Participant: Marilyn Wedge
Format: Presentation and Conversation
Themes: paradigm, praxis

The theory and practice of family therapy is indebted to Gregory Bateson for many of its most useful concepts: the unexpected (and often unrecognizable) consequences of a change in a family system, pathology as residing in patterns of communication rather in individuals, metaphor as the language of complex systems, and specifically family systems, and transforming the paradoxes and contradictions (double binds)–present in all self-reflexive systems–into practical therapeutic tools.
This paper examines through case examples how each of these concepts informs the practice of family therapy, and answers the question: “Is a family systems/ecological construct more effective, less dangerous, and more in keeping with nature than the current mainstream paradigm of child psychiatry?” With seven million American children labeled with psychiatric disorders and taking potentially harmful psychiatric drugs, a more humane and respectful paradigm is urgently needed.
Moreover, there are serious social justice and human rights issues inherent in the current model of child mental health. Poor children are four times as likely to be medicated as middle class children with similar problems. And children’s human rights are violated because labeling and medicating them deprives them of their childhoods.