Journal of Marital and Family Therapy

1985, Vol. 11, NO.2, 113-126

THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE IN EPISTEMOLOGICAL

PERSPECTIVE: QUESTIONS OF CONTEXT
IN FAMILY THERAPY
Morris Taggart
Houston Family Institute

Family therapy’s neglect of social context as a factor in its continuing distortion

of women’s issues has led feminist critics to wonder if systems-based psycho-
therapy truly serves women. Rather than heralding the demise of family therapy,
however, the feminist critique is here taken to open up concerns central to the
epistemological discussion underway in the field. A t first, these have to do with
the functions of “punctuation,” “boundary” and “closure”in systemic epistemol-
ogy. Later, the central question becomes that of the place given to context in
systems epistemology generally, as well as family therapy in particular. Several
implications of a more lively interest in context for family therapy’s work are
explored. These are discussed with respect to women’s issues, clinical epistemol-
ogy, and the challenge to raise novel questions in family therapy.

After a period of theoretical, pragmatic and professional consolidation during the

1970’s, family therapy and its systemic underpinnings have come under increasing
critical scrutiny from several quarters. The most visible of these critiques is that which
has come about under the rubric of the “new epistemology.” Since 1979, a welter of
publications has presented a series of more or less radical proposals for the renewal of
family therapy, as well as the spirited responses these proposals have provoked. It is
worth noting that this flurry of interest in things epistemological has been largely a
male preserve.
Over roughly the same period, others (cf. Brodsky & Hare-Mustin, 1980; Gurman
& Klein, 1980; Hare-Mustin, 1978; 1980; James & McIntyre, 1983; Margolin, Talovic,
Fernandez & Anorato, 1983; O’Hare & Taylor, 1983; Rice & Rice, 1977; Schwendinger
& Schwendinger, 1983; Westurlund, 1983) have offered critiques of family therapy
theory and practice based on feminist principles. Though not commanding anything
like the attention given t o epistemological proposals, these represent an equally critical
review of the underlying assumptions of family therapy. Indeed, the feminist critique is
more radical. The new epistemologists have generally called for the renewal and revi-
talization of family therapy through elaborations of its systemic epistemology. By con-
trast, feminist authors are not as sure that systems theory as such addresses their
concerns, and some (cf. James & McIntyre, 1983; O’Hare & Taylor, 1983; Schwendinger
& Schwendinger, 1983; Westerlund, 1983) come close to calling for its abandonment.
The discussion takes as its starting point the critique of systems-based therapy
mounted by feminist writers. Note is taken of those concerns whereby current systemic
theory and practice is experienced as continuing the neglect of women’s issues. The
phenomena of battering, incest and rape are viewed as particularly important locations

Morris Taggart, PhD, is a member of the faculty, Houston Family Institute. Address reprint
requests to 9401 Southwest Freeway, Suite 270, Houston, TX 77074.

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for the discussion in that it is here, say feminists, that systems-based therapies most
miss the mark. For example, systemic considerations appear t o call for the blurring of
the boundaries between rapist and victim so that the victim becomes, as it were, “CO-
responsible” for the assault. This, the argument goes, permits conclusions altogether
too compatible with the dominant culture’s sexist views on the causes of rape. Hence,
feminists raise the question rather directly of whether or not family therapy based on
systemic notions truly serves women.
Following a brief review of the feminist critique of family therapy, the discussion
moves to a consideration of its epistemological challenge. Rather than heralding the
demise of systems theory, the feminist challenge to family therapy’s treatment of wom-
en’s issues is here taken to open up issues central to the epistemological discussion
underway in the field. At first, these issues have to do with the nature of punctuation,
boundary and closure in systemic epistemology. Later, the central question becomes that
of the place given to context in systems epistemology generally, as well as family therapy
in particular.

THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE OF SYSTEMS-BASED FAMILY THERAPY

