Family Of Origin Therapy And Cultural Diversity

H. Russell Searight

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317763369
• Subtopic: Ethnopsychology
• Index: Psychology

This text explores family of origin treatment, which looks at patterns and rules in a family which affect interactions within that family. These patterns are then unconsciously utilized throughout a person's life in work and family settings. Examining and understanding these family rules allows an emphasis on cultural diversity. The family is often the basis for ethnic, cultural and religious norms. Examining these norms can help the individuals and their families deal with norms and variations from these norms, when confronting issues such as marriage and intimacy, sexual orientation and religious belief.

Part One
Introduction and Description

Chapter 1
Family-of-Origin Therapy: An Overview

Nearly everyone was raised and influenced by a family of one type or other. Family experience is carried over multiple generations and becomes a Weltanschaungen or worldview—a set of unspoken, largely unlabeled assumptions about the nature of relationships. Because these patterns were communicated from birth, they were present before language developed. Unlabeled experience is typically uncritically internalized. Dimensions of daily life such as the acceptability of emotional expression, closeness versus distance with friends or acquaintances, and style of handling crises are all shaped by multigenerational family history.

These patterns typically exist outside of awareness until a rule is broken. An analogy is riding an elevator. No one is ever formally taught the rules or etiquette for riding an elevator, one simply gets on, pushes the button for the correct floor, and thinks little about it. However, there are implicit rules for elevator riders. To see the rules, do the following: Rather than quietly standing side by side with fellow elevator riders, turn around and face them. The reaction will be one of extreme discomfort.

Family rules have the same power to shape conformity. Many people begin to be aware that their family's way may not be the only way during adolescence, when they start having more contact with peers and their families. Assumptions about the way the world is are likely to be challenged when it is learned that many families yell, scream, and carry on acrimoniously with one another but still seem very happy together or that a messy home does not mean that a friend is lazy. These implicit rules are more sharply challenged when significant relationships are developed in adulthood. Fundamental views about emotion, conflict, work, or gender may undergo upheaval as one becomes increasingly close to someone who operates from a different assumptive world. McGoldrick (1995) pointed out that rapid social change has moved many people out of insulated homogeneous family enclaves and into new social arenas that may readily challenge prevailing family rules. Changing gender roles, increased mobility, and the reduced influence of centuries-old religious traditions, as well as a rise in new family forms, make many individuals acutely aware of the clash between their assumptions about social life and the relationships that they actually experience. Another dimension that has contributed to this sense of upheaval is the acceleration of social change. Current events, music, politics, and the arts change at a dizzying pace. Former Vice President Quayle's quest for family values seems to reflect a reaction to the challenges of social and relationship changes and a wish to return to a supposedly traditional, more homogeneous lifestyle.

Family-of-origin therapy focuses on the patterns that are carried from early family experience and translated into adult experiences such as marriage or raising children. The goal of family-of-origin therapy is to help clients understand the rules, relationship patterns, and behaviors that arose in their own family development. Equipped with this knowledge, clients may alter the unproductive, emotionally trying, and repetitive sequences that occur in their current relationships.

Overview of Basic Theoretical Concepts

Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist, is usually seen as the founder of family-of-origin therapy. A major theme that runs through Bowen's theory is that of counterbalancing forces. Bowen, in contrast to strategic therapists such as Haley (1976) or structural therapists such as Minuchin (1974), emphasized the individual against a backdrop of family processes. Changes occur within the individual. As a result of those intrapsychic and corresponding behavioral alterations, systemic change follows. Bowen (1978) described two sets of forces, which fluctuate in their importance throughout development. One pair of forces centers around individuality versus togetherness, and the other set of forces involves intellectual versus emotional functioning. The individuality–togetherness dimension centers around a striving for independence, autonomy, and one's own identity on the one hand versus a strong need to be socially connected with others on the other hand. The intellectual versus emotional dimension centers around operating cognitively and choicefully versus being emotionally determined and immediately reactive. Bowen argued that the psychologically healthy person can maintain these two types of functioning as distinct but may also choose to operate on an intellectual, objective basis or an emotional, subjective basis. When these two systems are not separate, the element of choicefulness is lost, and behavior automatically becomes emotionally determined. When behavior becomes emotionally determined, it frequently centers around a reaction to others. People become overresponsive to others' behavior.

For example, consider a therapist working in a community agency who experiences a conflict with a supervisor or colleague at work. The conflict may be so emotionally disruptive that it becomes impossible for the therapist to give full attention to clients the rest of the day. When the therapist goes home that evening, he or she spends an hour or two rehearsing the event with a significant other and then has difficulty falling asleep because of ruminating about the conflict. In situations like this, the reaction to the colleague or supervisor has disrupted the therapist's sense of choicefulness, and his or her behavior becomes emotionally determined. In a very real sense, the supervisor or colleague comes home with the therapist and disrupts his or her emotional as well as social life.

