In "Form, Substance and Difference," Bradford P. Keeney (1983) offered an enlightening discussion of recursive epistemology, which can be applied productively to the field of marital and family therapy (pp. 12-60). From my point of view, therapists can learn tremendously from Keeney's (1983) examination of this topic because it compels them to critically reflect on their involvement in the therapeutic process and their relationship with their clients. As my career goal of becoming a therapist is to specialize in narrative therapy, I am interested in exploring how Keeney's (1983) concept of recursive epistemology can be used to serve as a theoretical foundation for narrative therapy in this reaction paper.
Unlike narrative therapists, therapists who adhere to the traditional model of psychotherapy believe that they should occupy a privileged position that is characterized by superiority, expertise and power vis-a-vis their clients. In other words, clients are expected to defer to the knowledge and authority of their therapists who supposedly possess the key to the answers that will eliminate their problems. Contrary to this conventional image of the therapist-client relationship, Keeney (1993) proposed a more complex view of the relationship in which both therapist and client influence one another in the therapeutic process (pp. 19-20). With this circular or recursive perspective of the relationship, the superiority of the authority of the therapist thus comes into question. More significantly, this recursive perspective of the therapist-client relationship captures the essence of narrative therapy.
By forcing therapists to re-examine the nature of the therapist-client relationships, Keeney's (1993) discussion also challenged therapists to question their knowledge and their therapeutic approaches. The self-referential aspect of questioning one's knowledge, which generates an endless series of recursive epistemologies, ...