Over the same period in which family therapy was undergoing its professional,
theoretical and pragmatic consolidation, the concerns of women relative to the larger
culture underwent revolutionary change. The translation into English in 1970 of de
Beauvoir’s (1949) classic, The Second Sex, both prompted and symbolized the new
consciousness emerging among American women. Psychotherapy was not exempt. Fueled
by a flurry of landmark studies (cf. Broverman, Broverman, Clarkson, Rosencrantz &
Vogel, 1970; Chesler, 1972; Franks & Burtle, 1974; Rice & Rice, 19731, feminist critics
brought such concerns directly to bear on the theory, research and practice of psycho-
therapy. At the heart ofthis early work was an insistence that much of psychotherapeutic
practice reflected the dominant culture’s biases in the matter of sex-role stereotyping
(Kaplan, Greif, Fibel, McComb, Sedney & Shapiro, 1983). Not only were there double
standards with respect to how the criteria of mental health were applied t o men and
women (Broverman et al., 19701, but psychotherapy’s practice in perpetuating these
double standards was enough to question its relevance for women’s issues (Chesler,
1972). Thus, therapists’ attempts t o say anything about women have been confounded
by the fact that “studies about women have largely been derivative, focussed on their
differences measured against men” (Sheridan, 1983, p. 494). Almost without exception,
the traditional view of these differences has been interpreted to women’s disadvantage
(Unger, 1979). Studies following on these foundational efforts have continued to appear
(cf. Brodsky & Hare-Mustin, 1980; Colao & Hunt, 1983; Coleman, 1981; Margolin et al.,
1983).
The feminist critics of family therapy (cf. Gurman & Klein, 1980; Hare-Mustin,
1978, 1980; Hines & Hare-Mustin, 1978; James & McIntyre, 1983; Kaplan et al., 1983;
Margolin et al., 1983; Rice & Rice, 1977; Schwendinger & Schwendinger, 1983; Westur-
lund, 1983) make the critique of psychotherapy explicit for family therapy and continue
its central themes. Family therapists, no less than psychotherapists in general, replicate
in their theoryipractice the traditional biases with respect to sex-role stereotyping and
ignore or, worse, project onto the woman as her “pathology,”what are the consequences
of the cultural biases in the first place. Family therapists may be in particular trouble
in that they too readily assume that their therapeutic efforts are transparent with
respect to these difficulties (cf. Hare-Mustin, 1978; Hines & Hare-Mustin, 1978; James
& McIntyre, 1983; Margolin et al., 1983; Westerlund, 1983). Having reconstructed
psychotherapy along systemic lines, they may now rely too much on the vague appeals
to “neutrality,” “equality,” “egalitarianism,” and “androgyny” which characterize sys-

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temic models constructed in the liberal tradition. The paradoxical effect of non-differ-
ential treatment of men and women on the basis of gender has been an ignoring of
gender issues in family therapy (Margolin et al., 1983). That is, the very neutrality
sought after by systems-oriented therapists is achieved only at the price of a theoretical
model which denies access to such questions altogether-one in which ‘ia theory of the
family, and of women’s participation in it, is collapsed into a theory of structural orga-
nization” (James & McIntyre, 1983, p. 122).
A major theme emerging in these criticisms of family therapy’s treatment of women’s
issues is the consequences issuing from its peculiar commitment to the nuclear family
as the unit of diagnosis and intervention. Thus, James and McIntyre (1983) draw
attention to family therapy’s tendency to particularize family problems so that “a par-
ticular family’s dysfunction is located within its own structures” (p. 123). Not only is
the family conceived in the abstract, bereft of its historical, social and economiccontexts,
but family therapists “replicate the very mistake they accuse individual therapists of
making: they approach the problem as if the nuclear family is ‘child to the wider society
‘parent,’ and insist on seeing the child out of the family context” (p. 123).Consequently,
there is no account in family therapy of the family as socially constructed. Neither is
there a way to wonder, with these writers, if “contemporarysociety creates, even requires,
a family form that actually produces the pattern of behavior that we judge ‘dysfunc-
tional’ ” (p. 123). This closure around family therapy’s understanding of “family,” in
effect treating it as a-thing-in-itself, necessarily (though perhaps unwittingly) forces its
practitioners into the role of guardians of the dominant culture’s neglectidistortion of
women’s issues.
Similarly, Hines & Hare-Mustin (1978) wonder whether, where the therapist’s goal
is to maximize the growth of the entire family, individuals’ rights (to refuse treatment,
to confidentiality and privacy, and women’s rights in the matter of power) are not in
jeopardy. Previously, this writer was critical of Hines and Hare-Mustin on the grounds
that rights-construed as inalienable, individual, and axiomatically supreme-cannot
be fitted into a systemic account (Taggart, 1982).What was not noticed at the time was
that this statement, turned around, echoes what feminist critics (cf. James & McIntyre,
1983; O’Hare & Taylor, 1983) have said all along-that systemic accounts of family
interaction lack the means of raising questions related to women’s issues.
This point is underlined by James and McIntyre (1983) when they consider the
direction of systemic theory’s development over the past thirty years. The central issue
lies in the evolution of a systems theory which is no longer interested in the functional
dynamics of or between individuals, and has opted instead for a “content-less”systemic-
organizational model in which such questions are moot. Though often described as
“interactional,” the theory’s interest is limited t o how interactional patterns contribute
to a view of the family in organizational terms. Consequently, women (and their issues)
are swallowed up in the primary task of seeing the family as a special case of a system.
In this, women bear much the same relationship to family therapy as Simone de Beauvoir
did to her leftist critics when The Second Sex: (1949) appeared: “They said that the
problem of women is not a true problem. There is no point in raising it. When the
revolution comes, women will find their place quite naturally” (de Beauvoir, 1981, p.
147). Family therapy appears to proceed on similar assumptions that, once the family
system has been truly “therapized,” women’s issues will disappear. As women have long
cause to know, this ancient bromide is a feature of all revolutionary movements’response
to women. Was it not St. Paul who said: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free,
male or female. You are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28)?
These objections to systemic family therapy take on particular poignance when
dealing with the nature of power in family relations, especially as this relates to
aggressive acts toward women in the form of battering, incest and rape. Psychodynamic

