Divorce: A Psychosocial Study

Shelley Day Sclater

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138276772
• eBook ISBN: 9781351943277
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Diritto di famiglia

Several jurisdictions have attempted to render divorce more harmonious by abolishing matrimonial 'fault' and facilitating the resolution of divorce disputes by mediation. In Britain, these provisions appear in the Family Law Act 1996. The book presents a challenge to the underlying assumptions that conflict and the adversarial system are undesirable. Its focus is on adults' experiences of divorce. In a series of interviews, divorcing people told their own stories of divorce. The personal narratives revealed that divorce can be emotionally traumatic, but it has positive sides too. The emotions of divorce are not pathological, but are readily explicable as ordinary human coping strategies, in the context of the real material privations that many divorcing people suffer. These coping strategies often involve conflict and acrimony. From a psychodynamic perspective, it is argued that these are integral, and psychologically necessary, aspects of the divorce process. This book is particularly topical in the light of the recent decision of the British Government to postpone the implementation of the Family Law Act 1996 and the acknowledged need for research to inform policy.

1 Introduction: Changing
Families, Changing Law

The Family Law Act 1996 introduced a new scheme for divorce, abolishing fault-based provisions and envisaging that party-controlled mediation, rather than adversarial negotiation or litigation, will become the norm for resolving divorce disputes. The legislation aims to encourage more ‘civilised’ divorce, and to reduce the costs, both financial and emotional, seen to be associated with the traditional adversarial process. The reform is underpinned by a conviction that the adversarial process itself encourages acrimony and conflict (which is seen as particularly damaging to children); mediation, it is thought, will provide the means to reduce conflict and promote co-operation and harmony (see Lord Chancellor’s Department, 1993, 1995). This book reports the findings from a qualitative project¹ which present a challenge to those assumptions.

The focus in this research was on adults’ experiences of divorce. In a series of in-depth interviews, we listened to the stories of divorcing women and men and our findings revealed that some degree of conflict is crucially linked to the emotional trauma of divorce; it is not just an artefact of the adversarial system, and we suggest that it is not likely to be waved easily away by the magic wand of mediation. We suggest that conflict in divorce is to be expected; there is considerable emotional work involved in reaching and in implementing compromise agreements. Other researchers (see Fisher, 1994) have drawn a useful distinction between ‘conflict’ in divorce, which dispute resolution practices cannot address, and ‘disputes’, which can be resolved. Our findings suggest, however, that the two are linked in complex ways; the psychological basis for ‘conflict’ is likely to be present in all divorces, both shaping and being shaped by the formation and resolution of disputes.

In this work, we aimed to develop an interdisciplinary approach and integrative framework in which the sociological and political context of divorce could be considered alongside its deeper, personal, emotional and ‘hidden’ aspects; and in which psychological insights were used to inform sociological theory, and vice-versa. Our findings challenge the negative images of divorce as damaging which abound in our culture, images which have emerged from a broad psychological literature in the traditional paradigm² and which have been sustained by dominant ideologies. In departing from that paradigm, we have found a wide diversity in divorce experiences, expressed in a range of stories which tell, at once, of the pain but also of the hope that divorce entails.

Our key argument is that divorce can be a difficult and emotionally painful process, but it should not be regarded as a ‘pathological’ one. The emotions that accompany divorce are readily explicable in terms of an ordinary human reaction to the experience of separation and the breakdown of a significant intimate relationship. In psychological terms, divorce is about coming to terms with ‘loss’, but our findings show that it is about much else besides. It is also a positive process of the reconstruction of identity, and the pursuit of autonomy as a new and valued goal.

We argue that the ‘survival strategies’ which divorcing people commonly adopt reflect both of these aspects of divorce and involve attempts at resolving the tensions between them. Importantly, too, divorcing people usually have quite mixed feelings, as their psychological coping strategies are put to work in what are often very difficult material circumstances. Furthermore, divorcing people are not immune to dominant ideologies; but the idea, for example, that ‘conflict’ is harmful to children and should be avoided, clashes with many people’s very raw feelings of anger and their need to reassert themselves in the face of perceived betrayals and injustices. In psychological terms, conflict can be seen as an integral part of the psychology of divorce and is not just an artefact of the adversarial process, as it is so often portrayed. Negative and destructive feelings are natural, and may need to be expressed during dispute resolution. We argue that if we are to achieve a truly ‘civilised’ divorce, we need to find ways of integrating, accepting and owning negative and destructive emotions, instead of relegating them to the realms of the pathological.

An emphasis on the positive aspects of divorce, however, should not result in adults’ experiences and feelings being trivialised. Divorcing parents are commonly exposed to exhortations to put their own feelings aside ‘for the sake of the children’. ‘You are the adults and you have to stay in control if you want your kids to be OK’ (Magnus, 1997, quoting family therapist and author Janet Riebstein) is a popular sentiment. This is the central premise of the dominant ‘welfare discourse’ in divorce, and there are powerful moral prescriptions involved here. Crucially, however, we may be trivialising the feelings of adults too much; there is a danger that prioritising the welfare of children does not sufficiently acknowledge adults’ own vulnerabilities, and that this very step that we take, ostensibly to protect the interests of children, can result in children becoming a repository for the unbearable vulnerabilities with which we, as adults, cannot cope.³ Our findings, therefore, represent a challenge to reformers, policy-makers, mediators and lawyers; the voices of ordinary people, speaking about their divorce experiences, reveal the distance between the ideals of the professionals and the realities of life on the ground.

Our work was carried out in the wake of the passing of the Family Law Act 1996. An inevitable question arose: why these reforms, and why now? We begin our discussion by putting contemporary divorce and legal reform in context. We highlight, for example, the profound and dramatic changes that have taken place in ‘the family’ and in patterns of intimacy over the last five decades, and we discuss the social anxieties that have accompanied those changes, and the ways in which family law has sought to manage them. We discuss the psychological correlates of those changes, which both reflect and underpin the social policy response.

This book is about the psychology of divorce, at both an individual and a social level. The discussion is centred upon our own research work, but the stories which our participants told us also provide a point from which we link up with wider theoretical explorations in sociology, psychology and psychoanalysis. We think that we have something important to say to a range of professionals in divorce, to students and academics interested in the fields of sociology, psychology and law, and to divorcing people themselves.

The Context of Divorce and Divorce Reform: Changing Family Patterns

Surely no-one gets married with divorce in mind. Yet, current statistics tell us that two out of every five marriages will end this way (Haskey, 1996a). At a time in our history when governments of different political persuasions, a variety of pressure groups, as well as a large section of the mass media, are prone to assert the crucial importance of ‘family values’, we are confronted on a daily basis with images of family breakdown as negative and damaging, for individuals and society alike. A wide range of current social problems, from unruly children in schools, through teenage preg...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• 1 Introduction: Changing Families, Changing Law
• 2 Divorce Dispute Resolution: A Review of the Literature
• 3 The Psychology of Divorce: A Review of the Literature
• 4 Theory and Method for a Psychosocial Approach to Divorce
• 5 Divorce: Symptoms and Feelings
• 6 Stories, Genres, Psychologies
• 7 Conclusions
• Appendix 1 The General Health Questionnaire
• Bibliography
• Appendix 2 Data Tables
• Index