Dancing at the Frontier: liminality, chaos
and change
À habiter un monde liminaire
EFTA Paris 2010
60 years of family therapy, 20 years of EFTA … and after?
New ways for systemic practice
Hugh Jenkins
Institute of Psychiatry, London, and independent practice
30 October 2010
www.hughjenkins.com
ventris@dircon.co.uk
30 minutes! A ‘time’ exercise in the
impossible?
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What are boundaries?
Two stories
What is time?
Being out of time? The
instant?
Ritual / rites of passage
Ritual and time – a
clinical example
Process of therapy: time
and boundaries.
A ‘frontier’ / boundary to measure
time

What is the nature of
this line?
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“Camberwell is ‘later’
than Greenwich.”
“Budapest is ‘later’ than
London”
“London is ‘earlier’ than
Timisoara, which is
‘later’ than Budapest”
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Meridian line, Greenwich, London
Change and time. Aristotle

‘Not only do we
measure change by
time, but we also
measure time by
change, because
they are determined
by each other.’
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Aristotle (1999) Physics.
Oxford. Oxford University
Press. 109.
Boundaries and timelessness
 Two stories!
Boundaries and timelessness
‘A boundary separates two zones of social
space-time which are normal, time-bound,
clear-cut, central, secular, but the spatial
markers are themselves abnormal, timeless,
ambiguous, at the edge, sacred. … The
crossing of frontiers and thresholds is always
hedged about with ritual, so also is the
transition from one social status to another.’
Leach, E., (1976) Culture and Communication: The logic by which symbols are
Connected. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 35.
When time boundaries become
confused

‘Shaul explains that the seminal historic event in every
settler child’s early education is the 1929 massacre
during the riots against Jewish immigration to Palestine,
when 67 Jews were slaughtered in a single day although 435 survived after being sheltered by their
Arab neighbours. … (H)e recalls how he saw an elderly
Palestinian woman … greeted by settler children
throwing stones at her. “I said to a child of about 10,
‘What do you think are you doing?’ He said, ‘Do you
know what this woman did in 1929?’ ”.’
(Emphasis added)
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MacIntyre, D., (2008) A rough guide to Hebron. The Independent
Magazine. 26 January 2008. 18-25.
What is time? Augustine of Hippo

‘What then is time? I
know well enough
what it is, provided
that nobody asks me;
but if I am asked
what it is and try to
explain, I am
baffled.’

Augustine of Hippo (1961)
Confessions. London. Penguin
Books. 264.
Augustine of Hippo. 345-430 AD.
What is time? J.M.E. McTaggart

‘I believe that
nothing that exists
can be temporal, and
that therefore time is
unreal.’
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J.M.E. McTaggart (1927) the
unreality of time. In: Le Poidvin,
R., and MacBeath, M., (Eds.) The
Philosophy of Time. Oxford.
Oxford University Press. 23-34.
J.M.E. McTaggart. (1866-1925)
The instant - Plato
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‘ “The instant seems to signify
something such that changing
occurs from it to each of two
states. For a thing doesn’t
change from rest while rest
continues, or from motion while
motion continues. Rather, this
queer creature, the instant, lurks
between motion and rest – being
in no time at all – and to it and
from it the moving thing changes
to resting and the resting thing
changes to moving. … But in
changing, it changes at an
instant, and when it changes, it
would be in no time at all, and just
then it would be neither in motion
nor at rest.” ’ (Emphasis added)

Plato, (1997) Parmenides. 388.
Bust of Plato. c. 428-347 BC
Nature of the present Augustine of Hippo

‘… it is not strictly true to say there are three times,
past present and future. It might be correct to say
that there are three times, a present of past things, a
present of present things, a present of future things.
Some such different times do exist in the mind, but
nowhere else that I can see. The present of past
things is the memory; the present of present things is
direct perception; the present of future things is
expectation.’
(Emphasis added)
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Augustine of Hippo (1961) Confessions. London. Penguin Books. 269.
Ritual and boundaries.
‘Ritual defined in the most general and basic terms is a
performance planned or improvised, that effects a
transition from everyday life to an alternative context
within which the everyday is transformed’
Alexander, 1997: 139. In: Bowie, F., (2006) The Anthropology of Religion.
Oxford. Blackwell Publishing. 140.
Boundaries and Rites of passage
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‘Thus although a
complete scheme of rites
of passage theoretically
includes preliminal rites
(rites of separation),
liminal rites (rites of
transition), and
postliminal (rites of
incorporation), ….’ (I
Gennep, A. van., (1960 [1908]) The Rites of
Passage. (Trans. Vizedom, M. B., and Caffee, G.
L.,) Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.
11.
Janus, the god of doors (thresholds).
Vatican Museums.
Time, boundaries, and the
unconscious.

