{"id":26191,"date":"2014-12-12T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2014-12-12T14:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=26191"},"modified":"2016-11-07T08:39:27","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T16:39:27","slug":"10-essential-elements-of-carl-whitakers-theory-and-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/10-essential-elements-of-carl-whitakers-theory-and-therapy-1212144","title":{"rendered":"10 Essential Elements of Carl Whitaker\u2019s Theory and Therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LightingBy the mid-20th century, family therapy<\/a> pioneers were overturning conventions. Chief among them stirred Carl Whitaker<\/a>\u2014country boy-turned-OB\/GYN-turned-psychotherapeutic provocateur who Rich Simon, editor of Psychotherapy Networker<\/em>, once called \u201cfearless and idiosyncratic.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the vein of existentialist<\/a> philosophers, Whitaker largely regarded his treatment paradigm as protest against the reduction of human existence to mere behaviors, cognitions, or even theories.<\/p>\n

There were at least 10 integral elements of Whitaker\u2019s richly evocative therapeutic ethic. These are explored below.<\/p>\n

Psychopathology as Distraction<\/h2>\n

Whitaker saw \u201csymptoms as mere signals of, or even noisome distractions from, the real existential problems faced by families\u2014birth, growing up, separation, marriage, illness, and death\u201d (Luepnitz, 2002).<\/p>\n

Whitaker contended: \u201cPsychopathology is proof of psychological health. The individual who is distorted in his thinking is essentially carrying on an open war in himself rather than capitulating to the social slavery. His delusion system and his hallucinations are a direct result of this war with his lifetime situation\u2014the stresses of his living and his efforts to defeat those stresses rather than become a non-person and a social robot\u201d (Whitaker and Ryan, 1989).<\/p>\n

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Responsibility of\u00a0People in Therapy<\/h2>\n

Whitaker\u2019s emphasis on personal freedom and responsibility derived from philosophers, such as Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, who considered the psychological implications of existentialist thought. Ludwig Binswanger (1967) assimilated these ideas into psychotherapeutic formulation, emphasizing \u201cfreedom and the necessity to discover the essence of one\u2019s individuality in the immediacy of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout Whitaker\u2019s writings and therapeutic example, he conveyed existentialist presuppositions: anxiety<\/a> and suffering can be growth inducing; people have power to choose to be responsible; elements of the human condition which exist in clients\u2019 relationships with each other exist between clients and therapists.<\/p>\n

Rousing awareness of change processes, Whitaker coaxed people\u00a0toward ownership. He declared, \u201cThe integrity of the family must be respected. They must write their own destiny\u201d (Neill and Kniskern, 1982).<\/p>\n

Value of Courage<\/h2>\n

Whitaker regarded existential anxiety as an \u201cirresolvable dialectic,\u201d contending: \u201cThe effort to solve living as a problem is impossible. \u2026\u00a0The process of facing the dialectic life \u2026 is endless, irresolvable, and poorly understood. \u2026 Security alone equals slavery. Exploration alone equals danger and death. The flux is always exciting but never an answer, only a courage<\/a>-inducing impetus to more of the individual\u2019s right to decide on the next move and to discover more and dare more\u201d (Whitaker and Ryan, 1989).<\/p>\n

Transformative Nature of Vulnerable Encounter<\/h2>\n

By daring to be vulnerable with people in therapy, Whitaker exposed families to an existential encounter.\u00a0When the family comes \u201cface to face with part of your insides, they have to decide what to do. … They\u2019re free to produce their own extrapolations, depending on how it reverberates inside of them\u201d (Whitaker and Bumberry, 1988).<\/p>\n

The concept of the \u201cI-thou\u201d relationship stems from the writings of Buber (1937), who philosophized that the nature of our interactions with others are often more \u201cI-it\u201d than \u201cI-thou.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Whitaker\u2019s common therapeutic goals was for family members to begin to experience themselves more openly and nondefensively with one another; that an existential shift occur on a systemic level.<\/p>\n

Primacy of Affective Experiencing<\/h2>\n

During one session, Napier and Whitaker (1978) hypothesized, \u201cThey [are] most afraid of what many couples find the threatening aspect of their marriages<\/a>: deadness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keith and Whitaker (1982) wrote, \u201cWe presume it is experience, not education that changes families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whitaker often redirected attentions from the content of conflict to the emotional process: \u201cI would guess that almost anything you focused on together would bring out this disagreement. \u2026\u00a0It feels more like a fear of conflict that\u2019s the problem, rather than some particular issue you are fighting over\u201d (Napier and Whitaker, 1978).<\/p>\n

Power of Artful Communication<\/h2>\n

Whitaker developed the notion of symbolic communication as interactional metaphor based largely on George Herbert Mead\u2019s concept of symbolic interactionism. Whitaker stressed the importance creating and shaping meaning between people and, consequently, facilitating shifts within the family emotional system.<\/p>\n

