Who was von Foerster, anyway
Identifieur interne : 001035 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 001034; suivant : 001036Who was von Foerster, anyway
Auteurs : Gianfranco Cecchin ; Pietro Barbetta ; Dario ToffanettiSource :
- Kybernetes [ 0368-492X ] ; 2005-03-01.
Abstract
Purpose What is therapy Which would be today Heinz von Foerster's answer The authors try to unveil the mystery of an answer coming from a conversation among them. They think that Heinz von Foerster, like Gregory Bateson, was one of the most influential philosopher of therapy. In the paper they analyse some very basic key words like trivial machine, human becoming and key concepts like broaden the field of possible in order to understand if there is an order or a purpose in doing therapy. Designmethodologyapproach The paper is a confrontation between epistemology and therapy. The trick is that, unlike von Foerster, the authors are therapists. So probably their conversation will not be reliable. But usually therapists, in doing therapy, do not look for reliability. They try to be accountable, which is a different issue. Findings Probably therapy is a language game. If yes, the language game of therapy is a trick without a trickster. A map in a stranger land. That can be considered the main finding which follows from von Foerster's thought. Practical implications Nevertheless, such a wrong map sometimes could help who is lost, provided that map and territory will never be the same thing. Originalityvalue The original value of the paper is, first of all that it can be considered the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. In the very last period of his life Cecchin was considering and sounding a new perspective for therapy. Pietro Barbetta and Dario Toffanetti were working with him in therapy and theoretically to find new frames for therapies in the postmodern era.
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DOI: 10.1108/03684920510581503
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They think that Heinz von Foerster, like Gregory Bateson, was one of the most influential philosopher of therapy. In the paper they analyse some very basic key words like trivial machine, human becoming and key concepts like broaden the field of possible in order to understand if there is an order or a purpose in doing therapy. Designmethodologyapproach The paper is a confrontation between epistemology and therapy. The trick is that, unlike von Foerster, the authors are therapists. So probably their conversation will not be reliable. But usually therapists, in doing therapy, do not look for reliability. They try to be accountable, which is a different issue. Findings Probably therapy is a language game. If yes, the language game of therapy is a trick without a trickster. A map in a stranger land. That can be considered the main finding which follows from von Foerster's thought. Practical implications Nevertheless, such a wrong map sometimes could help who is lost, provided that map and territory will never be the same thing. Originalityvalue The original value of the paper is, first of all that it can be considered the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. In the very last period of his life Cecchin was considering and sounding a new perspective for therapy. Pietro Barbetta and Dario Toffanetti were working with him in therapy and theoretically to find new frames for therapies in the postmodern era.</div></front></TEI><istex><corpusName>emerald</corpusName><author><json:item><name>Gianfranco Cecchin</name><affiliations><json:string>Centro Milanese di Terapia della Familgia, Milano, Italy</json:string></affiliations></json:item><json:item><name>Pietro Barbetta</name><affiliations><json:string>Centro Milanese di Terapia della Familgia, Milano, Italy</json:string></affiliations></json:item><json:item><name>Dario Toffanetti</name><affiliations><json:string>Centro Milanese di Terapia della Familgia, Milano, Italy</json:string></affiliations></json:item></author><subject><json:item><lang><json:string>eng</json:string></lang><value>Cybernetics</value></json:item><json:item><lang><json:string>eng</json:string></lang><value>Ethics</value></json:item></subject><language><json:string>eng</json:string></language><originalGenre><json:string>e-conceptual-paper</json:string></originalGenre><abstract>Purpose What is therapy Which would be today Heinz von Foerster's answer The authors try to unveil the mystery of an answer coming from a conversation among them. They think that Heinz von Foerster, like Gregory Bateson, was one of the most influential philosopher of therapy. In the paper they analyse some very basic key words like trivial machine, human becoming and key concepts like broaden the field of possible in order to understand if there is an order or a purpose in doing therapy. Designmethodologyapproach The paper is a confrontation between epistemology and therapy. The trick is that, unlike von Foerster, the authors are therapists. So probably their conversation will not be reliable. But usually therapists, in doing therapy, do not look for reliability. They try to be accountable, which is a different issue. Findings Probably therapy is a language game. If yes, the language game of therapy is a trick without a trickster. A map in a stranger land. That can be considered the main finding which follows from von Foerster's thought. Practical implications Nevertheless, such a wrong map sometimes could help who is lost, provided that map and territory will never be the same thing. Originalityvalue The original value of the paper is, first of all that it can be considered the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. In the very last period of his life Cecchin was considering and sounding a new perspective for therapy. 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They think that Heinz von Foerster, like Gregory Bateson, was one of the most influential philosopher of therapy. In the paper they analyse some very basic key words like trivial machine, human becoming and key concepts like broaden the field of possible in order to understand if there is an order or a purpose in doing therapy. Designmethodologyapproach The paper is a confrontation between epistemology and therapy. The trick is that, unlike von Foerster, the authors are therapists. So probably their conversation will not be reliable. But usually therapists, in doing therapy, do not look for reliability. They try to be accountable, which is a different issue. Findings Probably therapy is a language game. If yes, the language game of therapy is a trick without a trickster. A map in a stranger land. That can be considered the main finding which follows from von Foerster's thought. Practical implications Nevertheless, such a wrong map sometimes could help who is lost, provided that map and territory will never be the same thing. Originalityvalue The original value of the paper is, first of all that it can be considered the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. In the very last period of his life Cecchin was considering and sounding a new perspective for therapy. Pietro Barbetta and Dario Toffanetti were working with him in therapy and theoretically to find new frames for therapies in the postmodern era.</p></abstract><textClass><keywords scheme="keyword"><list><head>keywords</head><item><term>Cybernetics</term></item><item><term>Ethics</term></item></list></keywords></textClass><textClass><keywords scheme="Emerald Subject Group"><list><label>cat-ENGG</label><item><term>Engineering</term></item><label>cat-EEE</label><item><term>Electrical & electronic engineering</term></item><label>cat-CSE</label><item><term>Computer & software engineering</term></item><label>cat-SYSC</label><item><term>Systems & control</term></item></list></keywords></textClass><textClass><keywords scheme="Emerald Subject Group"><list><label>cat-IKM</label><item><term>Information & knowledge management</term></item><label>cat-ISYS</label><item><term>Information systems</term></item><label>cat-SMC</label><item><term>Systems modelling & cybernetics</term></item></list></keywords></textClass></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2005-03-01">Published</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><extension>txt</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/78B4C8EEDA6805A3BEB6717D2CA85BE6E05E6074/fulltext/txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus emerald not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:document><!-- Auto generated NISO JATS XML created by Atypon out of MCB DTD source files. 