Semantic Polarities and Psychopathologies in the Family

Permitted and Forbidden Stories

Valeria Ugazio

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135906764
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychopathology
• Index: Psychology

The gap between psychotherapeutic practice and clinical theory is ever widening. Therapists still don't know what role interpersonal relations play in the development of the most common psychopathologies. Valeria Ugazio bridges this gap by examining phobias, obsessive-compulsions, eating disorders, and depression in the context of the family, using an intersubjective approach to personality. Her concept of "semantic polarities" gives a groundbreaking perspective to the construction of meaning in the family and other interpersonal contexts. At no point is theory left in the wasteland of abstraction. The concreteness of the many case studies recounted, and examples taken from well-known novels, will allow readers to immediately connect the topics discussed with their own experience.

Part I

THE THEORETICAL MODEL

2

FAMILY SEMANTIC POLARITIES

Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other the Devouring. To the Devourer, it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole.

But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer, as a sea, received the excess of his delights.

(…)

These two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies: who ever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence.

William Blake,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

2.1 A Conversational Definition

The family is a “co-positioning” of differences. Within a single group there is a confrontation between individuals who are so diverse that it often seems, to use Blake's words, they should be enemies.

Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov is a classic example. Mitya, like his father Fyodor Pavlovich, is sensual, full of a lust for life. Alesa is a saint. Ivan, the enigmatic protagonist of Dostoyevsky's masterpiece, is in the middle: his heart is noble, touched by the suffering of the world, but he is capable of wickedness. He needs to believe in something in order to live, but cannot do so. Pride and arrogance lead him to the abyss of nihilism until he becomes morally responsible for the murder of his father.

And what about the grim family business in Dickens’ Dombey and Son (1848)? It is hard to imagine greater differences than those that set the main character against his two children. Dombey is arid, insensitive, fiercely strong-willed. Paul, the expected heir of Dombey and Son, has an autumnal temperament. Crushed and overwhelmed by a series of illnesses that afflict him one after the other, Paul seems to have had no other wish than to rejoin his late mother. Long before depriving the family firm of its male heir through his early death, Paul is as much an alien to his strong-willed father as his sister Florence. The kindness, charity, and devotion that Florence continues to give her father, despite the abuse she receives, make her just as much of a stranger to Dombey.

Many married couples are polar opposites, but Christina Stead's couple, the Pollits (in her novel The Man Who Loved Children 1940/1979), are something else: their opposition goes to the very root of their relationship. Conversation after conversation, episode after episode, we watch impotently, amazed and open-mouthed, as do their many children, at the frightening abyss separating Sam and Henny. When we meet them, they have already spent years waging a civil war that has produced devastation. But Sam's blue eyes, along with his idealism, still brighten the family setting, just as Henny with her mass of raven black hair and powerful theatrical scenes infuses dramatic pathos into their home. As the family gradually slides into degradation and misery, Sam's idealism turns into a hypocritical denial of reality and the scenes where Henny spews out everything become grotesque. He takes refuge in the company of his brats, who he keeps madly begetting to avoid facing reality, while she pushes her nose ever deeper into the garbage of the world. When tragedy arrives it is a liberation for everyone, for over ten years we have seen their two worlds move not one single step closer to each other: they remain poles apart from beginning to end.

The actors placed on stage by these fictional families are profoundly different, as are the meanings interwoven into the narratives. Naked power, the will to dominate, episodes of submission, humiliation and class pride dominate the stage in Dombey and Son. For the Karamazovs, it is good and evil, guilt and innocence, that drive the central episodes of the novel until Ivan is led to accuse himself of a parricide he has not committed. Events in the Pollit family are no less dramatic than those affecting the Karamazovs. Louie, Sam's daughter by his first marriage, would have more reason than Ivan Karamazov to accuse herself of her stepmother's death. But the only time she does so, all she wants is to force Sam to face reality, just as Henny had done. In this novel there is no trace of guilt. The help that Louie gives her stepmother to get her out of her plight is a painful gesture, an act of compassion. Henny only wants to be free from herself. Her game is over and we have all had enough of her scenes, of watching her shame, her ravings and her threats. Commiseration and contempt, sadness and jollity, are the dominant emotions of Stead's novel.

