Some Reflections on the Legacies of Michael White: An Australian Perspective

This article, which appears in a special 30‐year anniversary edition of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, reflects on the legacies of the work of Michael White. It begins by looking back on Michael's time as editor of the Australian Journal of Family Therapy. Of the many themes that were discussed in the Editorials and Letters to the Editor section of this journal in the early 1980s, this article focuses on three in particular to explore the legacies of the work of Michael White. The author describes how Michael has bequeathed not only a profound body of work, but also a distinctive spirit of originating, and ways of working that consider the effects of social issues and that examine the politics of experience. It is the author's hope that this approach to considering Michael White's legacies honours his work and also honours the contributions of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy in its 30th year.     

A Collective Response to Michael White's Passing

The following reflection was written at the Cairns Narrative Therapy Interest Group shortly after Michael White's passing. As a group activity, each individual was interviewed about the effects of Michael White's work on their therapeutic work. Each of the responses were manually recorded and then a member of the group developed the collective document to share back with the whole group. The document was a way to capture the atmosphere that was shared at the interest group that day upon reflection of Michael. The document also enables a way to remember the influence that a collective document can produce for a group of people.     

Missing Michael White: Understanding His Influence in One Person's Life and Work

This is a personal reflection that describes and seeks to understand the significance of Michael White's contribution to my life and work. It offers a personal history of the ways in which these ideas were incorporated over time, and the way in which Michael's teaching made this possible. It looks at how this influence is taken forward and continues to be lived out. It reflects the knowledge and skills, the intentions and the hopes, the purposes and plans held that have been shaped through learning experiences with Michael White and the people and ideas that this introduced me to. The legacy of this learning is a hopefulness for future skill development and teaching, nurtured through these communities of people.     

The Multiple Relationships Between the Discipline of Social Work and the Contributions of Michael White

Abstract

Michael White, the Australian narrative practitioner, died in April this year. Given White trained in social work and has had a large impact on many social workers, it is timely to investigate the opaque relationships linking White and his work with his discipline-of-origin. The present examination proceeds in three steps. First, a schematic outline of White's intellectual influences and achievements is set out; second, the alignments, as well as tensions, between White's work and his discipline-of-origin are considered; and, third, it is argued that White was informed by, and went on to produce a body of work that further informed, the contesting spirit that is the wellspring of the discipline of social work. This conclusion is reached mindful of the fact that White remained antagonistic to the role played by the professions in general and that he did not identify with the title ‘social worker’ in particular.     

In Praise of Sneaky Poo: A Case,Four Whites,and a Missing Narrative

Sneaky Poo (1984) announced Michael White, the second order cyberneticist, to the world. But there were several versions of both Sneaky Poo and White. This paper pays homage to Sneaky and critiques White's contribution to family therapy. A recent case is reported.     

The Narrative Dance — A Practice Map For White's Therapy*

Michael White's and David Epston's Narrative Therapy Approach, has stimulated a great deal of interest amongst practitioners both in Australia and overseas. While creative use of language is a cornerstone of the approach, this can also act as a barrier to therapists' attempts to understand and apply the model This paper focuses on the essential aspects and core dimensions underlying White's Narrative Approach. Utilising the analogy of a dance, a practice grid will be described to highlight key therapy steps.     

First Episode Psychosis: A Magical Realist Guide Through Liminal Terrain

This paper presents a narrative of a client, ‘Eva’, who experienced what is termed by psychiatry a first episode psychosis. As a family and relationship counsellor practicing narrative therapy with its backdrop of post‐structuralism and curiosity of exploring new entry points for narratives of identity, I tentatively sought new ways to engage with Eva's story. My endeavour in meeting with ‘First Episode Psychosis’ is described through adopting a listening position from a reading of magical realist literature. This extends Michael White's political exploration of ethnographer Arnold van Gennep's liminal spaces (in the rites of passage metaphor) to understand units of experience, units of meaning, and the fluidity of identity in psychosis, which is contextualised as a response to events in the client's story.     

Ethical–aesthetic critique of moral organization: Inspirations from Michael Haneke's cinematic work

This paper looks at the work of the Austrian film-maker Michael Haneke as an inspiration for developing an ethical–aesthetic critique of organization. Haneke's practice of film-making is located in the tradition of an ‘ethical parrhesia’, the courageous and often dangerous ‘truth-telling’, which aims at the transformation of being. Haneke's approach is then illustrated with an analysis of his film The White Ribbon. This example is taken to illustrate an ethical critique of moral organization and for analysing strategies that seek to instigate the open-ended moral reflection. By discussing implications of this form of critique, the paper contributes to the development of a critical aesthetics of organization that seeks to open a reflexive space on how we are formed in social and organizational life, and at what costs.     

