It is time family therapy looked wider than the therapy session. Problems presenting also need to be viewed within a societal context. The complexity and fluid nature of issues affecting the family today needs to be recognised. To highlight this, 3 divergent areas are discussed; family structure, culture, and the nuclear threat. The myth of homogeneity is exposed and the pluralistic nature of Australian society is discussed. It is argued that family therapists have a responsibility to be aware of, and to comment on, family policy issues if the approach is to continue to develop divergent directions and extra depths.

1984 and beyond: Divergent Directions and Extra Depth*

SynopsisI would like to talk about the kind of change I see going on. It is not economic change, it is not social change — it is culture change. When people ask me what I am working on these days, although I am a social worker I tend to say I work for culture change. And when I talk about the family I am really talking about two things — the family itself as one large variable or macro-variable; and the context within which the family finds itself. If we want to understand the family today we have to see what that context is and what are the interrelationships between the family and the context. Otherwise we get not only very partial views but we head off down some very inaccurate and damaging paths in our work and even in our own lives. I want to talk about data too, because all of us come from fields which rely heavily on data as well as other kinds of information, especially when we are discussing context. I will also be talking about life-styles. These are important in coming to understand what is goi...

William Dyson

Papers

The cultural context for family policy considerations