New Horizons in Systemic Practice with Adults

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Editors
Tone Grover Siv Merete Myra
Department of Family Therapy and Department of Family Therapy and
Systemic Practice Systemic Practice
Faculty of Social Studies Faculty of Social Studies
VID Specialized University VID Specialized University
Oslo, Norway Oslo, Norway

Ulf Axberg
Department of Family Therapy and
Systemic Practice
Faculty of Social Studies
VID Specialized University
Oslo, Norway

ISSN 2662-9127     ISSN 2662-9135 (electronic)

Palgrave Texts in Counselling and Psychotherapy
ISBN 978-3-031-30525-2    ISBN 978-3-031-30526-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30526-9

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 Acknowledgements

Behind a book there is always a great we. This book is no exception.

Thanks to a wide range of contributors, we were able to start and finish
this work. First and foremost, we want to give our deepest thanks to Jim
Sheehan and Arlene Vetere. For years they have been an enormous inspi-
ration and have made many contributions to our systemic family thera-
pist milieu at VID Specialized University. They have also helped us
connect with other systemic milieus as well as publishers in Europe.
Quite simply, this book wouldn’t have come into existence at all if it
wasn’t for them and their overwhelming generosity in guiding us.
We want also to express our gratitude to all our collaboration partners
who seek to relate to their own lives, together with us, in what we call
therapy rooms. Their living presence shows up, anonymized, in different
parts of the chapters in this book. From them we have learned more than
is possible to learn from any book. Without the inspiration received from
them, this book would be empty in both a real and a metaphorical sense.
As readers will see, rich contributions were received from all who sup-
ported this work by allowing themselves to be interviewed and by sharing
their own time and insights with the authors.
We also want to thank VID Specialized University in Oslo, especially
our Head of Studies Halvor de Flon and Dean Mona-Iren Hauge, for
giving us the space, support and time needed to complete this work. The

v
vi Acknowledgements

editors also owe a great debt to our professional “godfathers”, Per Jensen
and Håkon Hårtveit, who established our systemic family therapy educa-
tion in Oslo. Thanks to their pioneering work, it has grown from a few
enthusiastic people walking around in slippers to one of Europe’s largest
systemic training programs.
Last but not least our gratitude goes to our friends, families, partners
and pets! They are there, for inspiration and insight, reminding us, every
day, about how dependent we are on each other and giving inspiration to
go deeper into the complexity and beauty of systemic understanding.
One final acknowledgement of dependence: all that is written here in
this book by editors and authors rests on the shoulders of our wonderful
colleagues, past and present, both from systemic milieus and from other
disciplines. In systemic spirit, we don’t want to make division between
disciplines, and this richness is one of the reasons why we are so grateful
to be part of systemic understanding.
With love,
Tone Grøver, Siv Merete Myra and Ulf Axberg
 Contents

1 E
 ditors’ Introduction  1
Tone Grover, Siv Merete Myra, and Ulf Axberg

2 The
 Therapeutic Relationship: A Systemic View of Agape  7
Jim Sheehan and Arlene Vetere

3 Trust,
 Movement and Collaboration: An Exploration of
Trust, Its Significance and Its Forms of Expression in
Therapy Sessions 29
Tone Grøver and Inger-Margrete Svendsen

4 Q
 uestioning Forgiveness 47
Anne Øfsti and Bård Bertelsen

5 Longing,
 and Longing for Oneself: What Can Therapists
Learn from “Soul Activism”? 61
Tone Grøver

6 Giving
 Resonance and Room to Spirituality in Systemic
Practice 81
Åse Holmberg and Bengt Karlsson

vii
viii Contents

7 The
 Gift of Literary Fiction to Systemic Training and
Practice 97
Anne Øfsti

8 Till
 Life Do Us Apart: An Exploration of Crumbs on the
Floor and Existential Themes in Couples Therapy113
Sigurd Riste Andersen and Thomas Bernhard Thiis-Evensen

