The real problem for postmodernism

This essay is a critique of postmodernism and its relationship to family therapy. It is argued that the strengths of a postmodern approach (its relativism and narrative focus) are not unique but shared by traditions, modern and antiquarian, which the advocates of postmodernism now seek to displace both in the academy and the clinic. The negative baggage of accepting the emerging postmodernist orthodoxy is created, in the main, by the abandonment of a realist ontology. A variety of points are made about the relationship between postmodernism and general systems theory to highlight this point. At the end, critical or sceptical social realism is offered as a positive alternative to naïve realism or postmodernism. Some notes are made in conclusion about the implications of the essay's arguments for family therapists.