Peace, War, and Mental Health

Couples Therapists Look at the Dynamics

Barbara Jo Brothers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138978065
• eBook ISBN: 9781317739753
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Discover how issues of world war and peace relate to the dynamics of couples therapy in this thought-provoking book. In Peace, War, and Mental Health, couples therapists provide diverse views on the links between strengthening marriages and preventing and solving international disputes. Although the contributors vary in their approaches to this issue, a common theme is the belief that couples as well as countries need to build bridges, not walls, for healthy relationships and they need to strive to learn what others are really feeling, thinking, or needing underneath the defenses others exhibit.The contributing therapists in Peace, War, and Mental Health explore the various links between couples in conflict and nations at war. Chapters describe how prevention strategies used for couples in therapy may be applied to the well-being of the world as a whole and how significant change is possible through the involvement of only a small percentage of the population. Other chapters focus on specific tools for couples therapy such as outlines of the major tasks of relationship building and traps that mitigate against good relationship construction, a description of the nuts and bolts of conflict resolution, and the use of flashcards to help both members of the pair present his or her real feelings to the other. Some of the intriguing topics covered in this book include:

• the relationship between psychotherapy and spirituality and the paradox of individuals longing to belong since each is a part of the whole
• the role of gender on war and its potential impact on peace
• the failure of the humanistic movement
• societal attitudes linking domestic violence and large scale violence
• how the potential for resolution of differences in couples can be applied to peace among nations
• how prevention may be expanded to include the "mental health" of the whole world--Part V of an interview with Virginia SatirPeace, War, and Mental Health helps therapists look at international peace and couples therapy with new perspectives, a necessity in today's rapidly changing family and world climate.

Dilemmas of Difference: Differentiating Couples Therapy Issues for Intervention, Negotiation, Separation or Celebration

Petruska Clarkson

Petruska Clarkson, MA, PhD, Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society, is a chartered clinical psychologist, a practicing psychotherapist, supervisor, trainer and OD consultant. She is a member of the British Psychological Society’s Counselling Section and Clinical Psychology Division, Chairperson of the Gestalt Training Institute of Great Britain, President for the British Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy, and a Teaching Member of the International Transactional Analysis Association (I.T.A.A.). She is the Principal Clinical Psychologist and a founder director of metanoia Psychotherapy Training Institute, 13 North Common Road, London W5 2QB, England which, among other programmes, runs training and supervision in Integrative Couples Therapy. She is the author of articles and books on psychotherapy, the most recent being Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy: An Integrated Approach (1992), London: Routledge.

SUMMARY. This paper outlines a particular conceptual framework or working tool which individuals, couples and couples therapists have found useful in exploring the meaning of love and separateness, increasing the opportunities for love in couples relationships and reducing the potential for war in the intimacy zone. Three categories of difference between partners are outlined as an example both of specific couples therapy work in the microcosm, and of the relationships of nations in the macrocosm.

INTRODUCTION

The ideas in this paper are designed to evoke questioning of what the therapist can and cannot hope to facilitate, and what the couple realistically can or cannot hope to achieve, in couples counseling or therapy. Exploring the feasibility or likelihood of effective therapeutic action towards different therapeutic goals can sometimes prevent disillusionment and despair. Clarifying the kind of goals and achievability or morality of certain desired changes in couplehood seems to me vitally important, and sometimes a neglected aspect of couples work. Disagreement about the categories of difference I put forward here is to be welcomed and explored between the partners and the therapist. Such disagreement can be used to enrich the viability and usefulness of this contribution to the resources of the couples therapist.

It has been my experience in doing couples work, including training and supervising, that by sorting such desired changes into different categories, all parties can focus on more realistically achievable goals. Thus they can potentially reach greater satisfaction. It is therefore an attempt to put into couples work the spirit of the famous prayer usually attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

The courage to change the things I can;

And the wisdom to know the difference.

In order to deepen my understanding of my work with couples, my personal journey, and my experiences of organizations, I have found it useful to study macrosystems such as nations in the processes of change. Often the large systems reflect similar processes to the smaller ones and the microsystems reflect learning about the macrosystems. Nations are the large-scale experiments in humans living together where good outcomes lead to peace, harmony and creativity. As with couples, however, misunderstandings about differences between peoples can also explode into war.