9 Should
 I Stay, or Should I Go? Rethinking Identity and
the Experience of Migration as a Systemic Dialogue in
Therapy131
Nicoletta Businaro, Leandra Perrotta, and Jennifer Aramini

10 If
 We Only Met Once? A Talk with Five Single Session
Orientated Therapists147
Sigurd Riste Andersen

11 Coming
 Full Circle with the Neuroscience: Using New
Theory to Re-understand Therapy163
Arlene Vetere

12 E
 pilogue179
Tone Grøver, Siv Merete Myra, and Ulf Axberg

I ndex183
 Notes on Contributors

Sigurd Riste Andersen is an assistant professor at VID Specialized

University, Oslo, a position in which he teaches and supervises students
in the areas of social work, child protection and family therapy and
systemic practice. Being a passionate advocate of training and education,
he is also the Managing Director of the University student clinic for
family therapy. Sigurd has work experience with drug-related social work,
family work in psychiatry and child welfare and with members of the
refugee community. He is a board member of the Norwegian Family
Therapy Association, has his own private practice as a couples and family
therapist in Oslo and is engaged in preventive and health-promoting
courses and projects. In his research, he is interested in education, super-
vision, clinical practice and therapy and existential themes.
Jennifer Aramini is a clinical psychologist. Her private practice deals with
people who cope with depression, anxiety, substance abuse and eating disor-
ders. She is vice-president of COMITES-Italian Association in Norway.
Ulf Axberg, PhD is Professor of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice
at the VID Specialized University in Oslo, Norway. In addition, he is a
licensed psychologist and psychotherapist and clinical supervisor. He has
long experience working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health and
Social Services. His main research interests are systemic intervention,
parental support and children exposed to intimate partner violence. He

ix
x Notes on Contributors

has authored and co-authored several articles in peer-reviewed journals

and book chapter.
Bård Bertelsen is an associate professor at the University of Agder, in
Kristiansand and Grimstad, where he is a manager of the Psychology
Academic Group and teacher and supervisor for students in family ther-
apy and psychosocial health. He is also a clinical psychologist specializing
in family psychology and child and youth psychology. In his research, he
has been interested in parenthood in post-divorce conflict and the social
organization of family therapy and other psychotherapy practices.
Nicoletta Businaro is Associate Professor of Family Therapy and Systemic
Practice at VID Specialized University, Oslo. She holds a PhD and Postdoc
in psychology and has a specialization as a family therapist. Her research,
didactic and practice interests are related to systemic family therapy, devel-
opmental psychology and the approach of positive psychology. She is
author and co-author of several international articles and book chapters
that regard cultural aspects involved in therapeutic process, disability, chil-
dren’s subjective well-being and emotional development.
Tone Grøver is an associate professor at VID Specialized University,
Oslo, is a sociologist, has a master’s degree in systemic family therapy and
has a specialist education in narrative psychotherapy. She has worked for
over 20 years as a private therapist for couples, families and individuals.
She has also worked on assignments for the public and private sectors with
conflicts, work environment challenges and conversations with managers
(coaching) for almost 30 years. She has published three works of fiction
and in her teaching she emphasizes a narrative form. She is interested in
the insights we gain in therapy through art and poetic language.
Åse Holmberg, PhD is an ssociate professor of family therapy and sys-
temic practice at VID Specialized University in Oslo, working with
teaching, research and supervision. Her PhD from 2018 explored what
spirituality means for family therapeutic practice, and she continues to
work with spirituality and existential perspectives in various systemic
contexts. She has also been a private family therapist for over 20 years, for
couples, families and individuals.
 Notes on Contributors xi

