Dharma Bum

The AFTA Conference Update

Last night I returned home from the American Family Therapy Conference which was held in San Francisco this year. I was hoping to daily blog this conference as well but this being my 2nd conference in two weeks, I just didn't have the energy at the end of the day. Sorry! Anyway, I wanted to provide a summary of the conference and point out some of the peak moments for me.

Once again AFTA really did a nice job of putting on a conference focused on cutting edge practices in family therapy while maintaining a focus on social justice. This was a special conference for me because I had the opportunity to present with Anne Arnold and in the process show video of my work with families. It was a wonderful experience. After it was done Anne and I had a chance to peak at the evaluations and they were amazing. Success! Other highlights from the conference included having an opportunity to meet and spend time in conversation with a couple of stalwarts of the San Diego narrative community Jan Ewing and Gerald Monk from SDSU. Another highlight was being asked about my interest in teaching a class in a very important MFT program here locally. Keep your fingers crossed please, hopefully I'll have more to talk about at a later date. I also caught many great brief presentations and great keynotes. The one keynote that particularly stood out was Positive Deviance, Social Complexity, and Generative Relationships by presenter Arvind Singhal. I look forward to doing it all again in Chicago next year and continuing the relationships that started in San Francisco. Here's some photos from the presentation we did. Enjoy:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Narrative Project OC (Anne & Chris) in San Francisco

This week Anne Arnold and myself representing the Narrative Project of OC will be presenting at the American Family Therapy Academy conference beng held in San Francisco. If you happen to be attending, or in the area, please come join us. We are looking forward to having a collaborative and fun interest group. Details about our presentation follow:

There exists some critique of Narrative Therapy that in its emphasis on larger societal discourses it has missed out on considering the more immediate family or the human networks that people live within. This Interest Group will respond to this critique and show how narrative practice in family therapy does attend to both the larger societal discourses as well as family intricacies at the most local level, and rather than blame families for the problems of family members, the narrative family therapy approach brings the family or networks together to counter the problem as they see it.  Through collaborative dialog the participants will be invited to develop lines of inquiry that draw on families collective wisdom, and a co-research video demonstration will show from the families point of view, what works best in family therapy.

Therapeutic Conversations X - Day #3

Therapists come and go, but family and friends more often stick around for a lifetime. - Pru (a veteran consumer of human services)

Hello again! Day 3 of the Therapeutic Conversations conference in Vancouver and it once again it did not disappoint. This morning I had the opportunity to catch the exceptional workshop facilitated by Peggy Sax (pictured Bryna Andressen, Charley Lang, Peggy Sax) titled Neighborly Ways of Being: Building Communities, Linking Lives. Peggy Sax, through the use of video interviews and co-research, showed how the narrative practitioner can work to identify practices that strengthen naturally occurring communities of support using the rhizome metaphor as a guide for curiosity and surprise. Sax's workshop challenged common assumptions about working in individualized ways and how intentional therapeutic communal practices can strengthen social connectedness in ways that do not center the therapist. Sax showed how these communal practices can provide a wide range of non-prescriptive options for connectedness. It was a powerful workshop that gave me much to think about as I blew off the rest of the day to walk around Vancouver and see some art. Tonight is my last night in Vancouver. It has once again been a wonderful respite and opportunity to see what my narrative family has been working on. Goodbye Vancouver, I leave you with a song in my heart..

Therapeutic Conversations X - Day #2

Hello again! It was another wonderful day of learning Vancouver. The weather here was beautiful today so it was hard staying indoors, but fortunately for me all the workshops I attended made the lack of sunshine OK. The day started with a First Nation Welcome ceremony that included a song by the appropriately named band "The Externalizer's." Following that Stephen Madigan welcomed everybody to the conference and then gave the morning keynote. Madigan's keynote set the tone for the conference by declaring narrative therapy as a counter to longstanding therapeutic traditions of the privatized problemed self, doing this via an anti-individualist, relational stance. Madigan's keynote was an argument against de-politicized therapy. He also pointed out how quite realistically that anybody with little graduate studies can make claims of knowing on other bodies, and also name others pathologies. Powerful stuff. Madigan in a bit of humor went on to advance the idea that we should actually call ourselves Licensed Declassification Professionals.

