ABSTRACT

The transition from modern to postmodern practices in family therapy has been described in different ways—first-order/second order, objective/constructionist, systemic/narrative. One could say, that because postmodern approaches in some way have developed from modern ones, the idea of system has become an assumption to which it is no longer necessary to refer or to theorize directly about. Constructionist and narrative approaches in family therapy tend to place less emphasis on repetition, routinization, and regularity and more on variation and multiplicity. Constructionists do not dissociate themselves completely from systemic thinking. Indeed, this would be impossible. The emphasis on individual variation is possible because it is variation from a pattern, and the constructionist makes a choice about what to concentrate on. In all family therapy approaches there are more or less explicit assumptions about a "system" and that what is different in the different approaches is the emphasis that this collectivity receives and the extent to which it is theorized.