ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the experience of belonging as a basic existential yearning. It presents a systemic perspective on such yearning and considers its application through systemic psychotherapy with children in care. W. Guthrie’s song conveys a sense that belonging, having a home, is essential to a meaningful existence. In 1949, John Bowlby gave what was the first account of what became known as “family group therapy”. Ecological and systemic thinking helps us map and understand the organization, process, and structure of relationships: how they interlink and enfold in each other, like Russian matryoshka dolls, in different levels of social context and meaning. The chapter deals with Calvin as an example of a collaboration between child and systemic psychotherapy, involving the whole professional network around a child in care. Systemic psychotherapy draws its ideas from a synthesis of attachment-based thinking, the methodology of social anthropology, an existential phenomenological world view, and the communitarian awareness.
