I have read the special issue of Forum and really appreciated the fact
that critical voices within clinical psychology were getting a platform.
I personally find that I am becoming increasingly critical and 'social' in
my practice; a stance that makes a lot of sense working in a learning
disability team with poor white and Bangladeshi individuals and families
in the East End of London.
I wanted to raise a query about whether systemic family therapy approaches
mesh well with a community/social materialist/critical perspective. One
of the articles was very critical of narrative therapies, like systemic
family therapy an approach that owes a fair bit of its theoretical
underpinnings to social constructionism, implying that they focused on
enabling people to change their stories about themselves without really
examining their social positions and the wider disadvantages that might be
affecting their wellbeing (makes narrative therapy sound like CBT which
I'm not sure is entirely fair). The author(s) also raised problems with
the underlying moral/ontological relativism of social constructionism.
The article (was it by Bob Diamond? Not sure as I've misplaced my copy)
implied that it was going to look at systemic approaches too, but didn't
get round to it.
Systemic approaches have given me the opportunity to look at people's
social position with them, as well as the chance to be explicit about the
impact of racism, sexism and discrimination against disabled people; to
critique professional power and focus on family's strengths and resources.
By the way, I do think you can be a social constructionist and still
accept that there are structural inequalities which stand in the way of
fair access to social and economic benefits.
Any thoughts on this? One of my responses to the special issue, which I'm
sure has been often lobbed at critical/community approaches is that it was
strong on critique and analysis, but left me wanting more ideas about
interventions. could systemic approaches fill some of that gap?
Deborah
___________________________________
COMMUNITYPSYCHUK - The discussion list for community psychology in the UK.
To unsubscribe or to change your details visit the website:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/COMMUNITYPSYCHUK.HTML
For any problems or queries, contact the list moderator at [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
|