THREE CATEGORIES OF DIFFERENCE

I wish to draw out some patterns currently apparent to me which apply both to couples and nations. This is done in the knowledge that I cannot, and am not attempting to, do justice to the full complexity of a matter which has preoccupied the human race since the dawn of time, and will continue to do so ad infinitum. For the moment I am separating out three categories of problem. These categories of difference can be termed Unacceptable Behavior, Negotiable Issues, and Unchangeable Aspects of Self. I think that they apply usefully in doing work with couples and may also apply usefully in mediation with groups, organizations, and larger systems such as nations.

Unacceptable Behavior

The first category of difference between partners concerns areas of unacceptable behaviors. In other words: “This is what I won’t accept from you.” It is behavior of the other person or other party which is essentially non-negotiable and in an ultimate moral sense shouldn’t be up for negotiation. This concerns the basic human needs for security, economic well-being, a sense of belonging, recognition, and control over one’s own life (Fisher & Ury, 1981/1983, p. 50). Whenever any of these needs are threatened, absent, or denied, effective reconciliation or mediation work is substantially impeded, if not impossible, because one cannot meaningfully negotiate between a torturer and a victim until the victim is at least on an equal footing with the torturer. Any such “negotiation” is an attempt to escape victimhood, not to exchange value. Such cases are not genuine transactions between equal human beings, both of whom deserve respect.

A woman’s economic well-being is totally at the mercy of a vengeful and vindictive husband when he deprives her of either information or influence about how even her own earned income is spent. In couples therapy they cannot be said to be in a negotiating position on an equal basis. Where basic human needs are not honored, war or war-like actions follow almost inevitably.

Negotiations are not likely to make much progress as long as one side believes that the fulfillment of their basic human needs is being threatened by the other. In negotiations between the United States and Mexico, the US wanted a low price for Mexican natural gas. Assuming that this was a negotiation over money, the US Secretary of Energy refused to approve a price increase negotiated with the Mexicans by a US oil consortium. Since the Mexicans had no other potential buyer at the time, he assumed that they would then lower their asking price. But the Mexicans had a strong interest not only in getting a good price for their gas but also in being treated with respect and a sense of equality. The US action seemed like one more attempt to bully Mexico; it produced enormous anger. Rather than sell their gas, the Mexican government began to burn it off, and any chance of agreement on a lower price became politically impossible. (Fisher & Ury, 1981/1983, p. 50–51)

Domination (for example, when a wife is overruled through superior financial or physical strength of her partner), violence, a threat to the person or to their property, disenfranchizement (for example, when blacks are deprived of their right to vote in South Africa), all mean that the possibility for effective therapy or resolution is drastically reduced, if not made impossible.

I had an initial consultation with a couple where the man was quite a high-ranking member of the professional community. The wife pleaded with him to come to couples therapy with me because he frequently threatened her and on more than one occasion had pushed her around or even hit her. She was frightened by his behavior and yet unwilling or unable to call for help. Because of his standing in the community and his public reputation for being kind and generous she hoped that this could be resolved in couples therapy. He was, however, completely unwilling to accept personal responsibility for his threats of violence, for the terrorizing nature of driving fast and recklessly with her as a passenger when he was angry with her, for throwing large objects in her direction when he felt aggravated with her, or for engaging in acts of self-mutilation such as head banging, or breaking objects.

Naturally, this was very frightening to her and although she loved him, she could find no way to control him in such explosive rages. During these times he believed that she was accusing him of being mad or bad. The only way that she could escape from the verbal and threatened abuse was to leave the scene. Yet her love and concern for him seemed to rivet her to the interaction. She was trying to relieve his distress and of course deal with her own terror. He merely experienced it as further provocation and an incitement to more and more psychotic behavior.