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tendencies to view rape as a part of the victim’s life pattern have, of course, talked much
about her “masochism,” “seductiveness” and “self-destructiveness” (Caplan, 1984; Colao
& Hunt, 19831, and incest has long been explicated in terms of the victim’s “incestuous
longings,” “unresolved oedipal desires,” etc. (Westerlund, 1983). If such accounts manage
a t all to move beyond a consideration of the victim’s contribution, mothers provide a
rich explanatory lode as emotionally rejecting, sexually frigid, unavailable and collu-
sive. As Westerlund (1983, pp. 25-26) sums up: “It is very difficult to find writings on
incest that are not alarmingly sexist . . . After blame has been placed first on daughter,
and then on mother, the paternal Grandmother is considered and found to be (surprise!)
an inadequate mother.” But the paradigm shift from linear “error” to systemic “ t r u t h
may not have made much difference in how these issues of violence toward women are
handled in family therapy. We have, after all, our own schizophrenogenic mothers’ bones
to contend with.
Although not directed against family therapy as such, Schwendinger & Schwen-
dinger (1983) criticize the application of interactionist theories to rape on the grounds
that emphasizing rapist and victim as “mutually interacting partners” (Amri, 1971, pp.
266, 346, 355) leads too easily to notions of “victim precipitation.” The fear is that
interactionist theories tend to justify the rapist’s definition of the situation, which
definition enables him to define the woman as a legitimate victim. Such theories can,
however, only have reference to a hermetically sealed interaction in which context is
assumed to play no part. They can only have plausibility if it be assumed that rapist
and victim have equal power to determine the outcome of an interaction, i.e., that the
victim has the power to abort the sequence of events leading to the rapist’s assault. Such
assumptions are maintained by ignoring the oppressive sexist norms which govern the
everyday activities of women. Only by concealing the role of the wider social (ideological,
legal, political, etc.) context can the power issues be discussed as if rape or incest or
battering were only a n event between “mutually interacting partners.” What has pur-
ported to be a reframing of power issues, including their consequences as embodied by
victims, is a rather less troublesome and more straightforward ignoring of them.
Cook and Frantz-Cook (1984), in their study of wife-battering, acknowledge that
systemically oriented therapists have been seen by some as part of the problem rather
than of the solution. Their systemic approach, as one might expect, encourages them
“to see that something very powerful within the marital and family system serves to
maintain the recurrent cycle of violence” (p. 84, emphasis added). The important ques-
tion, however, is what kind of a powerful “something” are we talking about and, more
importantly, where do we look for it. Clearly, Cook and Frantz-Cook take the words
“within the marital and family system” to mean what most of family therapy has decided
it means. That is, the search for the “something” that maintains the recurrent cycle of
violence mostly takes place within a context-less dyadic interaction, supplemented by
occasional forays into family of origin work. In other words, the boundary between
“family” and the broad social context which defines it has become a barrier that prevents
exploration of the connectedness between them. More than this, the barrier thus drawn
around the concept of “family” is largely invisible. If one is in the habit of ignoring
context altogether, there is no need to acknowledge one’s punctuation of a boundary in
the first place. Families are simply what we consider them to be, without our having to
be aware that we have decided that such is the case.
The place this decision leaves us in is quite paradoxical. Our perspective teaches
us that there are no heroes and villains a t the level of a systemic description (cf. Carter
& McGoldrick, 1976, pp. 196-197). Power differentials in the family are presumably
reframed in some way as to make them (and their linearly punctuated “consequences”)
disappear. Violence, it can then be assumed, might indeed be a “way for the couple to
experience closeness” (Cook & Frantz-Cook, 1983, p. 91). But, eventually, one has to

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wonder what level of violence is needed before the elasticity of “closeness” is tested.
Presumably the death of the woman would introduce considerable strain into the model,
even for the most systemic among us.
Long before the death of the victim, however, the comfortable notions of “circular
causality,” “mutually interacting partners,” and so on, bump up against the paradoxes
of their own limits when applied to matters ofbattering, rape and incest. Systems theory,
as long as it treats the family as a-thing-in-itself, finds itself mystified by the limits of
its explanatory repertoire. Lacking the means of including in its account those contexts
(social, political, economic, etc.) which create the family, latter-day systemic therapy is
unable to get off the ground in the matter of women’s issues. Small wonder, then, that
some see little promise in family therapy as a means for grappling with women’s
concerns.
As was stated earlier, this paper treats the feminist critique of family therapy as
an occasion for the elaboration and renewal of systemic therapy, rather than its aban-
donment or demise. Put more synergistically, it is an invitation t o explore the “death
of systemic therapy (as currently practised) through and past the funeral to the birth of
something new. What follows is an exploration of the feminist critique as epistemological,
that is, a challenge which forces us to consider our most basic assumptions about “what-
we-think-we-know-and-how-we-know-it.”