Following the morning keynote I attended the workshop titled Insider, Outsider and the Generative Space in Between facilitated by Allison Rice and Dennis Dion (pictured with me in the middle). This was by far my favorite workshop. Allison and Dennis collaborated together for several years at the Peak House where they worked with youth and families struggling with the problem of substance misuse. Allison and Dennis did a wonderful job bringing forth their deep interrogation of the problem of addiction and its tactics and how an understanding of other theoretical frameworks (harm reduction, 12 step, etc.) help bring about a fluidity that resists binary ways of seeing problems or solutions. I understood both Allison and Dennis to have a poststructuralist and realistic understanding of substance misuse. I found them quite creative in the use of queer theory in their idea that it would be un-queer to attach a tag to someone that they don't prefer, but also that it would be un-queer to remove a tag that the person would prefer. I also found them to be quite pragmatic when they asserted that deconstructing modernist approaches to the problem in early abstinence could be quite dangerous. A bold position in this crowd for sure, but in my experience as an insider, their understanding resonated with me quite powerfully. Allison and Dennis' workshop really was an opportunity to see how a social constructionist/narrative lens really contributes meaningfully to those seeking our help.

In the afternoon I had the opportunity to catch the workshop where John Winslade did another outstanding job of making the work of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze more user friendly. There was much helpful discussion added by the presence of Tom Strong, Joel Shapiro, and Jonny Morris who were all equally adept at making some dense material more understandable. Kudos!

The day ended with the afternoon keynote by Sheila McNamee who is the Vice President of the Taos Institute. McNamee's keynote was titled Pushing the Relational Edge: Constructing Narrative Practice and her project seemed to be one of promoting a promiscuous stance (mixing it up) as opposed to one of practice purity. I'm not sure how this talk went over with the narrative faithful, but it did have me thinking about the morning workshop where both Rice and Dion showed a real practice that was less worried about "getting it right" and more concerned about points of connection, effectiveness, and protecting the people who sought their help from getting caught in the middle of theoretical battles. Lots to think about today. So while I'm considering all that happened today, enjoy another Vancouver sunset:

Therapeutic Conversations X - Day #1

Hello from beautiful Vancouver. I just wrapped up the daylong workshop with Bill Madsen titled Collaborative Helping: A Simple Map to Transform Relational Positioning. I first became a fan of Bill Madsen's work when I was introduced to his outstanding book Collaborative Therapy With Multi-Stressed Families in grad school. It was one of the few books from grad school that I re-visit again and again.

In today's workshop Madsen attempted to introduce us all to what he called disciplined improvisation through the use of a collaborative helping map he developed in an effort to operationalize family-centered values and principles to the often messy work of family therapy. His MAP or line of inquiry consisted of four parts (simplified considerably for this blog post):

            Organizing Vision: Where do you want to be headed in your life?

Obstacles: What gets in the way?  Supports: What supports you?

Plan: What needs to happen?

Madsen believes that through this MAP our relational stance, or how we are with people, will be transformed to a more collaborative approach. Our conceptual maps, or how we think of people and problems will shift, and our helping practices or what we do with people will be more ethical.

Anybody familiar with appreciative inquiry would find much to appreciate in Madsen's approach. Borrowing from the four D's of AI Madsen in his MAP rearranges the AI Dream phase to Vision and the AI Design phase to Plan. However, unlike appreciative inquiry's strength based focus, Madsen holds on to his poststructuralist cred by shifting the language of strengths and needs to one of supports and obstacles. All in an effort to move from the internal view of strengths as characteristics, to a more intentional view of strengths as skills of living, intentions, purposes, values, and hopes and dreams. It is in this shift that Madsen believes more interesting conversations can happen.

I was quite happy that I had the opportunity to spend the day learning from Bill Madsen. His presentation gave me much to think about. It was interesting to see how someone is integrating the principles of appreciative inquiry into narrative practice and how that may look. The conference is off to a great start for me, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the week. More later, but until then enjoy this Vancouver sunset I caught last night.

Job & Internship Fair

Attn: Therapist/Counselor friends!

On Friday, April 27 from 10:00am to 1:00pm the The Long Beach - South Bay chapter of the California Association of Marriage & Family Therapists (LB-SB CAMFT), in collaboration with the Orange County American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (OC AAMFT), and the Los Angeles chapter of CAMFT (LA CAMFT), invites you to their Fifth Annual MFT Job and Internship Fair. This job fair will be held at the Carson Civic Center located at 801 E. Carson Street, Carson, CA. The cost to attend is $10 and breakfast is included. For more info head on over to: www.lbsb-camft.org.

Scaffolding a Community of Competent Narrative Practitioners

Continuing the great free articles and Youtube videos from the Family Process Journal theme, I would now like to direct your attention to the article Scaffolding a Community of Competent Practitioners: Positioning and Agency in a Training Program for Narrative Counseling co-authored by Helen Gremillion, Aileen Cheshire, and Dorothea Lewis. This article explores the scaffolding of learning experiences in a postgraduate program in New Zealand that offers training in narrative counseling. In the article the authors examine relationships of power in classrooms, and explore ways to align poststructuralist counseling practices and the teaching of these practices. Please watch the video of Helen Gremillion describing her article then go spend some time with the article:

