Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy Theory and Practice Award:
Rosmarie Welter-Enderlin

Evan Imber-Black

I first met Rosmarie Welter-Enderlin through correspondence in 1989. Little did I know then that I was about to embark on a transatlantic colleagueship marked by rich collaboration and abiding friendship. I am deeply honored to present the AFTA award for Distinguished Contribution to Family Therapy Theory and Practice to this most accomplished woman, whose work, primarily in the German language has shaped the development of family therapy in Europe.

Rosmarie is the first woman founder and director of a major Family Therapy Institute in Europe, the Ausbildung Institut fur Systemische Therapie und Beratung in Meilen, Switzerland, just outside Zurich. From its' inception, Rosmarie sought to establish a multi-disciplinary team - psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, anthropologists, sociologists, historians - all working on behalf of couples and families and with Rosmarie's leadership, all seeking to create new knowledge to enhance family life, both at home and in the work place.

Committed to the belief that each training, therapy or consultation is its' own unique situation, Rosmarie has developed a complex, multi-contextual body of work, one that encompasses clients' internal world of cognition and affect; respects their full relational world bringing attention to both meaning and action; honors their historical world, including special consideration of the many ways European history and especially the Second World War continues to reverberate in present day interactions; and challenges their political and social world as exemplified in gender inequality at home and at work. One of Rosmarie's favorite phrases is that each therapy or consultation should be "tailor-made." This is never solipsistic, but rather represents her exquisite attention to the humanistic requirements of each situation.

The sweeping body of Rosmarie's work can be seen in her many books, including: Couples: Passion and Compassion now in its fifth edition. This book represents the best of grounded theory, comprising the results of interview with couples two to three years after completing couple's therapy. Focusing on the couple's attempts to achieve gender equality, this work raises the critical life cycle stage of what Rosmarie refers to as "baby shock," or the impact that the birth of children had on re-establishing stereotypical gender roles, and how therapy can mitigate against this.

Your Love is Not My Love: Partner Problems and Models of Solution from a Systemic Point Of View. This book, along with How Family Stories Can Be Transformed Into Futures, which enables couples to look at their own family secrets and life themes, are examples of Rosmarie's commitment to bring systems thinking and practice to an educated lay audience.

Systemic Therapy As Encounter (co-written with Dr. Bruno Hildebrand). This work offers a model for teaching couple's and family therapy, focusing on ways to achieve change through working with family stories and life themes, while challenging solution-focused models. Like all of Rosmarie's work, here theory arises from families' experiences. At the center of this work is the hopeful story of a Swiss farm family, plagued with multi-generations of alcoholism, incest and mental illness, helped through therapy to effectively hand the farm to the next generation.

Understanding Illness and Management Options with Chronic Arthritis, a quantitative study of 120 families coping with the consequences of arthritis, complemented by qualitative in-depth interviews of several families.

Rosmarie has also edited books completed with her colleague Dr. Bruno Hildebrand, including Feelings and Systems: The Emotional Framework of Counseling and Therapy; and Rituals and Their Wealth in Therapy and Culture. She had an eleven-year tenure as co-editor of the major European Family Therapy journal, System Familie and has scores of book chapters, journal articles and pieces written for the popular press.

Rosmarie Welter-Enderlin's work has always demonstrated the courage so necessary to challenge prevailing ideologies, whether that be the notions of radical constructivism that swept family therapy in the 1980's, or the embedded gender inequalities in large corporations that seek her consultation. Her work reclaiming affect required that she boldly confront a European family therapy that had increasingly come to rely on overly intellectual and ahistorical processes of change.

Rosmarie and her colleagues at the Institute in Switzerland give a gift to the European Family Therapy community every three or four years in the form of an International Congress on a major theme, such as Family Worlds; Coping with Chronic Medical and Mental Illness; Affective Communication; Rituals in Culture and Therapy. These congresses themselves have become highly anticipated rituals for the European family therapy community, imbued like all worthwhile rituals with meaning and relational connections. Unlike most conferences that come and go with the lightening quickness of a fast food meal, these congresses are gourmet repasts. Using their profits from a previous congress and starting a year or two before the next one, Rosmarie and her team assemble a multi-disciplinary and international "think-tank" to explore a topic in depth, raising new questions to be examined, new arenas for research. This cross-fertilization of family therapy concepts and practices with those from sociology, art, popular culture, history, etc. break us out of our usual modes of thinking, providing a richness found in few other venues. The congress, per se, provides a context for thoughtful discourse and respectful debate, as participants are encouraged to shape and re-shape ideas to fit their own communities. Each congress results in a book in order to carry the proceedings to a larger audience. The circularity of thought and action as exemplified in this process is emblematic of all of the work of Rosmarie Welter-Enderlin.

I offer this award on behalf of AFTA to Rosmarie Welter-Enderlin, with joy in my heart, appreciation for all of our work together, and gratitude for our deep friendship.