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Which would be today Heinz von Foerster's answer? The authors try to unveil the mystery of an answer coming from a conversation among them. They think that Heinz von Foerster, like Gregory Bateson, was one of the most influential philosopher of therapy. In the paper they analyse some very basic key words – like trivial machine, human becoming – and key concepts – like “broaden the field of possible” – in order to understand if there is an order or a purpose in doing therapy.</p></sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-heading">Design/methodology/approach</title><x> – </x><p>The paper is a confrontation between epistemology and therapy. The trick is that, unlike von Foerster, the authors are therapists. So probably their conversation will not be reliable. But usually therapists, in doing therapy, do not look for reliability. They try to be accountable, which is a different issue.</p></sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-heading">Findings</title><x> – </x><p>Probably therapy is a language game. If yes, the language game of therapy is a trick without a trickster. A map in a stranger land. That can be considered the main finding which follows from von Foerster's thought.</p></sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-heading">Practical implications</title><x> – </x><p>Nevertheless, such a wrong map sometimes could help who is lost, provided that map and territory will never be the same thing.</p></sec><sec><title content-type="abstract-heading">Originality/value</title><x> – </x><p>The original value of the paper is, first of all that it can be considered the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. In the very last period of his life Cecchin was considering and sounding a new perspective for therapy. Pietro Barbetta and Dario Toffanetti were working with him in therapy and theoretically to find new frames for therapies in the post‐modern era.</p></sec></abstract><kwd-group><kwd>Cybernetics</kwd><x>, </x><kwd>Ethics</kwd></kwd-group><custom-meta-group><custom-meta><meta-name>peer-reviewed</meta-name><meta-value>no</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta><meta-name>academic-content</meta-name><meta-value>yes</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta><meta-name>rightslink</meta-name><meta-value>included</meta-value></custom-meta></custom-meta-group></article-meta></front><body><sec><title>Truth is the invention of a liar</title><p>All scientific ideas – for example, the idea that whenever there is a diagnosis there is also a syndrome, and therefore that certain events linked to the syndrome will happen, and that if I administer certain drugs, other predictable events will happen – are scientific in their reasoning. They are a miraculous attempt to make the world seem ordinary. We usually think in this way, firmly believing that these wonderful ideas exist out there in the real world, independently of us, the people who invent them.</p><p>According to von Foerster, the important thing is not to believe this. If you believe that these ideas are the truth, you are a liar.</p><p>A trivial machine is not just a machine that is predictable; it is also a machine that wants to know what the consequences of its actions are. Scientific discourse is like this. The illusion of science lies in its attempt to organise itself and the external world in a trivial, i.e. predictable way. In doing so, it offers the illusion that you can have (total) control over life's events. Such control reassures us, on one hand, about science's (total) epistemological impotence; on the other, it commits the cardinal sin of <italic>hubris</italic>, the one, which the Greek gods found so extremely annoying. In other words, if you make a move in a game that has clear, fixed rules, you always get the same response; if you don't get the same response, there must be something wrong with the game because it is giving you the wrong answer.</p><p>Von Foerster replaces this idea with the concept of <italic>human becoming</italic>. Human beings are always in a state of becoming. Their stories are open‐ended, always unfinished. Within this kind of continuous movement, the idea of organising the reality around us, of making it predictable, of trying to use what has happened before to know what will happen next, begins to make sense. Linear thought – and therefore the idea that I can influence the things of the world and how other human beings behave – also begins to make sense. This is what we call “truth” in the West. According to von Foerster, this kind of discourse is untruthful because it claims that events are predictable, and, implicitly, that it has found the formula that enables them to be replicated (taking issue with Popper?). It also claims to have discovered the unalterable laws of existence, which means that the world can be organised in the way it wants. This, von Foerster says is a lie. Or an illusion, rather. Perhaps the best way to put it would be: “Reality is the invention of a dreamer”. But that would still be a too banal description.</p><p>Someone suffering from an illusion (from the Latin <italic>in</italic>, on, and <italic>ludere</italic>, play) abides by the rules of the game, but the game is never individual. As <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b19">Wittgenstein (1953)</xref> pointed out, it is always social. The game of language is never individual, it is always social. So we could say that reality is the illusion of a social group. And it is the illusion of power that keeps the game under control.</p><p>As a child, von Foerster performed invented magic feats with his cousin, and the two young men were delighted when they observed how astounded adults were by their magical skills. It is curious to see him so clearly at odds here with children's beliefs about the adult world; for example, the belief that truth exists. The statement “Truth is the invention of a liar” follows from this.</p><p>We have read about an experiment conducted by sociologists on a group of university students. They announced that a students' academic counseling service was going to be set up to help them decide about exams and courses. Then they opened up an office staffed by a person trained to answer questions in a random way. The students were told they could only ask “yes” or “no” questions, and the person who had to answer them – presumably a professional counselor – looked at a display with red and green lights that lit up randomly. When the green light came on, the “counselor” had to answer “yes”; if it was “red”, he or she had to answer “no”. It was absolutely forbidden to listen to what the students were actually saying. The experiment seemed to work pretty well. The students asked their questions, the “counselor” randomly answered “yes” or “no”, and the students decided themselves what that meant and asked more questions. In short, they seemed to enjoy this kind of counseling.</p><p>At first sight this looks like a conversation, which, at least on the “counselor's” part, eliminates meaning, but what it really does is point to the influence of context on how questions are asked and answered. The students found meaning in the “yes” and “no” answers, while the “counselor” gave human beings “yes” or “no” answers depending on whether the green or the red light came on, attributing no meaning whatsoever to the “yes” or “no”. But the students who went there for this kind of counseling did attribute meaning to the answers they received. This experiment seems to be telling us that the illusion of knowing which direction we are going in – even when this seems totally misguided from an outside observer's point of view – helps us to decide what to do.</p><p>Another story, which happened during the World War I, concerns some Austrian troops who had lost their bearings on the Asiago plateau during a snowstorm. They did not know their way home and the snow was heavy, so it was dangerous to make a move. Then one of the solders pulled out a map, saying “I've found a map that will get us out of here, a map of this area, the Asiago plateau”. They began walking and eventually ended up in the right place. The commandant asked them how they had managed to find their way and they said they had had a map. But it was a false map, a map of the Pyrenees. It only worked because the soldiers believed it was a true map.