Deconstructing Theory, Engaging Practice

ABSTRACT This article revisits longstanding differences between modern and postmodern theory within systemic and family therapy and discusses its implications for practice. Drawing on Derrida's understanding of deconstruction as an ethical relation, it proposes a hospitable stance that holds theory lightly and irreverently, opening practice to multiple forms of theory and knowing. This ethical posture precedes epistemology, where the priority for practice is less what and more how therapists know. The paper highlights the benefits of postmodern therapy, with its emphasis on collaborative‐dialogic practice, language, not‐knowing and relationality, while arguing it risks becoming yet another orthodoxy, foreclosing the pluralism and dialogue it intended to promote. The demands of contemporary practice require therapists to apply modern and postmodern sensibilities, drawing on evidence‐based models, neuroscience, trauma‐informed frameworks as well as postmodern approaches such as narrative therapy, collaborative‐dialogic practice and systemic thinking in a flexible way. The paper proposes a paramodern stance towards theory as a deconstructive bridge—one that acknowledges the enduring value of modern therapy approaches while welcoming the relational, contextual and dialogic perspectives of postmodernism. Here, knowledge can be seen as a spectrum of knowing and not‐knowing, where one informs and sits inside the other rather than being opposed as binaries. The author argues for a critical realist and deconstruction perspective that preserves the insights of social constructionism while being theory flexible and irreverent in challenging its anti‐realist assumptions. Finally, deconstruction invites a systemic practice grounded in an ethic of hospitality—one that regards theory as a resource for therapy practice. This legitimises diverse models and methodologies where to deconstruct theory is to engage practice in a way that is flexible, grounded in the modern science of therapy while being relationally attuned, collaborative and ethically accountable.