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Circular Questioning: An Overview
Circular questioning is the centerpiece of a group of Italian family therapists known as the Milan Group. Their experiences with families of schizophrenics led them to question and discard structural approaches in therapy and to incorporate systems theory, which draws heavily on the work of Gregory Bateson, into their work. For Bateson, mental processes are a form of cybernetic feedback, and "mind" consists of components connected in circular patterns. For therapists such as Karl Tomm, circularity means " the capacity of the therapist to conduct his [sic] investigation on the basis of feedback from the family in response to the information he solicits about relationships." Tomm also regards circularity as "a bridge connecting systemic hypothesizing and neutrality by means of the therapists' activity" (p. 33). (For more detail, see Tomm's as well as Cronen and Pearce's work in circular interviewing.)
Systemic therapists attempt to understand the system and to facilitate therapeutic change. To achieve these goals, they use two types of Circular Questions: descriptive and reflexive. They use the former to elicit information to help them understand how the "problem" is systemically connected, while they use the latter to attempt to precipitate a change in that particular system. In general, using CQ in therapeutic intervention not only demonstrates respect for the autonomy of the system, but also provides more possibilities for transformation than does offering opinions, prescriptions, directives, or instructions. In family therapy, the method has three key aspects: circularity, neutrality, and hypothesizing.
The circularity of CQ results from asking questions in such a way that the family can make new connections and think in new ways about certain events and acts. This requires shifting person-positions from first-person actor to third-person observer. For example, when a mother describes her son's perception of his father, the father faces a new image of himself. Instead of asking the son linear questions, such as "Do you love your father?" the therapists ask the mother circular questions, such as "How does your son show his love for his father?"
Neutrality, the second aspect of Circular Questioning, protects therapists from being forcibly incorporated into a family's system.. Normally, neutrality implies a lack of bias or involvement. In the case of Circular Questioning, Systemic therapists expect to be drawn into the conflicting patterns of the family, so they match this expectation in unexpected ways: they intervene by joining the family's system of knowledge in order to help change the very same patterns of meaning and action that have brought the family to therapy. Therapists using Circular Questioning work in teams to take the side of the entire family and not the side of any one particular family member. They do this by asking each other circular questions in the family's presence. For example, one therapist might ask another, "What do you think is the biggest challenge this family faces together?" Besides performing a person-shift, this question indicates to family members that they have to work together and that the therapists see them as a unit.
The third aspect of Circular Questioning, hypothesizing, is used to guide the family to make connections among elements of the stories told by family members and the actions associated with those stories. Therapists create a flurry of hypotheses, all of which suggest different patterns of connections. They may hypothesize that a person being treated for depression has been and will be through periods of being "not depressed." Instead of asking that person, "Why are you depressed?" they might ask, "When you are not depressed, what do you enjoy the most about not being depressed?" In searching for systemic connections, the therapists may ask the group, "Who is most affected by X's depression?" They might also give a positive connotation to a symptom. For example, they may praise the depressed person's behavior, hypothesizing that this depression is what holds the family together. From this point, they hypothesize that when the depressed person is ready to let others share the burden of holding the family together, s/he might find it easier not to be depressed.
Once a team of therapists joins a family system to explore how persons, actions, and ideas are inter(in)dependent, they use CQ to help the family become aware of how they engage with their "problems" by thinking and acting in certain patterns, and to guide them in creating alternate patterns. Rejecting the notion that problems are "caused" by meanings inside a person's head, therapists use CQ to help people conceive of things like "family problems" as socially constructed achievements. Ultimately, CQ helps therapists probe for the ways families describe their relationships; in essence, it helps therapists discover a "grammar" of meaning and action within relationships in order to transform painful patterns of interaction.
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