THE FEMINIST CRITIQUE AS EPISTEMOLOGICAL

There is some advantage to seeking a connection between the feminist critique of
family therapy and the movement seeking the latter’s renewal epistemologically. For
one thing, the feminist cri-de-coeur constitutes, finally, an adequate basis for raising
the epistemological question a t all. That is, the theoretical and pragmatic inadequacy
of family therapy’s current self-definition to run the feminist gauntlet is where episte-
mology begins. As Gellner (1974) points out, epistemology is never the product of
comfortable times. The epistemological moment is always born out of a sense that the
world as constructed by current theory is in process of dissolution. Nowhere in family
therapy is this feeling more manifest than among feminist critics. Nor are these concerns
restricted to the elite few who get published on the matter. Many women involved in
family therapy-writers, therapists, trainers, trainees, and clients-live in daily aware-
ness of the crisis and its consequences for them (cf. Kaplan et al., 1983). By contrast,
the sense of urgency found in recent epistemological reconstructions seems to be gen-
erated mainly by the audacity of theorists’ thinking. Few therapists or clients, after all,
are storming the barricades in favor of “the aesthetic preference” (Allman, 1982;Keeney
& Sprenkle, 1982;),“structure-determinism’’ (Dell, 1983), or, for that matter, “systemic
values” (Taggart, 1982). On the other hand, the sheer size of women’s representation in
family therapy, as well as their growing dissatisfaction with how the theory constructs
them, may a t last provide the requisite crisis for an epistemological renewal to get
under way.
The extent of the crisis goes far beyond the anger of those caught in its long arm.
Indeed, exclusive preoccupation with women’s anger, isolated from the theoretical con-
cerns which accompany it, serves only as a means of ignoring the latter. Thus, the
critique constantly runs the risk of being explained away in terms of the personal and
group attributes of feminists, interpreted as their failure to play by the (androcentric)
rules of the game. Ultimately, the nature and depth of the crisis will be measured by
the extent to which it calls our most unreflected-upon axioms into question. To explore
this prospect, we turn to a consideration of the feminist critique of science.
In a powerful essay, Keller (1982) leaves little doubt as to how radically epistemo-
logical the feminist criticism of science-in-general is. It is one thing, after all, to accuse

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a discipline of bias. Such charges, though distressing at times, can nevertheless be dealt
with relatively smoothly, without necessarily disrupting the accused epistemologically.
The usual liberal response is to admit the bias sorrowfully. This ritual obeisance to his
own perfectibility once over, the liberal is then free to grasp at the false hope that he
can continue to hold on to his most basic assumptions, now suitably disinfected of bias.
It is quite another thing, however, to struggle with the possibility that the scientific
enterprise itself is a profound expression of androcentric ways of looking at the world.
As Keller (1982, p. 116, parenthesis added) puts it: “To challenge the truth and necessity
of the conclusions of natural science on the grounds that they too reflect the judgement
of men is t o take the Galilean credo and turn it on its head. It is not true that ‘the
conclusions of natural science are true and necessary, and the judgement of men has
nothing to do with them’ (Galileo, trans. 1953, p. 63); it is the judgement of women that
they have nothing to do with.” Thus, the radical, feminist critique of science goes to the
heart of the matter when it turns its attention “to the operation of patriarchal bias on
ever deeper levels of social structure, even of language and thought” (Keller, 1982, p.
116).
To a generation brought up on the “objectivity”and “neutrality” of scientificmethod,
such matters may seem incomprehensible. The conventional view of science has been
that it is constituted entirely by its own logical and empirical necessities. No signature,
neither male nor female nor even androgynous, can appear in that system of knowledge
(Keller, 1982). Nor can we inquire as to the locus of a scientific statement, its relation
to some material or social context. True knowledge has been taken to be unconditioned
and as such is its own (and only) context.
But it is precisely these assumptions about science which have been under sustained
attack for some time (cf. Brown, 1977; Gergen, 1982;Kuhn, 1970;Morgan, 1983;Wilden,
1980). In particular, doubts have been raised whether science can sustain its claim to
be a value-free process aimed a t discovering a truth unaffected by our ways of looking
for it (cf. Colapinto, 1979). This was a crucial struggle in quantum physics during the
1920’s. Is truth a matter to be found “out there” in the shape of natural laws which have
nothing to do with the judgment of men, as Galileo insisted? Or, is truth connected
intimately with our ways of looking for it? This was a momentous question for physicists
to ask, and its continuing resolution has proved to be a turning point for science. On
one side stood Einstein (1936, p. 349) with his implacable view that “the most incom-
prehensible thing about world is that it is comprehensible.”On the other side were Bohr
and Heisenberg who insisted that quantum theory is about correlations in our experz-
ences, i.e., about what will be observed under specified conditions. By and large, Bohr
and Heisenberg have carried the day. As Zukav (1980, p. 38) sums it up: “The new
physics was based, not upon ‘absolute truth,’ but upon us.”
Bohr’s Copenhagen Interpretation has generally been taken, along with more recent
influences (cf. Piaget, 19721,as leading to constructivist accounts of epistemology.Stated
broadly, constructivism is the notion that “knowledge is primarily a product of the
processing agent” (Gergen, 1982, p. 176). The constructivist position is beginning to
influence theoretical discussions in family therapy, mostly in the form of Dell’s (1983)
exploration of the work of Maturana.
To return to Zukav’s comment noted above, there is considerable controversy as to
what the “us,”now taken as the subject matter of family therapy, denotes. If, as James
and McIntyre (1983) insist, family therapy conceives its arena as the internal function
of this family, uprooted from its social and economic contexts, it follows that the act of
constructing the family in this manner is likewise viewed as unconnected t o any context.
Thus, in conversations with family therapists, one encounters a naive version of con-
structivism which focuses almost exclusively on individuals’ creation of their own real-
ity, as if it were some kind of purely personal property. This so fits in with the American

