Collaborative Language Systems
Founders
Harlene Anderson and Harry Goolishian created the collaborative language systems model. This systems model was an approach that stemmed from the early works of family therapy. During the 1970s, Goolishian directed an interdisciplinary team at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. They conducted a Multiple Impact Therapy (MIT) approach
working with adolescents who suffered from psychiatric disorders. This therapy approach was geared around family, including the adolescents, the families, professionals, and their course of treatment.
Near this time, in Palo Alto, California, a team at MRI gained attraction at Galveston as they began to analyze the work MRI was recommending. The MRI team focused on therapist and client sessions. It is recommended that therapists shift the direction of clients speaking the language of a therapist to the therapist speaking the language of a client. This shift in thinking caused the team at Galveston to deviate from cybernetics and general systems theories to focus on the client’s language as they viewed it as integral to therapy. Anderson and Goolishian (1988) believed humans operated as a system they defined as a language system, a language-meaning-
making system. This new view paved the way for therapy to probe conversational dialogue, which would be the start of collaborative language systems (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988).
References
Anderson, H. & Goolishian, H. A. (1988), Human Systems as Linguistic Systems: Preliminary and Evolving Ideas about the Implications for Clinical Theory. Family Process, 27
(4), 371–393. doi:10.1111/j.1545-5300.1988.00371.x
