Tom Strong's Commentary 
on the question of "Not Knowing" in 
Collaborative Language System (CLS) Therapy
as represented in text of:

Anderson, Harlene.  Collaborative language systems: Toward a postmodern therapy.  In R. Mikesell, D Lusterman & S. McDaniel (Eds) Integrating 
Family Therapy: Family Psychology and Systems Theory (pp. 27-44). Washington, DC: American psychological Association 1995. 
 

I want to address several common criticisms of Harlene Anderson and Harry Goolishian's theory of therapy that I think are unjusified. 

First, some suggest that their "not-knowing" approach to therapy must mean that therapists who follow this approach have a stilted style in which they never express alternative perspectives. This is untrue. 

Anderson & Goolishian support therapists providing alternative perspectives when they arise in the spontaneity of the conversation and are not attempts to steer the conversation to some therapist pre-destined insight, goal or therapist preferred discourse.  Here is a relevant quote from "The client is the expert": 
 

The therapist's central task is to find the question to which the 
immediate recounting of experience and narrative presents the answer. Such questions cannot be pre-planned or pre-known. (p. 37)
Second,  some want to say that if Anderson and Goolishian object to therapists presenting what they feel are "preferred narratives" that they are they are just saying what the client wants to hear or that they are afraid to insult the client. 
Let me address this concern with four points: 

1- In the Anderson/Goolishian therapy, clients are seen as the "principal 
     authors"  of the dialogue and therapist contributions are much like 
     those of an editor with the client as the principal author who has the 
     final word as to how things are said. 

2- Good relationships, of the kind Anderson/Goolishian therapists try to 
     cultivate, have lots of room for people telling each other how things 
     seem to them, but ultimately the relationship does not require people 
     to do what the other sees. 

3- If our conversations are to be difference-creating (so as to help people 
     achieve happier lives) we do not do favors for clients if we only 
     help them preserve the 'integrity' of a problem narrative. 

4- Harlene Anderson speaks of a community of "shared resources" 
    drawn upon in "a purposeful conversation toward restoring dialogue. 
    Such a Dialogue," she tells us, "requires that there be room for familiar 
    views, confusing ambiguities, and vigorous attitudes to exist side by 
    side"(p34) 
 
You are visitor  to this page!