Emotional—Intellectual Polarity

Bowen's (1978) emotional system is a shared phylogenetic structure with nonhuman organisms. Subcortical structures such as the limbic system are shared with nonhuman animals and are involved with basic instinctive reactions (e.g., fleeing, fighting, feeding, and mating; Carlson, 1981). Emotional forces are automatic reactions—the immediate panic when a parent sees her 2-year-old in the middle of a busy street or the angry helplessness of watching a large truck back into one's parked car. As posited in classical Freudian theory, anxiety becomes aroused under conditions of perceived threat. At these times, the emotional system takes over and supersedes intellectual functioning.

In contrast, the intellectual system operates in a planful, goal-directed manner. Persons who have ready access to their intellectual system are focused, experience themselves as being choiceful in their daily activities, and do not become readily frazzled by external crises or distractions. An adult's ability to return to writing a report after answering the phone and hearing that the water pipes in his or her basement have just burst is an example of the relative influence of the intellectual system. Bowen has been misunderstood at times as viewing the emotional system as innately inferior to the intellectual system. Feminist family therapists, in particular, have been critical of this perspective (Luepnitz, 1988). It is more accurate to say that Bowen (1978) viewed the intellectual system as one that enables individuals to choose to be emotionally focused or to be cognitively focused and goal directed. The intellectual system is similar to meta-cognitive processes such as self-monitoring. Thus, there are times in which persons may choicefully be emotionally governed, such as during a romantic moment, listening to a symphony, or gazing out on a snowfall.

A third component, to which Bowen (1978) gave significantly less attention, is the feeling system. The feeling system centers around affective states that are conscious and usually labeled (Knudson-Martin, 1994). Bowen did not develop the role of the feeling system in his theory. Critics have argued that the feeling system may actually be a more appropriate pole against which to juxtapose the intellectual system (Knudson-Martin, 1994) than the more visceral, unlabeled emotional system.

Individuality—Togetherness Polarity

The other key duality in Bowen's (1978) theory is the force for togetherness and the complementary drive toward autonomy. The togetherness force is also, to some extent, biologically based. Papero (1990) noted that primates such as chimpanzees tend to live in groups. At the same time, there is a counterbalancing force toward personal independence and self-sufficiency. Developmentally, these forces are particularly evident in early adolescence. The young teenager will, within the span of minutes, shift from childlike dependency on parents to a strong need for personal privacy and space.

Differentiation

The emotional–intellectual and togetherness–separateness forces become integrated through the concept of differentiation. Differentiation refers to one's ability to maintain cognitive and emotional independence in the face of strong togetherness forces.

People whose functioning tends to be dominated by emotion are described as having a low level of basic differentiation between the emotional and intellectual systems. Those who can maintain this distinction—particularly in emotionally intense situations—have a high degree of basic differentiation. The greater the degree of fusion, or absence of this differentiation, the greater the influence of the togetherness force on the individual's functioning. When the togetherness force is particularly strong, there are several common results: poorly defined boundaries between the self and other, emotional reactivity to what others say and do, and an experience of being pressured to think and act in ways specified by others (Bowen, 1978).

This upsurge in reactivity is, in effect, an anxiety-management strategy. In work situations, this interplay can be observed when a coworker is suddenly fired. The tension will be managed through intense, repetitive, and anxiety-driven interactions among employees. For several days, the amount of social activity and processing of the event will prevent much work from being accomplished. Groups of employees will be huddled about as they anxiously share and reshare the information and rumors they have heard.

In families, this lack of differentiation emerges through reactivity to one another. Family members emotionally and automatically respond to one another's behavior. Everyday language suggests support for Bowen's (1978) view that human beings often experience themselves as controlled by significant others ("She drove him to drink," "My kids drive me crazy," "My husband's depression is bringing the whole family down"). Another aspect of undifferentiation is the tendency to predict or anticipate what others want from us and to shape our behavior accordingly.

As he did with the emotional system, Bowen (1978) linked the concept of differentiation to humans' phylogenetic heritage. One body of research cited by Papero (1990) is Calhoun's (1962) "behavioral sink." Calhoun found that increased density of rats in a colony resulted in deteriorated social functioning. Rats who were less physiologically stable exhibited more fighting and were less reproductively successful. At the higher end of population density, the more physiologically stable rats began to exhibit behavioral difficulties. Calhoun's work demonstrates how emotional reactions are related to external social forces. The rats, in a sense, became increasingly reactive. Even those rats with less physiological loading for social reactivity exhibited behavioral changes when the population density increased. Thus, differentiation is, in part, based in the biologically based emotional system and its relative influence on behavior under external stress.

