The Narratives Which Connect…

The Map of Resonance in family therapy training

The map of resonance is meant to add meaning both to systemic family therapy in general and to family therapy training especially. In family therapy training, the map of resonance may help us to know when we are talking about systemic family therapy and when we talk about some other kind of clinical work.

In family therapy training, the map of resonance goes together with family therapy theory and methods. That means that the map of resonance should not stand as an independent element but be viewed together with other central elements in the education programme. Since the map of resonance reflects the relation between the therapists’ personal and private life and her or his clinical practice, it needs to be supported by family therapy theory and methods. It helps us understand content, process and development of the therapeutic relationship.

Relational resonance

As mentioned earlier (p. 48), Cross and Papadopoulos (2001) point out that our own family, culture, gender and ethics, are four areas to focus on in family therapy training. They ask some questions that are relevant when we are looking for relational resonance. These questions are:

”What does culture have to do with how I work as a therapist?”

“What does my family have to do with my practice as a therapist?”

“What does it mean to be male or female, and, perhaps more importantly, what are the implications of these meanings?”

“What is the relationship between my personal morals, values and professional ethics?”

“What can I personally bring to the practice of therapy?”

It is my opinion that it is necessary for a systemic family therapy student to reflect seriously on these questions.

Relational resonance is here defined both as the resonance that appears within the therapist’s mind and between the therapist and the client(s). One example of relational resonance is the therapist’s inner dialog or inner conversation. Tom Andersen says: “When I talk with others, I partly talk with others, partly with myself” (Rober 1999, p 213).

Rober (Rober 1999, p 213) claims that the inner conversation can be summarized in the following three statements:

1. 
   The inner conversation is a conversation between two aspects of the person of the therapist, namely, the self of the therapist and the role of the therapist.
   
2. 
   The inner conversation is a negotiation between the self and the role of the therapist.
   
3. 
   The negotiation is about what aspects of the self can be used to open space for the not-yet-said in the outer conversation, and in what way these aspects can be used.
   

This inner dialog might be the therapist’s inner professional conversation with herself. What is going on in the therapy room might remind the therapist of some theoretical or methodological issues. It is important to mention that theoretical and professional ideas also might represent “...a tyranny of certain ideas of the therapist that would close any space for alternative ways of relating to self and/or others” (Rober 1999, p 213).

However, what is going on in the therapy room might also remind the therapist of some personal and private experiences from her or his own life. On these occasions, the inner dialog promotes relational resonance.

This meeting point between the therapist’s (or a family therapy student) map of resonance and her or his theoretical and professional standpoint will be important elements in her or his family therapy practice. This model may illustrate the situation both for the family therapist and for the family therapy student:

Table 21. A context for family therapy training.

When it comes to supervision as part of family therapy training, it is necessary to develop this meeting point between the map of resonance and family therapy theory to include both aspects in the supervision process. This could take place both in ordinary supervision and in a PPD module.

The family therapy student’s own experience from family therapy practice should be included both in the understanding of the map of resonance and in the understanding of how the student is supported by family therapy theory and methods.

Supervision and PPD-work as part of training

Supervision and personal therapy are ranked as more important than case discussions, taking courses, reading books or journals, giving supervision, working with co-therapists and other qualifying and developing tasks, (Orlinsky and Rønnestad, 2005, p. 127).³³

Formal supervision is an acknowledged and approved part of family therapy education in Norway. However, there was nothing in the education programmes that said the students had to work on the relations between personal and private experiences and clinical practice.³⁴ The importance of working with the relations between personal and private experiences and clinical practice seems to be necessary. Rober (Rober 1999, p 215) constructs this figure to illustrate what is going on in the therapy room.

Clients

Table 22. The dialogical process (Rober 1999).
Rober claims that if the self of the therapist is left out this might represent a missed chance for the therapist to get “...access to things that haven’t yet been said” (Rober 1999, p. 216). However, Rober does not connect the self of the therapist directly to the therapist’s personal and private life.

In the following, we shall discuss how the map of resonance may be helpful in understanding supervision and PPD work. The map of resonance may help us point out how personal and private experiences may be useful and form a constructive supplement in family therapy education and family therapy practice. In a similar way, the map of resonance may help us understand what happens when experiences from personal and private life interfere in family therapy practice in a way that is inappropriate, that seeks to cover the therapists’ own value system and interests, and in a way that could be considered unethical.