‘There is nothing in the id that
could be compared with negation;
and we perceive with surprise an
exception to the philosophical
theorem that space and time are
necessary forms of mental acts.
There is nothing in the id that
corresponds to the idea of time;
there is no recognition of the
passage of time, and - a thing
that is most remarkable and
awaits consideration in
philosophical thought - no
alteration in its mental processes
is produced by the passage of
time.’
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Freud, S., (1991) Volume 2. New Introductory
Lectures on Psychoanalysis. London. Penguin
Books. p. 106.
Sigmund Freud.
Memory
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How and what do we
remember?
How does this link to
our experiences of
time in the present?
What happens to our
time and awareness
of our boundaries of
self?
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010)
Memory relived: Caitlin’s experience
- ‘the same logical point’.
• When Caitlin (39 years old) becomes enraged
with Peter who has turned his mobile phone off as
she goes to collect theatre tickets, her anguish,
and rage are as if she has been abandoned, just
as she has felt abandoned all her life by her father
(physically) and her mother (emotionally), and also
physically by her mother who died in a fire in a
garden shed 6 years before. Her boyfriend
becomes ‘unsafe’ for her; she becomes the 4
year old child; and time stands still, except that the
rage and terror of the child are in the body of an
adult.
The past as present

‘Past, present, and future are united in a single reflexive loop,
… the present holds a special position in this loop. … (N)o
problem can exist outside the present. … It may happen that a
particular event - a betrayal, an error, a war, a loss - can acquire
total dominance. Despite the passing of time, it colours present
events and rigidly determines future possibilities. It is as if the
self-reflexive loop has split to become a linear, deterministic
chain: the event “which has passed” has a huge influence on
the present and future without itself being altered by them.’

Boscolo, L., and Bertrando, P., (1993) The Times of Time. New York. W.W.
Norton. pp. 100-101.
Ritual and performance - Edmund
Leach
‘In ordinary culturally defined ritual performance there is
no ‘composer’ other than mythological ancestors. The
proceedings follow an ordered pattern which has been
established by tradition - ‘this is our custom’. There is
usually a ‘conductor’, a master of ceremonies, a chief
priest, a central protagonist, whose actions provide the
temporal markers for everyone else. But there is no
separate audience of listeners. The performers and the
listeners are the same people. We engage in rituals in
order to transmit collective messages to ourselves.’
Leach, E., (1976) Culture and Communication: The logic by which Symbols are
Connected. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p. 45
The process in relation to time boundaries is
relatively complex.
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Early each evening, Jane was to plan the nightmare
she thought she expected that night, based on the
previous night’s dream, or the one she most feared.
Then she was to write down the nightmare, in detail and in stages if that helped.
She was to read it aloud on her own, - this being the
‘performative’, externalising part.
She was to do this in the spare room upstairs.
When she had done this, she was to do something
pleasurable, (options discussed).
She was to go to bed, after a relaxing bath, earlier
than was her habit.
The ritual – time, place, and
boundaries.
The process in relation to time-frames is relatively
complex.
Jane:
 consciously planned a future event, her future
nightmare, - itself an unconscious process;
 wrote it down now in the present. Then she
 read the future nightmare aloud, bringing it under her
present control in order to
 relegate it now, to the past, from a future that had not
yet happened.
The ritual – time, place, and
boundaries.
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What appears to happen is that in the later future she
does not experience the nightmare out of her control,
because it is now already in the past, and is
experienced as under her conscious will.
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Ultimately this helps establish the expectation for the
immediate future, a new pattern in the present, that
will survive spontaneously into the long-term future
and begin to change her future-present relationship
now, with her traumatised past.
Rites of passage - Victor Turner

‘(W)e are presented, in such
rites, with a “moment in and
out of time”, and in and out of
secular social structure, which
reveals, however fleetingly,
some recognition (in symbol if
not always in language) of a
generalised social bond that
has ceased to be and has
simultaneously yet to be
fragmented into a multiplicity
of structural ties.’

