The fundamental concern of psychotherapy is change. While practitioners are constantly greeted with new strategies, techniques, programs, and interventions, this book argues that the full benefits of the therapeutic process cannot be realized without fundamental revision of the concept of change itself. Applying cybernetic thought to family therapy, Bradford P. Keeney demonstrates that conventional epistemology, in which cause and effect have a linear relationship, does not sufficiently accommodate the reciprocal nature of causation in experience. Written in an unconventional style that includes stories, case examples, and imagined dialogues between an epistemologist and a skeptical therapist, the volume presents a philosophically grounded, ecological framework for contemporary clinical practice.
Professor Bradford Keeney, PhD, is an internationally renowned scholar, author, and therapist. He is presently Hanna Spyker Eminent Scholars Chair in Education and Director, Institute for Creative Transformation and Virtual Pedagogy, University of Louisiana, Monroe, and President, Louisiana Association of Marriage and Family Therapy.
As a fieldworker, Keeney has been called "the Marco Polo of psychology and an anthropologist of the spirit" by the editors of Utne Reader. As the author of over thirty-one books, Keeney presently is practicing and teaching what he has learned from the arts and sciences across diverse cultural traditions to help individuals, couples, and families transform their challenges and suffering into growth and more meaningful lives.
Apart from his work with the Kalahari Bushmen, he has served distinguished careers that span and connect the disciplines of social cybernetics, anthropology, and therapy. He has extensively researched and published information about various healing traditions around the world.
