This is a deeper challenge.
The blind spot of systemic therapy lies close to my therapeutic home ground- the place where I trained my psychotherapy skills, and perhaps the hardest context in which to apply the Dada lens. Yet my fondness for Dada’s peculiar charm would not have evolved so richly without first being “infected” by systemic thinking in psychotherapy.
I begin with an overview—a kind of hall of fame. For those who are not very familiar with the individual contributions of each expert, here is my admittedly “biased” résumé.
Who are the Gladiators of Systemic Therapy?
If systemic therapy had an arena, these would be its most recognizable fighters-each entering with a distinct style, each convinced they had found a better way to interrupt suffering. Beforehand I´d like to mention the three important key word givers
The Key Word Givers
Gregory Bateson — The Cartographer of the
Arena
Main move: Problems are patterns of relationships.
Dada twist: The patient is just the brightest pixel in the
wallpaper of the system.
Steps to an Ecology of Mind - 1972
Milton Erickson — The Street Magician of
Change
Main move: Small, precise disruptions shift the system unnoticed.
Dada twist: Systemic therapy learned its street tricks from
Erickson—how to bend a spoon without the system noticing.
My Voice Will Go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson - 1982
Heinz von Foerster — The Conscience in the
Loop
Main move: The observer is always inside the system; knowledge is constructed.
Dada twist: The system laughs, the therapist laughs, nobody is
outside the feedback loop.
Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition - 2002
The Gladiators of Systemic Therapy – The Dada Line Up
Steve de Shazer & Insoo Kim Berg (Solution-Focused Therapy)
Main move: Stop dissecting the problem; amplify what works.
Dada twist: Problems vanish, but nobody knows where the rabbit
went.
Michael White & David Epston (Narrative Therapy)
Main move: The problem lives in the story, not the person.
Dada twist: Sometimes the villain is punctuation, sometimes the
hero is a semicolon.
Paul Watzlawick (Palo Alto / Communication Theory)
Main move: You cannot not communicate; attempted solutions often backfire.
Dada twist: Words are boomerangs in disguise.
Milan Systemic Group (Selvini-Palazzoli, Boscolo, Cecchin, Prata)
Main move: Families are governed by rules; symptoms stabilize the system.
Dada twist: Dysfunction is a family hobby nobody admits
to.
Virginia Satir (Humanistic / Experiential Family Therapy)
Main move: Blocked communication and low self-worth create distress.
Dada twist: Therapy is an emotional buffet; sometimes people starve
while tasting everything.
Salvador Minuchin (Structural Family Therapy)
Main move: Problems sit in structure, not the individual.
Dada twist: Families are Lego towers; remove the wrong brick and
the whole thing topples spectacularly.
Listed and interpreted by Patricia von Papstein www.blisstobusiness.com
Many modern approaches explicitly integrate new aspects of the psyche´s suffering: Trauma-informed systemic therapy; Feminist and power-aware family therapy; Embodied and affect-focused systemic models; Attachment-informed systemic work. These therapy formats keep the systemic insight by gaining next ethical ground.
The Achilles’ Heel
Systemic therapy knows-perhaps more than any other school- that realities are constructed. Yet, in practice, it must still act as if something is real.
Where cognitive behavior therapy and even large parts of psychoanalysis often maintain the fiction that the therapist stands outside the problem. quietly importing norms such as evidence, functionality, or health—systemic therapy exposes the trick. It openly acknowledges that symptoms live in relationships, that pathology is frequently a response rather than a defect, and that the “identified patient” is often the one stabilizing the wider system.
Gregory Bateson’s move was decisive. He shifted the central question from “What is wrong with you?” to “What patterns are we caught in together?” This epistemological turn changed therapy from diagnosis to pattern recognition, from individual blame to relational meaning.
And yet—here lies the systemic Achilles’ heel.
Through a Dada lens, the very strengths of systemic thinking—play, language, circularity, reframing—can also become anesthetics. It risks transforming pain into cleverness. If everything is a construction, suffering can be treated as negotiable, symbolic, or merely narrative. But some realities resist reframing.
Power is not always symmetrical.
Trauma is not always relational choreography.
Violence is not a metaphor.
Certain experiences are not linguistic games but embodied facts.
Systemic elegance can drift into aesthetic distance—observing patterns while the wound is still bleeding. If everything is constructed, why does the body refuse the punchline? Circular questions spin elegantly, metaphors dance, reframes sparkle—and still, somewhere, a nervous system refuses poetry. Dada laughs at certainty, but even Dada notices when the laughter comes from the wrong mouth.
Healing the Feeling Blind Spot — the Dada Way
If systemic therapy’s strength is seeing patterns, its blind spot is missing the unsymbolized, pre-linguistic, or non-negotiable experience.
Dada intervenes gradually and subtly, sabotages stiff elegance, plays with friction.
Re-materialize the moment:
Ask “Where in your body did that sentence land?” Instead of “What does this pattern represent?”, Sensation becomes the intervention.