Turner, V. (1995 [1969]) The Ritual
Process: Structure and Antistructure.
New York. Aldine de Gruyter. 96.
Ritual circumcision.
Jane’s confusing time boundaries in
therapy
The opening, general question was:
HJ. “What were some of your experiences of being in the therapy room,
especially with regard to your experiences of time? You remember that I
sometimes said that bringing you back into the present, when you seemed to
disappear, was a bit like pulling you back in at the end of a rope!”
Jane. “There were times when I wasn’t in the room. It was a bit like watching
T.V. and it goes from one camera to another, it was seamless, it would slide. I
was never aware of the transition, this was before we did BMW, and I would
suddenly become aware of what was going on, and suddenly I was in a
different place; the sights and smells from a different place and time. There
was never any thought, ‘how can this be possible’. I couldn’t think this isn’t
possible because I was with Hugh, or that I was now a lot larger than then.”
[The Breathe-Mantra-Write (BMW) exercise was developed with Jane to help her manage her times of acute panic –
in the street, at work, in church, elsewhere. The three slow breaths-in was something she could do immediately, and
would have an immediate calming effect. The mantra was one that Jane devised for herself. It was: “I’m in control
and I’m OK”. The writing was a way to help externalise all that would be going on in her mind, but needed a place
where she could write without drawing attention to herself. She kept an exercise book with her for this purpose.]
Later on:
“It was like being in a dream but still awake, it was terrifying
because of the scary things that were happening. It was a reenactment of what used to happen. Somehow it seemed to be
worse than it had been in the first place; it seemed more
frightening than it had been at the time. I would end up where I
had been before, a moment that was leading up to a bad bit that I
knew was going to happen, when before, in the real time, I didn’t
know beforehand exactly what was going to happen.”
“It was like reading a book that you have read before and only part
remember. At that moment, I could see the future and that made it
seem worse than it had been. I was not aware of you in the
scenario while experiencing the terror. I was completely oblivious
of that.”
Continued:
In the sessions “I would eventually be aware that the
therapist was talking to me. Sometimes it would feel
like it was hours and hours, because I could be aware
of being in a different place, and yet complete scenarios
would be replayed. The whole thing would unfold and
the whole thing would be re-enacted, and it would seem
at the same time it was real time.”
Continued:
We discussed an incident during one of the early sessions of therapy,
when as she was unable to put her story into words, and still not beginning
to know the extent of her abuse, I asked her to represent her family using a
coloured felt tip pen of her choice and paper. Jane had the pen in her
hand. “I got the pen in my hand. I couldn’t hold it properly (she was
holding like an infant grasped in her fist). I’d obviously got the task. It was
like my brain was refusing to work out what to do. Then I thought, I know
what I can do, but I couldn’t get my hand to do anything. It was like my
brain was saying, ‘I won’t think about that, we’ll think about something
totally different’. It seemed like it was years, absolutely ages. I’d got the
pen in my hand, it wasn’t going to play the game. I was running through all
the scenarios of what happened in the past, and trying not to let myself go
there. I was trying to keep hold of where I was. What you asked me to do
was pulling my brain back to where I didn’t want to go.” (It took about
fifteen minutes to make a single mark on the paper.)
1
2
6
3
5
4
‘Linear time’ - durational: ‘direction of cycle’
1
Far Past
2
Near Past
3
4
Present
5
Near Future
6
1i
Far Future
Logical and temporal points: implications for time and psychotherapy.
2i
Negotiating boundaries.
‘My most vivid memories
… are of times when I
participated in and/or
observed the intricate
negotiations that occur
between clients and
therapists around their
relationship boundaries.’
Roberts, J., (2005) Transparency and
self-disclosure in family therapy: dangers
and possibilities. Family Process. 44:
45-63. p. 46.
Horseshoe to keep out
the Evil Eye, and catch
luck.
Overall course of psychotherapy:
boundaries as a rite of passage.
Separation
Liminal/Transformative
Re-incorporation
The overall context of psychotherapeutic treatment is a Separation-Liminal- Re-incorporation
(S-L-R) sequence.
Key. S = separation. L = liminal. R = re-incorporation.
Individual sessions of psychotherapy:
stages.
Individual psychotherapy sessions within a period of treatment:
L
S
L
R S
Individual
session
L
R
Individual
session
Interval
S
L
R