Bengt Karlsson works at the University of South-Eastern Norway at the

Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Institute of Health, Social and
Welfare Studies. Bengt holds a professorship in mental health care and is
the leader of Centre for Mental Health and Substance Abuse. He trained
as psychiatric nurse as well as a family therapist. His main areas of research
are within recovery, collaborative research, open dialogue and human rights.
Siv Merete Myra is an associate professor at VID Specialized University,
Oslo, Norway, since 2014. She completed her postgraduate dissertation
in 2018 with the University of Oslo, Faculty of Medicine. She is a mem-
ber of the Faculty of Social Studies at VID Specialized University where
she teaches family therapy to master’s-level students. She has been work-
ing in specialized health care for 25 years with families and children in
the addiction field. She supervises therapists in the field of addiction,
child welfare and family therapy. Her primary systemic practice interest
is children and families living with substance abuse disorder and the pre-
vention of intergenerational transference. Her research has been related
to substance-abusing pregnant women in compulsory and voluntary
treatment settings in Norway and their therapists.
Anne Øfsti is an associate professor at VID Specialized University, Oslo,
Norway, where she is responsible for the professional training of couple
and family therapists. Her doctoral thesis is entitled Some Call It Love:
Exploring Norwegian Therapists Discourses About Love and Intimacy. She
has presented her work in Norway and in other countries and has also
published in peer-reviewed journals. Previously she was the editor for the
Scandinavian journal Fokus på familien (Systemic Practice and Family
Therapy). She has extensive professional experience as a couple and fam-
ily therapist and supervisor. In 2014, she debuted as a novelist, with the
title If Only We Had All Day which is a story about shame, guilt, forgive-
ness and hope, and of course family relations.
Leandra Perrotta, PsyD is an Italo-Australian clinical psychologist and
specialist in psychotherapy. Leandra is a teacher, supervisor and co-
founder of the Anne Ancelin Schützenberger International School of
Transgenerational Therapy, and a teacher at IPAP—Post Graduate
Institute of Analytical Psychology and Jungian Psychotherapy. She is for-
xii Notes on Contributors

mer President of FEPTO—Federation of European Psychodrama

Training Organizations—and a member of the FEPTO Task Force for
Peace Building and Conflict Transformation. She has a fondness for lit-
erature and holds a master’s degree in English and French Literature.
Leandra has held lectures, workshops and trainings in psychodrama,
dance movement therapy, transgenerational therapy, trauma, dreams and
sexuality in over 40 different countries worldwide. Leandra has authored
and co-authored 20 international articles and book chapters.
Jim Sheehan is Professor Emeritus of Family Therapy and Systemic
Practice at VID Specialized University, Oslo. He is a systemic family ther-
apist, trainer and systemic supervisor with a background of more than 30
years of practice as a social worker. He lives and practices in the Republic
of Ireland. His recent publications include Family Conflict After Separation
and Divorce (2018, Palgrave) and two edited texts with Arlene Vetere:
Long Term Systemic Therapy (2020, Palgrave) and Supervision of Family
Therapy and Systemic Practice (2017, Springer).
Inger-Margrete Svendsen is a specialist psychologist who has worked as
a researcher at the Work Research Institute and has had her private prac-
tice as clinical psychologist and therapist for adults since 1996. She is a
supervisor for psychologists, as well as for different teams and groups in
the public and private sector. She has broad experience in working with
conflicts in work life and in families. She is passionately engaged with the
topic of conversations in human lives, and much of her work revolves
around the importance of building trust in relationships.
Thomas Bernhard Thiis-Evensen has a Cand. Philos.-degree in History
of Ideas from the University of Oslo, working as a philosophical practi-
tioner (NSFP) at Diakonhjemmet Omsorg AS. He is a board member of
the Educational Committee of the Norwegian Society of Philosophical
Practice (NSFP), teaching and supervising students. He works mainly
with existential themes, existential health, and quality of life through
philosophically oriented communities of inquiry both one on one and
with groups of people in vulnerable life circumstances (long-term survi-
vors of HIV/AIDS [Pioneers], seniors, addicts and next of kin, persons
breaking with religion, persons living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
 Notes on Contributors xiii

