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Fam Proc 23:198-200, 1984

TASTY HORS D'OEUVRES? AND A PROMISE OF A BANQUET

TO COME
CAROLYN ATTNEAVE, PH.D.a
a5206

Ivanhoe Place, N.E., Seattle, Washington 98105.

Gerald Erickson's "Framework and Themes for Social Network Intervention" begins to provide the menu plan for a badly
needed coherent theoretical description of principles and practices in social network intervention. Written during a year of
visiting professorship at the University of York in Great Britain, it suggests that the perspectives of distance and a slightly
different culture have given a three-dimensional view of problems and activities that engage the busy practitioner
secondarily in the usual practice. If one has any serious critical comment, it is that this experience frequently produces an
effect like looking at a scene through the stereoptican; suddenly a wealth of detail and relationships become apparent.
Trying to take note of them all in the confined space of one article is too much. Though not wanting to wait for him to have
another sabbatical year to give time for the task, one can hope Erickson plans an expansion into a longer work; if not a
book at least he could produce a series of connected articles.
Three problems are listed in the introduction: (a) techniques for the analysis of networks that include the temporal
dimension; (b) the validity of the assumptions that social network members are (or ought to be) available and useful in
times of crises; and (c) the reification of the concept of "network" so that it becomes a popular moral imperative in the same
fashion that developmental stages became for an earlier generation. In this work, Erickson discusses only the assumptions
of availability, but each of these topics deserves similar expansion of definition, including the pragmatic problems that
make it relevant to practice, a review of past and contemporary research, as well as the author's own empirical and clinical
data base. All this could then be integrated into the larger framework of social theory and philosophy so that social network
intervention would fit into an understanding of human beings and society? rather than assume an isolated competitive
stance with family and individual therapies.
In this discussion, Erickson has outlined a major contribution and then given a condensed, richly textured sample by
tackling only one of these issues in more detail. His conceptional framework should not be slighted. One can grumble a bit,
however, about glimpsing the menu and then being forced to rush through the banquet with only a taste here and there of
the courses.
Erickson's analysis of the truncated network in relation to both the general population and the distress of a psychiatric
crisis is very much needed. The use of historic perspective, a time dimension added to the analysis of social networks, is
one that has intrigued the earliest advocates of social network intervention, at least as a speculative problem. Tying the
contemporary network to past relationships and speculating on the causes of shrinkage and fragmentation, in addition to the
current crisis, are concepts Erickson makes explicit when others tend to leave them implicit.
The whole purpose of intervention in the system of the social network is similar to that in systems-oriented family
therapy? to shift not only resources but processes and patterns of relationship from those contributing to or supporting
distress to ones that support healthy growth and life, not only for the index person in crisis but the social unit as a whole.
The idea of simultaneous crises in many parts of the network is also not new, but to specify its counterpart of contagious
restoration to health is not always clearly stated. The approach of Erickson allows a generalization of this concept to less
critically escalating, but still significant impacts of previous conflicts and broken ties among members of a social network.
The result is an operational network description of the phenomenon of "cut-offs" familiar to Bowen and those who have
learned to conceptualize family therapy from him. It is extremely useful in planning interventions to think in terms of
Erickson's extended, available, and effective levels of network composition and the historical as well as contemporary
processes of interaction.
Erickson is quite correct in distinguishing between an almost shamanistic curative goal by Speck, Ruveni, Trimble, and
other pioneers in the use of social networks as a unit of intervention and the more problem-solving approach of Hansel,
Garrison, Curtis, and others. However, to limit potential interventions to only the two sub-types of created networks and
natural (or trained) neighbors, is premature. One should note that even the analysis of a network by one of its members or
the gathering together of a network at any one of the levels (extended, available, or effective) may lead to an increased
connectedness and reverse numerous pathological trends without recourse to either mystification of "healing rituals" or the
creation of "professionalized" support systems.
In the closing paragraphs Erickson departs from specifics of social network intervention to discuss the basic criteria of
any theory, especially that espoused by the philosopher Karl Popper: "falsifiability." The challenge to family therapists to
enlarge their field of view to include phenomena that cannot be explained by their theories? and thus set boundaries on
their claims to omnipotence? is probably long overdue. This paragraph imbedded in the closing section of the article opens

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whole new vistas and tantalizes the reader, practitioner, and theorist. It is to be hoped that this line of thought will be taken
up by Erickson himself and others. It could be expanded and developed into the main course of the menu, now that the
appetizers have been sampled.
Manuscript received October 27, 1982; Accepted October 27, 1982.

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