Family therapy and anthropology

There has been among family therapists a widespread belief that anthropology is at least useful if not kindred to their field. The belief springs from the assumption that families in different cultural milieus have different ways of expressing their experience of intimacy in everyday life. If this is true, family organization transcends culture, and the latter is a mere language or mode of expression of the more basic pillar of family organization. However, the assumption is also strong that different cultural contexts produce different types of families, and the natural consequence of this hypothesis is that family therapy as developed in the United States would be restricted to dealing with American families, while the problems of family life elsewhere should be meted by the local cultural ways. These two hypotheses, namely that of family universality and that of cultural relativism, are far ends of a continuum. The more interesting and real cases lie somewhere in the middle. In the following argument I will discuss this subject by presenting a brief overview of family therapy's theories and practices for those readers who know nothing about it, by reviewing a recent book that makes the claim that therapists will benefit from some kind of anthropological knowledge, and finally by turning the question on its head and addressing the interest family therapy may have for anthropologists.