Carmen Knudson-Martin, PhD, Professor and Head of the PhD Program in Marriage and Family Therapy, Loma Linda University, USA. This book is one of the most powerful demonstrations of relational patterns and their importance in our personal lives that I have ever come across. The different chapters in the book tell the story of IPscope and how it can be used in therapy, training, supervision and in many other domains of life.
CONTRIBUTORS
George is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary and a Family Therapist and Clinical Supervisor at the Calgary Family Therapy Centre. Olga Sutherland, PhD Olga Sutherland is an associate professor of couple and family therapy at the University of Guelph and a clinical/counseling psychologist in private practice. Dan Wulff, PhD Dan Wulff is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Calgary and has served as a family therapist and clinical supervisor at the Calgary Family Therapy Center for the past 6 years.
SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
First, the IPscope approach is the most comprehensive system I know of for making clear distinctions about relational patterns. Second, the IPscope system helps therapists embrace important values of relational healing and wellness when making these distinctions. Fifth, the IPscope approach is presented in a tentative, hedged way that reminds us that we are the ones drawing this distinction.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Finally, the notion of "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" also seemed relevant. I asked all therapists and trainees in FTP to rate the severity of the most obvious PIP in the family after each clinical interview. Joanne and Inés share their insights into some of the complex constraints in the interaction between gendered SCIPs, gendered interactions and gendered identities.
INTRODUCING THE IPSCOPE
It is the coupled reciprocity of the invitations that generates the apparent stability of the pattern. The participants in the interaction then suddenly switch roles, but the nature of the interaction pattern remains virtually unchanged. These are all potentially constructive influences on the mental health of those involved in the patterns.
CONCEPTUALIZING INTERACTIONAL PATTERNS
Recognizing the Patterned Interactions of Family Members Family therapy evolved in part from recognizing the patterns of individual clients. To return to Bateson's (1980) language, the focus of family therapists should be on “the pattern that connects the concerns” (p. 8) to the people expressing them. However, such distinctions made in diagnostic discourse have the potential to limit therapeutic options and sometimes, in the words of Massumi (2011), discursively “capture” the people involved in their use.
Phronesis is pragmatic and procedural wisdom, the situated kind that is adaptive and interactional—the kind that Schön (1983) referred to as knowing-in-action. Phronesis instead refers to contextualized knowledge (ie, knowledge that "fits" the context as opposed to matching it in a universally correct way) produced in and from human interactions, such as the changing interactions of family members with family therapists. We encourage the use of IPscope to enable different kinds of discernment—the kind that suit therapists and families in their work together.
Family life in this sense is carried out or coordinated relationally through the reactions of family members to each other. Whether well or poorly received and responded to, what can occur is a coordination of family members' responses to each other in particular forms of language use (Maturana & Varela, 1988). People can thus take different positions in other discourses – for example, the parent could understand and speak from the teenager's discourse about independence.
It is in this way that IPs can be seen as social practices given how family members engage with each other in their various relational ways of living together.
TEACHING AND LEARNING RELATIONAL PRACTICE
The creation of the IPscope made it easier for me to “see” the systemic process, in terms of making interpersonal rather than person-based distinctions. The IPscope lens allowed me to fill in the blind spot—that is, see the shape of the vase—and reconceptualize the son's behavior and feelings as part of an interaction pattern with the father (or the therapist). In doing so, we emphasize a central aspect of training at the CFTC: promoting generative WIPs between students and students.
Karl, you mentioned how the architectural design of the physical space at the CFTC allows practitioners to work together. Intuit the strongest negative emotions that seem to be active in the main participants of the interaction. Shari: Noticing or asking about reaching the family's unique HIPs along with family members who share or perform these HIPs is a very common TIP we engage with at the CFTC.
Look for evidence of the family's own healing behavior and draw it out (by observing positive initiatives and asking a series of circular questions). If the family's healing behavior is not immediately identifiable, think of a possible behavior that would conflict with or exclude one of the behaviors in the PIP. Among other things, therapists record specific behavioral patterns within the interaction patterns of the family system and/or in the therapeutic system further.
We use both grounded diagnostic-based and dynamic practice-based conceptualizations of the IPscope.
A LIFE HISTORY OF A PIP
The family members have been given pseudonyms and the dialogue in the examples in this chapter is a composite of the conversations we had together. Central to our IP view is an emphasis on how family members, through their interactions, coordinate ways to keep things acceptably familiar. Thus, the role of the therapist is to interpret and respond to the ways in which family members interpret and respond to each other.