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Dream of self-contained individualism that its operation is scarcely noticed. What it
amounts to is a belief that individuals construct their reality as a kind of creation ex
nihilo in which prior constraints (of language, history, social structure, epistemology,
etc.) are mysteriously done away with.
A danger associated with this view is its encouragement of the idea that changing
one’s epistemology is easily done-indeed, primarily a matter of a conscious decision to
do so. If my creation of my reality is truly self-contained, then I can create anything I
care to. Assumptions, no matter how axiomatic (hidden from view), can apparently be
wiped out and replaced a t will.
On the contrary, the construction of reality on the part of the “us” in Zukav’s
statement can only refer to a process which is socially constituted. Not only are our most
basic assumptions about “self” mediated by a culture supportive of (even demanding)
such assumptions, but “reality,”“truth” and “knowledge” have inescapably social mean-
ings. Thus, an individual’s “construction of h e r h i s own reality” is not something that
starts off as a private act from which, only later, the individual has somehow to move
out into a public world (Hamlyn, 1978). The very possibility of such a construction in
the first place depends on one’s participation in a form of life which includes, among
other things, a socially constituted language as the necessary vehicle for “private”
thought. Thus, a purely private construction of reality is no more possible for human
beings than is a purely private language. Not only does “language” imply a connection
with others (i.e., a possible discourse), but it necessarily brings in the cultural milieu
in which it is operative. Hence, Aristotle “could formulate his logic of substance and
attribute, relation, assertion and negation, because these categories are implicitly given
in the Greek language” (Langer, 1972, 319). In this account, language is not simply a
neutral tool which we use instrumentally: In a manner of speaking, it uses us.
The feminist charge that family therapy constructs the family by ignoring its social
contexts is now seen as the inevitable outcome of a way of constructing theory and
practice that likewise ignores its social contexts. As James & McIntyre (1983)suggest,
the mapping of the family on to a pure systems model ignores that the family is a human
system. Whereas pure systems appear to exist only in the context of the constructor’s
theory, families exist i n the context of a fully h u m a n way of life. But that form of life
which constitutes the family also frames the family therapist. If theoristipractitioners
view themselves as unaffected by their location within the broad social contexts defining
their behavior, they can do little else than create the family in their own image.
Can family therapy escape the paradoxes inherent in this state of affairs? Are we
doomed, as some feminist critics insist, to continue operating in terms of a constricted
systems theorylpractice which cannot transcend its own explanatory limits? These are
tough questions to be sure, but all the more so if we keep the vicious circle turning by
assuming that systems theory is also a-thing-in-itself,fixed in its operations and inca-
pable of evolving. This would surely be the supreme irony-that systems theory, con-
ceived as the means for describing how systems change, should lack an account of how
it itself changes.

PUNCTUATION, CLOSURE AND BOUNDARY IN SYSTEMIC EPISTEMOLOGY

Far from being alien, the feminist call to a wider appreciation for contextual issues
in systemic therapy is essentially a reminder of what systems theory is about. The idea
of context is central to systems theory. Any description of a system has within it, whether
explicitly or implicitly, some model of systemicontext relations. The very use of a phrase
like “a system” is itself a powerful punctuation which closes off part of the pattern and,
of necessity, assigns what is not thus closed off to the status of “context.” The immediate
consequences of such necessary operations is that the most searching questions one can