</p><p>We could be romantic and call all this “trust”. More cynically, we could call it “power of suggestion”. But, in our work as family therapists, it is better to think romantically. On the other hand, we must always have plans. In a way, as <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b12">Foucault (1971)</xref> says, science is a <italic>search</italic> for what is right or not, for what is true. We must always have a map – even if it is not, and never can be – the right one.</p><p>This is very like what Umberto Eco says about literature – that it is concerned with the trust principle, not the truth principle. When we read a novel we trust its author to be telling us the truth, not in the sense that we would entrust the author with our lives, but in the sense that we believe that we are being told the truth. We enter into the author's way of thinking, the narrative, the story, constructing a possible world alongside the one in the novel. We construct a story, a virtual text, alongside the written text.</p><p>How can we professional therapists use these ideas in our work? Well, a family comes to you, you talk, and from the questions you ask they construct a set of possibilities, or fantasies. These are maps of unknown territory that are valid for as long as people talk about them. The important thing <italic>is</italic> to talk about them. Perhaps, this is a definition of dialogue, something that lasts for as long as whatever people are talking about, and then disappears. In this perspective, therapy is a matter of telling stories, stories that have twists and turns, and last for as long as people talk about them. Therapy is evanescent: now you see, now you do not.</p><p>If, as a therapist, you become embroiled in a model that claims to have some direct relationship with the “truth”, the model becomes reality, and reality pins you down. The model is useful only until it becomes reality.</p></sec><sec><title>What is the purpose of therapy?</title><p>How does this square with the outcome of therapy? If therapy really is an evanescent conversation that lasts as long as a session, what happens after the session?</p><p>We have to acknowledge that if therapy goes well, it is because the people involved construct a map, a project that makes them feel good. Quite often this project cannot be described, in the sense that the people involved in it are not in a position to describe it.</p><p>Let us look at a case that Gianfranco was once in charge of. After a few sessions, he was reluctant to ask the couple, “How come you're feeling better?”, but then he realised that this was because his question was really asking them to explain their map.</p><p>The husband did not want to have children; his wife was Polish. Gianfranco elicited a whole range of fantasies on the theme that a man could not have children with a woman like her, who came from Poland. The husband, who probably felt provoked, said: “What kind of an idea is that? What has Poland got to do with it?” However, this fantasy about biology and race may have had an effect. Indeed, many other fantasies could have been woven around the idea that he did not want to have children with her.</p><p>During the next session, the two of them said they felt a bit better, and the husband even said he was willing to have children with her. They had completely forgotten what had been said during the previous session. They did not even talk about it. So Gianfranco made no further reference to why the couple felt better. He did not want to insist on the old biological fantasies because he realised that they had been valid only for as long as the couple talked about them.</p><p>As in daily life, people in therapy forget things. If you ask them “Why did this or that event happen?” they will often reply “I don't know”. Do therapists know? They have their ideas, certainly, whether they state them openly or not. Therapists play with their own ideas and their clients' ideas without believing that their own are any more or less valid than their clients'. Their aim is to facilitate discourse, perhaps of a kind that is totally opposed to the dominant discourse of the family (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b11">Foucault, 1966</xref>). Most importantly, they pretend to be unconcerned by the effect their ideas may have on the outcome of the discourse.</p><p>Pietro recalls a case in which there seemed to be an undiscoverable secret. At first it seemed that there was no way beyond the stalemate. The father was a doctor who had read Selvini Palazzoli's Family Games – which is a textbook in Pietro's school – so many times that he knew it by heart. He kept on repeating that his family was involved in a psychotic game, and Pietro, who could not remember the detail of the book, was making heavy weather of the situation. In agreement with the team, he decided not to compete with the doctor over who knew the family therapy literature better, and simply kept the conversation going, not only with the doctor but also with the other members of the family who, like Pietro himself, were unfamiliar with Selvini Palazzoli's ideas.</p><p>At a certain point, after six or seven sessions, the family members said they felt better and there was talk of concluding the therapy, but the father said: “I want another session. Everything's better now, everything's fine, but I want another session”. We asked, “Why do you want another session?” and he answered, “Because I want to know what you said to each other behind the mirror, what strategies you used to make us feel better”. The problem was that no one in the team knew how to answer the question.</p><p>In this case, the therapist was the map of the Pyrenees. You can use any map to get out of the hole you are in. The father was saying: “I feel better, I came here to have conversations with you. Now you must tell me what you invented, what you did”.</p><p>Gianfranco's opinion was that it would help this kind of father to be invited behind the mirror to talk to the team, so he would realise that everything the therapists had to say might be totally meaningless to him.</p><p>But there is a major obstacle here. As therapists we start from the constructionist idea that the principles we use should always be totally non‐authoritarian, and yet the outcomes we get from therapy are bound up with the persona of the therapist. How can the two ideas be reconciled?</p><p>On one hand, if the therapist is the map – any kind of map, and therefore a somewhat magical being – and if it is the client who decides what the therapist's actions mean, who is responsible for what in terms of outcome? On the other, if we choose to be totally non‐authoritarian, how can we judge outcomes? Are not the outcomes we are dealing with here more closely related to the force of the therapist's personality than to technique? We all use technique to a greater or lesser degree. A technique is always a technique, irrespective of whether it is you, or me, or someone else who uses it. Whereas here the client seems to think that we are magicians. We are reminded again of von Foerster as a child, playing at being a magician with adults. It is interesting to see how clear the origins of his thinking become when his ideas are applied to psychotherapy. There was a time when this would have seemed impossible to us, and yet, there are many previous examples of this in family therapy. For example, Milton Erickson was a “magician” – he never passed on his techniques directly, apart from those relating to hypnotic suggestion – and his “magic” was an integral part of his way of doing psychotherapy. In the case we described earlier, the father probably did not want to believe that no “magic” was involved. He needed magic to make sense of the outcome. We think it is important that therapists don't believe in it either.</p></sec><sec><title>Power wears down people who think they have it</title><p>The danger of all human relationships is that they can fall into the trap of becoming power relationships. And yet, people come to us and give us, if not power, then <italic>a</italic> power. When this happens, we do all we can to demolish the power, maintain a balance, and avoid entering into the power game. Gianfranco has written on several occasions about “power and meaning”. He says that metaphors of power, war and strategy were often used in family therapy. Now he proposes an approach in which people do not necessarily enter into relationships through power. His new idea is that human beings enter into relationships in order to give their lives meaning. How does this free us from power? How is the image different? Perhaps, it is different because the meaning it gives to life is much more complex than power.