This involves some kind of therapeutic noticing of what family members notice in each other's reactions, whether they are acceptable or objectionable. However, when a DIP stabilizes, a PIP arises through the recursive coupling of family members' offending interactions. In fact, the ways in which family members tell each other the beginning or origin story can be critical in perpetuating unacceptable patterns.
It is also important to listen for the HIPs that family members are already performing. We not only invite family members to acknowledge these preferred directions (HIPs), but also want to see if we can help stabilize these preferred directions into repetitive and acceptable ways of responding and moving forward together (WIPs). Family members usually go about their lives interacting in ways that they interpret and respond to as acceptably familiar.
Some PIPs are obvious and stabilize conflict between family members in ways that are very familiar to therapists.
GIVE YOU A TIP?
One of the reasons a PIP can be difficult to interrupt and replace is that the participants in the pattern may be unaware that their behavior is actually perpetuating the pattern. In line 29 we see how D makes a HINT attempt by suggesting an alternative understanding of the problem. S interrupts M again (“OK, any other theories?” in line 40) to redirect the conversation and open up space for alternative ideas.
We talk 8 about it, that's how you get it out of your 9 system, have a conversation about it. It's like I know when I get off the bus, 15 school officially ends, and like I don't. Furthermore, we see S's openness to being corrected by C1 ("MILK it's not that but" in line 58) as a possible indication of her preference to deconstruct the PIP together.
It is 'in' words-in-them-speak that we can find the political and ethical influences of interest to us at work.”. M's response shows a partial agreement with this assumption ("Yes {laughs}" in line 8) to which K further inquires, seeking clarity ("have you?"). One way of organizing the previous extract in terms of the IPscope is shown in Figure 5.1.
We see that this conversation is oriented toward a HIP in which M actually "be patient," which may invite "cooperation" on behalf of the children (which, in turn, may strengthen M's willingness and capacity to engage in "patient practice").
BRAIDING SOCIO-CULTURAL INTERPERSONAL PATTERNS
INTO THERAPY
After working with the IPscope for a year, I just felt there had to be a connection between what I called larger social discourses and PIPs and HIPs. SCIPs are not the social discourses themselves, but rather the ways in which persons weave those discourses into their daily lives and their embodied interactions. All four strands are woven into a braid to symbolize a SCIP - the interplay between our experiences of the world, the distinctions we make, the patterned interactions we develop, and the social discourses of our community/society.
SCIPs developed from a CFTC research project in which we looked at the relationship between parent-child conflicts in family therapy and associated social discourses (see Chapter 10). We define SCIPs as the behavioral performances that occur when families act in accordance with their ideas or interpretations of the social discourses within which they live. Some of the social discourses that have "grown up" within a given community or society can contain seeds of trouble for those who use them as standards for their behavior.
As members of our clients' communities and societies, these social discourses influence us too. Our thesis in this chapter is that introducing this form of conversation provides a broader therapeutic conversation that connects the problems of the family to the larger societal discussions in which we are all engaged. Therapists also embrace certain social discourses that can positively or negatively influence the process of therapy with families.
It may be a difficult task, but we believe that our daily interactions with our families and their daily interactions with others can drive small social changes and differences to the social discourses that dominate our lives.
HIS CAVE AND HER KITCHEN
In our experience, the person in the less powerful or disadvantaged position often initiates therapy. When working on a healing pattern that could serve as a possible antidote to the PIP, the therapist typically empowers the person in the position of less power. Similarly, flexibility can be developed regarding who takes the initiative in the care and nurturing of the partner and the relationship.
Another way of presenting these connections is to visualize the triadic interaction between societal discourses on gender, gender stereotypes and gendered PIPs and HIPs in the generic diagram in Figure 7.4 and the more specific example in Figure 7.5. In the next diagram (see Figure 7.7) we illustrate how dominant discourses about gender can affect ongoing adult relationships. In the process of assessing PIPs and hypothesizing possible HIPs, it is very important for therapists to be aware of what interpretive lenses they use and how they assess power dynamics.
Pease (1997) summarized some of the key models used in the treatment of male violence, including the anger management model, the interactional model, and pro-feminist men's programs. However, if a therapist expects the aggrieved partner in the victim position to be the primary person to hold her partner accountable, make. 2 For a description of what took place in home economics departments at many universities in the United States around this period, the reader may refer to the chapter entitled “The Men Move In: Home Economics.
The oppression t-shirt that speaks: Incorporating the experience of power/powerlessness in teaching cultural sensitivity.
SENSING, UNDERSTANDING, AND MOVING BEYOND
INTERCULTURAL PIPS
In my early work with families, I (Tamara) worked at a program facilitating groups for parents whose children were exhibit-
