Transmaterial worlding in the home

Abstract

The family home offers tremendous possibilities for expanding the scope of systemic therapy beyond the limits of spoken language.  In this paper, I will describe how the home has often been rendered undesirable by those writing in the systemic field.  I will explore how the home and its contents actively shape the therapeutic process as described in the literature.  Finally, I will draw on the concept of transmaterial worlding to show how the richness of the home and its contents can be embraced as actively participating in the therapeutic encounter, helping to bring the process to life.  Simon and Salter (2019) offer transmaterial worlding as a framework for considering the ways in which the human and other-than-human are mutually entangled, drawing on examples which highlight the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world.  In my view, practitioners engaging with a posthuman perspective can sometimes develop a sense that the other-than-human is located ‘out there’ in places which can seem geographically distant from the spaces in which everyday systemic practice most commonly takes place.  This paper seeks to address this issue by exploring how transmaterial worlding applies to systemic therapy when carried out in the domestic space, as a way of demonstrating the applicability of these ideas to local, everyday systemic practice.