Day 6 + 7, Croydon, January 2017 Jamie McCreghan Mark Huhnen CMM Day 6 + 7, Croydon, January 2017 Jamie McCreghan Mark Huhnen

Learning outcomes Situating CMM within the Social Constructionist Era Exploring how therapeutic relationships are established through use of language The hierarchical model as a reflexive tool / theory of change Clinical application of CMM through Systemic questions Application of GGRRAACCEESS within CMM

Social Constructionism How do we know what we know? (Epistemology) “Everybody knows…” Radical constructionism: “There is no reality apart from the one we construct together.” Chair example

Co-construction of social reality Manners… Stereotypes… Believes Institutions Institutions in the sociological sense like “marriage” Play “love and marriage” Examples of constructions: Communism is a nice idea, but it wouldn’t work. It is against human nature…

Co-construction of self (and other) “I am but I do not have myself yet. That is why we become.” Bloch “I think therefore I am.” Descartes Remember Bateson “No meaning without context”, Context magazine. Examples of constructing the other…

Social Constructionism and second order cybernetics The observing system (rather than observed system)

The importance of language Ludwig Wittgenstein: “language games” “meaning is use” => Language is inherently social Like tools. Link back to chair example. Another point that Wittgenstein makes against the possibility of a private language involves the beetle-in-a-box thought experiment. He asks the reader to imagine that each person has a box, inside of which is something that everyone intends to refer to with the word "beetle". Further, suppose that no one can look inside another's box, and each claims to know what a "beetle" is only by examining their own box. Wittgenstein suggests that, in such a situation, the word "beetle" could not be the name of a thing, because supposing that each person has something completely different in their boxes (or nothing at all) does not change the meaning of the word; the beetle as a private object "drops out of consideration as irrelevant".Thus, Wittgenstein argues, if we can talk about something, then it is not private, in the sense considered. And, contrapositively, if we consider something to be indeed private, it follows that we cannot talk about it. -> language as inherently social

CMM The coordinated management of meaning W. Barnett Pearce Vernon Cronen

Theory of change Behaviour is governed by the meaning attached to behaviour (own and other’s) A question usually requires an answer, exception rhetorical questions, but it is not always clear whether a question was rhetorical or not

Speech act Smallest unit of meaning Every time we are saying something we are doing something and every time we are doing something we are saying something …as promising, ordering, greeting, warning, inviting and congratulating

“No meaning without context” The hierarchical model

The daisy model

The social GRRAACCEESS Line of privelege What are you more or less curious about

Intersectionality

The social GRRAACCEESS …in the construction of self…

…or rather in the social construction of self / selves… Replace therapist with practitioner / social worker…

…different “voices”…

Serpentine model

LUUUUTT

LUUUUTT

Strange and charmed loops

Strange loop

Combining the models Imagine 2 friends sitting in a pub, joking with each other. Person 1 makes Speech Act 4, that Person 2 finds offensive on the basis of ethnically, racially or culturally offensive and retaliates. For both people the contexts and their hierarchy has changed.

Well done! How was it? What do you take away?