Summary of the XIII Nordic Family Therapy Conference 2024

From 28 to 30 August, the 13th edition of this systemic conference went ahead. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Iceland organise a conference on systemic practice every three years.
Coincidence does not exist? On the way to the conference, I flip through my newspaper where I read an extensive article on the difference in parenting in Norway and Belgium. Norwegians appear to raise their children closer to nature . In schools, too, comparatively many hours are spent on ‘hand skills’ and outdoor education. Norwegians are said to give their children co-determination from an early age and teach them to make their own decisions. Saying no, refusing something, playing outside, getting dirty, climbing trees (and hurting themselves) are part of their tradition and a vision of education. Reading the article makes me curious about how the conference will go. What do we share and where is there a difference?

What immediately stands out is the good organisation and punctuality. Doors open at the scheduled time and presentations start and end exactly at the minute set in advance. Our northern colleagues already appear to share some habits: arriving on time, listening attentively and silently during a presentation, not leaving the room before the end. They are friendly, open and polite. People interact with each other in a respectful and cordial manner, both during lectures and in between breaks. The conference starts two of the three days in plenum. Each time there is an opener with dance, theatre, singing or music. This is pleasant and brings variety and lightness to the three-day programme. Music can be very touching and brings with it that you are not only addressed intellectually, but the learning also touches other layers of being. The workshops are short, often only 30 or 40 minutes and varied. In between, there are long breaks, which leaves space to interact with each other or the speakers.
Proportionately, there are a lot of workshops where themes of spirituality and existentialism take centre stage. I wonder whether this is a new wind blowing through the systemic field, whether it has to do with context or is a coincidence. Social themes such as war and conflict, ecology and climate change also come up, sometimes as the main theme, sometimes woven throughout the content of the presentation. Social justice I missed a bit as a theme in the programming but it does recur in the various presentations in the form of attention to power dynamics, the impact of poverty and other themes. I reflect that it is actually quite good this way.

There were many fascinating presentations but I want to pick out a few to dwell on. Why they stand out for me has partly to do with the content but certainly also with the way they were presented. What struck me throughout the congress was that the presentations were often peppered with very personal stories and experiences. You could call this self-disclosure. It makes me curious about how this lives within therapeutic practice.
Jacob Cilius Vinsten Christiansen and Lennart Loras co-wrote the book ‘LOOK OUTWARD! Reflections on relationships. In it, they raise a number of relationship myths that they explain and question. The two of them engaged in a dialogue about some of these myths and enlivened them with recognisable and sometimes vulnerable stories about insecurity or doubts from their own lives. The stories were at once funny, moving and taken from life. I thought it was a great example of how to do something with the theme of masculinity, by showing something and not just talking about it. In their presentation, these men gave insights into their own doubts, insecurities and quests. It was a disarming and refreshing keynote.
Tone Grover is a Norwegian educator and narrative therapist who gave 2 very tasteful workshops. The first was called ‘ Longing and longing for Oneself, What can therapists learn from ‘soul activism’.? She explored the concept of ‘the self’ and thereby the experience of losing oneself. She linked this to the question of whether therapy can sometimes be an obstacle to healing/healing and how the experience of losing oneself can indirectly lead to our destructive behaviour and the destruction of Mother Earth. In a second workshop ‘What is Ethics in meeting conflict’, we reflected on how we can embrace conflict without entering into conflict and without losing touch with the important values at stake in all conflicts. Tone is an enthusiastic speaker and in her workshop she sometimes brought in small bits of stories from her own life that gave the lectures an authentic and lively character.

EFTA Vice-president Hans Christian Michaelsen facilitated a workshop entitled ‘Literature and therapy. Reflections on anxiety in the world and in the world within us.’
Together, we explored how to draw inspiration from Scandinavian literature and art to find ways to move systematically with people between love and despair, longing and illness, the past and the moment, crises in the world and the love of life.
Bente Barstad (NFTO/Norway) along with her 2 colleagues did a presentation titled “Stepfamily, second class or just different?” in which we were invited to reflect on both the unique challenges and opportunities facing stepfamilies.
Kurdish-Danish (ex-)politician Özlem Cekis presented a gripping and inspiring story called ‘dialogue-coffee’. She told how, as a politician from a different ethnic background, she was bombarded with hate mails. Fourteen years ago, she decided to invite the writers of these mails to have a coffee together. She founded the organisation ‘Bridge Builders Association’, a movement where people across religious and political differences are invited to engage in ‘coffee dialogues’. Be sure to take a look at the website https://brobyggerne.dk/en/about-us/ or listen to her TED talk. Özlem told wonderful stories about what can happen when you look for what we share as people from curiosity and interest in the other, keeping in mind some simple (but therefore certainly not easy) principles. You bring something to eat, you do not form judgements (before your coffee is finished), you focus on what you share and try not to convince but to understand someone’s story and history, how a person became who they are today. The closer to home, the harder it is to do this: family, neighbours, colleagues prove harder to engage in dialogue with than people a bit further away from us. She also asked us to do the thought exercise of who each of us might invite to coffee. It is a question that, since it was asked, has not let me go.

Besides the conference programme, there was also a social programme you could sign up for. There was a reception, a fjord cruise and a dinner. This created opportunities to get to know colleagues also in a different context which was very nice. Meeting together with your nose in the wind on the deck of the ship or having dinner together is a different way of meeting than during a presentation or workshop. Moreover, all the different northern countries had prepared an act that either made us sing, dance or laugh heartily. That was nice.
Looking back on the three days, I thought it was a very successful congress. It was multifaceted and multicoloured. We learned, made new contacts, saw a little bit of the beautiful surroundings. Inspired by the workshop on post-humanism and new-materialism, I would formulate it as follows: it was a beautiful assemblage of people, materials, objects and environmental elements that together provided new perspectives.
For those colleagues with interest as well as overflowing diaries: in exactly three years’ time, the Swedes (Uppsala) will stand in for the organisation.

Cinthe Lemmens