Searching for a better story: harnessing modern and postmodern positions in family therapy

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Abstract
In this paper it is argued that modern and postmodern positions on reality and knowledge should not create a theoretical division in family therapy and that rather, by harnessing the two together, each may restrain the other. This combination creates the potential for drawing widely from the whole field of family therapy as well as challenging the separation of mainstream family therapy models from psychoanalysis. The concept of better story is used to replace both the polarized modern position of an objective discoverable truth and the polarized postmodern position of all stories having equal validity. It is suggested that better stories, which evolve in the meeting of family and therapist, may include those which are more congruent, object‐adequate, encompassing, holding, shared, emotional, conscious, just, provisional and hopeful.