My first AFTA meeting
Thomas W. Blume
When I try to recapture the feeling of being at the 2002 Annual Meeting, my first AFTA meeting, I am struck by how similar it is to my memories of being at my grandmother's funeral when I was 20 years old. The whole extended family was there, people I had only heard about or seen in pictures. It was a constant memory challenge—am I supposed to know this person? It was exciting, as each conversation was tremendously affirming and I wanted to stay connected like that forever. At the same time it really was a sad occasion, and I felt conflicted as I drifted in and out of the feelings of loss. If I could sum all of it up into a single word, it would be "intense." So I will make a few tentative efforts here to recall parts of the experience, recognizing that they are already fading into a hazy still life. I'm going to emphasize a few aspects: Inclusion/openness to outsiders, because I have the impression that AFTA has concerns in this arena; political/social consciousness and responsibility, because I value those as major items on the AFTA agenda; and the intellectual life of family therapists, because that's high on my agenda right now.
Inclusion. Until recently I had not given much thought to joining AFTA; I had images of the group as sort of a preservation society, a group of curators who gathered to share relics of the "golden age." I first looked for more accurate information on AFTA—and it's not easy to find, there's an implicit message that "if you belonged here, you would have been invited"—after I began writing a family therapy textbook. Rereading things from the 80s and 90s that I had not appreciated at the time, I discovered a fear that I would write something that was already out of touch with the field before it was published. AFTA seemed like a place where I might be able to find people on the cutting edge, people who were examining the field from a critical perspective.
I looked at the AFTA web site, and I was impressed. A memoir of the Miami conference convinced me that there were exciting developments taking place in AFTA, and I started trying to get myself connected. It wasn't easy. My physical and academic location in Michigan, in a Counseling department, didn't put me in much contact with AFTA members, and the application process was a challenge. By the time I arrived in New York, I was ambivalent, not sure these people really wanted new members.
On Thursday morning, I arrived in the room for the Newcomers breakfast, and I don't think I have ever felt so welcomed anywhere. Volker Thomas and Gonzalo Bacigalupe were the only familiar faces, but within minutes Don-David Lusterman adopted me, introducing me around the room, and I found my ambivalence draining away. This was not an organization that was trying to keep people out, it was an organization that valued new members! The format was wonderful, with an open mike where the new members and the senior members all provided information about ourselves, and I walked out of the room feeling that I now had connection points; if I felt lost in a room, I would have someone I could talk to.
Commentary. In a past life I was a compulsive joiner. As a college freshman, I joined a fraternity, and I quickly moved up the ladder to being responsible for "rush"—the recruiting of applicants for membership. The AFTA experience felt like the best of our rush efforts, making sure that every new visitor was welcomed and making sure that the people doing the welcoming were high-status people who would be able to immediately connect the applicant with the power structure. AFTA is doing a great job of welcoming people who screw up the courage to jump the hurdles and get membership applications submitted, and I deeply appreciate the sincere commitment to inclusion that was communicated Thursday morning and throughout the conference. As I look back on the contrast between looking from the outside and standing on the inside, I believe that this contrast probably says as much about me as it does about AFTA. I think we are both a bit judgmental and uncertain about people we don't know, but quick to connect when people have passed our screening procedures.
Political/Social Consciousness and Responsibility. Looking at the conference program at home, I saw a clear connection between the location and the theme of the conference, and Thursday morning's plenary demonstrated that the social action/outreach perspective that I saw in the Miami descriptions was real. The meeting in New York was exciting and challenging, with a strong focus on finding ways to make a difference. I found it scary at AFTA (and at a recent Narrative conference) to confront questions of responsibility, caring, meaning, inclusion, privilege, and power. These people around me were committed, they were living what they were talking.
Commentary. I have told my family counseling students for years that they have to go out of their offices, and yet somehow my own practice has become more and more chair-bound and limited to the 1-hour session. I found the content at AFTA, as well as the interactions with others, to be stimulating and inspiring, and I reconnected with some work I've done—larger systems work—that I had somehow placed in other categories than "family therapy." AFTA really was a place where I was finding people who were helping me find my back to ways of living my ideals.
The Intellectual Life of Family Therapists. I came to AFTA hoping to find people who were thoughtful, informed, questioning, troubled, and excited about the ideas and practices we have come to call "family therapy." Since I left graduate school 15 years ago, the language of the field has become a richer text, full of ideas I have tried to teach to others so I would have someone to talk to. But those conversations have been unsatisfying, for the most part, and I longed for conversations with more guts to them. I wasn't terribly optimistic, though. Even though many of the intellectual leaders of the field are AFTA members, I had no idea who the other members were. I was prepared to watch from a distance as mobs of people crowded around the popular kids, just like I remembered from junior high school dances.
Instead of a classroom conversation or a junior high school dance, I found a group of up-to-date colleagues where it seemed that everyone was seeking new ideas and engaging in conversations that mattered. And I was able to talk with the popular kids, who were just as exciting as everyone else. I felt like I was in heaven.
Commentary. AFTA seems to have tried to create a place where significant conversations can take place, and this goal has clearly been a top priority for conference planners. I gather that there have been some members who have stayed away or quit in response to this 10-year-old tradition of meaningful discourse. It is sad whenever a group loses members, and loss is probably an especially powerful theme in a group that still has some of its founding members. But I value the group's commitment to staying on the cutting edge. That's what brought me here. And I hope it continues, and continues to change.
Thomas W. Blume is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Ph.D. in Counseling at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, and he maintains a practice in Bloomfield Hills. He is currently producing a new family counseling introductory textbook under contract with Wiley; exploring the technology and culture of distance supervision in MFT; and studying couple and family experiences of adult students.
