| Abstract: | This paper addresses the relationship of family therapy to its own knowledge, and the relationship between theory and practice experience. An argument is made that family therapy has related oppositionally not only to outside knowledges, but also to its own knowledge in its successive and frequent knowledge shifts. This oppositionality had led to a dominant story which downplays themes of continuity in our own development of theory. It has also fuelled a momentum toward purity and anti‐eclecticism. Postmodernist thinking within family therapy has both allowed and disallowed the space for theory diversity, and there has been a similar paradox with respect to attention to lived experience. The paper begins and ends with a discussion of three pieces of practice experience and leads to a plea for theory diversity in family therapy in the interests of meeting the complex demands of practice. |
