The reflecting team: dialogue and meta-dialogue in clinical work

Abstract

A "stuck" system, that is, a family with a problem, needs new ideas in order to broaden its perspectives and its contextual premises. In this approach, a team behind a one-way screen watches and listens to an interviewer's conversation with the family members. The interviewer, with the permission of the family, then asks the team members about their perceptions of what went on in the interview. The family and the interviewer watch and listen to the team discussion. The interviewer then asks the family to comment on what they have heard. This may happen once or several times during an interview. In this article, we will first describe the way we interview the family because the interview is the source from which the reflections flow. We will then describe and exemplify the reflecting team's manner of working and give some guidelines because the process of observation has a tendency to magnify every utterance. Two case examples will be used as illustrations.