The 1978 publication Paradox and Counterparadox by the Milan group was immediately recognised as a fundamental shift in family therapy thinking but indecipherable to many of its eager readers. The authors, Selvini Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin, G. and Prata acknowledged this confusion in their next major publication Hypothesizing, Circularity and Neutrality: Three Guidelines for the Conductor of the Session saying that readers were often left with the impression that ‘our interventions at the end of the session have come out of the blue.’ To remedy this, they identified three key activities of the practitioner aimed at ‘stimulating the family to produce meaningful information, which is indispensable to the therapist in making a therapeutic choice.’ These activities or practice methodologies were underpinned by the principles of the systemic epistemology of Gregory Bateson.
The Three Principles
The team identified three principles they believed were indispensable to interviewing the family correctly and they became the title of the paper.
Hypothesising
Based on the information available, the practitioner formulates a systemic hypothesis, including all parts of the family and their relational structure. The hypothesis is defined as ‘that which is under’ or the ‘proposition at the base of a conceptual construction.’ This scaffolding provides a starting point for enquiry and a vehicle for active testing of the supposition guiding the therapist’s work. Without this structure sessions would ‘go toward a discouraging increase in disorder and muddle.’ The authors were at pains to stress that the value of the hypothesis was not its ‘correctness’ but rather in the generation of information with a disproved hypothesis contributing information in its elimination of variables.
Circularity
The second key principle is that of circularity, the idea that information is contained in difference and a difference is always a relationship. This requires the practitioner to ‘conduct his investigation on the basis of feedback from the family in response to the information he solicited about relationships and, therefore, about difference and change.’ Obtaining relevant information from the family guides systemic enquiry. This is the origin of the difference question with the following categories of questions suggested; asking one family member to comment on the relationship between two others, specific interactive behaviours in specific circumstances, differences in behaviour between family members, ranking by family members of a specific behaviour or a specific interaction and change in the relationship before and after a precise event.
Neutrality
The final principle was that of neutrality which referred to the impact the practitioner had on the family through taking a meta position to each member. This is done by ‘being allied with everyone and no-one at the same time,’ avoiding any coalitions or privileged relationships.
Where from Here?
While this remains a seminal paper practitioners remained unclear about the practical application of a circular epistemology and a flurry of attempts were made to operationalize the difference questions. While these were of interest it became clear that this was a complex process and generated more categories than could easily be retained by the practitioner as they attended to the chaos of a family session. Simplicity, clarity and maintaining a systemic lens became the goal which has become our focus at Bower Place as we work to create a questioning process that is equally useful for the beginning therapist as their more experienced counterpart.
Selvini Palazzoli, M., Boscolo, L., Cecchin, G. and Prata, G., Paradox and Counterparadox, New York, Aronson. 1978
Selvini-Palazzoli, M., Boscolo, L., Cecchin, G. and Prata, G., “Hypothesizing-Circularity-Neutrality: Three Guidelines for the conductor of the Session,” Fam. Proc., 19, 3-12, 1980.
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