Constructivist family therapy offers a model for the application of Maturana’s theories to practice. This paper describes key concepts of a constructivist approach and draws on family therapy to provide guidelines for applying them in an organizational setting. It offers a view of the organization as a network of conversations in which change occurs through the coconstruction of new conversations which widen or change the rational domain in which a problem occurs.

Key words: systemic therapy, family therapy, constructivism, autopoiesis, organization, problem solving, human service organizations, management, resistance to change, systems methodology.

In the second half of the last century different variations of systemic and constructivist thinking emerged that not only have been important for the development and differentiation of systemic therapy but are increasingly becoming attractive for other psychotherapeutic approaches. This article explains some essential notions of all the theoretical models presented (complexness, self-organization, context sensitivity, and process orientation, as well as pattern generation and detection). Subsequently, basic ideas of the following theory models are presented: first order cybernetics, theory of autopoietic systems, theory of social systems (N. Luhmann), theory of problem determined systems, social constructionism, theory of self-organized systems (synergetics), and person-centered systems theory.

This paper presents a critical evaluation of the impact of Maturana’s constructivist approach to (systemic) family therapy. After an historical introduction and a brief description of the main ideas, a number of criticisms are considered. These concern the radical antirealist epistemology, and problems in dealing with the social context of the family, and power relations within the family

Key words: autopoiesis, constructivism, epistemology, systemic therapy, family therapy, feminism, power, social structure

Operating with paradoxes seems to infringe scientific rules, which try to avoid paradoxes as false argumentation. Both constructivism and system theory do not ignore logic paradoxes and practical dilemma situations. Rather, observing paradoxes theoretically and solving di-lemma situations practically is typical for constructivist research programmes (cf. Watzlawick, systemic therapy etc). The constructivist way of thinking in terms of paradoxes can be applied to journalism re-search (theory) and journalism (practice). Journalists have to cope with conflicting expecta-tions and demands in practice, and journalism researchers cannot ignore these dilemmas and the ways of overcoming them in theory-building. This volume collects almost fifty authors contributing relevant issues in journalism research which are more or less paradox in struc-ture. Although many of the authors are not committed to a constructivist or system-theoretical perspective, they manage to describe typical paradoxes and how these paradoxes can be “solved”. As this volume is also a festschrift for Siegfried Weischenberg, a prominent journal-ism researcher in Germany, it closes with an extensive interview the editors conducted with Weischenberg on major issues in journalism research and practice.