Break the tyranny of coherent stories:
Encourage fragments, contradictions, drawings, nonsense metaphors. Let shock, terror, or dissociation appear without forcing meaning.
Expose power without moralizing:
Exaggerate roles, swap chairs, perform family myths as theater. The hidden choreography becomes visible.
Reintroduce the unsolvable:
Silence, confusion, and contradiction hold the experiences that cannot yet be reframed.
Restore play without trivializing pain:
Play targets rigidity, not the client. Movement shifts the nervous system before insight arrives.
These suggestions aren’t intended as a perfect concept- just something I endured, honestly.
A Gentle Wink at Therapeutic Speak
In the Dada spirit, therapy is a very serious word that wears a lab coat even when nobody is sick. Somewhere along the way, “therapy” began to sound like a repair shop:“Bring your sadness. We will tighten the screws.Please wait in the lobby until your personality is aligned.”
Therapy: a place where language tries to convince the nervous system that everything is under control. The nervous system rarely signs the contract.
“Cure” is even more ambitious. It suggests that human life is a technical malfunction with a warranty. Cure is a charming industrial fantasy- as if grief were a software bug and the therapist had admin rights. My Dada raises an eyebrow. What exactly is being cured? And who decided that this version of us was the broken one?
Most therapies promise change; My Dada hopes to notice what refuses to change. Sometimes, is see therapy as just a socially acceptable place to be confused together.
Imagine an Unauthorized Dada Dictionary of Therapy
If systemic therapy has taught us anything, it’s that words are slippery, patterns are infinite, and the therapist is never truly outside the system. And yet—somewhere between reframing a symptom, bending a loop, and performing a paradoxical intervention—language starts to sound serious, even sacred.
This glossary refuses solemnity. It is a small rebellion, a wink from the Dada corner of the room, a reminder that “therapy,” “mental health,” and “evidence” are often just words wearing fancy hats. Enjoy the first fiveteen selected terms to smile at.
Terms of The Unauthorized Dada Dictionary of Therapy
- Therapy: A place where words try to convince the nervous system that it’s safe to relax.
- Cure: A charming industrial fantasy—grief as a software bug, emotions as faulty wiring.
- Intervention: Heroic-sounding attempts to move a system that might not want to move.
- Insight: Fancy translation of “Notice what we all already knew but ignored.”
- Resistance: The nervous system voting “no” while the mind politely argues.
- Progress: A rumor spread by charts and timelines.
- Evidence: Relief that agreed to stick around long enough to be measured.
- Normal: A statistical rumor invented to keep everyone in line
- Diagnosis: A confident label worn like a hat, often too small or crooked.
- Compliance: Following instructions while the nervous system smirks behind your back
- Boundaries: Invisible fences that the mind insists exist, until someone bumps into th
- Defense Mechanism: The system’s polite way of kicking you in the shins
- Symptom: A subtle note from the body saying, “I exist, even when ignored.”
- Mindfulness: Watching the chaos politely without flinching (sometimes)
- Therapist: A participant observer in someone else’s circus
(To continue)
Kind of a Legacy
In my current workshops - “My Unburdened Virtual Being,” “Tea with the Tyrant: The Ceremony of the Disobedient Steam,” “Twist the Hype,” “From Sparks to Change,” or “Knead Dada to the Story“ I scatter my Dada charms like confetti: not to make you only think, not merely to argue, but to stumble, to wonder, to taste the pause between the words, the curl of a loop, the weight of a sigh.
I hope that the next generations of psychologists, emerging from independent training programs and universities into professional life, will uphold the idea of a sensual approach to the human psyche and keep our profession vigilant in adapting to the demands of the times. A little Dada sparks in evolution would be wonderful.
See you there, in the swirling work of it all?
Shiver. Smile. Sigh.
Patricia von Papstein
here my poetic poem
System wise?
We knew the floor of emotions was moving
and refused to call it ground.
We watched causes chase themselves
in circles,
saw symptoms migrate like birds,
saw the patient dissolve
into a grammar of glances.
We learned the trick early:
there is no outside.
The mirror is part of the face.
The observer leaves fingerprints
on the fact.
But when the room was filled with pain
that feels unbearable,
when bodies shook without metaphors,
when power entered
without asking permission,
we hesitated.
Systems do not bleed.
People do.
So, we borrowed ethics
from the next room,
smuggled values in our pockets,
pretending we had not chosen them.
Still —
we remain dangerous to dogma,
immune to false cures,
unwilling to worship certainty.
We just had to learn
that deconstruction is not enough,
that wisdom without weight
floats,
and that the therapist
is another improvisation
of dust and exercise.
We rearranged meanings,
polished paradoxes,
interviewed reality.
Reality declined the interview.
The emotional pain we all share
sits quietly in the corner
rearranging the furniture of meaning.
It hums through the floor
we once refused to call ground.
It asks for our full attention,
our loving smile,
then leaves
before we finish understanding.