NACHRUFE †
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Tom Andersen 1936 - 2007
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Er war - gerade in Österreich - durch die Entwicklung und Propagierung des Reflecting Teams - ein sehr wirksamer Geist. Darüberhinaus war er mit Harry Goolishian befreundet und beide vertraten die Ansicht, dass "Vorurteile" (Andersens deutsches Lieblingswort) systemisches Handeln eher einschränken als flexibilisieren. Tom Andersen hat in gewisser Weise das geistige Vermächtnis Harry Goolishians weiter verwaltet und in seiner ihm eigenen Bescheidenheit und besonderen Langsamheit, viele Menschen in seinen Bann gezogen. Ohne ihn wäre die ÖAS heute nicht das, was sie ist. Er gibt den Geist der Zeit, in dem Tom Andersen wirkte, am besten wieder, deshalb bringe ich den englischen Nachruf von Eugene Epstein und menge mich auf Deutsch dazu. Eugene wurde bei Harry Goolishian ausgebildet und ist bis heute einer der uneingeschränkten Vertreter des Kooperativen Ansatzes (collaborative systems approach) und des Reflektierenden Teams. “In thinking about Tom, I think back to the mid 80’s in Houston and Tom’s visits to Harry and our group at Galveston Family Therapy Institute. I think about bacchanalian parties at Harry’s house in Galveston (ich selbst konnte Harries Einkauf im texanischen Supermarkt miterleben, einige Fünfliterflaschen Whiskey und ein wunderbares Roastbeaf), the conferences where we romped about drinking, conversing about therapy and laughing together like fools. The long and intense discussions about therapy, ethics, philosophy, god and the world, Harry’s chuckling at Tom’s slow and carefully phrased dry snippets of irony and wit ( die beiden waren wirklich Gegensätze im Tempo). I don’t want to sink intosentimentality, but I do think about some very moving therapy talks I observed with Tom over the years. He turned Harry’s advisory “If youwant therapy to proceed quickly, then you must ‘go slow’” into an art form, demonstrating that there are no limits to just how slow ‘going slow’ can be! (Ich konnte das auch erleben und dabei lernen, meine eigeneUngeduld zu zähmen) I think about Tom the philosopher, talking about inspirations and expirationsin rather pious tones, and Tom the party animal, blowing (expirating?) into the ear of one or the other young and pretty party-goer. Hecame from another generation of therapists - ambitious, idealistic, and willing to take risks and be different. His ideas moved some theoreticaland therapeutic mountains in my opinion, and they did so without gently,without openly fighting or pushing. He wasn’t an angel, though in front of a crowd I thought he sometimes tried to act like one (stimmt genau, und hinter dem Engel ein klitzekleiner norwegischer Teufel versteckt, der die Ironie der Heiligkeit verkörpert).He possessed a very important set of beliefs and ideas, an importantlink in a small and rather tenuously held together community ofideas. I am sad at his loss and I will miss him. Many centuries ago, in the long darkness of the Alaskan winter, theYupiit Eskimos said that when one among them dies, it is the beginning of a sweet, infinite journey on a beautiful underground river. But there isdanger along the way. The departed person’s kayak can get caught in one of the vicious currents and be trapped forever in one of the eddypools near the riverbanks. The traveller has no power to guide the kayak. Only those who remain behind can keep the kayak in the center of the river, safe from the dangerous currents and eddies. They do this by the words they speak and the thoughts they hold about the one who has leftthe common house. In this way, for more than 10,000 years the Yupiithave avoided the end of the world. Tom comes from a part of the world not unlike that known to the Yupiit.I can picture him getting into his kayak in the long darkness of the northern norwegian winter, leaning back and smiling as we guide him alongon his sweet and infinite journey." Eugene Epstein (kommentiert von Corina Ahlers) |
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