Hoffman Lynn - Fundamentos de Terapia Familiar
Hoffman Lynn - Fundamentos de Terapia Familiar
Hoffman Lynn - Fundamentos de Terapia Familiar
SALVADOR MINUCHIN
did. All family interviews were to be supervised live, and it was the job of the super-
visor to protect both the family and the trainee. A telephone behind the one-way
mirror was always ready for correcting an intervention. To make possible such a cold
immersion into therapy and its techniques, Jay prepared a detailed map of the first
interview that the students would use to guide the voyage of the first encounter. It was
the respect, demand, and discipline that Jay brought to this group of students that was
instrumental, I think, in moving them to a professionalism equal to that of their
university-trained colleagues.
Whether supervising professionals or paraprofessionals, Jay would sit behind the
mirror with a telephone in his hand. After a period of observation, he would develop a
whole treatment plan, with a clear objective and a tentative set of probable inter-
ventions. It was always interesting to watch this creative process, to notice how he
could see around corners. His plans frequently carried both directions and indirection,
an understanding of logical processes and of the absurdity of life. There was an explicit
demand for an acceptance of the task required for change, and an implicit smile ac-
knowledging that in life there are no straight roads, and that all goals are temporary.
I think this dualityFthe disciplined scholar combined with the secretive smile of
the Cheshire CatFwas his message to his students, but it was imparted in cumulative
small doses until, with a ‘‘Eureka,’’ it became incorporated into a new perspective on
lifeFtherapy and the relationships among people seen as both clear ideas and
stammering, as soaring and stumbling.
There was, in Jay, an unending optimism about the possibilities of therapy. He
taught a direct-detouring journey toward a more effective and harmonious expansion
of relationships. In time, his teaching lost paternity as his ideas and techniques be-
came part of the grammar of the field, a public domain trove that we all use. Jay was a
late-born samurai, his rapier always ready to challenge foolishness and absurdity. He
was passionate in his defense of children, whom he saw as becoming addicted to
prescribed drugs, and relentless in his criticism of the psychiatric establishment,
whose pronouncements about the human condition he considered pedantic and ob-
scure. Now that he isn’t here to fight our battles, we feel diminished and unprotected.
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