Relational Parenting

The outstanding Family Process Journal is experimenting with youtube videos that describe several articles that can be found in the latest issue, for free! It just so happens that in this issue of Family Process, Pepperdine's own Dr. Amy Tuttle has an article titled Parenting as Relationship: A Framework for Assessment and Practice, co-authored with Carmen Knudson-Martin and Lana Kim. Please take a look at Dr. Tuttle's article and video, and be sure to browse the other free articles available which include an article by Harlene Anderson and an article on narrative therapy training which I will post on this blog shortly. Enjoy:

The Narrative Project's Spring Consultation Group

Well the Project kicked off another narrative therapy consultation group facilitated by Anne Arnold. It was great to be back in community learning, sharing, and having fun as we moved through narrative theory and practice. If you're interested in participating in a future group just shoot me a message. Some pics from today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Johnella Bird - Reflections In Therapeutic Conversations

Attached is a nice video of Johnella Bird describing her use of reflections in therapeutic conversations with people, couples and families she is working with. Like Johnella I've found taking time for reflections quite helpful in finding out if those I'm working with believe we are moving in a useful direction. In this video Johnella proposes that most clinicians are trained with the idea that we are to do information gathering in an effort to "know" and then act on that idea. Johnella uses relational expressions to create reflections that counter this idea of having to know, and rather as a tool of discovery with people who consult with her. She describes using reflections more regularly as having several positive effects on therapeutic conversations including:

1. Slowing the process down, and allowing considerations for how the contextual environment may be effecting couples or families.

2. Making sense of the work. Are we moving in a useful direction?

3. Provides the opportunity to "experience" the reflections, and allows people access to alternative descriptions.

4. And finally, reflections allows the counselor and those she's working with an opportunity to establish a new narrative platform.

All of this in an effort not just to discover new resources, but actually make new resources in the present moment. Movement. This video has inspired me to use reflections more often in my sessions for all the reasons above. Enjoy the video:

AAMFT Student Conf. & AFTA in San Francisco - Presenting

Don't I look like I know what I'm talking about? Hello All. Anne Arnold and I will be presenting on Narrative Approaches to Family Therapy at both the AAMFT-CA Student Conference at SDSU on Feb 24th, and the American Family Therapy Academy Conference in San Francisco May 16-19th. I've been to both conferences and both are worth the effort if you can make it. Plus you can come say Hi to us! Currently they're offering discounted registration for the AAMFT Student conference HERE. I hope to see you in San Diego or San Francisco.

AAMFT-CA Division Second Annual Student Conference - Call for Abstracts

This year I'm helping to pull together the second annual AAMFT-CA Student Conference to be held at San Diego State University on February 24th. This conference's theme will be The Family in All Its Forms, and for those interested the call for abstracts went out today. We seek proposals for presentations about MFT's impacting families in all forms, addressing such questions as:

LGBT Parenting, Single Parent Families, Childless Couples, Foster Care & the Family, Blended Families, Military Families, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Empty Nesters, Cohabitating Couples, Adoption, Immigration Effects on the Family, New Approaches to Systems Theory, Religion & Family Family Health, Diversity & Inclusion, Counseling & Therapy Research.

If you are interested, or know somebody that might be interested in presenting at the conference, all the info can be found HERE. Abstracts must be submitted by Dec 15th. Please spread the word!

CYS Crew

I ran over to CYS Counseling today between seeing clients at the Project. I officially start at CYS on Monday and I'm excited that I get to work with my friend Steve White and continue to work with the Clinical Director Duane Durst who has been my supervisor for the last month plus over at the Bridge. Everybody at CYS has been really great and extremely welcoming. Good things on the horizon for sure. Here's a few pics I took today of some of the crew..

 

Therapist extraordinaire Steve White

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clinical Dir. Duane & Program Administrator Jeremy Tom

Good Therapy

Following is a wonderful piece by David Foster Wallace. Just change fiction to therapy and he captures my position in narrative practice. Often I have found myself in conversation with socio-politically aware folks wondering, where's the possibility here? How do I take that into the room with me? These conversations tend to be heavy on the dark worldview, light on the hope or possibility. Foster Wallace captures it beautifully when he says; ..do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? ...the definition of good art (therapy?) would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness... Call me a sucker, I still believe in the magical. Rest of the quote follows..

If what’s always distinguished bad writing— flat characters, a narrative world that’s clichéd and not recognizably human, etc.— is also a description of today’s world, then bad writing becomes an ingenious mimesis of a bad world. If readers simply believe the world is stupid and shallow and mean, then [Bret Easton] Ellis can write a mean shallow stupid novel that becomes a mordant deadpan commentary on the badness of everything. Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.