</p><p>The notion that everything is organised around power is only one of the many meanings that can be given to life. This whole debate stems now from the famous difference of opinion between Bateson and Haley. Haley said that human beings come together for reasons of power, and Bateson replied, “I don't believe in the metaphor of power because it's a metaphor that corrupts”. However, it has to be acknowledged that Haley has been a much more successful therapist. Bateson did not influence many therapists, apart from the Milan school, and many of the students who come to Milan to learn how to do therapy often go away with some notion of power in their heads. Power is a powerful idea. This has to be acknowledged.</p><p>The hegemony of power is, first and foremost, cultural. You want to be a therapist because you want to help people. If you can find a formula that stops people from behaving in certain way – for example, self‐destructively – and helps them to behave more positively, then you have been successful. This is the mission of all therapists, but it does seem worryingly like the description of “truth” we gave a little earlier.</p><p>Watzlawick says that therapists intervene in people's lives to achieve a result. Sometimes that intervention is successful, and this success convinces people that the method used particularly in their case was the right one, the true one. But we think this idea conceals a form of non‐ecological authoritarianism.</p><p>Like it or not, Bateson's systemic concept says that the force of a system lies within the system itself, so his concept teaches us that power corrupts. You do not necessarily have to agree with this idea – it is, as von Foerster would say, just one of the many ways of explaining what one observes – but it <italic>is</italic> Bateson's concept. There are no recipes for all occasions. If you think the idea of power is always wrong, you turn the systemic concept into a sort of moral sermon. And, in effect, the morality that therapists use <italic>is</italic> very superficial. For us, hearing a person say “I feel good” is better than hearing a person say “I feel bad” and in this sense we think that the metaphor of power increases the possibility that things will go badly. We say “badly” to avoid talking about “corruption”. However, not even Bateson himself was perfect. He had a certain Puritan streak in him, a touch of the British. There was something of the moralist in him. But perhaps what Bateson meant is that if you use just the metaphor of power, it is more likely to associate itself with the metaphor of corruption.</p><p>Returning to his disagreement with Haley, one of Bateson's problems was that most of the people doing research with him at that time did have this idea of power. Today we could say, paraphrasing a famous Italian politician that power wears you down, but only if you see things exclusively in terms of power. On the other hand, power is not an individual attitude; it is a genuine social construct. Someone comes along and gives you power. The temptation to use power for its own sake is rather strong in therapy, too. So when someone gives us power, we do our utmost to demolish it. We don't want to wear ourselves out, we don't want to be corrupted. It is a kind of exercise to avoid burn‐out. Now let us see in what other ways we can read a relationship which therapists obsessed by power see exclusively in terms of power. A father says to his daughter: “Ask mummy where she went last night”. He does not ask directly. As first sight, this looks like “corruption of a minor” and we might think that corruption is endemic in that particular family because its members are <italic>using</italic> each other: “I want something from mummy so I'm asking you to go and ask her”. If we accept Kant's categorical imperative that we should see the other as an end and never as a means, we can only condemn this kind of family corruption. And yet, we also have to ask if it really is possible to apply the Kantian imperative to everyday life.</p><p>Let us do another take on this father. Let us see him instead as a father who is having problems talking to his wife and therefore needs his daughter's help. This is a different interpretation: the episode is the same, but it has quite another meaning. Why should it necessarily be seen as corruption? On the other hand, we could amalgamate the two stories if we are prepared to accept that “corruption” is not necessarily a bad word. If we do, we get a father who is having problems talking to his wife and is forced to corrupt his daughter to keep going.</p><p>But therapy <italic>is</italic> this pendulum‐swing between meanings. Instead of using the word “corruption”, we could say that the father <italic>has</italic> to ask his daughter for help. By doing so, we create a context in which the father begins to change the direction of his conversation with his daughter: “Look, I've got problems with your mother, I just can't speak to her. Will you help me? Will you speak to her? I can't, I feel awkward”. And the daughter can always say: “That's your business. You should work out your problems with your wife for yourself. Maybe you should try therapy”. If his daughter answers like this, there is no longer any question of corruption.</p></sec><sec><title>The von Foerster imperative</title><p>Von <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b9">von Foerster (1982)</xref>, like Kant, proposes a ethical imperative – “Act always so as to increase the number of choices” – but his imperative has the practical advantage that, if you describe the same phenomenon in different ways, you create possible words, i. e. meaning is constructed in multiple ways, resulting in the famous polyphony that <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b3">Bachtin (1981)</xref> speaks of.</p><p>Thus, I can describe the phenomenon of the father who says to his daughter “Go and ask mummy where she went last night” as an instance of corruption, as a perverse triangle, as a father asking his daughter for help, as a carnival joke, or in any number of other ways.</p><p>Thinking rationally, one invents different hypotheses. In America the situation might be seen more as a perverse triangle because Haley is very influential there, whereas in Vienna, where Freud has been influential, it could be seen as more Oedipal. Different cultures will find different ways of describing the situation. In some it may be described as pathogenic and therefore to be avoided; in others it may be seen as a mechanism of mutual help and solidarity. This means accepting the von Foerster imperative of increasing your options, i.e. this is what I see, but what might it mean in different circumstances, different situations, different cultures?</p><p>The three of us once proposed “Constructivism/constructionism and morality” as a conference theme because we had the impression that morality is always lurking out of sight at therapy's back door because therapists are embarrassed about letting it in at the front door. We are terrified of being considered moralists, but isn't this terror itself a moral stance? We are even reluctant to <italic>discuss</italic> morality. We dance a minuet around the issue: clinically and theoretically, we are always baffled by it. This is due to the now widespread idea that we should avoid advising people, i.e. avoid moralising. Our prejudice is that we insist that people think for themselves. In the meantime we give them lots of options, some of them “moral”, others not.</p><p>Let us go back to our example of the “corrupting” father, and consider typical circular questions like “Do you think it would be harmful to your daughter if she asked her mother a question like that?”, which could also be a moralistic question; or “Do you think your daughter is happy about you asking her to ask her mother. Do you think it makes her feel more important?”, which in some ways is Oedipal; or “Do you think the girl feels more important because you give her this job to do?” The options we give might also sound immoral. For example, we might say that, deep down; this father loves his daughter and says all these things in order to be close to her. Or that he does not care what the mother does: it may be just a way of talking to his daughter, of persuading her to tell him her secrets; or (since he is very shy) that he simply does not know what to talk to his daughter about, so he talks about her mother, seeing that she likes her very much.