At their initial consultation I asked him if he was willing to agree not to be violent or to threaten violence with her again. His statement was “Of course I can do that–unless she provokes me.” What constitutes provocation in situations where one person is at the mercy of another physically or financially, is open to a great deal of interpretation. Victims are often kept in this position by the abuser telling them that they are paranoid, oversensitive, or lying (Dorfman, 1992). The secrecy that surrounds marital or physical and sexual child abuse makes it notoriously hard for the child or the injured spouse to be believed. Yet we now know that this is one of the most potent acts of healing to begin a journey back to personal empowerment (Miller, 1985 and 1979/1987). Blaming victims for their abuse at the hands of others is a collectively well-documented phenomenon, in the same way that children can be blamed or blame themselves for the fact that they were party to abusive situations (Caplan, 1985). A prisoner who refuses half rations of food, or objects to inhuman conditions, is often considered a troublemaker and a provocateur, only to be punished more violently if he or she complains of such treatment (Makhoere, 1988).

I asked the woman whether she was willing to call in the police next time he terrorized her. She was unwilling to do this knowing that he had a psychiatric history. Confronted with his unwillingness to offer his wife a basic sense of security, I refused to work with them as a couple. This was not only because it was an emotional victim/persecutor situation, but because she was actually in danger if he was so unwilling or unable to accept responsibility for his own violence. Her justifiable distress was exacerbated because of her loving concern not to expose his secret brutality at the expense of his professional reputation.

So any form of fascism where one person of a couple is enforcing through physical, financial, or emotional violence or threats of violence, the compliance of the other person constitutes for me an area of unacceptable, non-negotiable behavior. I do not think that couples work is appropriate at this level in many cases. What is more appropriate is to separate out the abused spouse/partner until he or she has reclaimed his or her basic human rights and can feel emotionally and financially like an equal human being. This is often impossible while they are still in a mutually self-reinforcing abusive system. Only when their basic human rights have been protected can threatened or abused individuals genuinely go into the arena of reclaiming their emotional and psychological equality.

Extreme cases, such as the ones mentioned above, are quite easy to recognize. Couples work where one gets habitually drunk and aggressive, whether it be on alcohol or jealousy, is notoriously difficult unless the co-dependency of the partner and their covert consent to their partner’s brutality is withdrawn. Often separate work with each of the partners is indicated (Dryden, 1985). There are less extreme examples of unacceptable behaviors which, I believe, must be articulated between couples, usually in the beginning stages of their relationship, if it is not to lead to explosive or embittered breakdowns later. Ideally, these pre-requirements would be discussed early on in the relationship so that each partner understood as clearly as possible what the other partner considered to be absolutely non-negotiable, or beyond the pale, ground for breakdown, and unforgivable.

People differ surprisingly as to what they consider to be unacceptable. For one person it may be lying (by commission or omission), for another it may be infidelity, for another it may be financial betrayal. This area is different for different people, and is often not the same for both partners in a couple. One may find casual sex forgivable but not a genuine, loving relationship with another person outside of the couple (whether platonic or otherwise). One person may find it easy to live with somebody who is unreliable and unpredictable about time or keeping their promises. For another person, violations of such contracts would constitute grounds for irreparable breakdown. Having unprotected sex with another person has now entered the unacceptable area for most couples, whereas invasion of privacy, such as reading your partner’s diary, or going through their private papers, might not be considered so unforgivable by some.

It is important to note that sometimes one spouse in a couple may accept the violation of their bodies, dignity, or autonomy early on in the relationship. They may even welcome or collude with abusive behavior, particularly if it is secret and confined to the privacy of the bedroom. However, when the abused spouse, for example, goes into psychotherapy and begins to experience and assert his or her basic human rights to freedom from physical threat and financial influence over their own lives, the other partner may experience this as extremely disturbing. The partner who is threatened with loss of control over the other may escalate threatening or abusive behavior. It may seem to them as if the original psychological level contract between them is failing. Their request to “Be the person that I married”–i.e., stop changing and becoming autonomous, is often based on fear of the threat of change, and a desperate wish to defend the lightness of precedent–however unfair it was.

