A Galveston Declaration
Family Therapy is experiencing another significant transformation!
A Galveston Declaration
Family Therapy is experiencing another significant transformation!
Family Therapy is experiencing another significant transformation!
Family Therapy is experiencing another significant transformation!
Family Therapy started in the 1960s as an exciting and innovative field that developed into a very generative paradigm for working with human systems. Persons were seen less as individuals and more as a component part of a dynamic family system. For several decades the construct and practice of family therapy became one rallying point for an international community of creative professionals. However, it no longer exists as a singular source of inspiration. The field of family therapy has reached a plateau, and the idea of family therapy is now at risk for constraining further innovative developments. We believe it is time to liberate ourselves from such constraints and move more fully into the flourishing of alternative understandings of persons and communities in relationship.
The traditional experience of “family” is also transforming. In the 1960s people largely made up their lives and identities within their work and family systems. These days, the interactions through which people construct their lives and identities are much wider, spanning peer groups, online buddies, colleagues, social media contacts, socioeconomic conditions, genders, ethnicities, racial differences, religions, politics and policies, as well as within families. We want to explicitly leave behind the notion of family as the primary social unit for understanding persons in context. Families are only small parts of many much larger overlapping socio-cultural human systems.
“Therapy” is also transforming. The word therapy implies sickness, deficit, dysfunction, and/or wrongness that needs to be cured or to change, and has all too often contributed to processes of objectifying, pathologizing, and/or diminishing others in hierarchical power structures of helper/helped relationships. Many of us who have grown up professionally in the context of family therapy now stand against these processes as much as possible, and instead stand for more mutual recognition, mutual acceptance, mutual learning, and mutual acknowledgement. In addition, much of our work is now done outside contexts labelled as therapy – including social work, coaching, team development, education, recovery - anywhere where people are looking to move forward.
So in this sense, family therapy may be experiencing another significant transformation. A blossoming collection of empowering practices have emerged which build upon many ideas from family therapy. While these practices have various names (narrative, collaborative, solution-focused, systemic, feminist, multicultural, justice-focused, etc.), we believe they jointly aspire towards many of the preferred values outlined below. We would like to propose a shift in our collective identity and priorities from ‘family therapy’ to a yet-unnamed cluster of preferred attitudes, values, and interpersonal commitments. Some of these values are listed below. They are deliberately organized and presented in contrasting counterpart pairs. While we accept a both/and perspective and acknowledge legitimate ethical enactment of either counterpart in particular circumstances, we explicitly embrace a clear preference for the counterpart on the left hand side more than the one on the right hand side.
This statement of values is presented in four categories, to help the reader navigate and explore them. The four categories speak to the notion of choice in the context of social heterogeneity. While there may be many ways of looking and seeing, some are more preferable in relation to the ultimate human goal of creating a sustainable ecology for human growth and development. The first category (pluralism) is about preferred ways to handle differences of view, giving more value to the personal, and acknowledging difference. The second category (flux) is about preferred ways of being in the world, as well as preferred ways of facilitating the becoming (by which we mean the growth and development toward ecologically valid preferences) of others, as opposed to assuming that aspects are fixed and unchangeable. The third category (opening space) is about the value of expanding choice for those we work with, as against imposing our own choices and assumptions. The fourth category (responsibility) is about preferred ways of enacting an ethic of care at the social level by looking for efficacy and possibility rather than dysfunction and deficit.
Table 1
Declaration of values
We Value This: | More Than This: |
---|---|
PLURALISM – differences of view | SINGULARITY - of view |
1. Acknowledging multiple “truths” | 1. Holding to a singular firm belief |
2. Responsiveness to particularities in context | 2. Applying generalities (including diagnosis) |
3. Exploring multiple social realities | 3. Searching for a single reality |
4. Exploring multiple cultures, contexts, interactions and influences | 4. Privileging specific cultures and contexts over others |
FLUX – differences of state | STATIC - fixed states |
1. Facilitating the emergence of new identities | 1. Stabilizing fixed or rigid identity/identities |
2. Regarding “every interaction as mutual influence” | 2. Assuming “neutrality and objectivity” with potential for unidirectional influence |
3. Recognizing people as persons embedded in relationships | 3. Treating people as separate individuals |
4. Experimenting with transformational restorative justice practices | 4. Implementing traditional retributive justice practices |
OPENING SPACE – expanding choice | CLOSING SPACE – removing choice |
1. Living with curiosity | 1. Living with certainty |
2. Opening space for enlivened possibilities | 2. Closing space for problems to persist |
3. Inviting others to entertain change | 3. Imposing change interventions upon others |
4. Proactively including others (while respecting their possible choice to remain apart) | 4. Passively and/or actively excluding others from participating |
RESPONSIBILITY– generativity | DEFICIT FOCUS – constraint |
1. Noticing resources, competencies, and possibilities | 1. Identifying and diagnosing deficits, dysfunctions, and limitations for correction |
2. Anticipating potential effects of resource use and developing sustainable ecologies | 2. Utilizing profitable resources without consideration of the consequences |
3. Assuming collective responsibility and accountability | 3. Projecting responsibility and specifying to whom it belongs; judging others |
4. Enacting an ethics of caring and privileging restorative justice | 4. Applying moral judgements and retributive justice |
We are sharing this declaration as an invitation for individuals, groups, service agencies, and other organizations who in the past may have identified with ‘family therapy’, or who simply feel their work embraces these values, to sign on, stand with us and contribute to this shift. By striving to live and work more consistently with these preferred values in our personal lives, in our work places, in our communities, and in our organizations, we hope to contribute towards better worlds both locally and globally. Some next steps could be to identify possible concrete manifestations of these values, or to propose a process or steps, in the spirit of the declaration, that we as a community could undertake.
