Lyon discusses about epistemology

Marcelo Ceberio, (president of RELATES), Carlos Sluzki, Umberta Telfener, J-L Linares, Jacques Pluymaekers, Estelle D’Ambrosio, Raoul Medina

With the title “False appearances and plausibility”, IFATC, the French Institute that is organizing the Lyon Congress 2025 with us on behalf of Relates, has organized a very interesting dialogical congress the 5^th and 6^th of December 2024. There were many members of Relates (Marcelo Ceberio, the president of Relates, Juan Luis Linares the founder, Raul Medina and Yasna Badilla Briones, active members) plus members of IFATC and the three hosts, very hospitable and caring, Liliana and Reynaldo Perrone (defined  by his friends the systemic Lacan because of the titles he chooses) and Estelle D’Ambrosio. Plus other EFTA and non EFTA members: Ivy Daure who spoke of couples and Abdessalem Yahyaoui, who discussed on a case.
Guest of honor was Carlos Sluzki, one of the fathers of Family therapy, that you will have the chance to meet in Lyon 2025.
I gave a presentation on the second order reflexive stance, specifying these necessary postures, among others: 1. the participatory relationship with knowledge, whereby both the client and the therapist emerge from the process of knowing. 2. Attention to the observing systems and not only to the observed one. 3. Problems considered undecidable and situations that are brought to us indeterminable, therefore without an a priori possible solution. 4. The metaphors of dance and encounter, dialogue and exchange as the most utilized. 5. The relationship between world – body and mind for an embodied knowledge that includes intuition. 6. The shift of attention from communication to relationship. 7. The loss of the therapist’s role of problem solver: we define problems in many ways, in an attempt to deconstruct them.
I listened with attention to the different presenters, interested by their creativity. A group of students discussed the act of smiling (“From Smiles to Tears, Self-Disclosure in Therapy”), proposing a real performance on multiple levels: images, quotes and interactions. Another group presented two points of view on the same clinical case (“Crossed Looks and Recomposed Realities”), asking participants what they would actually do in the therapy room…
The focus of the two days included different epistemological stances, a discussion on premises and their consequences in a time in which the students tend to ask for techniques, as if they did not remember that once you have an epistemological frame and you follow procedures I personally think that three quarters of therapy is brought home. I was surprised by the fact that we were not all on the same boat concerning premises, stances and practices, despite we reported the same amount of success in therapy outcomes.
What are the characteristics that make a therapy – whatever model it refers to – effective? The therapeutic alliance, positive expectations, the qualities of the therapist, the client’s responsibility and the therapeutic framework, which comes last. Yara Doumit-Naufal reminded us of this aspect, speaking of the Dodo Effect. So is believing in therapy and in the client enough? I don’t want to pass on this idea, which seems simplistic and superficial to me. However, I can make one last concluding reflection: every time I go to a conference abroad, in this era in which too much attention is paid to techniques and strategies, I am happy to have learned well the epistemological framework within which I can insert every question that arises.