Chapter 3: The early days
One of the best ways to get a sense of some of Michael White’s early work is to read ‘Panning for Gold’ which is an article written by Mary Sykes Wylie that was published in 1994 in Psychotherapy Networker. This beautifully written piece was created through a series of interviews that Mary conducted with Michael White in Adelaide. During her visit Mary also met with a number of people who were consulting with Michael in therapy. We recently found a letter that Michael wrote to one of these folks, Brigitte, when Panning for Gold was published. Reading the article and then this letter conveys a great deal about both the ideas and the ethos of the Michael’s work in the 1990s.
Wylie, M.S. (1994). Panning for gold. Family Therapy Networker, 18(6), 40-48.
And then read this letter to Brigitte
23 January 1995
Dear Brigitte
I really enjoyed catching up with you and Bruce again last Friday. I discovered that there had been many developments since our previous meeting, and that you are claiming a space for yourself in life. This you have achieved despite on-going interference from anorexia nervosa. You said that you had estimate that you had reduced anorexia nervosa’s share of your life down to 20%, and that you intended to get back at least another 10% of this for yourself.
From our discussion I learned that anorexia nervosa still manages to hypnotise you into believing that you are fat when you are really painfully thing. Anorexia nervosa casts powerful spells on women’s lives, spells that turn them away from their own interests. When we reflected on the recent steps that you had taken to challenge anorexia nervosa’s authority, it became clearly apparent to us all that you have now built the sort of foundations that you can depend upon in future steps to reclaim your body from anorexia nervosa. Although anorexia nervosa is still a powerful force in your life, it’s spell is already partly broken.
For the last eight months you have been resisting what Bulima has tried to dictate to you. My guess is that this is another one of those achievements that you would never have predicted in the course of your life. Women have given me some understanding of the extraordinary determination and personal strength that is required to achieve personal victories of this sort. As much as anorexia nervosa, the voice of bulimia is a voice of self-rejection and self-denial. The voice of bulimia is in league with the voices of those people who abused you. In breaking free of what bulimia has been dictating, you have taken a very significant step to strip the people who abused you of their power.
As you have said, there is still much to be done. But the important thing is that you are doing it at a pace that is right for you, not at a lace that fits with anybody else’s demands of you.
I believe that it is really important that you appreciate the contribution you and Bruce have made to others through your willingness to be represented in the Networker Article “Panning for Gold”. I just know that you have brought hope to the lives of many others who h ave been without this hope. I know that you have introduce new possibilities to the lives of so many who have felt locked in by the effects of the abuses that they have received.
I look forward to our next meeting.
Warm regards,
Michael White
Creative documents
One of the sparkling realms of the early work of Michael White and David Epston involved creative letters and documents. In preparing this resource, we came across many examples of these. In addition to the sort of therapeutic letter written to Brigitte, here are three other very different documents:
- Treasuring my life is a document created from Brigitte’s words
- PhD in Ethics was offered to someone consulting Michael in 1996.
- A letter of membership was written to a boy in New Zealand in 1989.
