DATE: October 22, 1987
EDITION: Volume II, Number 3
David Trimble, Editor
Jodie Kliman, Associate Editor
CONTENTS
---Live Fyrand (see her address in NETLETTER REPORT, below) hosted a Nordic Seminar on Social Networks, August 26 - September 4 in Norway. Carolyn Attneave, Diane Pancoast, and the Botkyrka Network Project (including Gunnar Forsberg) presented on social network intervention to a group of more than 200 professionals, most of them from Scandinavia. Live is conducting a social network intervention project in Norway which includes social welfare programs, psychiatric care programs, programs for the elderly, and institutions and day centers for delinquent teenagers. The Botkyrka Project will be consulting with Live's project through the year, with Diane Pancoast returning for another consult in the fall of 1988. Live has published a book in Norwegian (see REVIEWS).
---Gunnar Forsberg reports that the Botkyrka Network Project is hoping that they will have their final report completed by November. They are hoping to be able to present their work at Ortho next year.
---Ortho approved a half-day workshop rather than a full-day course for their Annual Conference in San Fransisco. It will probably be scheduled March 28 or 29. The workshop format sets a firm limit on the number of faculty; on the panel will be Carolyn Attneave, Anne Coppard, Gerald Erickson, Elizabeth Hemley-van der Velden, and Paul Ruff. Titled "Current Practice in Network Intervention," the workshop will be described in the program as follows: "We will provide an overview of social network intervention in current mental health practice in Canada, the U.S., and Scandinavia. Applications include chronic mental illness, adolescent problems, and crisis intervention. Discussion will focus on participants' interest in applying social network intervention in their own clinical settings."
---Julia Halevy's institute at the American Association for Marital and Family Therapy Conference was cancelled, as less than five people signed up for it. AAMFT was very disappointed, as they are apparently very excited about a presentation on networks. They have suggested an article on networks in the Family Therapy Networker, as a way of increasing the visibility of network therapy among family therapists.
--- Donald Lugtig continues to work on his project proposal (See NETLETTER,I,3, December 23, 1986) while holding down a full-time job. It is on its way through multiple layers of Canadian federal government review, which will culminate with possible final approval by the Health and Welfare Minister for the Federal cabinet. If all goes well, the project will start in April of 1988.
---There is little progress to report on trying to find an English language publisher for Natverksterapi. I have collected rejections from Pantheon, Gardner Press, Guilford, Jossey-Bass, Basic Books, Jason Aronson, Brunner-Mazel, and Human Sciences Press. No response yet from Sage, International Universities Press, and Plenum. I will be trying Academic Press and Norton. Donald Lugtig has offered to approach Hegvell. One obstacle seems to be the cost of the translation. Carolyn Attneave is planning to approach the Scandinavian language department at University of Washington to see if they can provide translations of Live's book or Natverksterapi.
---Mary Youngquist is currently enrolled at Saybrook Institute, an external degree program based in San Francisco, as a psychology Ph.D. candidate. She is hoping to do dissertation research on a network-related topic. Stanley Kripner is a faculty member; he is interested in shamanism and its relationship to healing in communities. Mary is interested in exploring the relationship between shamanism and network therapy.
---Anne Coppard reports that Mount Tom Institute for Human Services administrator Paul Wagner recently visited COTA in Toronto. Gerald Erickson will be presenting an overview of the network field as the final lecture in next year's COTA training course. The course has apparently been drawing human service professionals from other agencies in the Toronto area.
---Ross and Joan Speck have returned from a tour of Europe. Mauro Croce(see address in NETLETTER REPORT) and Roberto Merlo interviewed them for Gruppo Abele and for the Milan Family Institute, which will publish the interview. In Yugoslavia for two weeks, they were shown three large networks by Branko Gacic (see NETLETTER REPORT), and spent several days discussing the phenomena and the differences in cultural and ethnic issues. Says Ross, "Branko is head of the Yugoslav Alcohol and Drug division of their N.I.M.H. He and his team of 15 therapists see 400 families weekly. He has been experimenting with networks since the 1970's. Included in the sessions are friends, neighbors, relatives, co-workers, bosses, etc. In one session we even saw the journalist co-worker who the I.P. had threatened with a gun - and who had reported the I.P. to the police. It is now a criminal case. My feeling is that Branko's program in Belgrade is far ahead of anything in the U.S. for alcohol and drug abuse."
---Julia Halevy has a new son; born September 15.
---Gerald Erickson writes the following, with reference to the issue of "anti-humanism" which I raised in NETLETTER, II, 1: "I have followed the exchange about `anti-humanism' with some interest. It seemed to me that Julia Halevy misunderstood my point originally (that what is termed `systemic' inevitably is anti-humanistic, but that social network theory is not and, in fact, permits a humanistic practice). It is somewhat of an esoteric point, but it seems that she still is off in a contrary direction. The enclosed `Our Systemic Mode' makes the same claim in what was intended to be an ironic form. A recent paper `Decentering Family Therapy: The Network Focus' presented at the Western Canadian Conference on Family Practice in Banff in May, 1987 is partially an extended argument in a similar direction. Family Process has been reviewing that paper for 4 months now. I will send a copy if its fate is ever settled." I'll review the paper for the NETLETTER when I get it. Here's Gerry's "Our Systemic Mode", from Family Therapy News(May-June, 1987), 18,3: Just to keep the pot boiling on this issue, I disagree with Gerry that social network theory is not "anti-humanistic," although I agree that the theory of social network therapy is not. As I understand social network theory in sociology, it is structural, and in its purest form accounts for human action by positions in social matrices, rather than by individual actions as determined by internalized norms. Any comments from a network analyst on this?
