A Systemic View of Spirituality: God and Twelve Step Programs as Resources in Family Therapy

As the family therapy field has evolved, it has neglected the most powerful resource of all, God, in large part because what we call God has been seen to fall within the province of religion with its associated dogma. It could be said that spirituality is to conventional religion as systems thinking is to linear, cause and effect thinking. Utilizing the principle of metacommunication, it is possible to describe the evolution of the relationship between human beings and God as a process of eight specific stages, culminating in a new, systemic view of God as the “between” or relatedness. Alcoholics Anonymous was one of the first to make the distinction between spirituality and religion and remains the premier example of haw a self-help group can catalyze changes not usually accessible in therapy. This is a function of its theology and the specific manner in which AA members relate to each other.