We, the undersigned, endeavour to work with these values in mind. We invite you to add your signature to ours below, and invite your colleagues and contacts to consider doing the same.
321 SIGNATURES & COUNTING +++
AND COUNTING +++
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Christopher Zeitz
United statesSigned
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Olivia Hinojosa
United statesSigned
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Steve Meeks
United statesSigned
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Tomas Horak
SwitzerlandSigned
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Mike Edwards
CanadaSigned
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Rev. William A. Bauzo, M.Div., M.A., LMFT
United statesSigned
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Louis Cauffman
BelgiumSigned
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Gonzalo Bacigalupe
United statesSigned
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Katherine Manners
United statesSigned
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Joseph Winn LICSW
United statesSigned
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Joseph Winn LICSW
United statesSigned
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Jeremiah Gibson
United statesSigned
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Jason Kae-Smith
United statesSigned
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Kifferie Corley
United statesSigned
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Julie Vinci
United statesSigned
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Thais Avila
MexicoSigned
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Joshua Mark
United statesSigned
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Michael Flanagan
IrelandSigned
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Simone Köhler
GermanySigned
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Marsha Vaughn
United statesSigned
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Jacqueline Gagliardi
United statesSigned
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Marcela polanco
United statesSigned
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Liz Morrigan
AustraliaSigned
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Andres Nazario
United statesSigned
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Amy DiGennaro
United statesSigned
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Flavia Almonte
United statesSigned
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Rachel Samuel
United kingdomSigned
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Bernadette Solorzano
United statesSigned
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Chip Chimera
United kingdomSigned
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Peter Lehmann
United statesSigned
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Bill Madsen
United statesSigned
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Luis Antonio Guerrero
MexicoSigned
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Andrew Frager
United statesSigned
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Shona Russell
AustraliaSigned
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Matt Erb
United statesSigned
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Randi Cowdery
United statesSigned
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Thomas W. Blume
United statesSigned
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Kristen Benson
United statesSigned
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Christopher Iwestel Kinman
CanadaSigned
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Sue Levin
United statesSigned
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Pam B. Smith
United statesSigned
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Chris Hall
United statesSigned
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Dragana Ilic
United statesSigned
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Rachel Dash
United statesSigned
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Diana Rico
MexicoSigned
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Enrique Puebla
ChileSigned
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Nelly Chong Garcia
PeruSigned
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David Marsten
United statesSigned
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Makungu M. Akinyela
United statesSigned
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Makungu M. Akinyela
United statesSigned
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Rosy De Prado
United statesSigned
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Joel Simon
United statesSigned
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Fredrike Bannink
NetherlandsSigned
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Julie Tilsen
United statesSigned
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Carlo perfetto
ItalySigned
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Bailey hattox
United statesSigned
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Andreas Höher
AustriaSigned
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Mariana Gracindo Trajano
BrazilSigned
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Gregory Lease
United statesSigned
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Julie-Anne Geddes
AustraliaSigned
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Dayna Sharp
United statesSigned
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Lúcia Helena Abdalla
BrazilSigned
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Fizzy Oppe
United kingdomSigned
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Leticia Uribe
MexicoSigned
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Jyotsana Uppal
United arab emiratesSigned
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Gavin Anderson
CanadaSigned
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Elizabeth Brenner
United statesSigned
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Stephane Kovacs
FranceSigned
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Peter johnson
New zealandSigned
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Jan Herreman
BelgiumSigned
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Agnes Boedt
BelgiumSigned
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Rodrigo Murguía Rodríguez
MexicoSigned
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Marian Jenkins
United kingdomSigned
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Rhonda George
United statesSigned
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Peter Sundman
FinlandSigned
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Dominic Hiles
United kingdomSigned
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Jane Tuomola
FinlandSigned
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Alejandro Contreras Nuño
MexicoSigned
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Orsolya Szechey
NorwaySigned
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Lawrence Levner
United statesSigned
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Lynda Ashbourne
CanadaSigned
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Catherine Hanenberg
CanadaSigned
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Carey McIver
AustraliaSigned
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James Barrett
IrelandSigned
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Teri Pichot
United statesSigned
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Heleni-Georgia Andreadi
United kingdomSigned
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Jessica
United kingdomSigned
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Annie Bordeleau
GermanySigned
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Pieter G SPIES
South africaSigned
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Louisa Rhodes
United kingdomSigned
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Zoltán Kónya
RomaniaSigned
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Nina Viljoen
United kingdomSigned
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Claire Barber-Lomax
United kingdomSigned
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Henrik Lynggaard
United kingdomSigned
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Gun-Eva Andersson Långdahl
SwedenSigned
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Christina Revsbech
DenmarkSigned
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Christina Revsbech
DenmarkSigned
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Kelly Bernardin-Dvorak
CanadaSigned
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Duane Bidwell
United statesSigned
SIGN THE DECLARATION
Please sign the declaration below:
FOUNDING SIGNATORIES
Karl
Tomm
Calgary, CAN
October 8, 2016
Mark
KcKergow
London, ENG
October 8, 2016
Faye
Gosnell
Calgary, CAN
October 8, 2016
Emily
Doyle
Calgary, CAN
October 8, 2016
Joan
Wilson
Calgary, CAN
October 8, 2016
Blaine
Moore
Fort Worth, USA
October 8, 2016
Rashaad
Vahed
Toronto, CAN
October 8, 2016