WELCOME! For All That
Click here for info about Family Therapy in Edinburgh & Lothian
A Man's a Man for A' That
"For All That", the name of this website about demystification is a reference to Robert Burns' poem 'A Man's a Man for A' That'. That poem is about seeing through appearances to the human beneath. Demystification does that too.
Confusion and Demystification
Nick's life began in experiences of confusion. His life's theme has been demystification. Nick aims to write a book. Having put off doing it in a big way, he has now "published" a small virtual one - here (Feb 2010) is the text of: "Ben and The Futurescope" That is the most succinct introduction to Nick and his story behind this website about confusion and demystification!
The theme of demystification of the helping professions emphasises ordinary good practice. Ordinary good practice best gives and gets clients and workers their humanity and life - "life" as in the phrase "get a life"! You know when you take a step to "getting a life" because you'll "get it" - it clicks with you, it moves you!
Celebrating 10 Years
For All That has been conceived and coordinated by Nick Child. To celebrate 10 years since it was launched in 2000, Nick is refreshing it here but linking to the old version as he does it. That means that many of the links will take you to simple old-fashioned rather gaudy pages without obvious return tabs back to these new home pages.
This new more interactive set up on Weebly makes it much more attractive for Nick to keep working on it. So do keep coming back as he improves it! And join the Blog or the SP Network. And send a message to Nick on the contact form below.
Connections in Practice
"Systemic practice" means various things to various people. Here, in For All That, Nick wants it to mean ordinary good practice. In the UK's family therapy field, it also means applying family therapy's systemic ideas into the practice of other helping professions.
For All That was launched at the Connections in Practice conference in Stirling in March 2000. Nick's keynote speech there was on The Potential of Systemic Practice, a demystification of family therapy into good practice for social work (on that occasion). Other material from that event is here, linked through the Systemic Practice page. For an updated version of that keynote speech, download the article from Context 110 (Summer 2010) at the bottom of this page.
Four papers that people commonly want to read are:
Family Therapy: The Rest of the Picture
Deficient Attention and Disordered Activity: Child Psychiatry's Response to ADHD
The Limits of the Medical Model in Child Psychiatry
The Potential of Systemic Practice: A Huge Army of Great Workers
Family therapists themselves have done the impossible and written detailed manuals of their method in a way that needs no demystifying. Short cut this website and go direct to Leeds Family Therapy & Research Team website if you want to download for free a full, close up, "manual" account of what is both good ordinary systemic practice and of specialist Systemic Family Therapy (SFT). But please email where invited to feedback to them what you do with it.
Briefly About Nick
Nick lives in Edinburgh. He was a child and family psychiatrist in the Child and Family Clinic, Motherwell for 22 years. Retired in 2003, he now spreads his time between family therapy, salsa, internet work, house, friends and family. See two other websites: Family Therapy at CC Lothian, and Salsa Ceilidh to see some more about his other work and fun. More about Nick here. And read Ben and The Futurescope of course!
Please use the contact box below to send in your own suggestions, ideas, links and material. And enter your email to join the Systemic Practice Network.
