The Mattering Map: Confluence and Influence1
This article describes and elaborates upon the theoretical model of the Mattering
Map, initially introduced in Engendered Lives: A New Psychology of Women's
Experience (Kaschak, 1992). This model organizes the principles of contextual
feminist therapy in a manner that honors the complexity, multiplicity and
morphing of the energetic field of mattering. The mattering map is more
intimately related to 21st century physics, neuroscience and constructionist
thought than to 19th and 20th centuries reductionist and fragmenting
epistemological models.
Keywords: contextual; constructivist ; feminist therapy; mattering map; social
construction; epistemology
Theory and Epistemology
Contextual theory has made significant contributions to the practice of
psychotherapy since its inception in the early 1970’s (Kaschak,1976; Kaschak,
1992). Early in development, the focus was largely on the contextual variables of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation and their role in the psychology of girls
and women. Over the ensuing decades, this perspective has increasingly
provided a complex, multi-dimensional and dynamic approach to the
understanding of human psychological functioning that is not fragmented or
reductionist, but instead related to social construction, quantum theory,
neuroscience and other contemporary theories and practices.
While a close and narrow focus is often crucial for the advancement of human
knowledge, so there comes a time for integration of seemingly disparate ideas.
The arbitrary boundaries that define the disciplines often create the illusion of
separation rather than what they are, a temporary and convenient distinction that
accommodates human eyes and the human mind. That is, there are no
disciplines except as we observers define them and those definitions can outlive
1 An earlier version of this work entitled The mattering map: multiplicity, metaphor
and morphing in contextual theory and practice appeared in the journal Women
and Therapy, 34:1 and 2, Taylor and Francis, 2010.
