin, Gerry Lane, Wendel A. Ray

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429912481
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Two central ideas have become part of the orthodoxy of modern family therapy thinking. The first is that the therapist is part of the system he or she observes, and the second is that the therapist and family create a co-evolving reality through their interactions until now. No one has described the process by which these concepts are played out in the course of therapy. Cecchin, Lane and Ray are opening the way for a new field of enquiry in psychotherapy. In this book the authors identify the therapist's values and beliefs which they describe as prejudices, then they identify the equivalent prejudices held by the family, and finally they trace the ways a prejudice from one side affects the other and is, in turn, affected by the other. The book is a blend of theoretical discussion supported by case examples from therapy and the world at large. Readers of this book will discover values about themselves which guide their therapy but have long since been rendered to some unconscious realm: values about certainty, control, accountability and the search for understanding.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

 

 

 

 

 

Even though we, the authors, each have very strong views of how to do therapy effectively, which will be described later, we are no longer trying to seek to capture the “correct” way of doing therapy. This book is not an attempt at inventing a new way of treating clients. There are currently so many therapy models to choose from that we think it important to take a break from hying to create a new model and spend some time considering our position.

Of course, in the end, we anticipate that if one spends time thinking about one’s own position and the prejudices that colour it, a natural consequence may be the creation of an idiosyncratic method. We are definitely not proposing that self-reflection become a new model. Perhaps we are proposing that therapists become more playful and aesthetically curious, playmates of novel ideas, liberated from a Stalinist sense of being prohibited from deviating from orthodoxy. We hope to stimulate ourselves to avoid becoming stymied by the dominant culture, including the prevailing therapy models that we helped to create and perpetuate. How can we come out of the limits of our own creations which can unwittingly dupe ourselves and other well-meaning therapists into contributing to the creation of a culture of dunces, unwilling to move beyond selfestablished limitations?

We believe that acknowledging one’s own prejudices is an act of responsibility. When we think about the idea of responsibility we find it is a very easy thing to say responsibility, but a very difficult thing to be responsible. As Rorty (1991) explains, in many ways the mental health professions have done little to clarify the issue of responsibility:

The increased ability of the syncretic, ironic, nominalist intellectual to move back and forth between, for example, réligious, moral, scientific, literary, philosophical, and psychoanalytical vocabularies without asking the question “And which of these shows us how things really are?—the intellectual’s increased ability to treat vocabularies as tools rather than mirrors—is Freud’s major legacy. He broke some of the last chains that bind us to the Greek idea that we, or the world, have a nature that, once discovered, will tell us what we should do with ourselves. He made it far more difficult than it was before to ask the question “Which is my true self?” or “What is human nature?” By letting us see that even in the enclave which philosophy has fenced off, there was nothing to be found save traces of accidental encounters, he left us able to tolerate the ambiguities that the religious and philosophical traditions had hoped to eliminate. [p.158]

Being responsible is very costly, unusual, and extraordinary. The rare leap into responsibility is so uncommon that it may happen only once in a lifetime—Jesus Christ, Einstein, Marx, Freud are examples of major leaps out of the conventional constructions of reality.

One of the earliest mythologies of irreverence towards the dominant wisdom is the story of Eve rebelling against absolute perfection and the responsibility void of the garden of Eden. By taking the first bite from the forbidden fruit she risked entering into the perilous world of responsibility and accountability. These rare instances of originality inevitably become an orthodoxy. Much of the time the creative flash is fear-evoking, eventually to be absorbed and recycled, becoming the irrefutable truth of the moment, to be flattened out into banality. What begins as imaginative renewal of the human spirit soon becomes the prevailing orthodoxy. We consider this a natural phenomenon which remains a mystery.

How is it that humanity seems to fear these instances of creation? How is it that we succumb to the influences of one thing or another—the market, the profession, the client, the socially con- structed realities that dictate what one should and must be or do? There are many theories—one is the classical systemic idea of homeostasis: the more things change the more they stay the same. Another is chaos theory—the notion that existence is made up of random acts which humans desperately try to organize into coherent and predictable explanations. Another is religious monotheistic fundamentalism—the idea of one God who organizes a grand scheme which we must accept and trust. For the psychologically minded, there is the idea that insecurity creates addiction to orthodox adherence to a particular prejudice. If we adhere to this view it becomes very difficult, even dangerous, to be irreverent to the prevailing truth. These flashes of generativity become ahistorical orthodoxies, detached from the living narrative of the local communities from which they emerged.