</p><p>In short, the idea is to develop imagination in various directions (be they moral, immoral, or amoral), to encourage imaginative story‐telling with the ultimate aim of generating some sort of resonance between the people themselves and all the things we say. A resonance that says: “This is the right choice. The one that's true today, this week, in the period the client is living through at the moment”.</p><p>“True today” means evanescent. It means it worked as dialogue when the father was taking to his daughter, the mother, the therapist, the outside world. It worked at that moment, for a moment.</p><p>The therapist has constructed new knowledge, and the meaning of this new knowledge is related to the possibility of controlling reality. This is Foucault's knowledge/power.</p><p>According to <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b15">MacIntyre (1984)</xref>, the Kantian imperative “Treat everyone as an end, not as a means” is totally impracticable because it is impossible to enter into relationships with other human beings that are <italic>not</italic> manipulative.</p><p>Indeed, one might conclude that Kant's idea has given rise to a kind of moral rigidity that has been a feature of some forms of modern totalitarianism. In the light of post‐modern thinking, the outcome of Kant's philosophy certainly seems disconcerting, but where do we go from there? Well, if it is true that we can not help manipulating other human beings, at least the other person should be put in the position of knowing and accepting this. If I treat another person as a means without first asking his or her permission, my action is immoral. But maybe my action is equally immoral if I treat him or her as an end without asking permission first. This brings to mind the story of the boy scout who forces an old lady to cross the road with him because he <italic>knows</italic> he has to do one good deed a day. Good feelings and the moral good are being abused here, quite apart from the more classic abuse that comes of bad feelings. It is just that abuse of good feelings is more disarming; we do not always recognise it for what it is, or know how to deal with it.</p><p>A wife might say: “This husband is OK because he's useful to me. He makes money and gives me children, and I want to be useful to him, too. I want to be really affectionate and do everything for him, but he's also useful to me. There are advantages in having him as a husband”. And her husband might say: “This woman is useful to me, too, because she's a good mother. I benefit from her because she takes care of me at home, and she's a good‐looking woman, too”. Both of them consciously say “I'm using the other person, but in a positive way. We manipulate each other, but in a positive way”. As therapists we might criticise this, but our point of view would be external, authoritarian. From an internal point of view, if the two feel this is a mutual exchange, their attitude is right. Only when there is no reciprocity does it become a problem, a form of abuse. We might even be scandalised by what they say. However, our opinion is that one source of madness is the mad idea that we should always treat everyone as an end and not as a means. MacIntyre even claims that the entrepreneur and the therapist are two key moral figures of modern times because they have found a way out of this moral dilemma. As Hannah Arendt says, theirs is a <italic>vita activa</italic>.</p></sec><sec><title>So what is a therapist?</title><p>If a therapist asks “What use is your husband/wife to you?”, people are a bit surprised because they are used to think that a man and a woman marry for love. But if we say “Forget about what you do for love, tell me what use s/he is to you”, it is interesting to see them realising that, deep down, they do consider their partner a means. With “he's useful to her and she's useful to him” you have a balance of usefulness, but if one of the two has married the other for love, the usefulness may end up being one‐sided. As often as not – almost always, in fact – this is what happens to women.</p><p>In Ancient Greek the word “service” has the same root as “therapy”. According to Foucault, “therapy” meant “service” in three different ways in late Antiquity: a servant who serves a master; a person who helps another person; and service in the medical sense. In the modern age, “therapy” is seen as being at the service of a system that needs unblocking, a system stuck in a form of psychosis or madness. A system, which the therapist tries to unblock using dialogue. Thus, the therapist is at the service of a system that seems to have stopped evolving, i.e. is no longer <italic>inside</italic> life.</p><p>Von Foerster's idea of <italic>order from noise</italic> is related to the question of how systems evolve. If the therapeutic system is co‐evolutional, it follows that the noise from which order is constructed is expressed in the form of dialogue. However, many kinds of order can be constructed, and the one that eventually <italic>is</italic> constructed can never be predicted or calculated in advance. Dialogue does not say in advance what the solution is. So let us say that systems, and human beings with them, are continuously evolving. As <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b18">Shotter (2002)</xref> has said, they are positioned midway between order and chaos, but as soon as they stop evolving they become rigidly organised. By contrast, an evolving system operates at different levels of order, constantly shifting from one to the other as it goes on changing. It is never stuck in a fixed order so it is always in a state of becoming.</p><p>Von Foerster says that unhealthy human systems are blocked systems, and yet the idea of blockage is embedded in all language that uses the verb “to be”. To describe people we call them human <italic>beings</italic>, not human <italic>becomings</italic>. Our language games block the system because our “essentialist” vision of things takes a photograph, and the photograph blocks the system, freezes it as it is. The image of a film, a <italic>movie</italic>, is much more useful. As a <italic>series</italic> of photographs, the film epitomises our idea of what systems are. Now and again the film seizes up, and that is when we see blocked, seized‐up families.</p><p>“Stick” has many meanings. As a verb we can use it in expressions like <italic>stuck system and stick to the path</italic>, which are metaphors of rigidity. Similarly, the ancient Romans (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b16">Pakman, 2003</xref>) insisted that peasants should stick to the furrow (<italic>lira</italic>) when they ploughed. Not to do so resulted in <italic>de‐lirium</italic>, a deviation from the pre‐determined path.</p><p>This can also be described in theatrical terms. A script is divided into acts. During the performance, act follows act until the play is finished. When therapists see a family, they see it at a certain point during the performance, let us say in Act Two. The problem is that when a family comes to therapy, its members are stuck – in Act Two, for example. They go on stage and repeat Act One, always in the same way or perhaps even worse than before. Couples always repeat the same things, the script is always the same. They need an outsider who can give them options and therefore, increase their possibilities – someone who can inject a bit of delirium into their lives.</p><p>This is the notion of therapist as co‐author, someone who works with the couple or family to rewrite a script for the future. On the other hand, each human system writes its own story, it is not acted upon by others. A therapist is not someone who gives orders to families about what kind of script they should have. The aim is to facilitate the creation of the new possibilities that von Foerster speaks of, and this is done by asking questions – circular, self‐reflexive questions that strengthen and stimulate the imagination.</p><p>In our opinion, the art we have learned lies first in avoiding the use of the verb “to be” in the present indicative as much as possible – not just “he's schizophrenic”, “he's an abuser”, “she's anorexic”, but also “you're stupid”, “you're wicked”. Secondly, it lies in avoiding the use of causal, linear concepts, unlike in most conversations in the West, which are about who caused what, who made a son “schizophrenic”, a daughter “anorexic” or “lesbian”, etc.</p></sec><sec><title>Being and becoming</title><p>How can structural determinism be reconciled with extending the range of possibilities? We think that the “cause” of all causal thinking is the verb “to be”. In Hebrew the present indicative of the verb “to be” is not used in the third person singular. This is what Aristotle called the “first immovable mover”. The concept of causation – with all its derivations – is attributed to something non‐human, something too powerful to be attributed to human beings.