Keeney has been an important figure in the field of family therapy and cybernetics for years, and has written a number of seminal books in the field. For a number of years, he dropped out of therapy, spending years doing field work with indigenous healers across the world.

Now he is back! What he is calling for is a therapy that is creatively alive. Here is a quote from his recent book, “The Creative Therapist” ” Creativity encourages inspired presence rather than stale imitation. It embraces the process of developing something new, uncommon, and unique…Rather than replicating or reproducing a template to be hammered onto every clinical session, creative therapy custom-builds a therapeutic encounter as the occasion call it forth. He goes on to describe what he calls a therapy jazz–a performance-based practice that, like music, requires technical know-how and familiarity with the rules of music in order to have the chops to make great improvisational music.