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Introduction to the programs on family development
Vision Circles and Vision Exchange provide their users with a method aimed at developing personal and interpersonal insights regarding one’s ideals through the practice of dialogue. The following statement of Richard Klemer is taken from his comprehensive, creative and informative book, Marriage and Family Relationships.
Published in 1970 some of the examples are dated, but his treatment of marriage and family through the prism of empathetic learning yields timeless insights.
“The empathetic approach assumes that much of your understanding about relationships comes to you in a breakthrough moment of insight when you all at once perceive new meanings and new cause-and-effect associations. … Such dramatic changes in perceptions often take place as a result of your day-to-day living experiences…. Inasmuch as these insights, inferences and solutions (acquired from empathetic listening) will be in keeping with your own value system and your own personality, they can have immediate meaning in your own living experience…. Your ongoing progress in understanding the dynamics of human relationships and adjusting to them will have a crucial effect on your success, your happiness and your emotional health.”
There are many theories of family therapy (see Family Therapy Sourcebook by Piercy, Sprenkle, Wetchler, and Associates, 1996) such as, structural, strategic, behavioral, experiential, and systemic family therapies. In the end, as Klemer points out, their success depends on the quality of the insights developed by each family member in his or her particular stage of development and role.
Society has umpteen certifying programs for a slew of careers, but it has not, in keeping with common sense, mandated laws to certify parents. Although many instructional programs and a fund of cultural knowledge are at our fingertips, parenting for the most part is a self-discovery, self-teaching and creative thinking project.
Successfully self-taught people observe themselves and the world carefully to discover personal and social resources. Similarly, effective parents engage in rational self-dialogue and interpersonal dialogue to stay focused on the richness of their intuited ideals and to search for practical ways to make their families the incarnations of their vision.
The following Vision Circles program is an illustration of a self-dialogue using the OSCAR method to address one the many challenges facing parents.