The perspective, opened up by Gregory Bateson and the Palo Alto Group, subsequently developed by the Mental Research Institute and the Brief Therapy Center and later by Mara Selvini Palazzoli and the Milan Approach, is the basis of all our activities. The attention to the pragmatic aspects, to what people do rather than to what they say, to non-verbal behavior rather than words, to interactive processes rather than to the outcomes interactions originates from here.
This aspect is what differentiates us from contemporary narrative therapies which are often too anchored in the narrated story. According to us, interactive behavior and body language deserves more attention than words.The contextualization of each event is equally essential for us. The assumption of Pragmatics of human communication, according to which “a phenomenon remains unexplainable as long as the range of observation is not wide enough to include the context in which the phenomenon occurs”(Watzlawick et al. 1967 p.20-21 ) remains the basis of both our therapeutic and theoretical activities. From Mara Selvini Palazzoli and the Milan Approach we have inherited the basic strategies for conducting the session. Although we have introduced many innovations, hypothezing, circularity and neutrality, remain fundamental guidelines in our approach to the therapeutic sessions.