Fundamentals of Theory and Practice Revisited; The Reality of Voices: ‘Auditory Hallucinations’

This paper describes some recent developments in approaches to voice‐hearing and relates them to contemporary ideas about psychosis and therapy. The author looks at the growing body of work on cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis. She examines the similarities and differences between these approaches and those of innovators like Marius Romme and Sandra Escher, Philip Thomas, Michael White and the Hearing Voices Network. The author describes some influences upon her own systemic practice with clients diagnosed with schizophrenia, in a Community Mental Health Team in Wales.     

Dilemmas in child care practice and the role for state sponsored social workers

Since the publication of Messages from Research (Department of Health, 1995) there has been intense and extensive debate about the limitations and implications of this summary for contemporary child care practice (Duxbury, 1997; Hughes, 1996; Parton, 1996; Littlechild, 1998; White, 1998). Unsurprisingly, in such a highly contentious arena, there is little consensus as to the appropriateness of the analysis or the recommendations contained in the report, particularly the overview to the research summaries. This short article seeks to add to the debate through the use of case study material to articulate social work practice dilemmas that the author has experienced; practice dilemmas that render problematic some of the assertions contained in Messages from Research. In doing so the author does not seek to undermine the importance of research for practice, as we seek to articulate an appropriate theoretical base for professional interventions in the lives of children and families, but to question whose interests are served by what can be seen as the selective representation of findings. As Stevenson (1991) states, we need to explore and understand what personal, professional and organisational processes may impede the implementation of research in practice within the child care arena. It might also behold us to ask what political or social processes may also impact on the way/s in which research for practice are 'produced' and/or 'consumed'. Overall, the author wishes to engage with, and stimulate further debate around, a core issue for practitioners and students as they explore the contemporary statutory social work role with children and their families.     

Gendered Divisions of Fertility Work: Socioeconomic Predictors of Female Versus Male Sterilization

Domestic labor researchers have examined a multitude of duties disproportionately performed by women, yet the responsibility associated with navigating a couple's fertility—fertility work—has been overlooked. Using data from the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth (N = 1,415), the author examined how racial and socioeconomic factors affect the division of contraceptive fertility work among married and cohabiting women who rely on either their partners' vasectomies or their own sterilizations. Drawing theoretical connections between fertility work and housework, resource‐ and gender‐based perspectives were used to assess whether women's or their partners' characteristics are stronger predictors of sterilization type, and whether women's absolute or relative education level has a greater impact. Findings suggest that White and socioeconomically privileged women are more likely to have vasectomized partners than disadvantaged women. Male partners' characteristics were more closely associated with sterilization type than women's characteristics, lending greater support for the gender‐based hypotheses.     

Michael White Memorial

The following is a memorial speech delivered at the Maugham Uniting Church by the author in memory of Michael White.     

Families With Young Children: A Review of Research in the 1990s

Research conducted in the past decade on families with young children concentrated on 5 broad topics: (a) the transition to parenthood; (b) the importance of maternal sensitivity for children's attachment security and subsequent adjustment and social competence; (c) the effectiveness of particular parenting styles and practices; (d) interparental, familial, and broader societal factors influencing parenting behaviors and child adjustment; and (e) the impact of family structure and household composition on children's well‐being. Our review documents substantial diversity in family structures, parenting arrangements, and childrearing values and practices both within and across ethnic and racial groups. Collectively, the evidence suggests that in most families with young children, parents and children seem to be doing well. We conclude that substantial work is required to expand the study of families with young children beyond mother‐child dyads in White, middle‐class, two‐parent, first‐marriage families.     

Children's Time With Fathers in Intact Families

This paper uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to examine children's involvement with their fathers in intact families as measured through time spent together. Our findings suggest that although mothers still shoulder the lion's share of the parenting, fathers' involvement relative to that of mothers appears to be on the increase. A “new father” role is emerging on weekends in intact families. Different determinants of fathers' involvement were found on weekdays and on weekends. Fathers' wages and work hours have a negative relationship with the time they spend with a child on weekdays, but not on weekends. Mothers' work hours have no effect on children's time with fathers. On weekends, Black fathers were found to be less involved and Latino fathers more involved with their children than are White fathers. The weekday‐weekend differential suggests that a simple gender inequality theory is not sufficient in explaining the dynamics of household division of labor in today's American families.     

