being one of constraints rather than resources. I want to encourage us to reflect on,
and discuss, with each other: • To what extent are you supported to be better able to cope with the world?
• What are the warning signs that you are not situated in professional and personal holding environments?
• What are your team’s warning signs? • How are these signs noticed and attended to? I want to encourage us to draw on, and create opportunities to have, validating experiences: • Hearing from your clients and colleagues
• Identifying what you need to hear • Identifying what you can validate in your colleagues. My colleague, Dickon Millett, and I
had a recent article published in Context (2019) and we invited contributions from a family with whom we had worked. Their comments were so confirming of us as good enough systemic therapists, going beyond NHS standard ways of measuring outcome – this is some feedback from a family member after reading the article: ”I can’t believe how much we covered. I had forgotten so much of it, and almost felt shocked by reading it What a journey, often there was so much going on and so much to make sense of – how did you manage to make sense of it all? – navigating the art of family therapy. It is the synergy of us all working together in that safe holding environment makes the magic happen for dynamic healing – I suppose basically the proof of family therapy at its working best.” I will end by returning to my daughter’s
gift to me – she had written a number of statements in a beautiful book describing what she has valued about having me as her good enough ordinary devoted mum. Here are a few: “because you make me giggle” “because when you saw me after
the surgery to fi x my broken nose, you couldn’t hide the shock in your face” “because there is nothing, I can do to
stop you loving me, and you will always fi ght my corner”
Amy Urry with grandchild number 4 “because you let me make mistakes;
because you let me know you’ve made, and make, mistakes”.
References Ainsworth, M.D.S. (1967) Infancy in Uganda: Infant Care and the Growth of Love. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press. Bick, E. (1968) The experience of the skin in early object-relations. International Journal of Psycho- Analysis, 49: 484-486. Bion, W.R. (1962) Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann. Borg, L.K. (2013) Holding, attaching and relating: A theoretical perspective on good enough therapy through analysis of Winnicott’s good enough mother, using Bowlby’s attachment theory and relational theory. Theses, Dissertations, and Projects, 588. Smith ScholarWorks. Brazelton, T.B. & Greenspan, S.I. (2000) The Irreducible Needs of Children: What Every Child Must Have to Grow, Learn, and Flourish. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books Group. Bowlby, J. (1988) A Secure Base. New York: Basic Books. Millett, D. & Urry, A. (2019) When a tremor strikes
through the family core: Travelling through unfamiliar landscapes. Context,165: 21-25 Winnicott, D.W. (1960) The theory of the parent- infant relationship. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 41: 585-595. Winnicott, D.W. (1964) The Child. The Family, and the Outside World. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Winnicott, D.W. (2002) Winnicott on the Child. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books Group.
Amy is a UKCP-registered family and systemic psychotherapist, approved supervisor and trainer with many years of experience working with individuals, couples, families, teams and organisations. She has taught family therapy programmes at foundation and intermediate levels since 1981, and was co-director of the post- graduate diploma/MSc in systemic practice from 1991- 2009 at Exeter University. She is currently employed in an adult mental health NHS specialist personality disorder service, and is deputy chair of the AFT board. Email:
amyurry@hotmail.co.uk
Context 170, August 2020
9
The good enough family therapist: We may choose to be family therapists but not necessarily in circumstances of our choosing
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