We would like to propose the idea of irreverence as a kind of protection from the power of addiction to anything—ideas, love, helping, food, connection, compassion, heroin, therapy, etc.

There are natural consequences to being overly obedient (addicted) to any of the mandates of the various socially constructed realities. Unwittingly one can become detached from the historical process you are involved in at the moment. It can blind you from seeing different options—more novel ways of experiencing life—dulling your sense of being part of the world you live in. It can destroy art and the aesthetic. Taken to the extreme you have whole cultures, such as Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, contemporary Iraq, etc., where deviation from the correct is deemed extremely hazardous to the survival of the state.

The irreverent position we are proposing is not a new idea. In mediaeval times, the feast of fools, or carnival, was a time during which conventional orthodoxies were transcended much in the same spirit and in the same way that we use irreverence.

The suspension of all hierarchical precedence during carnival time was of particular significance. Rank was especially evident during official feasts; everyone was expected to appear in the full regalia of his calling, rank, and merits and to take the place corresponding to his position. It was a consecration of inequality. On the contrary, all were considered equal during carnival. Here, in the town square, a special form of free and familiar contact reigned among people who were usually divided by the barriers of caste, property, profession, and age. The hierarchical background and the extreme corporative and caste divisions of the medieval social order were exceptionally strong. Therefore, such free, familiar contacts were deeply felt and formed an essential element of the carnival spirit. People were, so to speak, reborn for new, purely human relations. These truly human relations were not only a fruit of imagination or abstract thought; they were experienced. The utopian ideal and the realistic merged in this carnival experience, unique of its kind.

This temporary suspension, both ideal and real, of hierarchical rank created during carnival time a special type of communication impossible in everyday life. This led to the creation of special forms of marketplace speech and gesture, frank and free, permitting no distance between those who came in contact with each other and liberating from norms of etiquette and decency imposed at other times. A special carnivalesque, marketplace style of expression was formed. [Bakhtin, 1965, p. 10]

A historical story comes to mind—the tragic tale of Galileo. A very religious man, Galileo felt a great devotion to the church and the Pope, but could not deny what he had demonstrated as a scientist—that the earth revolved around the sun. This dual loyalty led Galileo to be an irreverent man by making public his scientific knowledge, in spite of his desire not to disobey the church. He was asked by the church to declare his discovery a hypothesis, in order to save his life. But to become irreverent to his discovery was too much for him. He chose to be excommunicated, which ultimately contributed to his death. It is interesting that it is only now, 350 years later, that the church has decided Galileo was not guilty of heresy. The tension that lasted such a long time between the orthodox church and science has probably contributed greatly to the development of science, and conversely to the bolstering of the faith of the true believers which grew stronger by having a magnificent enemy in the sciences with whom to keep the debate alive. We wonder whether the church would have forgiven Galileo earlier if science had become part of the church orthodoxy, possibly inhibiting the irreverent spirit on which science thrives.

This oscillation between orthodoxy and irreverence is part and parcel of the drama of living. Both are part of the fabric of human culture, which is immersed in language. Too much orthodoxy can lead to passivity, totalitarianism, numbing of the creative spirit, and eventually violence. Too much irreverence can lead to terror at the thought of having nothing firm to hold on to, to social disintegration (witness the former state of Yugoslavia), and into addiction to messiahs who are beyond accountability, to violence in its many forms.

One may wonder what this has to do with the practice of psychotherapy. Irreverence, perhaps, suggests the possibility of being responsible rather than becoming the dupe of some rigid proscription from one of the many socially constructed realities.

Responsibility is a very difficult feat, which is why we prefer to use the idea of accountability when we talk about therapy. In part, accountability means being aware of the potential dangers of your own prejudices. It also means you have a duty to have colleagues available, behind the mirror, or available for consultation to help you avoid being unknowingly seduced by the power of your own prejudices. Accountability also involves self-survival: protecting oneself from exploitation by clients, employers, colleagues, or others—exploitation that can take on many forms. Prejudices, accountability, and irreverence will be the topics of this volume.