Whitaker saw his role as engaging a family by raising the intensity within its relationships and communicating symbolic meaning through experiential interaction in such a way as to catalyze the family toward intimacy.<\/p>\n

Spontaneous Evocation as Healthy<\/h2>\n

Whitaker advocated a spontaneous and evocative presence with people in therapy\u00a0as a means of engaging them at the hidden symbolic dimensions of awareness. Perhaps his most well-known display of spontaneity in therapy was when he wrestled with a teenage boy who had knocked Carl\u2019s glasses off in a moment of rage: \u201cAs Don had struck out in panic and anger at Carl, Carl had tackled him, and the two of them went down onto the Oriental carpet, a tangle of limbs\u201d (Napier and Whitaker, 1978).<\/p>\n

This unplanned and, arguably, unprofessional encounter was certainly one of Whitaker\u2019s more radical therapeutic moments. Yet it was also indicative of Whitaker\u2019s view of therapy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Whitaker went as far as to advocate \u201ccraziness\u201d\u2014nonrational, right-brain experiencing\u2014as a measure of health in both therapist and family (Whitaker and Keith, 1981). Whitaker explained, \u201cMy craziness [has given] other people the freedom to be more spontaneous, to be more intuitive, to be crazy in their own ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Necessity of Present-Centeredness<\/h2>\n

Whitaker was careful to observe and allow himself to react quickly and intuitively to interactions between family members, both to prevent unhelpful more-of-the-same dynamics and to highlight potential signals of underlying emotional patterns, often the very mire in which the family is stuck.<\/p>\n

Whitaker saw the problems that families brought to therapy as failures to adapt together to common problems of life and the here-and-now as the necessary moment for creative intervention and change. He urged, \u201cLife isn\u2019t mind over matter, it\u2019s present over past and present over future\u201d (Keith and Whitaker, 1982).<\/p>\n

Developmental Growth as Necessarily Relational<\/h2>\n

Every person must counterbalance needs for individual autonomy with needs for relational connection. Whitaker believed that therapy must stimulate the growth of the person alongside the growth of the system.<\/p>\n

Whitaker worked to facilitate family cohesion, ensure family members were meeting each other’s needs in the process of their own individuation, and were developing increasing proclivities for spontaneity, creativity, and attunement within the family unit. For Whitaker, the individual cannot grow in a relational vacuum.<\/p>\n

Need for Holistic Versus Reductionist Goals<\/h2>\n

Whitaker saw the trajectory of therapy moving toward, for example, a heightened sense of competence, well-being, the development of compassion<\/a>, self-esteem<\/a>, role flexibility, awareness, self-responsibility, greater sensitivity, learning to recognize and express emotions, achieving intimacy<\/a> with a partner, and so on.<\/p>\n

Carl Whitaker died in 1995, and this April will be the 20th anniversary of his death.<\/em><\/p>\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Binswanger, L. (1967). Being-in-the-world: Selected papers of Ludwig Binswanger<\/em>.<\/em>Needleman, J., translator.\u00a0New York: Harper & Row.<\/li>\n
  2. Buber, M. (1937). I and Thou<\/em> (2nd<\/sup>)<\/em>, translated by Ronald Gregor Smith. Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.<\/li>\n
  3. Keith, D. V., and Whitaker, C. A. (1982).\u00a0Experiential-symbolic family therapy<\/em>. In A. M. Horne and M. M. Ohlsen (Eds.), Family counseling and therapy. Itasca, IL: Peacock.<\/li>\n
  4. Luepnitz, D. A. (2002). The family interpreted: Psychoanalysis, feminism, and family therapy<\/em>. United States: Basic Books.<\/li>\n
  5. Napier, A. Y., and Whitaker, C. A. (1978). The family crucible<\/em>. New York: Harper & Row.<\/li>\n
  6. Neill, J. R., and Kniskern, D. P. (Eds.). (1982). From psyche to system: The evolving therapy of Carl Whitaker.<\/em> New York: The Guilford Press.<\/li>\n
  7. Whitaker, C. A., and Bumberry, W. M. (1988). Dancing with the family: A symbolic-experiential approach<\/em>.\u00a0Levittown: Brunner\/Mazel.<\/li>\n
  8. Whitaker, C. A., and Keith, D. V. (1981). Symbolic-experiential family therapy.\u00a0In A. S. Gurman and D. P. Kniskern (Eds.), Handbook of family therapy<\/em>. New York: Brunner\/Mazel.<\/li>\n
  9. Whitaker, C. A., and Ryan, M. O. (1989). Midnight musings of a family therapist<\/em>. New York: Norton.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Carl Whitaker, a pioneer in family therapy, took an experiential\u2014some would say unorthodox\u2014approach to facilitating growth within family systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2385,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[31,81,579,27],"class_list":["post-26191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-family-therapy","tag-for-therapists","tag-psychotherapy-models"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2385"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}