Mapping and/or Discovering Meaning in Family Therapy: An E-Mail Conversation

• Published in: Family process Vol. 36; no. 2; pp. 127 - 132
• Main Authors: BEELS, C. CHRISTIAN, KOGAN, STEVEN M., GALE, JERRY E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01-06-1997; Blackwell
• Subjects: Anthropology, Cultural; Biological and medical sciences; Client Relations; Communication; Conjoint Therapy; Family psychotherapy. Systemic therapy; Family Therapy; Family Therapy - methods; Humans; Medical sciences; Narratives; Postmodernism; Professional-Family Relations; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psychotherapies. Psychological and clinical counseling; Research Design; Treatment Methods; Treatments; Human; Therapeutic process; Treatment; Family psychotherapy; Critical study; Conversation; Therapeutic relation; Content analysis
• ISSN: 0014-7370; 1545-5300
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1997.00127.x

Editor's Note: Because of the provocative and stimulating nature of the study reported on by Steven Kogan and Jerry Gale in their article “Decentering Therapy,” I have invited one of our Advisory Editors, Chris Beels, to provide some comments about the study and its implications. However, rather than use the standard for mat of a formal “Commentary,” followed by an “Authors' Response,” Beels, Kogan, and Gale have instead carried out a series of e‐mail exchanges, with reactions and responses going back and forth in the form of a dialogue. What follows is a slightly edited version of their conversation. As you will see, this exchange has afforded Beels, Kogan, and Gale the opportunity not only to critique each other's ideas, but also to raise questions and to puzzle together about the linkages that might be forged between the Kogan and Gale study and earlier therapy process research carried out by Beels using Scheflen's context analysis techniques. The use of a conversation format seemed more consonant with the research being discussed, research that urges a stance of openness and curiosity rather than formal hypothesis testing and closure. Hence my decision to endorse this experiment in “commentary as conversation,” rather than “commentary as debate.” What follows is the first three rounds of this “conversation,” with the “roughess” of ordinary e‐mail communications retained, but with some minor editing in order to facilitate clarity and narrative flow.