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ask of systems theory (family therapy theory, practice, epistemology, etc.) are at the
analog level of contextual relations rather than at the digital level of textual descriptions
(Wilden, 1980, p. 115). In other words, systems theory is not merely a way of under-
standing a “something” called “a system,” but rather its relation to some context.
Accounting for connectedness,but in ways that enable distinctions to be made, is systems
theory’s central genius and task. Thus, one of the earliest inventions of family therapy
(Framo, 1972; Fry, 1962) was to understand a symptom in the context of those relation-
ships which define it. But, as part of the field’s consolidation over the last ten or fifteen
years, family therapists have been content to rest there and not, for example, move on
to understand concepts like “family”or “relationship” within the contexts which, accord-
ing to systems theory, most assuredly define them (cf. Elkaim, 1982).
Watzlawick (1982) has raised fears that expanding the discussion in this direction
would expose family therapy to the risk of falling headlong into an infinite regression.
There are, one supposes, possible forms of the appeal to context which never settle down
anywhere, but push their upward reductionism too easily and too often into what he (p.
403) has called “planetary space.” But the far more present danger inherent in the
bogeyman perils of infinite regression is that any move to consider contextual aspects
beyond those which are most familiar to us is strangled a t birth. If the pioneer family
therapists had been as fearful of the infinite regression as we sometimes seem, they
might not have taken even the first systemic step. But, the field did not lose itself in
planetary space. There proved to be ample scope for a new pragmatics based on family
interaction as the context for psychotherapy. No compelling reason appears for believing
that the same thing might not happen if the feminist suggestions for enlarging our
understanding of “family” were taken seriously. Certainly, the present unclarity as to
the form these pragmatics might take is not to deny their possibility a priori.
Wilden (1980) discusses a systemic approach which includes context as a core
element. According to this view, systemicontext relations may be thought ofas a function
of the interplay between three closely related operationsiconcepts-punctuation, closure
and boundary. The punctuation of a pattern by a n observer is a n act of closure which
establishes the boundary of a system and, by the same act, calls the system’s context
into being and fixes its boundary. That is, the existence, description, behavior, etc., of
any system is a function of the ways in which an observer-participant punctuates it (p.
111).Since closure is a n epistemological act, not an ontological given, there can be no
description of a system without reference to its context.
Thus, while punctuation, closure and the drawing of boundaries are necessary to
make distinctions a t all, the necessity is always methodological and not conditioned by
either “truth”or “objective facts” (Wilden, 1980, p. 115).In turn, the distinctions (models,
theories, techniques, etc.) created by these operations are themselves methodological
and provisional rather than real and permanent. Otherwise, the search for knowledge
would indeed conform to the logical empiricist’s dream of being able to set up an
impregnable boundary (barrier) and then faithfully chipping away a t herlhis ignorance
of the “reality” contained therein. In the systems view of things, however, the boundary
is not the mere container of the system’s substance designed, as it were, to keep context
at bay while scientists (or therapists) get on with their work in uncomplicated peace.
Consider the instance of punctuating a pattern into “figure” and “ground” (Wilden,
1980, pp. 315-3161, Our typical practice is to separate figure from ground, and then to
attribute the boundary between them to the figure. That is, the boundary is considered
to be the outer limits of the figure which separates it from the ground. Such a move is
clearly the first in a process of reifying the figure (system) as separate from and unme-
diated by the ground (context).Thus, “closed” can easily become a n ontological descrip-
tion-“this is a closed system and, look, here is its boundary”-rather than a n episte-
mological act. Wilden’s view, rather, is that the concept of boundary is a digital rule