In human systems, well-differentiated persons are able to maintain the intellectual and emotional systems as distinct even under relatively intense social demands. These individuals are able to engage in close intimate relationships while maintaining a clear sense of personal identity and goals. Behavior is not determined by the other party. Bowen (1978) assumed that a person's basic level of differentiation is similar to the concept of early childhood temperament and is constitutionally determined early in life. However, although persons may vary in their innate reactivity, this predisposition may be altered through planful effort and overt behavioral change.

Triangulation

Bowen's (1978) theory, up until this point, was largely intrapsychic. However, with the concept of triangles, Bowen linked intrapsychic concepts such as differentiation to interpersonal interactions. At the dyadic level, he proposed, persons tend to seek out and develop relationships with persons exhibiting similar levels of differentiation. As a result, the dyad may be characterized by surges in anxiety and tension associated with reactivity when individual-level boundaries are poorly defined or maintained. When anxiety exceeds a critical point in one dyad member, a third party may be brought into the relationship. This temporarily reduces tension in a two-person relationship, such as a marriage. For example, Whitaker and Bumberry (1987) argued that a common unlabeled conflict in many marriages is the wife's desire for emotional intimacy and the husband's inability to provide it—a pattern they described as "hopeful women and hopeless men." Because of the unstable nature of this process, which stems from unmet emotional needs, a child may be brought into the relationship. The child's presence often has an initial calming effect on the marital dyad. The husband, who is aware of the tension with his wife but often unaware of its meaning, is typically initially relieved by her involvement with the child. The mother may experience emotional connectedness with the child, thus reducing her need and therefore her efforts to engage her husband. This pattern may persist until the child moves toward independence—either in a small way such as beginning school or in a big way such as leaving home in early adulthood. The mother's differentiation level will be an important determining factor in whether larger or smaller moves toward independence evoke anxiety. Thus, the child's beginning elementary school may make the triangle unstable and either provoke a return to the former pattern of the wife as pursuer after her husband or stimulate a renewed effort on the wife's part to reengage the child. In this process, the wife may develop somatic or psychological symptoms, which functionally serve to elicit caretaking by the child or husband (or both). Although the above pattern is probably one of the most common ways of managing dyadic tension, Bowen (1978) also described several other resolutions.

Other Forms of Dyadic Tension

In response to dissatisfaction around unmet individual needs, couples may also exhibit increased marital conflict. This is a situation encountered by many marital therapists. Conflict may oscillate with intense togetherness ("The best part of breaking up is making up"). One clue that underlying historical issues are being enacted is that the couple seems to be fighting intensely over relatively superficial issues. Conflicts over such things as who takes out the garbage or who feeds the cat that appear to have incredible emotional energy surrounding them are likely to represent underlying conflicts around individuality and separateness. In these situations, the couple is likely to view negotiation as a major threat to their individuality. So rather than having a fight about who takes out the garbage, the couple is in essence really having a fight about whether or not one party controls the relationship and the accompanying struggle for independence. The strong reactivity that the spouses exhibit toward one another is indicative of poor levels of individual differentiation. The endless bickering and sarcasm also reflects the strong emotional pull for closeness while simultaneously indicating the accompanying anxiety associated with intimacy. Bowen (1978) argued that the more effectively this tension can be managed within the marital dyad, the less likely it is to adversely affect any children in the home. Parents who are anxious about the impact of this conflict on their children often overcompensate through overinvolvement or have difficulty being objective as a parent. For example, a father who worries excessively about how marital conflict may be influencing his adolescent daughter may go easy on her and not set behavioral limits. Although the father's intent is to compensate for the adverse effects of his marital conflict, the result will likely engender greater anxiety for the teenager because of the absence of limits and structure.

Another common pattern is one in which one partner absorbs the distress; the relationship may become patterned around an overfunctioning and an underfunctioning partner. One partner may readily take on the patient role. In addition to psychiatric disorders such as major depression, panic disorder, or substance abuse, this patient role may also include physical problems in which there is a psychological component, such as migraine headaches or lower back pain. Haley (1976) noted that physical distress can be seen as a metaphor for the relationship. "I have a headache" is often a way of communicating that "This is a painful relationship." Although symptomatology may remain solely in one spouse, one variation on this pattern occurs when there is fluctuation between spouses around who is sick and who is well. Another variation is one of symmetrical escalation—each partner competes with the other for the title of sickest. A diabetic woman may require hospitalization when her blood sugars are out of control. In response, the husband's low back pain may flare up, requiring sedation and bed rest. Each spouse is managing anxiety about their dependency needs not being met by upping the sickness ante and becoming more symptomatic. These processes are usually not conscious and are somatic representations of the emotional system.

A third mechanism for managing anxiety is emotional distancing. In U.S. society, men are particularly prone to relying on this mechanism. Emotional disengagement and social distancing often emanate from intense fears of dependency and interpersonal engulfment. Although the apparent source of di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part One Introduction and Description
• Part Two Integration of Family-of-Origin Therapy with Diversity
• References
• Index