Reciprocal resonance and therapeutic colonialism in family therapy training

When reciprocal resonance and therapeutic colonialism come forward in supervision or in PPD work, this should be viewed as possibilities for development and change.

McGoldrick (1992) argues for trainees to work with their relationship to their own family. As mentioned earlier (p. 44) she claims that it is her impression that such work benefits the trainee’s clinical work, and that is particularly helpful in aiding trainees to shift from linear to systems thinking. She sums up by stating that: “…it is my strong impression that one tends to get blocked with clinical families in the same ways one does in one’s own family” (p. 20). Instead of being blocked, the family therapy student should get help to discover innovative possibilities and new ways to go in family therapy practice.

Reciprocal resonance in students practice

To illustrate how the concepts direct and indirect reciprocal resonance may widen our understanding of PPD-work and supervision in systemic family therapy education, I will turn back to the literature review. I will only use one example of each kind of reciprocal resonance.

McGoldrick tells the story (p. 45) about the student “Peter” and the “Arthur” family. Through a supervised process, “Peter” identifies common themes from his own family in working with the family. Through supervision and willingness to open up and bring these themes into the therapy room through self-disclosure, he gains new experience as a family therapist. This is an example on how indirect reciprocal resonance might be turned into a constructive element in a therapeutic process.

An example of direct reciprocal resonance is the “trigger family” in a case study by Monica McGoldrick. The trigger family is defined as a family where the relation between the issues in the trainee’s own family and the family in therapy are close to his own (McGoldrick 1992 p.17). In the same way as with the “Arthur” family, the trigger family made it possible for the student to develop the therapeutic process.

These two examples illustrate how the map of resonance is able to add new language to the description of processes in systemic family therapy. These two examples also illustrate how reciprocal resonance promotes development in the family therapy students’ clinical abilities.

The Grounded Theory categories presented in this research should be helpful in introducing areas and topics to introduce into both PPD-work and supervision. One of the main findings of this research study is how the therapists’ cultural, personal and private values influence family therapy practice. Examples of GT categories that deal with the familt therapy students values are categories 3, 4 and 5:

The participants’ explicit personal values that influence family therapy practice.

Dynamics that show how personal and moral values influence therapeutic work.

Therapists’ acceptance and avoidance of the idea that personal and moral values influence their therapeutic work.

The map of resonance offers a language to put experienses from family therapy practice into a new context. However, the GT categories in this research are based on the study of a small sample of seven family therapists’ practising in Norway. To expand the understanding of how family therapy might be influenced by the therapists’ personal and private values, the research in these areas should be continued.

Therapeutic colonialism and imperialism in students practice

After a brief presentation of the map of resonance, a prominent family therapist told me that when he was a young student and in family therapy training, he attended family therapy himself. In his own therapeutic process an important topic connected to his relationship with his own father occurred. He felt that his father never had expressed that he loved him and appreciated him for whom he was. The therapist suggested inviting his father to a therapy session. His father came to a session and that made it possible for him to give words to his feelings and how he missed his father’s acknowledgement. The father was not able to say much during the session but some days later the father called his son and the father was really able to tell his son that he loved him and acknowledged him. This was the turning point for this father-son relationship.

The young therapist from now on thought he had found the way to work when a father-son topic occurred in a therapy session. His own experience from therapy came to determine how to deal with topics like this. However, it never worked in the same way. “I think what I did as a family therapist, after my experience of my own therapy, is an example of therapeutic colonialism,” he said.

In the literature review of psychotherapy research, I was not able to find examples of therapeutic colonialism and imperialism. However, as I have pointed out in this chapter, therapeutic colonialism and imperialism add meaning to some of my research findings. The GT categories 4b) Raising children and the Paradigm Cases concerning “Parallel Connections” about Alcohol abuse, at home and in couples therapy, represent examples of therapeutic imperialism and colonialism.

Some of the participants were able to tell stories about therapeutic colonialism and imperialism. However, some of the most important stories about therapeutic colonialism only occurred after video observations were connected to the transcribed interviews. Direct observation with the supervisor behind a mirror or in the therapy room or videotape review of the students’ clinical work plus oral presentation should probably be a compulsory part of systemic family therapy training. Video tapes of family therapy sessions offers particular possibilities for micro analysis of communication that promote links between the therapists personal and private life at another level than ordinary supervision inside or outside the therapy room.

