Synopsis
To help people and families who do not function optimally, as a therapist or a coach, you need to be “Always confident but never certain”. You need to be a confident leader of the process. To be confident you need a therapeutic map to quickly find your way in the ever new and ever changing territories that these individuals and families represent.
Once you become certain however, you become dangerous, because you are no longer open to feedback. Therapists become certain when they treat the map as if it were the territory. They also become certain when they believe in their intuitions. Although all kinds of unscientific psychobabble claim the contrary, it’s better not to follow your intuitions. Research on the role of intuitions in decision making shows that they are 50/50 bets, unless these intuitions are learned under specific conditions (Kahneman and Klein 2009).
Every therapeutic strategy is nothing but a hypothesis, inspired by your therapeutic map, but that needs to be tested in a continuous learning process of trial and error.
In this chapter the author describes his therapeutic maps at different levels: the level of epistemology, the level of methodology and the level of technique. He suggests an eco-psycho-somatic approach to therapy to better integrate relevant knowledge from different scientific domains and to pay special attention to what goes on at the interface between them.
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Acknowledgements
I am extremely lucky not only because in my career I got more than I strived hard for, but also because I have enjoyed so many fortunate serendipitous encounters with very inspiring people.
It was a fascinating journey. As a dwarf on the shoulders of giants, I did not become any taller, but it gave me a better view. It lead me from medicine, to neurology, to psychiatry, to psychosomatics, to behavioural therapy, to family therapy, to systems thinking combined with stress research, to executive coaching, consulting and teaching managers the directions of use of people and last but not least, working with families with a business. The last 6 years I did research about the brain and how we ruin our intellectual productivity and creativity by using our information and communication technology without knowing the directions of use of our own thinking brain.
It would take dozens of pages of references to mention the writings of all the writers who influenced my ideas mentioned in this chapter. I learned a lot in personal conversations and workshops too. The most important live learning happened with the following, more or less in chronological order: L. Van Trotsenburg, E. Wassenaar, R. VanDijk, above all S. Minuchin with whom I collaborated for 2 years and also G. Patterson, M. Erickson, G. Bateson, G. Guntern, J. Haley, C. Whitacker, many colleagues, team members, trainees, students and especially the sometimes very humbling learning from patients and their families.
Looking back, my journey through family therapy was an unremitting and sometimes tempestuous learning experience. I am very grateful to so many fascinating creative people who got, and still get, me out of my comfort zone again and again.
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Compernolle, T. (2016). Fascinating Interfaces and Systems: Integrating Biology, Psychology and Social Sciences in Teaching, Therapy and Coaching. In: Borcsa, M., Stratton, P. (eds) Origins and Originality in Family Therapy and Systemic Practice. European Family Therapy Association Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39061-1_8
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