CHAPTER TWO

A theory of
the cybernetics of prejudices

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language provides several definitions for the term prejudice, the second of which fits our use of the term: Prejudice—A preconceived preference or idea. A bias. To elaborate on this brief definition, we are in agreement with Gadamer that the notion of prejudice is not in and of itself a negative thing (Cecchin, Lane, & Ray, 1991, 1992, 1993). Furthermore, we firmly believe that it is useful for therapists to understand what their prejudices are. According to Gadamer:

It is not so much our judgements as it is our prejudices that constitute our being. This is a provocative formulation, for I am using it to restore to its rightful place a positive concept of prejudice that was driven out of our linguistic usage by the French and English Enlightenment. It can be shown that the concept of prejudice did not originally have the meaning we have attached to it. Prejudices are not necessarily unjustified and erroneous, so that they inevitably distort the truth. In fact, the historicity of our existence entails that prejudices, in the literal sense of the word, constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience. Prejudices are biases or our openness to the world. They are simply conditions whereby we experience something—whereby what we encounter says something to us. This formulation certainly does not mean that we are enclosed within a wall of prejudices and only let through the narrow portals those things that can produce a pass saying, “Nothing new will be said here.” Instead we welcome just that guest who promises something new to our curiosity. But how do we know the guest whom we admit is one who has something new to say to us? Is not our expectation and our readiness to hear the new also necessarily determined by the old that has already taken possession of us? [1987]

When we talk about prejudices we mean all the sets of fantasies, ideas, accepted historical facts, accepted truths, hunches, biases, notions, hypotheses, models, theories, personal feelings, moods, unrecognized loyalties—in fact, any pre-existing thought that contributes to one’s view, perceptions of, and actions in a therapeutic encounter. Like Rorty (1989), we believe human prejudices are inevitable and exhibit themselves in language:

All human beings carry about a set of words which they employ to justify their actions, their beliefs, and their lives. These are the words in which we formulate praise of our friends and contempt for our enemies, our long-term projects, our deepest self-doubts and our highest hopes. They are the words in which we tell, sometimes prospectively and sometimes retrospectively, the story of our lives. I shall call these words a person’s “final vocabulary”. [p. 73]

We are interested not only in the prejudices of the therapist, but equally in the biases and beliefs of our clients. Therapy occurs in the interplay of the prejudices of therapist and client—a cybernetics of prejudices. Therapy necessarily involves a constant exchange between therapist and client(s) in which the actions and utterances of one are constantly informed, take on meaning, and are shaped by and shape those of the other. The process is cybernetic in that it is outcomes that shape the behaviour of both therapist and client. That is, the meaning of any behaviour is found within the context of the subsequent behaviour it evokes, whether in oneself or others (Ray & Keeney, 1993).

Accepting, for the moment, this as our working definition of the concept of prejudice, we will begin this discussion by looking at some prevalent prejudices, and some of the consequences of these prejudices, within the field of family therapy, brief therapy, psychotherapy, and Western culture.

THE WOUNDED THERAPIST

We noticed an interesting article in the September 9th, 1992, edition of the New York Times. The story focused on how the personal history of a therapist affected his or her prejudices and practice. Most therapists described in the article thought they had been abused or neglected by their families during childhood. In adolescence or young adulthood these therapists described how they usually had come across someone who had helped them overcome this “mistreatment” by their parents. The story indicated that many of these individuals then became therapists, going into the field of psychotherapy in order to try to offer clients the same help they had received.

A theme implicit in this caricaturization of the life experiences of therapists is the story of helping. Thus we have what are called the helping professions. Quite often, implicit in this theme of helping is the idea that what people need is warmth, understanding, and, at times, even love. This is an extremely powerful and common prejudice within our culture today, and one that many of us therapists share. How did we get to this absurd position?

The belief that people need warmth and understanding seems to be a peculiar evolution from the time Freud developed psycho-analysis, which involved exploring the unconscious life of people in order for them to gain insight into transference relationships. Prior to Freud’s invention of unconscious processes and psycho-analysis, emotional and behaviour disturbances were managed primarily by the church. Th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Editors’ Foreword
• Foreword
• Chapter One Introduction
• Chapter Two A theory of the cybernetics of prejudices
• Chapter Thre Clinical prejudices
• Chapter Four Managing discourse about prejudices: the heart of therapy
• Chapter Five Closing comments on the therapeutically correct
• Epilogue The last family therapist
• References and Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Authors