[ALS], etc.). Through funded projects using systematic user feedback, he

has developed methods and courses for volunteers and people working
with people wanting to work more existentially informed.
Arlene Vetere is Professor Emeritus of Family Therapy and Systemic
Practice at VID Specialized University, Oslo. She is a clinical psychologist
and systemic psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor, registered in the
UK, where she resides. She has recently edited two texts with Jim Sheehan:
Long Term Systemic Therapy (2020, Palgrave) and Supervision of Family
Therapy and Systemic Practice (2017, Springer).
 1
Editors’ Introduction
Tone Grover, Siv Merete Myra, and Ulf Axberg

This book will introduce you, the reader, to the reasons why systemic
theory, as a meta-theory and a relational organic theory, is a suitable
framework for understanding and appreciating the new horizons of ther-
apeutic practice that are described in the chapters that follow. This book
is written in times of uncertainty at many levels. So, more than ever, we
experience how dependent we all are on each other and that this depen-
dence seems to have no limits.
Systemic thinking is a way of understanding our being in the world,
from the big questions to the small choices we make together. Therapy
and therapeutic processes are also part of our being in the world together.
We want this book to shed light on these processes and explore how we
can develop systemic therapy and systemic understanding, from the small
micro-choices we make towards each other to opening up the larger ques-
tions about what therapy can be, and how we should understand the
ethics of what we do in the light of our times.

T. Grover (*) • S. M. Myra • U. Axberg

Department of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice, Faculty of Social
Studies, VID Specialized University, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1

T. Grover et al. (eds.), New Horizons in Systemic Practice with Adults, Palgrave Texts in
Counselling and Psychotherapy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30526-9_1
2 T. Grover et al.

The different chapters will explore how systemic perspectives, as they

are presented in the various practice contexts of the authors, can promote
hope by giving room for reflections on uncertainty, change, opportuni-
ties, interconnections and differences. Furthermore, the chapters will
illuminate the ways that systemic theory makes space for a multiplicity of
varying approaches that address the needs of all of us in the different set-
tings where we live our lives, and maybe seek therapy.
So why do we need this book about new horizons for systemic practice
with adults and families? We wanted to explore newer applications of
understanding and development in systemic practice and show how a
growing integration of current research with these new developments
across the broader fields of psychotherapy and counselling can be held
within a systemic relational umbrella. In this book, we focus on existen-
tial themes and on how insights from the different realms of science, lit-
erature and history, as well as learning from our clients and our nurturing
communities, can be included within a systemic understanding that
embraces different therapeutic perspectives.
The emphasis in this book is on the social utility of the approaches and
perspectives presented, their historical origins and how practice can be
enhanced as a result. All of the editors and authors are leading some of
the developments in their particular field of competence. Several of the
authors are affiliated with VID Specialized University, Oslo, while others
are systemic practitioners and trainers from other parts of Norway and
Europe. All the authors use examples from their systemic practice across
a range of contexts and themes. Each chapter will explore aspects of
working with difference and diversity as a golden thread and orient the
reader to new practices in changing and changed working contexts.
Themes of loneliness and separation, marginalisation and exclusion,
safety and protection, play and exploration, evil and forgiveness, health
and death, spirituality and healing, and trust in its many subtle forms
have always been with us, but in a time of uncertainty, our awareness of
how such existential issues impact in our daily lives has intensified. This
book is written with love for the depth of systemic understanding, for its
complexity, and not least for its ability to realise how dependent we all are
on each other. Each chapter will translate some of these themes directly
into practice examples, learning points and tips for practitioners.
 1 Editors’ Introduction 3

