THE LISTENING HEART AND THE CHI-SQUARE - CLINICAL AND EMPIRICAL PERCEPTIONS IN THE FAMILY-THERAPY OF ANOREXIA-NERVOSA

Clinical and empirical methods are commonly considered to be complemen tary activities. However, many people in the fields of mental health a nd social welfare espouse a strong adherence to experimental, scientif ic methods for the evolution of theory and practice and consider only that which has been experimentally tested as 'really true'. Others wou ld propose the clinical method as the main source of useful knowledge and are suspicious of enumeration and quantification as sources of use ful information. Formal, empirical methodology is well and extensively described whilst there is less systematic exposition of the clinical method. Family therapy evolved in a context in which activity was visi ble and the emerging discipline was propelled by a theoretical framewo rk with strongly scientific origins that was critical of the exclusive clinical method of pre-existing psychotherapies. This paper describes some of the clinically based contributions to the family therapy of a norexia nervosa and compares this information with that which comes ou t of the Maudsley trials of psychotherapies in anorexia nervosa.