Memories of my early professional training came rushing in after my first day at the Cape Cod Institute where I am attending a class on ‘covert processes in organizations,’ taught by Bob Marshak from American University. Part of the appeal of the class is the topic (overt) and part is the people who go there, the duration (only in the morning) and the phenomenal breakfast served at 10:20 AM (covert).
Two other classes are taught at the same time. During the break I mingled with two psychotherapists attending a class on therapy of children. One of them was trained some 40 years ago in a new-fangled area of research called family systems dynamics, taught by a man named Minuchkin. I did an internship at that time – mid seventies – still a psychologist in training, at a psychiatric clinic in Leiden which was experimenting with cutting edge therapies. Minuchkin was one of the people we had to study. Family systems dynamics was very new, very exciting and very American.
I remember sitting behind a one way screen with another student and a mentor, watching an intake conversation with a family that had a black sheep, a young boy, who needed to be fixed. I think it is there that my fascination with group dynamics started.
But then I married, moved to Beirut and that was the end of my family systems therapy dreams. Yet also a stepping stone to my international career that bent around to organizational systems (therapy) over the next 40 years.
Sylvia's Journal 
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