</p><p>For the people of Antiquity, only gods could be “causes”; human beings were simply thrown into the world and, in a certain sense, had a destiny to fulfill. By contrast, our modern concepts of education and upbringing have been shaped by the belief that human behaviour and character can be changed, made “good” – anyone who refuses to be changed by their upbringing becomes “bad”.</p><p>The ancients knew better than we moderns that two ideas are in operation here: the idea of temporal flux – wrongly attributed to Heraclitus – which means that everything is constantly changing, and the idea of static being, which means that each existence is unique, as Parmenides said.</p><p>We moderns have problems in using these terms because they seem opposites, and opposites have to be reconciled. Von Foerster says that we should see different things from different points of views, and that the differences don't necessarily have to be reconciled. We moderns don't even need the verb “to be”. We no longer believe there is a creator. On the contrary, we believe that the idea of a creator only serves as a kind of spiritual reassurance. The idea of an omnipotent God is certainly reassuring, yet we moderns think it is possible to live without this idea. Separating the verb “to be” from the notion of the “first immovable mover” fosters the illusion that we can become God‐like. When the word “is” is spoken, everything stops, you become omnipotent, because “is” is the truth. In the modern age, we know where the truth lies: the truth lies in being, not becoming.</p><p>Returning to Kant's categorical imperative, we might ask: What is it, if not an attempt to establish ontologically certain truth through reasoning? Isn't always treating others as ends, not means, an attempt to establish a moral truth? But are not true morals also <italic>absolute</italic> morals? Morals that are true irrespective of the fact that we live our lives relatively, <italic>in relation to</italic> others?</p><p>If we accept that therapists have the right to be curious, it would be more useful to ask different questions, like:<list list-type="bullet"><list-item><label>• </label><p>Who are the people who interact with this human being?</p></list-item><list-item><label>• </label><p>How many of them are there (mother, father, employer, daughter)?</p></list-item><list-item><label>• </label><p>Who listens to him?</p></list-item><list-item><label>• </label><p>Who sees him?</p></list-item><list-item><label>• </label><p>Who can hear his voice, appreciate what he does?</p></list-item><list-item><label>• </label><p>Does what he does mean anything to the other human being?</p></list-item><list-item><label>• </label><p>How does he use human dialogue?</p></list-item><list-item><label>• </label><p>How does he use and let himself be used by others?</p></list-item></list>We think the last question is liberating because sometimes people lose patience and say “Everyone uses me!”. People often suffer because they feel used, without ever realising that they use others, too. This is a lack of <italic>knowledge</italic>: they think they are everyone's victims, whereas often it is they who are abusing everyone else.</p><p>This situation could be replaced by a healthy contract of reciprocal exploitation. Perhaps, we are a little cynical, but isn't it liberating to think that families and human systems in general evolve through the <italic>use</italic> their members make of each other? Analysing the question from this point of view, you see that grandparents are honored because they are wise and give advice, or because they have got money, or because they are useful to the grandchildren and parents, and so on for three generations. This is an example of two people, or a group of people, using each other reciprocally. If we agree with Wittgenstein that meaning is established in use, is not making use of each other an instance of the social construction of shared meaning? Isn't it precisely here that people beginning to interact? When they use each other, people interact with other, and, when they interact, human groups evolve, i.e. they change because in some ways they cann't help changing. So, at every moment, something is being constructed which didn't exist before interaction occurred. This is mediation between conflict and dialogue. Conflict and dialogue cann't do everything on their own, you need both.</p><p>To take a cultural example, people are always talking about integration, for example, the reconciliation of the conflict between blacks and whites in America, and yet, interaction between blacks and whites has produced new cultural forms such as jazz, which integrates black and white music. European classical music and African music have produced something which is neither one nor the other, but different. Blacks and whites have used each other, but in the case of jazz the exploitation has been productive, fertile, i.e. they have produced something, which we find aesthetically pleasing and love listening to. From the point of view of therapists, we think the use one person makes of another <italic>can</italic> be described in a positive, useful way. Of course, stories don't do not always develop in this way; if they did, there would be no reason for therapy to exist.</p><p>We also wonder to what extent the therapist's stance is related to the old idea of neutrality. The constructionist therapist has to try not to adopt a stance, no matter how difficult this can sometimes be, because adopting a stance would mean no longer trying to <italic>connect up</italic> how one person uses another, and vice versa. Instead there would be disconnection. The neutral stance should not be rejected, though it should perhaps be radicalised: it should never ever take sides, never say that someone is being used too much, for example. Rather, interest should focus on observing <italic>how</italic> someone is being used and what the consequence of this are, so as to understand why some people like being used in a certain way, while others prefer to be used in some other way. The point is that, in one way or another, everyone is in a position to use someone else.</p><p>We think the example of the mother and her new‐born child epitomises what we are trying to say. In our view, this is a fantastic kind of reciprocal use. The child is born and starts screaming, as if to say, “You must feed me, mummy, you're here to serve me”. The mother feeds the new‐born child and he calms down. At first sight, it seems to be the child who is giving the orders, but the mother is also using the child to gratify her sense of power. “I am the mother who generates. As well as producing this child, I also produce milk to feed him. I am incredibly powerful”. When others come to talk to her, she could not care less and tells them to go away because it is she who has created this reciprocal use. Infanticide may even occur. At such times, the mother's power no longer seems to work. On the contrary, she feels impotent, unable to set this amazing reciprocity mechanism in motion.</p><p>Many therapists think that it is the mother who acts unambiguously on the child – the idea is fundamental to the theory of attachment, for example. However, <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="b4">Benjamin (2002)</xref> watched mothers suffering from post‐natal depression interacting with their babies, and concluded that an important reciprocity mechanism was at work between them. At times, even though the mother was not looking at her baby, the baby reacted positively to her and in turn elicited a positive secondary reaction from the mother. We don't believe in baby‐abandoning mothers as such. We think there are mothers who, at a specific moment in time, abandon their babies but may then develop into mothers who realise that interacting with their babies is advantageous to them because it boosts their sense of power. Failing to see the reality of her power, she constructs a reality of impotence. Though she has fed her baby, changed his nappies, etc., she thinks she is useless as a mother, so much so that she abandons her baby in a rubbish skip or even kills him.