© Sarah Clarke Photography
everyone else so well, they are still excited at their friendliness. We are still excited by systemic ideas, and have an immediate stance of friendliness to one another while willing to debate heartily our differences at times.” Richard: “What were the origins of the idea for your keynote: ‘The Good Enough Family Therapist’?” Amy: “I was trying to link psychodynamic and attachment ideas to the work we do, as well as the contexts in which we work. In particular, with the current work situations many of us find ourselves in, I think it is important to ask ourselves whether we can do a ‘good enough’ job when we are not supported ourselves. I thought this topic would be helpful for us to consider, what do we need to be able to do a good enough job. I also found myself ref lecting on my role as a mother and realised that, although there were difficult times, I had been a ‘good enough mother’.” Richard: “If you were to present the keynote again in 40 years, what do you think would be your topic?” Amy: “Gosh I’d be…. older! I suspect I’d be revisiting the history, the ghosts, exploring what has remained and what ’s been lost. I would love to be encouraging people to keep a place for individual as well as systemic therapy, because family therapy was so dominant.”
A short history of the Dillington Estate and very tenuous links to contexts for family therapy The Dillington conference takes its name from Dillington
House, one of several manors that have been collectively known as the Dillington Estate. The estate is situated outside the town of Ilminster, Somerset. It is the type of house you might expect to see in a period drama.
Context 170, August 2020 I have a weakness for such places, having been a lifetime
member of the National Trust for over 30 years, and I find it impossible not to enquire about the places I form a connection with. In the remainder of this article, I would like to share a few stories from the history of Dillington that struck me as having perhaps some wider contexts relevant to our work as family therapists. I offer no evidence for such links, drawing only on literature’s example in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Fall of the House of Usher, where he links the physical appearance of the house with the psychological state of the Usher family. The internal walls of the house are adorned with family
paintings: the oldest, I noticed, was of Jane Malet, born in 1586. Jane is painted wearing a full head-scarf, oblivious that such a form of dress, which continued in fashion until the last century, might be a source of contention to today’s society. Another painting bears the description: “Unknown gentleman of the Malet family, in red uniform, by an unknown artist”. I had always imagined the Malet family walking the same
corridors as I was. However, as I have more frequently found in my systemic work, my assumptions and the family appearances were deceptive. The Malet family were never occupants anywhere on the estate. They were more like stepchildren, their portraits being part of a collection loaned to Somerset County Council, the current occupiers of Dillington. However, the family was intimately linked with Somerset as long ago as the Norman conquest (a Malet is one of the guarantors of the Magna Carta and the family name is found in places such as Shepton Mallet). Perhaps the most famous inhabitant at Dillington was Lord North, prime minister of England, Great Britain and the
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The Dillington conference – Family therapy learning jewel in the South West
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