The Karamazovs, the Pollits, and the Dombeys belong to different cultures and historical periods, so it comes as no surprise that they each have different significances and that even the same events should produce different emotions. The families I meet in clinical practice all live in the same period of time, they often come from the same background, and yet they are each different from the other. Those things that one whole family fights, rejoices or despairs over are entirely irrelevant for another. Meanings and feelings change from one family to the next. Equally frequent are the polar differences that place the various members of a family into conflict with one another. I have often come across a sensitive, cerebral child with athletic, down-to-earth parents, or an active, dynamic wife with a thoughtful, gloomy husband. I often meet siblings who are opposites: one with many intellectual pursuits, the other interested only in football and girls; a loyal sister who is so frank as to be tactless, with a brother who is diplomatic or even a skillful liar.

I have found myself reflecting on these differences within families and between families, particularly when practicing family therapy. Patients in individual therapy also talk about wives, siblings or parents who are sometimes profoundly different from themselves, but their stories are narrated accounts. It is quite a different matter to have parents and children, siblings, husbands and wives physically there in front of you. Their differences stand out and strike you. I am therefore surprised that the literature describing the practice of family therapy has so often focused, from the very beginning, on holistic concepts such as the family myth or paradigm (Anderson & Bagarozzi, 1989; Andolfi, Angelo, & De Nichilo, 1989; Ferreira, 1963, 1966; Reiss, 1981) that give us a monolithic vision of families. These concepts are capable of showing the similarities between the various members of each family—similarities which certainly exist—but they ignore the perhaps greater differences within families, as extensive studies on siblings has shown. “Children raised in the same family—researchers agree—are more often different from one another than they are similar” (Walsh, 2003, p. 618). And it is the very fact of living in the same family that makes siblings different rather than similar, a surprising discovery as it alters the perspective that has traditionally been applied to the family's influence on development.

The concept of semantic polarities to which this chapter is devoted offers an explanation of this unexpected finding. It provides a constructionist approach to meaning that captures the differences as well as the similarities inside the family as in any other group.

According to this concept, conversation within the family, as in every group with a history, is organized between opposing polarities of meaning such as just/unjust, good/bad, closed/open, attractive/repugnant. This follows the idea—an ancient one as we shall see—that meaning is constructed through opposing polarities, applying to it a constructionist approach, whose background is the Positioning Theory of Harré and colleagues (Harré & Moghaddam, 2003; Harré et al., 2009; Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999).

Polarities are not considered as something in the mind of each individual, but as a discursive phenomenon. These are identified with certain qualities of conversation. Let us now examine three of these.

1) A Shared Plot of Semantic Polarities

Each member of the family constructs conversation within certain specific semantic polarities made prevalent by the discursive practices of that family. Those polarities form a kind of shared plot that generates specific narratives and storylines.

Polarities define what is relevant to each group. They indicate, in the face of the incessant and multiform flow of experience, what will be constructed through joint action as an episode, the minimum unit in which the discourse is articulated (Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999).

One family, like any other intersubjective context, acquires its own identity and specific nature insofar as those who belong to it construct the episodes through which conversation is articulated in a different way from other families. Within each family only certain semantic polarities present in the cultural context prove to be salient. Naturally, everyone understands the main meanings constructed by people in their own culture, even if it is an abstract understanding. In fact, each person is able to interact only within discursive practices that present at least some semantic polarities already experienced in their own relational contexts.

In short, a family is a family inasmuch as those belonging to it have a shared plot, formed by a certain number of semantic polarities and by the narratives that these polarities feed. The similarity between members of the family is limited to this sharing of a plot of semantic polarities which is derived from the conversational history of the family. This plot circumscribes the repertory of narratives and storylines within which the episodes will be constructed.

2) Inevitable Positioning

All members of a family, as in the case of any other group with a history, must necessarily take a position inside the relevant polarities within their group.

Here one of the key hypotheses of Positioning Theory is applied to the concept of semantic polarities, according to which we inevitably find ourselves taking a position in the conversation. This hypothesis recalls a well-known axiom of the Pragmatics of Human Communication (Watzlawick, Beavin, & Jackson, 1967): the impossibility of not defining the relationship.¹ Taking a position is a two-way process:

Whenever somebody positions him/herself, this discursive act always implies a positioning of the one to whom it is addressed. And similarly, when somebody positions somebody else, that always implies a position of the person him/herself. In any discursive practice, positioning constitutes the initiator and the others in a certain way, and at the same time it is a resource through which all persons involved can negotiate new positions.

(Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999, p. 22)

This discursive practice is not semantically empty: people always take a position in relation to some meaning present in the conversation. I will be able to feel and behave as someone who is “full of energy” only if the polarity “full/lack of energy” is relevant to the context in which I am (or have been) a part; otherwise I will experience other emotions and feelings. Even if my conduct might resemble that of someone who appears to be full of energy, I will feel “curious” or “lively” in a situation where, as well as those who are similar to me, there are others who are “apathetic” or “sad.”