In working with questions concerning therapeutic colonialism and imperialism, the clients’ perspective can be of importance. It would be helpful to develop methods where the clients’ voice about these issues would be invited into the conversation. The clients’ experiences of therapy can be enlightening for therapists and help them address blind spots and pitfalls in their practice. Issues might emerge which the therapist could bring to supervision for further exploration.

Reciprocal resonance, therapeutic colonialism and the supervisor

These perspectives also call for some developments concerning supervision and supervisors’ skills. Mason promotes the idea of risk-taking as an element in supervision when it comes to addressing “... sex, sexual orientation, race and culture, gender, religion/faith and disability,” (Mason 2005, p. 299). In lining up some dimensions for supervision, Haber and Hawely point out four aspects. These are: “methodology (‘‘hands’’), ideology (‘‘head’’), use of self (‘‘heart’’), and creativity/intuition (‘‘nose’’), (Haber and Hawley 2004, p. 375). In this context, use of self and creativity/intuition seems to add meaning to the supervision process. Haber and Hawely discuss how bringing supervisees’ family members into supervision might open up new developments. This could create possibilities for a ‘‘growing edge’’ and for opening up talk about the map of resonance and relational resonance.

The supervisor needs to add the map of resonance to her or his own priorities and punctuations and use it when the students’ present their angles and contexts. The stories and the topics that occur in supervision also trigger and promote resonance in the supervisor’s mind and will probably have some of the same implications for a supervisor as for a therapist.

It will always be a balance between supporting and challenging a student or a family therapist in supervision. On the one hand, by being supportive on specific topics or in understanding certain narratives, the supervisor might contribute to clinical colonialism and imperialism.

On the other hand, by being too challenging one can put the therapist into a defensive position. A defensive position might hinder the student’s development and his or her chances to reach new understandings. Such a dynamic might hinder opportunities for new practice. When a student is stuck in his or her own understanding or biases in such a way that the therapeutic process suffer, it is a challenge for the supervisor to facilitate a communication that can open up and create perturbation in the therapist’s interpretation and understanding. This process can be seen as a parallel pattern to what is going on in the therapy.

Elements of therapeutic colonialism and imperialism might promote the supervisor’s own moral and personal ideas. Such ideas might result in the supervisor needing to “correct” or guide the student in a certain direction. The supervisor needs to listen to her or his resonance to find the best direction forward. When it comes to therapeutic colonialism and imperialism, the supervisor needs to learn how to see the students’ punctuations as resources in the development of clinical work. It is a challenge for the supervisor not to get in the same mindset as the therapist as the therapist with the family: knowing best how to think and what to do.

As a supervisor of family therapists, my own agendas about how to work as a therapist and how to understand family dynamics may influence my supervision. It can be difficult to create a conversation in which the therapist will be able to address his or her own biases. In working with these issues as a supervisor, it is important to pay attention to the analogic level of communication, and work with communication at different levels and promote observation as an inspiration to self-reflexivity. Videotapes, both of the therapy and of the supervision can be a helpful resource in addressing these perspectives.

The dynamic between challenge and support, and one’s own ideas and biases about professional growth, are important to deal with. The supervisor may need a supervisor. It is necessary to develop effective approaches for this part of family therapy training.

Relevance outside the therapy room

The map of resonance is developed to widen the understanding of systemic family therapy. However, the map should also be considered relevant in decribing and understanding clinical work outside the therapy room. Phenomena like relational resonance of different kinds, and therapeutic colonialism and imperialism, are likely to occur in all kinds of clinical and pedagogical practices. The map of resonance should be developed to gain relevant new understandings in these areas also.

Summary

The implications for family therapy education and supervision suggest a range of topics and ideas for further research. One of the main topics to develop in Norwegian family therapy education is a new approach to our multicultural society. Dilemmas in family therapy education are connected to how to think and act when it comes to personal therapy as a part of family therapy training. The map of resonance promotes a language to widen and expand clinical supervision and PPD-work as a part of family therapy education. The GT categories offer examples of topics and areas to work on in supervision and PPD-work. Although the map of resonance is developed to widen the understanding of systemic family therapy the map should also be considered to be relevant in decribing and understanding clinical work outside the therapy room.