The Satir Journal, Vol.2, No.2, 2008
ISSN – 1718-2050 (print)
ISSN – 1718-2069 (online)

About this Issue

Our on-line “Connecting” button answers your individual questions from our distinguished editorial board about Satir-based therapy, training, research, locating people and resources. We are proud to welcome Dr. Barbara J. Burns, PH.D. an expert in clinical evidence-based research and practice-based research, with a long interest in Satir-based approaches.

                          Articles

Our articles begin with Reflections: The Oral History of Virginia Satir – An Interview With Bunny Duhl, Ed.D. by Jesse Carlock,PH.D, who has interviewed 18 former students and personal friends of Virginia Satir. This interview looks sensitively at the disparagement Satir endured from her male colleagues in the early family therapy movement. While some of this was due to some of her radical ideas and methods, it also touches the edges of evident sexism that was apparent but unacknowledged. It presents some of Satir’s personal challenges and her very human struggle to stay congruent herself.

 Our next article is from Wendy Lum’s research; Therapists’ Experience Using Satir’s Personal Iceberg Metaphor. Her study includes nine therapists (seven women and two men) between 35 - 61 years of age, who received training in the beginner and advanced level of Satir Transformational Systemic Therapy. A phenomenological approach was used to interview participants and analyze their use of the iceberg metaphor in their lives and in their practice.

Sharon Blevins, M.A. offers a narrative account of her personal journey through her parents dying in  A Personal Journey through the Grief and Healing Process with Satir, Kubler-Ross, and Worden.

 “I am aware that I am not through the full impact of accepting their death and embracing a new way of being in the world without them. Since their deaths, however, I have taken a new direction in the field of counseling. I no longer am pursuing marriage and family therapy, but focusing on grief and loss. My spiritual beliefs about the world and people have deepened because of my search for answers around the meaning of life and death.”

Finally, we offer Linda E. Roberts’ touching poem “Call Me an Angel.” A clinical member of the Satir Institute of the Pacific, Linda is a counseling supervisor with the Salvation Army. The poem focuses on her earlier struggles between needing to be distant from others and to be more human. I found this an interesting account of someone working poetically through the iceberg metaphor. The accompanying photos are from her “outward” journeying.

- All the best
Steve Bentheim, PH.D.
Editor