---It has been nearly twenty years since Ross Speck, later joined by Carolyn Attneave and Uri Rueveni, began to gather full-scale network assemblies in Philadelphia. Within a decade, John Garrison and Robert Curtis had developed models for smaller scale assemblies, and Alice Collins and Diane Pancoast had applied the network concept to support systems and natural helpers. Currently, the practice of social network intervention has, despite substantial conceptual and technical advances, made little progress in getting established in mental health practice in the United States. It does appear to be flourishing in Canada, Scandinavia, and Yugoslavia. I would like to introduce a discussion among NETLETTER readers about the state of the field and its prospects for the future.
AAMFT canceled an institute on network intervention due to lack of registration; we have been unable to organize a course at Ortho for the last two years for the same reason. I know of only two places in the United States, Family Networks in Minneapolis and the Network Team at Mount Tom Institute in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where network intervention is well-established as a mode of mental health practice. I can think of a number of reasons for the lack of involvement with networks by mental health professionals in the United States. The network approach is embedded in the community mental health approach; the community mental health movement has been losing considerable ground during the recent dominance of conservatism over the American political scene. In areas with a firmly established social welfare tradition (Canada, Scandinavia, Yugoslavia), network intervention appears to be doing well. We may also have suffered from the accident of our history which made the full-scale assembly the first and best-known network intervention technique. Many professionals are reserved about learning an approach which borders on shamanism and which paradoxically demands a great deal from the clinician while explicitly assuming that the power and responsibility for change rests with the client rather than the professional. A full-scale assembly is expensive, and unlikely to be mounted without the committed support of a human service organization.
It may also be the case that it is too much to expect the mental health establishment to embrace a new paradigm so soon after making room, reluctantly, for the family therapy approach. Another problem is that the social support literature has not been well integrated with the literature on network intervention. Most of the new work on social networks and mental health has been in the domain of social support. Contributors to this literature have either ignored the network therapy literature, cited only the earliest sources (compounding the problem of identifying network intervention with the full-scale assembly), or directly contributed to negative stereotypes of network therapy (e.g. Lambert Maguire's Understanding Social Networks (1983), Sage Publications).
Meanwhile, despite the difficulties in dissemination, the field has become much more sophisticated. A contemporary understanding of network intervention embraces a wide range of individual, family, group, and community intervention methods, informed by a fairly small set of central concepts from network analysis (Size, density, intensity, directionality, differentiation of clusters). There is a wide range of network mapping techniques available for clinical practice. The full-scale assembly, while still valuable, is now recognized to have application to only a very small proportion of the mental health problems which can be addressed from a social network perspective.
People in acadamic settings, e.g. Carolyn Attneave and Gerald Erickson, have contributed to refining our theoretical understanding. Their work in fact may help to inform network analysts about action and change in social networks. We need to keep abreast of developments in the field of social network analysis, to inform new practical and theoretical developments in social network intervention.
The NETLETTER is one effort to support progress in our field. Our recent experience with Ortho and AAMFT shows that we cannot rely on established professional organizations to gather network therapists for the exchanges necessary to sustain progress and integration of our work. Perhaps some of our readers are in a position to find a sponsor for such a gathering.
I hope to publish correspondence from our readers on the issue of promoting progress for our field.
---Elkaim, Mony(Ed.) Les pratiques de reseau: Sante mentale at contexte social(Network practices: Mental Health and Social Context)(1987). Paris:Les Editions E S F (17, rue Viete, 75017 Paris). Includes articles by Ross Speck, Mony Elkaim, and others on network intervention in Canada, Italy, and Belgium. It is apparently an outgrowth of a recent conference in Brussels. The article on practice in Belgium includes reference to work with Moroccans, Turks, Albanians, Yugoslavs, and Hispanics in that country. Mony sent me a copy of the book, which is written in French. I would be happy to share it with a reader who can read and review it for NETLETTER, perhaps together with a translation of its Table of Contents.
---Fyrand, Live Activitet og ansvar i eget bomiljo(1985) Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, A.S. Available through Lie and Company, Boktrykeri As, Oslo, Norway. ISBN # 82 00 35323 0. Carolyn Attneave is exploring the possibility of getting a translation of this book, which is written in Norwegian. Perhaps we have a reader who can review it for NETLETTER, together with a translation of its Table of Contents.
---Barry Wellman recently asked me to forward to Sweden some membership forms for the International Network for Social Network Analysis, which publishes the informal Connections and the formal journal, Social Networks. Membership includes subscription for Connections, which is a useful source for keeping up to date with social network analysis. I'm sending out copies of the form to all our readers, and urging any nonmembers of INSNA to join.
---Gerald Erickson and Ross Speck have both expressed the wish that NETLETTER eventually become a journal. I would be happy to facilitate that process. I will start by inviting papers which will be circulated with the NETLETTER, with the author retaining all rights for republication in other, formal journals. Mary Youngquist has expressed some interest in presenting her clinical experience with preparing for a network assembly as a network intervention in itself. Perhaps she might want to write this up, and use publication in the NETLETTER as a step toward formal publication elsewhere. I will continue to review works which have or are scheduled to appear in other settings.
---The next issue will come out before the end of this year. It will be the first issue sent out to subscribers. Please fill out the enclosed subscription form and send it to me by November 30, together with $5. (U.S.). I will assemble a directory of subscribers, printing your responses to the form with your name and address.
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