ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates an approach combining ideas from social constructionism and systemic therapies. Such an approach, instead of starting from an assumption that there is a problem to be treated, asks questions about how various sorts of problems are constructed in any given culture. L. Hoffman's commitment to a social constructionist position, which regards problems as related—at least in part—to wider societal factors, leads to a view of therapy as necessarily limited. Therapy may offer some benefits, but it cannot simply eliminate the wider societal forces that shape people's experiences and their problems. Eron and Lund have suggested that a narrative approach to therapy is assisted by an understanding of how the problems have evolved. Therapeutic change must therefore involve a change both in how problems are seen and also in the process of how family members act with each other. These two facets of family life—action and construing—are inextricably and dialectically interwoven.