The kind of couples therapy required in this category of difference is obviously radically different from that required for issues potentially harmful to life or property such as miscommunication, sexual adjustment, and differences about parenting. In extreme situations what is most important and most required may be education as to basic human freedoms, prisoners’ rights, legal or police protection, refuges, and so on.

Sometimes what is unacceptable to one partner is not concerned with a basic human right but is particular to their history, or their individual sensibilities. Veronica was sexually abused while being almost strangled as a child. When her breathing is restricted during lovemaking she gets very anxious. I believe that this kind of difference should not be labeled pathological because she finds it unacceptable. Whether or not the person has been traumatized in a particular fashion, an equal and respectful relationship must be based on concern and consideration for each other’s psychological lesions (Berne, 1980), belt lines (Bach & Goldberg, 1974/1983), and fears, whether or not they seem understandable or “reasonable” to the partner.

If something falls into the category of unacceptable behavior, we are discussing the pre-requirements for establishing a relationship, or the ground conditions for continuing a relationship; for example, “I will not stay with you if you continue drinking.” It is, therefore, more figural and emphasized towards the beginning or ending of relationships. If these issues are not resolved further, couples work may even cause damage. For example, continuing to work in couples therapy on communication styles when a woman’s life or economic freedom is endangered does not constitute good psychology. People are not free to take emotional risks, or to grow and develop in partnership, when their basic rights are threatened or denied. We are thus talking here about the essential pre-conditions for effective couples counseling; or to put it another way, if these issues are not resolved then the therapist may be colluding with cruelty or injustice at some level, since to remain neutral is to favor the aggressor in many such cases. Continuing without an agreed foundation, or with a wrongly assumed foundation to the relationship may also cause damage; and this is to be found both in the microcosm of couples relationships and also in the macrocosm of inter-racial and international issues, such as the current situation in South Africa.

I have been a voluntary exile from South Africa since after 1976 when black schoolchildren were being killed in increasing numbers for protesting against the injustices of the South African Bantu education system. Many black people rebelled against the infamous apartheid laws which attempted conformity by forcing them to be educated in a language not their own. They also rightfully resisted the attempt to make cultural and skin color differences the basis for their oppression and disenfranchizement. After the release of Mandela and the lifting of the state of emergency in 1990 I returned to work and to learn for a short while in the country of my birth. The heritage of injustice, cruelty and abuse over generations remains appalling. Recent changes are only somewhat ameliorating and do not reach to the heart of the abuses perpetrated over centuries. Notwithstanding appearances, people are still being tortured, still disenfranchised, still discriminated against. Yet, I found that the hope of change for the better is still possible as long as we can retain our empathy for others as human beings.

Unbelievably … there is an astonishing level of compassion, love and tolerance still left. They call it UBUNTU–which means fellow human feeling–and it is because of this that she still feels tremendous hope that the horrendous problems that are South Africa can progress towards peace. (Clarkson, 1990, p. 11)

It is important to separate non-negotiable from negotiable areas of work in couples therapy. It should not be negotiable to be treated with respect as a human being–t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Make Love Not War–Or at Least Make Meaning
• Prevention: Changing Our Whole Culture–An Interview with Virginia Satir
• Men/Women, War/Peace: A Systems Approach
• Metanoia: A Great Change of Heart
• We Have Failed
• There Is But One Love We Share
• Response to Margaret Kirschner’s Article: “There Is But One Love We Share”
• Blood and Oil
• Mirror of Madness
• Making Meaning: Living in a Both/And World
• Dilemmas of Difference: Differentiating Couples Therapy Issues for Intervention, Negotiation, Separation or Celebration
• “Talk to Me Like I’m Someone You Love”–Conflict Intervention for Real Life
• The Tasks and Traps of Relationships
• Response to Lawrence Maltin and Joan D. Atwood’s Article: “The Tasks and Traps of Relationships”
• Couples Therapy from a Systems Perspective
• Comment–Response to Dorothy S. Becvar and Raphael J. Becvar’s Article: “Couples Therapy from a Systems Perspective”
• WHAT OUGHT TO BE THE RESPONSIBLE PSYCHOTHERAPIST’S ATTITUDE RELATIVE TO WAR?