Completing Distinctions - Softcover

Flemons, Douglas G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 087773545X ISBN 13: 9780877735458

Publisher: Shambhala Publications Inc, 1991

Synopsis

Completing Distinctions develops a new way of thinking about the connection between problems and solutions for family and systems therapists. The author suggests that addiction and other social and ecological dilemmas stem from the belief that distinctions such as hate and love, sickness and health, or problem and solution are irreconcilable oppositions. Flemons shows how much separations can be completed so that genuine healing can occur in individuals, families, organizations, and ecologies. Written in a playful style, the book includes short client-therapist dialogues that illustrate the author's approach.

About this title

Product Description

Completing distinctions, paperback, Light wear.Contents clean and unmarked.

Synopsis

Drawing on the work of Gregory Bateson and Taoism, this book develops a new approach to the problems encountered in family and systemic therapy. The author argues that many personal, social and ecological dilemmas stem from the false belief that a problem and its solution are separate and irreconcilable. In making hard distinctions between a problem and it's solution, between "sicknes" and "health", or "self" and "other", it is essential to realize that a boundary that separates things also connects them. Borrowing the Taoist concept of yin and yang, the author explores the paradox of opposites which are both mutually dependent and connected and at the same time separate and opposite. Conventional problem solving, the author suggests, automatically engenders failed solutions because it looks at problems only in terms of separation from a solution, so when a person tries to eradicate a neurotic symptom the sympton returns in other forms, or when a society tries to isolate and destroy a sociological ill the problem simply manifests itself in another way.

The author shows how a patient's neurotic attempts to separate from another person, or from an obsession such as alcoholism, inevitably leads to another connection or dependency. Again drawing on his knowledge of Chinese philosophy, the author describes how the Taoist notion of wu-wei or "non-action", provides a valuable paradigm for living that goes beyond the duality of either separation or connection to a realization of completion. He describes family, or systemic, therapy as a process of completing distinctions in which unconscious oppositions are made conscious and can be transcended, so that alternating separations are connected and dreaming connections are severed.

Edition details

• Publisher: Shambhala Publications Inc
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 087773545X
• ISBN 13: 9780877735458
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144