In short, positioning does not occur within unpredictable meanings. On the contrary, this process takes place within a repertory of meanings that is pre-defined, though flexible and changeable. Conversational partners position themselves and are positioned within the semantic polarities that appear relevant in a given moment in a specific context, as a result of the discursive practices of their own families (and other groups to which they belong or have belonged). Naturally, the relevance the conversation assigns to each semantic polarity is continually negotiated. In the same way the possibility of the conversation developing new meaning is always open. The whole process is spontaneous and to a great extent unintentional.

3) Semantic Polarities and the Interdependence of Multiple Selves

Conversational partners, positioning themselves with others into the plot of semantic polarities relevant to their own intersubjective contexts, anchor their own identity to those of the other members of those groups. Shared subjectivities are consequently assured by the polar structure of meaning. Moreover, in all families (as in all other conversational contexts), more than one polarity is relevant, so that the number of selves become as many as the positions generated by each polarity.

This property of conversation ensures that the organization of meaning according to opposing polarities creates an interdependence between the identities of the members of the family, as with any other relational context with a history. Individuals, co-positioning themselves into the relevant semantic polarities of the social groups to which they belong, assume a specific position within the shared narrative plot: they can position themselves as “just,” “loyal,” “reserved,” but in order to occupy these positions others will have to position themselves as “unjust,” “untrustworthy,” “theatrical.” The identity of each partner thus crucially depends upon how many people, occupying different positions, allow the existence and continuity of discursive practices that generate the meanings on which his/her identity is built. That is why, when someone in therapy tells me: “I am a good person,” I immediately ask: “Who is the bad one in your family?”

I use the term identity to refer to two fundamental aspects of the self that express both its singularity as well as its multiplicity. In accordance with the Positioning Theory, singularity is experienced subjectively “as a continuity of our point of view” and expressed in conversation through the use of such discursive mechanisms as the first person. Multiplicity, on the other hand, is ensured by the variety of positions occupied by the conversational partners. Each person is thus a single self but also a “plurality of persons” (Harré & Van Langenhove, 1999), at least as many as the relevant semantic polarities within his/her relational contexts.

If, for example, the polarity “intelligent/dim-witted” is relevant in a family—in other words, if it constitutes a semantic dimension around which conversation is organized—the members of this family will position themselves with people who are intelligent or very intelligent but will also be surrounded by people of limited intelligence or who are actually dim-witted. They will marry people who are intelligent, bright, stupid or clueless. They will strive to become intellectually brilliant or will help those who are unfortunately less bright to become so. They will fight and compete to ensure that their intellectual abilities are recognized, they will end marriages and friendships or, alternatively, develop new relationships when intellectual problems arise. Some members of the family will be intellectually brilliant, or regarded as such, while others will prove to be intellectually lacking. One thing is certain: everyone in this family will have to “co-position themselves” into the polar dimension in question and each member, in order to maintain their own identity, will have need of those positioned at other points in this semantic dimension.

In other families, though belonging to the same cultural background, the semantic dimension “intelligent/dim-witted” will be irrelevant and the conversation will be organized instead around episodes, for example, in which the theme of “giving and taking” is central. These people will “position themselves” at work, socially, in their private life, with people who are generous, very generous, and in some cases lavish or, on the contrary, with selfish, mean people. They will form friendships and fall in love with people capable of giving and being altruistic. They will end relationships and friendships when they realize they are being exploited by people who they had trusted or when they realize their partners or friends are concealing an underlying selfishness. Their children will be generous, sometimes even too disinterested in themselves and their own interests or, on the contrary, capable only of taking. They will suffer for the prodigality of some people and the incapacity of others to take into account the needs and rights of others. Conflicts, relationships, alliances, break-ups, and reconciliations will all be played out around problems of “giving and taking.” In reconstructing the history of these families, there will certainly be people who are admired for their generosity, while others will be ruined by their prodigality, as well as perhaps someone who was driven by selfishness towards acts of cruelty and those who, thanks to their avarice and greed, have built up fortunes. One thing is certain: all members of these families will position themselves according to the polarity of generosity/selfishness.

In other families different polarities are relevant, and all families have more than one relevant polarity. For this reason, the organization of meaning into opposing polarities, besides making identities interdependent, guarantees the multiplicity of the self.

I will be examining other aspects of the concept of family semantic polarities below, but two points should be clarified straightway.

First, the organization of meaning into opposing polarities, as set out above, guarantees, from the outset, “intersubjectivity,”² in other words, a community of intercon...