Paradoxical strategies

Comprehension of Appropriateness (Part #14)

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The comprehension dilemma may be further clarified by the possibility that paradoxical strategies (inconsistent with conventional policy axioms and accepted values), namely strategies which ostensibly encourage negative or maladaptive behaviour, may constitute a valid policy phase in an appropriate new mode. Paradoxical strategies have been used with great success in psychotherapy, although most therapists have been reluctant to employ them, not only because of their theoretical-clinical complexities, but also because of their inherent unorthodoxy (53). Although such an approach would be necessarily highly controversial on a collective level, it is even possible that certain negative social conditions can only be usefully understood as having been effectively engendered by the society, or its neighbours, as necessary developmental learning experiences for that society. If, after a decade of global modelling, the experts are still 'gropingin the dark' (54), such paradoxical methods of encompassing counter-intuitive (and essentially paradoxical) situations merit vigorous investigation. 

In Leon F Seltzer's extensive review of paradoxical strategies he explores the possibility of a 'metatheory' of therapeutic paradox (53). The apparent irrationality of such strategies is such that they 'regularly elicit - and in fact are to be associated with - reactions of surprise, confusion and disbelief' (53, p. 10). He notes Omer's argument that the single unifying factor is 'symptom decontextualization' whereby, through experiencing a problem from one or more alternative settings, it loses its problematic character because of the modified form that it acquires in a broader experiential perspective. Omer even suggests that the more widespread the dimensions of contextual modification, the shorter the time of treatment required and the greater the likelihood that significant improvement will take place (55). 

In this light, at the collective level one merit of policy cycles lies precisely in the manner in which they allow problems emerging through the inadequacy of one policy to be reviewed through other modes of social action. Such a cycle is thus essentially regenerative, or self-healing, in that problems emerging at one point in the cycle are reabsorbed at some other point. It is the cycle which provides the larger context in which societal problems are processed. And, if Omer is correct, the faster the cycle, the greater the probability that the problems will be successfully defused.