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about rezations, not the fixed outer limits of a system’s structure. The first casualty of
such a view of things, as Bateson’s (1972, p. 459) well-known consideration of the-blind-
man-and-his-stick demonstrates, is the conceit that boundaries, once punctuated, are
fixed and permanent. Equally, there appears no good reason to assume that family
therapy, itself a n unfolding system, possesses “fixed” and “permanent”boundaries beyond
which it cannot evolve.
An important consequence of the view of systemic epistemology being developed
here is, as Whyte (1962, p. 40) puts it: “No rational system-logical, mathematical,
scientific-can ever be used to define its own boundaries.” The decisive demonstration
of this point was provided by Godel’s (1931) celebrated proof of the incompleteness of
mathematics. As Barrett (1979, p. 100) describes it: “. . . Godel showed that even such
a relatively simple system as elementary arithmetic is too rich to be encompassed by
any set of axioms. It will always contain more truths than the axioms can yield.” Godel’s
Theorem is a momentous event in the history of thought. It is a fatal blow to the notion
that perfect consistency within a system is possible. Every description of a system, no
matter how carefully deduced, will generate Godelian sentences which are known to be
true but which cannot be demonstrated within the system (Wilden, 1980, p. 122).When
such Godelian sentences (paradoxes) appear, oscillation and repetition can be avoided
only by the introduction of new levels of logical typing in the organization of the system.
The Godelian paradox can be understood as inevitable in terms of a description of a
mathematical system which leaves out the mathematician. Once the mathematician is
included, arithmetic ceases to be a self-contained system organized internally by its
own axioms. It too participates in a fully human form of life.
What the feminist critique (and this article) argue for is nothing less than the
inclusion of the therapist in family therapy. No longer can this be understood, however,
as the conjunction of two self-constituted, independent entities which must somehow be
forged into an uneasy unity. Rather, the therapist-family system is a systemic combining
of components which takes place in the context of the human form of life which consti-
tutes both them and their combination. Thus, when we have exhausted the limited
supply of “systems components” derived from our currently restricted view of what a
system is, the women’s movement will still be insisting that we include oursezues-not
as isolated “creators of reality,” but as participants in a network of cultural assumptions
(our economic, political, historical, linguistic, etc., practices) which together constitute
our way of life. Included in that way of life is not only the what of those dominant
punctuations which create our picture of reality, but also the who. As Wilden (1980, p.
116) puts it: “. . . no matter what ecosystem we consider-natural, social, psychological,
economic-the punctuators tend both individually and collectively to be white, male,
industrialized, affluent, and usually Protestant.” A fresh appreciation of the role played
by these contexts will bring to view the new levels of logical typing necessary for systems-
based psychotherapy to break out ofthe “moreof the same” aspects of its current practice.
In time, to be sure, whatever pragmatic resolutions do emerge as a result of increased
attention paid to questions of context will themselves eventually run into trouble. Such
is the nature of systemic epistemology. Unlike the foundational epistemology it seeks
to replace, systemic epistemology is never complete. Solutions do become problems in
time, but the paradoxes that systemic theory must necessarily encounter are reframed
from “impasse” to “opportunity,” and the royal road to its continued unfolding is to
change our perspective on context. Only along such lines, perhaps, can we escape the
supreme paradox that systems theory-a model for describing how systems change-
should lack the means to account for its own transmutation.

CONCLUSIONS AND PROSPECTS

This paper’s proposals, to be sure, are cast in very general terms so far. What family
therapy would look like-informed and enlivened by a new appreciation for context-

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is still, even in the feminist literature, more a matter for hope than fulfillment. Nor is
this entirely a disadvantage. To have t o struggle for a while with the implications of
context, rather t4an proceeding too easily and too quickly to found yet another “school”
of family therapy, might not be such a bad thing for the longer run.
Even so, little harm can come from listing some modest prospects which, informed
by a richer appreciation for context and its effects, may serve heuristically to open up
the matter further:
1. Women’s issues. As was said earlier, the recognition of the role played by social
context is a guarantee of the full presence of the therapist in relation to women’s issues.
The social context connects therapists with these concerns in ways that have t o do with
the therapists’ location amid the multiple structures (social, political, economic, histor-
ical, etc.) which comprise our way of life. To assume less, i.e., that family therapists
have managed somehow to be exempt from the influence of these features, is self-
righteousness bordering on delusion (cf. Sarason, 1981). In short, the call to context
reminds us, whatever our gender or level of imputable gender bias, of our participant
status.
Taking context seriously would mean, for example, that family violence cannot be
considered as merely this woman’s, or this family’s problem, toward which the therapist
can adopt some “benign, neutral” stance. Instead, family violence (and women’s issues
in general) are profound expressions of the very same social frameworks that create and
sanction the therapist’s total role-theory, practice, language, professional status and
livelihood. Thus, while problems of rape, incest and wife-battery may be alien to the
therapist when viewed as discrete behavior sequences, they are representations of the
broad social structure which defines “therapist” as much as “the rapist.”
A cautionary note is in order. Though rape, incest and battering have been used in
this paper to highlight the deficits in family therapy’s construction of women, such use
is not without risk. Employing dramatic instances like these may serve only to conceal
those less spectacular but more ubiquitous forms of gender bias in our theoretical,
clinical and educational practice (Rampage, 1984).Perhaps the more subtle, and there-
fore the more intransigent, issues of our “ordinary” clinical work will prove the greater
challenge. At the very least, therapists might become sensitive to the violence they
perpetrate daily through nothing more sinister than the assumption that their social
context is unconnected to what they think, say and do.
2. Implications for clinical epistemology. Earlier, it was noted that initiatives asso-
ciated with the “new epistemology” have so far largely been a male prerogative in family
therapy. Among the more important implications of this paper is the prospect that
women will be less apt than previously to cede the business of epistemology to their
male colleagues. The “naturalness” and “rightness”of such traditional divisions of labor
are, after all, what is being challenged by feminist theory. One might hope that, in their
determination to be more than amplifiers of others’ music, increased numbers of women
will take their places a t all levels of family therapy, including this one. The infusion of
womanly gifts and graces into the epistemological discourse go beyond the dominant
culture’s notion of “equal opportunity.” The expansion in the range of tools and topics
which women bring t o the epistemological task is actually necessary for its continuing
fulfillment. To take just one example, if questions of power and its prerogatives have
now moved t o center stage in the epistemological debate (cf. Allman, 1982; Coyne,
Denner & Ransom, 1982; Keeney & Sprenkle, 1982; Watzlawick, 19821, traditional
(androcentric) punctuations of power may not take us far. As Vivianne Forrester (1981,
pp. 181-182) says of the similar predicament of women film makers: “How can male
directors today not beg women to pick up the camera, t o open up unknown areas to
them, t o liberate them from their redundant vision which is deeply deformed by this