— David Foster Wallace

AFTA Day #3

Quick post because I'm beat, but AFTA day #3 was a winner. The day started off with the Pearls of Wisdom panel facilitated by Amy Tuttle which featured accomplished academicians and clinicians Harry Aponte and Don-David Lusterman. It was great to hear from these stalwarts of family therapy and to benefit from the many wisdom's they shared. The day ended with a few of us catching the Orioles vs Reds baseball game at the legendary Camden Yards. It was a great night for baseball with friends. Here's some pics:

Legends Harry Aponte & Monica McGoldrick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harry Aponte & Amy Tuttle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vicki Dickerson after her Narrative Therapy with Couples presentation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Camden Yards

 

Live From Baltimore - AFTA Conference

Hello everybody. I'm currently in Baltimore attending the American Family Therapy Academy conference. This is my third AFTA conference and they are always a great learning experience. This year I also have the pleasure of presenting with Justine White and Dr. Amy Tuttle. We are basically going to tackle organizing social justice efforts in a university setting. We are going to draw on our experience with Pepperdine University's Social Justice Collaborative, which we are all still involved, and talk about our experiences getting SJC off the ground and the pitfalls that can occur. I will be posting pics and stuff over the next several days so please come back often.

After the conference is over Michele and I are going to head to D.C. then Paris. More on that later.

The Socially Constructed Genogram and Re-membering Conversations

This has been a good year for new books on narrative practice. First was Stephen Madigan's new book Narrative Therapy, and now I have found myself really enjoying the highly recommended Innovations in Narrative Therapy: Connecting Practice, Training, and Research.

There's much to find in this new book but one piece I wanted to highlight was Jim Duvall and Laura Beres approach to the socially constructed genogram.

The Traditional Genogram

The traditional genogram has been used for years to track the representation of a family tree, display detailed data on relationships among individuals, hereditary patterns, and psychological factors that punctuate relationships. Genograms represent a positivist view and can be described as locking people into a family not of their own choosing, or tracking pathology through generations and strengthening problems visually into relationships. According to Duvall & Beres the traditional genogram is a static device meant to diagnose and establish normative conclusions about people and their relationships. An example of a traditional genogram follows:

The Socially Constructed Genogram

What is so great about the socially constructed genogram when coupled with re-membering conversations is that it provides an alternative for understanding the multiplicity of identity, family, relationships, and culture. With the Socially Constructed Genogram people can regain agency when determining who belongs in, what Michael White called, their associations of life. 

According to Duvall & Beres when creating the SCG with someone you are working with people are invited to express their relationships on the SCG as the actually experience them, and through re-membering conversations begin to explore the meaning of those relationships. In this process people are encouraged to expand beyond the normative view of relationships and can include people (living or dead), pets, archetypal heroes, friends who are like family, etc.

Below is an example of an SCG using circles. The person you're working with can be placed in the center circle and then asked to place others in respective circles based on closeness or distance, importance or lack of importance, etc. All of this goes a long way to developing an enlivened backstory.

 

The socially constructed genogram understands that meaning and understanding are generated socially in conversations with others. It also takes into consideration power and broader cultural discourses. Unlike the traditional genogram which can perpetuate the problem story, the SCG is a move toward unpacking and exploring the meaning that can be found in the experiences between people.

Who would you put in your circles?

Creative Language

A favorite example of one of Michael White's questions that moved beyond taken-for-granted assumptions was when he asked someone who was crying, not what she was feeling, but rather, "If you could take that tear and open it up, what would be inside?" Answering about a feeling state might have led to her saying she was sad. Every single word we utter is packed full of many traces of other experiences and influences. In order to more ethically engage in a useful and hope-inducing conversation with people, we must remember this and foster an ability to examine those influences and make their own decisions about their preferences, values, and commitments. - Innovations in Narrative Therapy

A Good Man Is Hard to Find..

There's a whole lot to take on in this recent article in the NY Times titled Need Therapy? A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The article tracks college psychology programs inability to attract male applicants and the “feminization” of mental health care.

I suppose it left me with more questions than answers.

Are men better positoned to invite other men into acountability? This is a topic thats comes up often in supervision. Has the influence of the large number women in the field countered the institutionalized oppression of women by the mental health field, and isn't that a positive thing? Is this another article that privileges male voices over female voices? I could go on..

I participated in graduation ceremonies on Saturday and it was pointed out a couple of times how few men were graduating from all the psychology programs. How should we make sense of this? I am not so sure. Any ideas? Please leave them in the comments.

AFTA Conference & Presentation

I'm excited to report that I found out today that Dr. Amy Tuttle, Justine White and myself will be presenting at the upcoming American Family Therapy Academy Conference this June in Baltimore. Our topic will be MFTs Impacting Communities and will examine the non-traditional ways in which MFT's are impacting communities, specifically, how they are engaging in critical discourse and are responding to issues of oppression, inequity, and social justice. I've never been to Baltimore and look forward to the conference, which is always superb, and the opportunity to tour the capital.