The systemic therapeutic model: a constructivist perspective

Abstract

The paper illustrates some new clinical developments which have recently taken place within the systemic therapeutic approach. The adoption of a social constructivist perspective has brought about a series of radical changes both at a conceptual and at a more strictly therapeutic level. The first change concerns the object of analysis itself and requires a shift of attention from the family as a unit to the articulation between the family and the individual. The objective becomes the study of the conversational processes by means of which the individual's identity is constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed. This shift demands the elaboration of new explicative categories, an example of which is the concept of "family semantic constructs".
The second change is a methodological one. It is concerned with the procedures adopted by the therapist in order to reach the understanding of the self-organization of the system. This change implies a switch from the so called "circumstantial model" based on the interpretation of "signs" and "clues", to a "self-referential" model based on the ability of the therapist to place him/herself in a reflexive position towards the relationship between him/herself and the observed system.
The third and last new development regards the way we conceptualize the therapeutic change, and consequently the way we elaborate a therapeutic strategy. The adoption of a social constructivist perspective implies a switch from a prescriptive and instructive therapeutic model to one based on the concept of "perturbation".