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lack? Women’s vision is what is lacking and this lack not only creates a vacuum, but it
perverts, alters, annuls every statement. Women’s vision is what you don’t see. . . .”
The broader implications of this paper’s proposals for the epistemological didcourse
in family therapy can be expressed in several ways. At one level, the challenge is to
account for the “real presence” of the epistemologist in herhis work. In most of what
has emerged on the topic so far in family therapy, this recursive relationship is treated
as if instrumental descriptions alone-“observer,” “constructor,”“knowing subject,” etc.-
are sufficient to encompass it. Such metaphors tend to deny or ignore the embeddedness
of epistemologists within their social contexts, and thus sanction the search for a “ t r u t h
likewise independent of its locations. But a “ t r u t h which is “true” everywhere, for
everyone, and for all time, is hardly the stuff of which systemic dreams are made. As
Gergen (1982, p. 98) puts it: “The chief question confronting the theorist is not, ‘How
accurate is the description?,’ but rather, ‘What function is the selected theoretical
language to play within the human arena?’ What forms of activity is a theoretical
account designed to sustain, create, or destroy? How is the linguistic account to be
employed within the society, and for what ends?” Contextless epistemologists creating
contextless epistemologies can hardly contribute here.
Another way to express it is to say that this paper represents a return t o the basic
assumptions of systems theory. “System” takes meaning from the contexts which define
it, and this is as true of systems epistemology itself as for the families we treat in its
name. Consequently, any attempt to reconstruct systems-based models in family therapy
must, to be systemic, embrace its location within the same political, economic,historical,
linguistic, etc., structures as constitute our form of life.
3. New questions for family therapy. If family therapy is indeed located within the
broad networks of our social, political and economic life, we now can relate our theory
and practice to a much wider range of human activities than is customary. Thus, the
opportunity to juxtapose hitherto “unrelated matters,” so indispensable a tool when
working with families, becomes available for the reframing of family therapy itself.
That is, a heightened appreciation for the role of context might lead to the formulation
of some startlingly novel questions for family therapists.
To take just one such unexplored conjunction as illustrative, consider the economic
context of family therapy. Apart from the recent effort of Pittman (1983),this connection
is rarely noted among family therapists. Whatever else is thought to happen in offices,
research centers, class rooms, and on both sides of one-way mirrors, the economic aspects
of family therapy are largely invisible-once the fee has been collected. It is as if the
economic assumptions undergirding our work are by now so axiomatic that, like the
fish’s relation to water, we are oblivious to them. Even those emerging models labeled
“ecosystemic”(cf. de Shazer, 1982; Keeney, 1983; O’Connor & Lubin, 1984) are content
with purely ritual salutes to the importance of the larger social context. Thus, the only
economic questions likely to be raised by family therapists are those sanctioned by the
market ideology of the dominant culture-how to get more clients, how to collect higher
fees, and how to invest surplus wealth. Economic factors, punctuated as being “outside”
the system called “family therapy,” operate as some kind of neutral medium in which
the real action-a theorylpractice in principle unrelated to the economic context-takes
place.
”0 move beyond this construction of the economic context as an inert medium for
our work is to bring different questions to view. How, for example, does the dominance
of private practice within the structures of family therapy in the United States influence
the development of theory? Is there any significance to the observation that, despite the
revolutionary nature of the much-celebrated paradigm shift, we have retained intact
the feeltime practices of the much-reviled psychodynamic therapist? What would happen
if, instead of a blinkered concern with “outcome” defined as what we imagine is the

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outcome for clients, we found ways to include such aspects as the outcome (income?) for
clinicians and researchers (promotion, prestige, funding, etc.)? Are the opportunities for
women to assume leadership in the family therapy field invitations to become (like)
men?
The call to context-in particular the social, political, economic, linguistic, etc.,
contexts of power-is indeed so radical that it changes everything. The currently famil-
iar punctuations defining family therapy point only paradoxically beyond themselves.
It is because they cannot that they do. But this, as argued earlier, is the indispensable
predicamentlopportunity inherent in systems theory. Hence, the goal of this paper has
been to amplify rather than “answer” the perturbations introduced into family therapy
by feminist critics. These fluctuations may well become the means for transforming the
oppositional and exploitative relationships of our common life-mardwoman, self/other,
whitemhird World, organisdenvironment, mindhature, theory/practice,therapistlclient,
etc.-into those relations of non-exploitative difference, without which all systems
perish.

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