1. ALMOST BUBER: Martin Buber’s Complex Influence on Family Therapy
Alan Flashman MD
Berlin
2008

2. MURRAY BOWEN: DIFFERENTIATION OF SELF IN SYSTEM
“I” - POSITION

3. “I” - POSITION Authentic & Full Expression Beginning of the Encounter
Rather than:
Erasing “I” – giving in
Erasing “You” – forcing
Taking a risk

4. DIFFERENTIATION OF SELF IN SYSTEM
“I” - POSITION
TRIANGLES

5. HIGH DIFFERENTIATION: TRIADS = 3 Dyads
FATHER
MOTHER
CHILDREN

6. LOW DIFFERENTIATION: TRIANGLES
FATHER
MOTHER
CHILDREN

7. DIFFERENTIATION OF SELF IN SYSTEM
“I” - POSITION
TRIANGLES
CO-CREATION

8. DIFFERENTIATION
LOW
HIGH
DISENGAGED
ENMESHED
CO-CREATION

9. DIFFERENTIATION HIGH LOW I I YOU YOU WE WE WANT/FEEL AM ERASED = ENDS
= CO-CREATION
LOW I
AM ERASED
YOU
ARE ERASED WE
DO NOT CHANGE

12. NO CO-CREATION
LOW DIFFERENTIATION
CO-CREATION
HIGH DIFFERENTIATION

13. I’ I
Thou’
thou

14. Yonatan Darmon
Safed, Israel

16. DIFFERENTIATION
LOW
HIGH
DISENGAGED
ENMESHED
CO-CREATION

17. . Themost remarkable event at that time was the visit of Martin Buber, who in 1957 delivered the fourth William Alanson White Memorial Lectures and also gave a series of evening seminars to especially interested faculty members… I was delegated to call upon him It was an experience I shall never forget. It made me somewhat uneasy to be calling a "holy man" (as I thought of Martin Buber) on the telephone, but I did. I was to meet him in an apartment house with a large private foyer or waiting room, where I waited for an uneasy five or ten minutes. Buber was a short man, no taller than I was, with extraordinarily alive brown eyes and a white Santa Claus beard. He greeted me without any social smile whatsoever. He merely looked at me very intensely, and my uneasiness dropped away completely. I think I have rarely felt so much at ease, so much myself. Still without any social smile, he said, "Come over here in the light where I can see you better." And so I did, without any self-consciousness. One of the first things he said was: "When one is 80 years old, one has to choose carefully which places one will go to. There isn't SO much time left, I want to come to the Washington School of Psychiatry because I think it is one of the few places which keep the questions open." … I think the School has never been paid a greater compliment..

24. From black and white to shades of gray
Expanding Buber
From black and white to shades of gray
Relatively more full I-Thou
From static oscillation to growth
“Stochastic Processes”
(Στοχαζειν)

27. Obstacles to Buber Intimacy and intrusion Loneliness of the therapist
Acceptance of loss of control
Clients needing something else first
Buberians and non-Buberians

28. “keep the questions open”
Buberian
Non-Buberian
Buberian
Non-Buberian
Buberian
Non-Buberian

29. REFERENCES
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972; Mind and Nature,1979.
Murray Bowen, Family Theory in Clinical Practice, 1978.
Martin Buber, The Knowledge of Man, 1963.
Mona DeKoven Fishbane, ”I, thou, and we: A dialogical approach to couples therapy”, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Jan
Family Process, March, 1982 (21:1)
Alan Flashman, “Mutual Fantasies in Families of Adolescents”, in Fantasies and Adolescence”, H. Deutsch, Ed, Jerusalem, 2007.
Alan Flashman & Hanna Avnet, Therapeutic Communication with Adolescents (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 2005, ch. 7.
Walter Kaufman, I and Thou: A Prologue, 1970; Discovering the Mind, Vol. 2, 1980.
Daniel Stern, The Present Moment, 2004