</p><p>The story could be told another way. For example, the mother has been abused by a man who raped her and made her pregnant. She gives birth to her baby. Then her father, mother and sister look askance at her and whisper, “You're an unmarried mother. You've ruined your life. You went with a man who could not care less about you, who's afraid of being a father, who has gone and left you”. This leads her sincerely to believe that she never wanted the baby, and that she should probably kill him because she cann't use him to demonstrate her power. On the contrary, the baby is proof of her misfortune: “I can't use him, so I'll kill him”.</p><p>But why does she think she can not use him? Perhaps because a context has been created in which she does not have this authority, in which she has not been authorised. A context whose dominant idea is the end, not the means – “Why haven't I been authorised? Why do I believe I haven't been authorised? What lies behind this idea?” Possible answers to these questions could be “You're a sinner because you had sex before marriage” or “You're worthless because you let yourself be raped”. Here, the mother might conclude that since the baby – a baby born of rape – is both an end and also an outcome of abuse, he cannot really be an end and should be killed. The baby is not an end, but the means by which her reputation has been ruined, by which she has been turned into an unmarried mother, by which she has been made to hate the world. “Since this baby can't be an end, I will eliminate him”.</p><p>There are other situations, other circumstances, in which a mother might think of abandoning her baby as a way of saving him, but they are extreme ones. And yet, if she succeeds, she again demonstrates her power. When they were deported to concentration camps, some women threw their tiny babies off the moving trains because they knew that if they took them to Auschwitz they would certainly die. By throwing them from the trains they were saying: “He may die, but someone may also find him, take him away and bring him up”. So abandoning the baby made sense because it was a reaction simultaneously of hope and of hopelessness. There was no alternative, and yet there was still one, the hope of saving the baby's life.</p><p>Another example is kamikaze fighters, who kill themselves to save themselves, their people, and even all humanity. Here, it is they who offer themselves as an end for their people. Is this not madness? If they think that, to save their people, they have to <italic>talk</italic>, start a conversation, find some form of mediation, would not they have risked seeming sane? Perhaps, we need another ecology of mind.</p></sec></body><back><ref-list><title>References</title><ref id="b3"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Bachtin</surname>, <given-names>M.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1981</year>), <source><italic>The Dialogic Imagination</italic></source>, <publisher-name>University of Texas Press</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Austin, TX</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b4"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Benjamin</surname>, <given-names>L.S.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>2002</year>), <source><italic>Interpersonal Diagnosis and treatment of Personality Disorders</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Guildford Pres</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>New York, NY</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b11"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Foucault</surname>, <given-names>M.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1966</year>), <source><italic>Les Mots et les Choses</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Gallimard</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Paris</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b12"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Foucault</surname>, <given-names>M.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1971</year>), <source><italic>L'ordre du discours</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Gallimard</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Paris</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b15"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>MacIntyre</surname>, <given-names>A.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1984</year>), <source><italic>After Virtue. A Study in Moral Theory</italic></source>, <publisher-name>University of Notre Dame press</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>IN</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b16"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Pakman</surname>, <given-names>M.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>2003</year>), “<article-title><italic>Poetica e micorpolitica nelle pratiche di salute mentale: i margini invisibili</italic></article-title>”, in <person-group person-group-type="editor"><string-name><surname>Barbetta</surname>, <given-names>P.</given-names></string-name></person-group>, <person-group person-group-type="editor"><string-name><surname>Benini</surname>, <given-names>P.</given-names></string-name></person-group> and <person-group person-group-type="editor"><string-name><surname>Naclerio</surname>, <given-names>R.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (Eds), <source><italic>Diagnosi della diagnosi. Ricerca critico‐interpretativa e categorie diagnostiche</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Guerini</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Milano</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b18"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Shotter</surname>, <given-names>J.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>2002</year>), “<article-title><italic>Real presences – the creative power of dialogically‐structured, living expression</italic></article-title>”, Final draft for KCC 123 Conference, Canterbury, July.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b9"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>von Foerster</surname>, <given-names>H.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1982</year>), <source><italic>Observing Systems</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Intersystems Publications</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Seaside, CA</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="b19"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Wittgenstein</surname>, <given-names>L.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1953</year>), <source><italic>Philosophical Investigations</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Blackwell</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Oxford</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref></ref-list><ref-list><title>Further Reading</title><ref id="frd1"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Arendt</surname>, <given-names>H.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1963</year>), <source><italic>Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil</italic></source>, <publisher-name>The Viking press</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>New York, NY</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd2"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Barbetta</surname>, <given-names>P. a c</given-names><given-names>ura</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>2003</year>), <source><italic>Le radici culturali della diagnosi</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Meltemi</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Roma</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd3"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Bertrando</surname>, <given-names>P.</given-names></string-name></person-group> and <person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Toffanetti</surname>, <given-names>D.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>2001</year>), <source><italic>Storia della terapia familiare</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Raffaello Cortina</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Milano</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd4"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Cecchin</surname>, <given-names>G.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1992</year>), “<article-title><italic>The construction of therapeutical possibilities</italic></article-title>”, in <person-group person-group-type="editor"><string-name><surname>McNamee</surname>, <given-names>S.</given-names></string-name></person-group> and <person-group person-group-type="editor"><string-name><surname>Gergen</surname>, <given-names>K.