Individual
session
Interval
S
L
R S
Individual
session
Interval
L
R S
Individual
session
Interval
L
R
Individual
session
Interval
S
R
Individual
session
Interval
Transitions are seen as the intervals between sessions, but also a time and place for
transformation. Transformation is intentional and necessary for new values to emerge
and for change to occur.
Each S-L-R sequence represents an individual session: a momentary separation from the
mundane world. The intervals between each psychotherapy session become another kind of
liminal period, out of time, from each psychotherapy session. Figure and ground change
constantly.
Key. S = separation. L = liminal. R = re-incorporation.
Psychotherapy: whole and parts.
Separation
Liminal/Transformative
Re-incorporation
The overall context of psychotherapeutic treatment is a Separation-Liminal- Re-incorporation
(S-L-R) sequence.
Individual psychotherapy sessions within a period of treatment:
L
S
L
R S
Individual
session
L
R
Individual
session
Interval
S
L
R
Individual
session
Interval
S
L
R S
Individual
session
Interval
L
R S
Individual
session
Interval
L
R
Individual
session
Interval
S
R
Individual
session
Interval
Transitions are seen as the intervals between sessions, but also a time and place for
transformation. Transformation is intentional and necessary for new values to emerge
and for change to occur.
Each S-L-R sequence represents an individual session: a momentary separation from the
mundane world. The intervals between each psychotherapy session become another kind of
liminal period, out of time, from each psychotherapy session. Figure and ground change
constantly.
Key. S = separation. L = liminal. R = re-incorporation.
Representing time - Immanuel Kant
‘We represent the time-sequence by a line
progressing to infinity, in which the manifold
constitutes a series of one dimension only;
and we reason from the properties of this line
to all the properties of time, with this one
exception, that while the parts of the line are
simultaneous the parts of time are always
successive.’ [Emphasis added.]
Kant, I., (2003, [1781]) Critique of Pure Reason. Houndmills.
Palgrave MacMillan. p. 77.
Edie’s story: - (interview, Shinui
Institute, Tel Aviv, 1998)
HJ. “… What, if you like, the time loop that goes on here is a
replay of different loops from different parts of your
experiences.”
……………………………
Edie. “That definitely, that connectedness, is the loop of our
past and our present, and where we’re going, it’s becoming
more clear to me all the time, and as (pause) Uhh. …..
Simultaneously, I’m trying to (pause) understand and truly accept
Mordechai for the way Mordechai is. ….. I’m very stubborn, I’m
finally beginning to get it that he just … doesn’t have the need to
talk, like I do. Umm. And I’m slowly learning how to truly accept
that.”
Edie’s story –
cont’d.
HJ. “If, and I know your mother only died fairly recently, but if
your mother, you could hear her voice in your mind. What
advice do you think she would be saying to you, right now,
about this, how you could handle this, handle yourself and handle
this in your relationship? What would her voice be in your head?
Edie. “I like that question. Her advice would be: ‘Edie, be
yourself. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Continue to have the
courage.’ (pause) It would be, what, ..… her spirit talks to me
now in a very different way than her words spoke to me when
she was alive. She’s speaking with me now at the level I
always wanted her to.”
Narrative means … time …
‘In striving to make sense of life, persons face the task of
arranging their experiences of events in sequences across
time in such a way as to arrive at a coherent account of
themselves and the world around them. Specific experiences
of the past and present, and those predicted to occur in the
future, must be connected in a lineal sequence to develop this
account. This account can be referred to as a story or selfnarrative. … Since all stories have a beginning (or a history),
a middle (or a present), and an ending (or a future), then the
interpretation of current events is as much future-shaped as it
is past-determined.’ (Emphasis added.)
White, M., and Epston, D., (1990) Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends.
New York. Norton. 10.
Behaviours / actions / events
i
n
f
l
u
e
n
c
e
Stories about
events that are
recounted and
which are known
and have a future
Emotions
g
o
Feelings
v
e
Meanings
r
n
Over time,
stories become
part of scripts ‘how things are
done’ / ‘how
relationships
are’
Beliefs
Adapted from:
Jenkins, H., (2006)
Inside out or outside
in: meeting with
couples. Journal of
Family Therapy. 28.
113-135.
Scripts become incorporated in
myths which are disconnected
from the original events and time as finished stories, being fixed and
having no future, - now out of time.
They give meaning and authority,
becoming part of belief systems