Plenary: Family therapy and Clinical Consultations Here and Abroad
By Hugo Kamya
Perhaps, no better words than David Campbell’s capture the process that Pat Romney, Gladis Brun,
he and I went through as we worked to produce what I would like to describe as a synergy of ideas in preparing
for the AFTA Plenary: Family Therapy and Clinical Consultations Here and Abroad. In his plenary presentation,
David Campbell described how teams "must work together to produce some service or product. The ability to
work well together depends on trusting and being empathic to the behavior of others, in other words being able
to modify behavior to fit in with the behavior of others." He went on to say that "when people are able to work
together they are more likely to make decision which are grounded in interaction and good for the whole rather
than one or two individuals . . ."
My journey with Pat Romney, Gladis Brun and David Campbell was grounded in this hope, for we were four
persons who had not seen, let alone met, each other prior to our attempt to map out a journey that would be “trusting,
respectful and supportive” of the relationships into which we immersed ourselves as we prepared the plenary.
Over the months of communications, four beautiful and diverse lives came together. Each work was grounded in the
life experiences that defined it and in those experiences they created the "wonder" that was unique yet global for all of us.
Pat Romney recalled with great enthusiasm how much change requires therapeutic work at all levels—individual, family and
society. She detailed her journey, as she proudly recounted her experiences, from lessons learned from her own "gurus" in
graduate school, to studying about larger systems through organizational consultations, to her work with arts-based civic
dialogue. Dialoguing with Pat Romney on her work and ideas, she presented what is most dear to her heart. She described
key formative experiences in her arts-based civic dialogue. As she talked about these experiences, any listener would feel
the symphony of a dialogue that is geared toward change, not only at an individual level, but on a larger systemic and organizational level.
She posed a very poignant question when she stated, "Who better than us, as system thinkers, to move outside the boundaries of the
consultation room, but into the world to help people frame the issues and questions that are important in their daily lives." Like many
others she connected with in her presentation, she underscored her work as one that is involved in a process of inquiry and the
development of questions. "Whether it is Peggy Penn’s future questioning, the elaborate questioning methodologies of Karl Thom,
the depolarizing questions of the Public Conversations Project, the skillful reflections and questioning of Tom Anderson, or the artful
questioning of Michael White, we, as family therapists, have spent the life time of our profession constructing questions that generate
curiosity, interest, engagement, and help people move to change. And that is what the dialogue movement is all about." Pat’s reflections
re-engaged us and made us feel excited about questions and the framing of those questions.
Gladis Brun, for her part, immersed us in stories of her life. She invited us into her story which so much became our story.
She describes "the scenario of the times she lived, where deep social changes were part of everyday life." Gladis’ was a map of
migration. She described the "history of family therapy in Brazil, being, herself, not only a witness but also one of its leading agents."
In so doing, she sought caringly and lovingly to link the different levels of change, the personal and the professional. Her process was
so beautifully done that our process and her process achieved a closeness we had never imagined or anticipated. Gladis shared
"her understanding and practice of the importance of keeping oneself open, awake, flexible, and actively curious, as a natural
consequence of deep respect for and an interest in differences." Her map of intellectual, social and physical migration invited all
of us to reflect on our own maps, and made us wonder about places where these maps would take us if we dared to dream along.
These maps were captured in her work, her place as a mother, a grandmother, a woman, a feminist, and her work as a family
therapist. In particular, she stressed our differences as creative opportunities in merging contexts, from individual to larger systems.
The moments that Galdis Brun shared with us were, and still are, migrations in time and space. Indeed, while some people choose
to deal with complexity by sealing it into compartments—by separating profit from environment, work from home, or reality from
ethics—Gladis showed us that others cannot disengage the parts from the whole. They instead choose to reach out for some
new set of connections as they make sense of a world now simultaneously, and paradoxically, larger and smaller and more complex.
Pat Romney, Gladis Brun, and David Campbell echo this complexity. David called the tension between the part and the whole within
any system as one between the loyalty one has to the organization and the loyalty one has to oneself. But he acknowledged that his
approach seeks to "create a context in which different types of conversations can take place . . ." To do this, he proposed a "careful
attention to the larger context that needs to be in place in order to support new, riskier conversations." Gladis, Pat and David stepped
up to this challenge.
In our preparation work, Pat Romney, Gladis Brun, and David Campbell invited us to imagine and embrace the larger sphere of
dialogue and responsibility, one that calls for a keener recognition of diversity, complexity and ambiguity. Carefully examined, we can
begin to imagine and appreciate the clinical and the organizational, the micro and the macro, the personal and the professional in refreshing
new ways. And perhaps we can own Blanco’s words when he says, "A map of the real world is no less imaginary than a map of an imaginary
world." This may be what Olds has called the new "mindscape," and, I might add, what I like to call the “wonderscape” of dialogue.
For my part, I enjoyed and loved working with such amazing people. My life is definitely different for having had the chance to experience
but a fragment of what Pat Romney, Gladis Brun, and David Campbell have to offer. I am encouraged by the way in which they have woven
together the personal and the professional within both the individual and larger systems, and how they serve, yet again, as beacons of hope
for all of us.
References:
Blanco, A. (1994). Dawn of the sense: A bilingual anthology of Alberto
Blanco. San Francisco: City Light Publishers.
Revised translation by
Mark Schafer (2002).
Brun. G.(2002)
AFTA Plenary Presentation. Family Process. http://www.familyprocess.org.