Chapter 2 (Jim Sheehan and Arlene Vetere) introduces us to a Systemic

View of Agape in therapy. The chapter starts like this: “Love. Straight to
the heart of therapy. So why do we talk and write about alliances, thera-
peutic relationships, goals, tasks and bonds? Do we risk hiding behind
our research-based descriptors? Are they a form of institutional defence
that is protective for both of us as practitioners and our clients—a fear of
unhelpful boundary crossing perhaps? Fears of dual relationships, sexual
exploitation, or countertherapeutic practice? Is this why we do not call
our therapeutic relationships love?” Enjoy this chapter—as Tina Turner’s
sang: What’s love got to do with it?
Chapter 3 (Tone Grøver and Inger-Margrete Svendsen) is written as a
letter to you as the reader. The authors invite you to explore your own
experiences with trust in therapy. From systemic theory, we know a lot
about what creates trust. However, this is mostly at a somewhat general
level, such as the meaning of listening, accepting, respecting and repre-
senting equality. The authors wish to be specific, looking at micro-­
situations and the subtleties of little sequences, where much of our
experience lies and our lives are shaped and ask: What is it that gives rise
to trust? What are the forms of expression of trust? All the way through
the chapter they ask questions to you, the reader. And they invite you to
send them a letter about your experiences so that a continuation of this
exploration could be made by you and your collaboration partners.
Chapter 4 (Anne Øfsti and Bård Bertelsen) questions forgiveness. The
chapter takes its place within a long and rich tradition of systemic think-
ing on forgiveness. The authors suggest that they find, both in their per-
sonal lives and their practice, a strong expectation that we should forgive.
This prevailing discourse is challenged through an interweaving of stories
from personal life and practice experience. Like other systemic thinkers
before them (Sheehan, 2007), they have turned towards philosophers like
Arendt and Derrida to throw further light on the many paradoxes gener-
ated by the theme as it presents both in personal life and in practice.
Chapter 5 (Tone Grøver) is about longing and the longing for oneself.
It is often expressed with this sentence “I have lost myself.” The chapter
discusses whether the premise that we are separate selves has come to be
valid in systemic therapy and therefore whether we have inadvertently
abandoned what might be a key point in systemic understanding. The
4 T. Grover et al.

chapter discusses the consequences of therapy if we were to assume that

the separate self is a fundamentally false premise in the sciences of people
and society. The author also asks if the premise of the separate self, and
longing, might play an important part in our ongoing destruction of
the earth.
Chapter 6 (Åse Holmberg and Bengt Karlsson) is about giving reso-
nance and room to spirituality in systemic practice. The chapter explores
the concept of spirituality underpinned by voices from an ongoing study
of unemployed young adults in Norway. The authors link spirituality to
systemic perspectives, like love, wondering and complexity. Finally, they
encourage systemic family therapists to find their own spiritual path
which in turn can perhaps make us more open to our clients’ spiri-
tual lives.
Chapter 7 (Anne Øfsti) explores how literary fiction can move, touch
and create insights into what it is to live, individually and together, in
different ways than traditional scientific literature can. The author says: “I
dare to claim that reading and writing fiction has shaped me as a therapist
in completely different ways than non-fiction and research texts. I think
it is a loss that fiction has less knowledge status than the evidence-based
research texts.” The chapter offers us a description of a reading group in a
systemic therapist training programme, couched in the author’s love of
literature.
Chapter 8 (Sigurd Riste and Thomas Bernhard Thiis-Evensen) is an
exploration of existential themes in couples therapy from the perspective
of therapists. In this chapter, the authors explore their own wonderings
and show, with an example, how we might explore such phenomena as
identity, meaning, sickness and death, freedom, responsibility, choice,
remorse, guilt, shame, loneliness, relations and attachment in an existen-
tial way.
Chapter 9 (Nicoletta Businaro, Leandra Perrotta and Jennifer Aramini)
has the title “Should I stay, or Should I Go? Rethinking Identity and the
Experience of Migration as a Systemic Dialogue in Therapy.” The chapter
focuses on a topic that is relatively unexplored in the family therapy lit-
erature: what happens in the therapy room when therapist and client
have experienced migration, and both have the same country of origin.