ABSTRACT
A historical account of reflexivity in relation to cultural differences in systemic psychotherapy must begin with Gregory Bateson and particularly with his several postscripts to his ethnographic study Naven. Social anthropologists have turned to psychotherapy for a promise of solutions to the difficult methodological problems presented both by theory and participant observation. The aspects of meaning generation, referring to those processes which implicate continuity, development, family relationships, history, patterns, and, power, were deliberately put out of view. It is one thing to acknowledge one's own position as a white, middle-class therapist, but quite another to become aware of the extent to which one's own ideas, attitudes, and knowledge about the world, about relationships, about bodies, about personhood and subjectivity are culturally constructed. Crosscultural psychotherapy, gay and lesbian relationships, the reconstitution of families, fostering and adoption, and the increasing incidence of IVF and surrogacy all challenge orthodox assumptions about relatedness and about the generation and constitution of personhood and individuality.