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (Eds), <source><italic>Therapy as Social Construction</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Sage</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>London</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd5"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Eco</surname>, <given-names>U.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1984</year>), <source><italic>Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio</italic></source>, <publisher-name>Einaudi</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Torino</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd6"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Eco</surname>, <given-names>U.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1994</year>), “<article-title><italic>Six walks in the fictional woods</italic></article-title>”, Harvard University, Norton Lectures, 1992‐1993, <publisher-name>Harvard University Press</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Cambridge, MA</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd7"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Foucault</surname>, <given-names>M.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>2001</year>), L'herméneutique du sujet. Cours au CollËge de France. 1981‐1982, <publisher-name>Gallimard</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>Paris</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd8"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Kant</surname>, <given-names>I.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1956</year>), <source><italic>Critique of Practical Reason</italic></source>, tr. By Lewis White Beck, <publisher-name>Liberal Art press</publisher-name>, <publisher-loc>New York, NY</publisher-loc>.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd9"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Selvini</surname>, <given-names>P.M.</given-names></string-name></person-group>, <person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Cirillo</surname>, <given-names>S.</given-names></string-name></person-group>, <person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Selvini</surname>, <given-names>M.</given-names></string-name></person-group> and <person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>Sorrentino</surname>, <given-names>A.M.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1998</year>), I giochi psicotici nella famiglia, Raffaello Cortina, Milano.</mixed-citation></ref><ref id="frd10"><mixed-citation><person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>von Foerster</surname>, <given-names>H.</given-names></string-name></person-group> and <person-group person-group-type="author"><string-name><surname>von Glasersfeld</surname>, <given-names>E.</given-names></string-name></person-group> (<year>1999</year>), Wie wir uns erfinden, Carl‐Auer‐Systeme, Heidelberg, Trad it. (2001) Come ci si inventa, Odradek, Roma.</mixed-citation></ref></ref-list><sec><p><bold>Death of one of the authors</bold></p><p>This is probably the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. We are proud to have been his friends and colleagues. He gave us inspiration in our profession and, what is more important, in our lives. It has been great honour to work with Gianfranco during all these years. One day we hope to meet him in the nowhere, and confirm that we are “still crazy, after all these years”.</p></sec></back></article></istex:document></istex:metadataXml><mods version="3.6"><titleInfo lang="en"><title>Who was von Foerster, anyway</title></titleInfo><titleInfo type="alternative" lang="en" contentType="CDATA"><title>Who was von Foerster, anyway</title></titleInfo><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Gianfranco</namePart><namePart type="family">Cecchin</namePart><affiliation>Centro Milanese di Terapia della Familgia, Milano, Italy</affiliation><role><roleTerm type="text">author</roleTerm></role></name><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Pietro</namePart><namePart type="family">Barbetta</namePart><affiliation>Centro Milanese di Terapia della Familgia, Milano, Italy</affiliation><role><roleTerm type="text">author</roleTerm></role></name><name type="personal"><namePart type="given">Dario</namePart><namePart type="family">Toffanetti</namePart><affiliation>Centro Milanese di Terapia della Familgia, Milano, Italy</affiliation><role><roleTerm type="text">author</roleTerm></role></name><typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource><genre type="other" displayLabel="e-conceptual-paper"></genre><originInfo><publisher>Emerald Group Publishing Limited</publisher><dateIssued encoding="w3cdtf">2005-03-01</dateIssued><copyrightDate encoding="w3cdtf">2005</copyrightDate></originInfo><language><languageTerm type="code" authority="iso639-2b">eng</languageTerm><languageTerm type="code" authority="rfc3066">en</languageTerm></language><physicalDescription><internetMediaType>text/html</internetMediaType></physicalDescription><abstract>Purpose What is therapy Which would be today Heinz von Foerster's answer The authors try to unveil the mystery of an answer coming from a conversation among them. They think that Heinz von Foerster, like Gregory Bateson, was one of the most influential philosopher of therapy. In the paper they analyse some very basic key words like trivial machine, human becoming and key concepts like broaden the field of possible in order to understand if there is an order or a purpose in doing therapy. Designmethodologyapproach The paper is a confrontation between epistemology and therapy. The trick is that, unlike von Foerster, the authors are therapists. So probably their conversation will not be reliable. But usually therapists, in doing therapy, do not look for reliability. They try to be accountable, which is a different issue. Findings Probably therapy is a language game. If yes, the language game of therapy is a trick without a trickster. A map in a stranger land. That can be considered the main finding which follows from von Foerster's thought. Practical implications Nevertheless, such a wrong map sometimes could help who is lost, provided that map and territory will never be the same thing. Originalityvalue The original value of the paper is, first of all that it can be considered the last essay written by Gianfranco Cecchin before his death. In the very last period of his life Cecchin was considering and sounding a new perspective for therapy. Pietro Barbetta and Dario Toffanetti were working with him in therapy and theoretically to find new frames for therapies in the postmodern era.</abstract><subject><genre>keywords</genre><topic>Cybernetics</topic><topic>Ethics</topic></subject><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Kybernetes</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal">journal</genre><subject><genre>Emerald Subject Group</genre><topic authority="SubjectCodesPrimary" authorityURI="cat-ENGG">Engineering</topic><topic authority="SubjectCodesSecondary" authorityURI="cat-EEE">Electrical & electronic engineering</topic><topic authority="SubjectCodesSecondary" authorityURI="cat-CSE">Computer & software engineering</topic><topic authority="SubjectCodesSecondary" authorityURI="cat-SYSC">Systems & control</topic></subject><subject><genre>Emerald Subject Group</genre><topic authority="SubjectCodesPrimary" authorityURI="cat-IKM">Information & knowledge management</topic><topic authority="SubjectCodesSecondary" authorityURI="cat-ISYS">Information systems</topic><topic authority="SubjectCodesSecondary" authorityURI="cat-SMC">Systems modelling & cybernetics</topic></subject><identifier type="ISSN">0368-492X</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">k</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1108/k</identifier><part><date>2005</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>34</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>3/4</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>330</start><end>342</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">78B4C8EEDA6805A3BEB6717D2CA85BE6E05E6074</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1108/03684920510581503</identifier><identifier type="filenameID">0670340303</identifier><identifier type="original-pdf">0670340303.pdf</identifier><identifier type="href">03684920510581503.pdf</identifier><accessCondition type="use and reproduction" contentType="copyright">© Emerald Group Publishing Limited</accessCondition><recordInfo><recordContentSource>EMERALD</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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