Voices of ethnicity: a metaphor for creating conversations that lead to collaborative therapeutic contracts

Abstract

From the Milan school’s perspective, the process of establishing a workable therapeutic contract is vital in therapy. This article describes one way that a group of therapists in Bogotá, Colombia use their understanding of ethnic voices and the deconstruction of contextual forces as a means of developing “workable therapeutic contracts”. The authors, who are systemic therapists working in a private setting create an ethnic metaphor that facilitates the management of problem issues related to the way clients “make and break scheduled appointments, use and misuse in-therapy time, and withhold payment of agreed upon professional fees”. By analyzing these issues through the lenses of culture and ethnicity, the authors develop a metaphor of “mestizaje” that refers to the ethnic and racial crossbreeding which took place in Colombia and most of Latin America. They build a story that helps them initiate a new form of dialoguing with clients to develop a collaborative therapeutic space, time and language. The story around the “mestizaje” that began during the colonization of the New World provides the therapists with an inner map that helps them discuss problem issues, to allow the building of a new therapeutic culture where collaborative and meaningful change can begin to take place. Introduction: culture as context Understanding things in context has been essential to Systemic thinkers from its earliest stages. (Bateson,1972). As psychotherapists working in a private setting in Bogotá, Colombia; we have become sensitive to the influence of context in our professional role and wor