ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a different kind of clinical work. This work seems to be evading the term "therapy". It avoids the implication of fixing something that has broken down or is not functioning, and comes closer to being some kind of hopeful discourse. It is, as far as possible, non-judgemental and non-pejorative. It is not control-oriented. Family systems work has always presented itself as a pre-scientific endeavour. It has looked at living systems with the fresh mind of the artist but without the legitimacy of a scientific frame. Constructivism, being part of the larger enterprise of psychology and the cognitive sciences, offers such a frame. It also offers a less ethnocentric view. There was a time when Lynn Hoffman believed that they were about to decipher the Rosetta Stone of symptomatic communication. She hopes that out of this struggle to decipher there comes an overarching language, accessible to all.
