A New Member's Viewpoint

By Muriel Singer

I had always heard stories about AFTA. It had a reputation as being an old, fossilized club and an elitist organization; a hoity-toity bastion of family therapy laureates that only accepted a privileged few within its lofty ranks. I seriously doubted if I would ever be allowed in. And, as a confirmed Marxist (Groucho), I told myself that I would never belong to a club that would grant me membership anyway. Then, last summer, I spent some time at the meeting in Miami and I was struck by the quality of the presentations and the diversity of the membership. I was invited to join and I did. So, how is it to be a card carrying member of this club at my first annual meeting?

Let me begin by saying that the remarkable spirit and courage that the speakers conveyed in the opening plenary on the Truth and Reconciliation project in South Africa just blew me away. It was a real tour de force and it was a privilege to hear each of their stories. They demonstrated, firsthand, that our relationship with the "enemy" requires not violence, but intelligence, courage and self-transformation. I was also very impressed with much of the research that was exhibited in the poster session that evening. Several projects involved taking systemic, relational ideas out into the community where the action is and working in partnership with families. The focus was on building resources in the community and making an effort to elicit and utilize the expertise of families.

One of the first things I noticed, in general, is that there's a lot of shmoozing that goes on in the halls—old friends and colleagues saying hello, catching up, engrossed in conversation. I must admit that I often felt star struck by the presence of so many luminaries in the field who have been so influential in my own development as a family therapist. My first impression was that AFTA is a smaller organization with big visions. Since it's smaller in size, the members seem to be more accessible and available. I felt like I was moving into a neighborhood where there was a shared history and a desire to keep the neighborhood vital and energetic, as well as safe and welcoming for all its inhabitants. Although I am new to AFTA, I never felt excluded during the meeting.

Actually, the effects of exclusion seemed to be a main theme throughout the meeting. Questions concerning the consequences of power, privilege and marginalization kept coming up. There was naturally quite a lot of discussion about 9/11 and there were many different points of view expressed concerning the issue of United States' complicity and the ways in which we have contributed to this violence. Opinions ran the gamut. I found myself thinking, "What if they're all correct? What if every last one of them is correct? What do we need to do to experience that?" One obvious solution is not to blame anyone, not attack anyone, not focus primarily on the shortcomings, perceived deficits, alleged moral degeneracy of any other. I think this begins by staying with one's own experience and being responsible for speaking it and acknowledging it.

During one interest group I took part in, Melissa Griffith did just that. I really appreciated her being so open about her personal reaction to seeing Muslim women wearing burkas on the street, and how she became curious about her own surprising judgment of them. I realized that I have often had the same reaction to Muslim women and Hasidic women and through the discussion it became clear to me that in my own interactions with "the other," the woman (or man) disappears as a person, and quickly becomes my current projection board; a fundamentalist fanatic, a poor oppressed victim, a bad mother. As the world turns, I may deify her, crucify her and resurrect her. We're in a house of mirrors all the way down.

This brings me to another stimulating interest group I participated in on the medicalization of therapy and the ideology that human distress is caused by brain dysfunction that needs to be managed biologically. Many questions were posed, such as, "Is it possible to present credible alternatives to the medical monolith that has come to dominate our field and which has gone largely unchallenged? What is the value and what are the limits of assimilation? Can we validate the good that the medical model has to offer while presenting an alternative perspective based in an ecosystemic epistemology?

Overall, the AFTA meeting brought me closer to my sense of who I am as a therapist. There seems to be a strong commitment to address some difficult issues, to reexamine our identity as a field, to take some risks, and to cultivate an ethical base for our practice and actions. Rather than being a club of old fossils protecting the field against change, I felt that there was a strong impetus for change. I liked it that the roundtables and interest groups provide a format for increased discussion and the development of ideas, although I did hear some complaints in the halls that the bulk of the meeting was not relevant to practicing clinicians or educators working in the "trenches." Personally, for me, the question of how we can stay relationally connected, both with our adversaries and ourselves, so that conflict leads to new understandings and new conversations is of utmost importance. One of the greatest contributions that therapy can make in our culture today is to offer creative ways to transform conflictual relationships. Our paradigm should embrace the community because there are times when the wider space of the community is what is needed for healing. After all, community is so important. A community for therapists is so important. A community for me is so important.

Muriel Singer is an assistant professor in the marriage and family therapy program at Kean University. She also has a part-time practice in New York City.