SOCIAL WORK SCHOLARS' REPRESENTATION OF RAWLS: A CRITIQUE

Although Rawls is the most cited social justice theorist in social work, he is not always accurately represented in the literature. To clarify this claim, the author reviews social work scholars' views about social justice, shows social work scholars' representation of Rawls, and highlights aspects of Rawls' theory of social justice. The author's critique reveals that there have been and continue to be more differences than similarities between Rawls and social work scholars. Consequently, the article recommends revising the social work knowledge-base in relation to social justice and Rawls so that his ideas are authentically represented in future social work education and scholarship.     

Teaching Critical Reflection: A Tool for Transformative Learning in Social Work?

In an Australian Bachelor of Social Work degree, critical reflection is a process explicitly taught in a fourth year subject to students who have returned from their first field placement experience in agencies delivering social work programmes. The purpose of teaching critical reflection is to enable social work students to become autonomous and critical thinkers who can reflect on society, the role of social work and social work practices. The way critical reflection is taught in this fourth year social work unit relates closely to the aims of transformative learning. Transformative learning aims to assist students to become autonomous thinkers. Specifically, the critical reflection process taught in this subject aims to assist students to recognise their own and other people's frames of reference, to identify the dominant discourses circulating in making sense of their experience, to problematise their taken-for -granted ‘lived experience’, to reconceptualise identity categories, disrupt assumed causal relations and to reflect on how power relations are operating. Critical reflection often draws on many theoretical frameworks to enable the recognition of current modes of thinking and doing. In this paper, we will draw primarily on how post-structural theories, specifically Foucault's theorising, disrupt several taken-for-granted concepts in social work.     

Interview With Michael Kerr

The following article was written by Dr Michael Kerr in response to questions put to him by Barbara Fraser; Linda Mackay and Lu Pease when he visited Australia two years ago. These three family therapists took it upon themselves to prepare this interview in recognition of Dr Kerr's unique vantage point on Bowen Theory and family therapy. Michael Kerr was trained by Murray Bowen in the 1970s and subsequently went on to work as faculty at the Georgetown Family centre. He succeeded Bowen as director of the centre where he has devoted his professional life to the understanding, application and extension of theory. He is the co‐author with Dr Bowen of Family Evaluation: An Approach Based on Bowen Theory (Kerr & Bowen, 1988), which remains the most esteemed text on this theory. He is also the editor of Family Systems: A Journal of Natural Systems Thinking in Psychiatry and The Sciences. Bowen's Family Systems Theory grew out of years of research from the 1950s‐1970s, which included observations of inpatient families with a schizophrenic member and using data from Bowen's own interactions with his family of origin (Bowen, 1978). The theory continues to be influential in family therapy with its most well‐known contributions being the process of triangling, the intergenerational transmission of family patterns and the concept of differentiation of self. (Brown, 1999). The following discussion from Dr Kerr brings a fresh perspective on the current applications and developments of this systems theory     

Freirian Codifications and Social Work Education

Abstract

Although social workers have been writing about the significance of the Freirian framework for decades, a gap exists in the social work literature on Freirian conscientization—Freire's term for the ongoing learning process involved in co-learning. This article attempts to fill that gap by outlining an approach to training students that will enable them to facilitate conscientization. The approach involves the construction and use of politicizing pictures, which Freire called “codifications”. The author describes Freire's method and gives detailed guidance on how to provide training suitable for social work students. The benefits for social work students with this training are that they will be better able to facilitate reflection and abstraction, will become more sensitive to different oppressed groups, and will become more dialogical.     

THE "PROBLEM" OF MICHAEL WHITE AND MICHEL FOUCAULT

The following essay proposes to look at the “problem” of the family therapist, Michael White, and the philosopher, Michel Foucault. The problem generally defined is the following: what are the key features of the relationship between Foucault and White? To answer this question, four areas need to be examined. First, it is important to look at the relationship between personal stories and cultural and institutional discourses. Second, there is a need to address the local use of power. Third, attention needs to be paid to the positions of Foucault and White vis-à-vis their respective disciplines. Lastly, the issue of the proper use of Foucault's methodology as applied to family therapy needs to be explored.     

JUNK-KING EDUCATION

The author examines the political and pedagogical implications of the rise of the education conglomerate by focusing on Michael Milken's Knowledge Universe. The discussion includes the increasing corporate control over knowledge production in both education and mass media exploring effects in varied fields including child care, online education, and entertainment.