ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author talks about her own work and the ways in which David Campbell's ideas influenced or inspired her. What the author wants to trace is how the attributes appear in a certain kind of relationship to psychotherapy that she like to think of as "austere"; that is, as difficult and rather relentless, because it refuses to get taken up with the emotionality of the moment of encounter. One of the criticisms that might be levelled against systemic family therapy is that it is too "cognitive", in the sense of being concerned primarily with what people think and with the stories they tell about themselves and their predicaments, rather than paying sufficient dues to emotionality and the affective underpinnings of psychotherapy. The tricks of the systemic trade are genuinely helpful, ranging from active processes of selfdisclosure to the potentially collaborative engagement of clients with therapists' thinking through techniques such as the "reflecting team".
