The Session Practiced Without Meeting of Full Members of Family: Therapeutic System and Feedback System

Abstract

　Generally it’s desirable to practice the session with full members of family. But there are many cases that full family members rarely come together to the therapy room, even the only one member of the family comes. Even in such cases, therapist should try to change the whole system of the family throughout approaching the sub-system of the family which he must be faced with.　In this paper, we report the case that our therapist-team approaches the inter-relationship between mother and other family members hidden from us. The feedback process in the family system which the therapist can observe is called "the first cybernetics", and the cybernetic feedback process between the therapist and the family system which the therapist team can observe is called "the second cybernetics". The member of the therapist team who stands on the position of this complex phase takes the role of "the observer of the observer". Therapist must stand on the meta-position to the family system. And therapist team must stand on the more meta-position to the system which both the therapist and the family system form. We consider that the approach based on the cybernetic feedback process offers a fruitfull viewpoint for effective practice of therapy.