Fam Proc 23:198-200, 1984TASTY HORS D'OEUVRES? AND A PROMISE OF A BANQUETTO COMECAROLYNATTNEAVE, PH.D.aa5206 Ivanhoe Place, N.E., Seattle, Washington 98105.Gerald Erickson's "Framework and Themes for Social Network Intervention" begins to provide the menu plan for a badlyneeded coherent theoretical description of principles and practices in social network intervention. Written during a year ofvisiting professorship at the University of York in Great Britain, it suggests that the perspectives of distance and a slightlydifferent culture have given a three-dimensional view of problems and activities that engage the busy practitionersecondarily in the usual practice. If one has any serious critical comment, it is that this experience frequently produces aneffect like looking at a scene through the stereoptican; suddenly a wealth of detail and relationships become apparent.Trying to take note of them all in the confined space of one article is too much. Though not wanting to wait for him to haveanother sabbatical year to give time for the task, one can hope Erickson plans an expansion into a longer work; if not abook at least he could produce a series of connected articles.Three problems are listed in the introduction: (a) techniques for the analysis of networks that include the temporaldimension; (b) the validity of the assumptions that social network members are (or ought to be) available and useful intimes of crises; and (c) the reification of the concept of "network" so that it becomes a popular moral imperative in the samefashion that developmental stages became for an earlier generation. In this work, Erickson discusses only the assumptionsof availability, but each of these topics deserves similar expansion of definition, including the pragmatic problems thatmake it relevant to practice, a review of past and contemporary research, as well as the author's own empirical and clinicaldata base. All this could then be integrated into the larger framework of social theory and philosophy so that social networkintervention would fit into an understanding of human beings and society? rather than assume an isolated competitivestance with family and individual therapies.In this discussion, Erickson has outlined a major contribution and then given a condensed, richly textured sample bytackling only one of these issues in more detail. His conceptional framework should not be slighted. One can grumble a bit,however, about glimpsing the menu and then being forced to rush through the banquet with only a taste here and there ofthe courses.Erickson's analysis of the truncated network in relation to both the general population and the distress of a psychiatriccrisis is very much needed. The use of historic perspective, a time dimension added to the analysis of social networks, isone that has intrigued the earliest advocates of social network intervention, at least as a speculative problem. Tying thecontemporary network to past relationships and speculating on the causes of shrinkage and fragmentation, in addition to thecurrent crisis, are concepts Erickson makes explicit when others tend to leave them implicit.The whole purpose of intervention in the system of the social network is similar to that in systems-oriented familytherapy? to shift not only resources but processes and patterns of relationship from those contributing to or supportingdistress to ones that support healthy growth and life, not only for the index person in crisis but the social unit as a whole.The idea of simultaneous crises in many parts of the network is also not new, but to specify its counterpart of contagiousrestoration to health is not always clearly stated. The approach of Erickson allows a generalization of this concept to lesscritically escalating, but still significant impacts of previous conflicts and broken ties among members of a social network.The result is an operational network description of the phenomenon of "cut-offs" familiar to Bowen and those who havelearned to conceptualize family therapy from him. It is extremely useful in planning interventions to think in terms ofErickson's extended, available, and effective levels of network composition and the historical as well as contemporaryprocesses of interaction.Erickson is quite correct in distinguishing between an almost shamanistic curative goal by Speck, Ruveni, Trimble, andother pioneers in the use of social networks as a unit of intervention and the more problem-solving approach of Hansel,Garrison, Curtis, and others. However, to limit potential interventions to only the two sub-types of created networks andnatural (or trained) neighbors, is premature. One should note that even the analysis of a network by one of its members orthe gathering together of a network at any one of the levels (extended, available, or effective) may lead to an increasedconnectedness and reverse numerous pathological trends without recourse to either mystification of "healing rituals" or thecreation of "professionalized" support systems.In the closing paragraphs Erickson departs from specifics of social network intervention to discuss the basic criteria ofany theory, especially that espoused by the philosopher Karl Popper: "falsifiability." The challenge to family therapists toenlarge their field of view to include phenomena that cannot be explained by their theories? and thus set boundaries ontheir claims to omnipotence? is probably long overdue. This paragraph imbedded in the closing section of the article opensPrinted from The Family Process CD-ROM_______________________________________________________________________________________Copyright 1999 Family Process.1whole new vistas and tantalizes the reader, practitioner, and theorist. It is to be hoped that this line of thought will be takenup by Erickson himself and others. It could be expanded and developed into the main course of the menu, now that theappetizers have been sampled.Manuscript received October 27, 1982; Accepted October 27, 1982.Printed from The Family Process CD-ROM_______________________________________________________________________________________Copyright 1999 Family Process.2