Journeys in Psychoanalysis

The selected works of Elizabeth Spillius

Elizabeth Spillius

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317518525
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Spanning six decades, this collection, Journeys in Psychoanalysis: The selected works of Elizabeth Spillius, traces the arc of her career from anthropology and entering psychoanalysis 'almost by accident', to becoming one of her generation's leading scholars of Melanie Klein.

Born in 1924 in Ontario, Canada, Elizabeth arrived at the London School of Economics for postgraduate studies in the 1950s and soon embarked on a groundbreaking study of family life in the East End of London that produced a PhD and her first book, Family and Social Network, under her maiden name Elizabeth Bott. Published by the Tavistock Institute in 1957, it remains one of the most influential works published on the sociology of the family.

These papers are a testament to the luminous intellect and understated compassion that Elizabeth has always brought to her work. They vividly map not just the evolution of Elizabeth's career but the development of Melanie Klein's thought, often drawing in compelling fashion on the writer's own experiences with her patients. Each is written with the clarity and concision that makes difficult concepts eminently comprehensible to psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists and laymen alike.

CHAPTER 1

CONJUGAL ROLES AND SOCIAL NETWORKS¹

The original version of this chapter was published in Human Relations, vol. 8: 345–384, 1955. It was reprinted in a shortened version in Eric Trist and Hugh Murray (eds), 1990, The Social Engagement of Social Science, Volume 1 – The Socio-Psychological Perspective, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, USA, pp. 323–350.

This paper will give an account of the sociological results of an intensive interdisciplinary study of 20 London families. It will be confined to one problem: how to interpret the variations occurring in the way husbands and wives performed their conjugal roles.

A joint conjugal role-relationship is one in which husband and wife carry out many activities together, with a minimum of task differentiation and separation of interests. Husband and wife not only plan the affairs of the family together, but also exchange many household tasks and spend much of their leisure time together. A segregated conjugal role-relationship is one in which husband and wife have a clear differentiation of tasks and a considerable number of separate interests and activities; they have a division of labour into male tasks and female tasks; they expect to have different leisure pursuits; both have their own friends outside the home. Yet these are only differences of degree. All families must have some division of labour between husband and wife; all families must have some joint activities.

Early in the research, it seemed likely that these differences in segregation of roles were related to forces in the social environment and an effort was made to explain them in terms of social class. This attempt was not very successful. Most husbands in joint conjugal role-relationships were professionals, but there were several working-class families that had relatively little segregation and several professional families in which segregation of roles was considerable. An attempt was also made to relate degree of segregation to the type of local area in which the family lived, since the families with most segregation lived in homogeneous areas of low population turnover, whereas those with predominantly joint role-relationships lived in heterogeneous areas of high population turnover. Once again, there were several exceptions. But there was a more important difficulty in these attempts to correlate segregation of conjugal roles with class position and type of local area. The research was not designed to produce valid statistical correlations. Our aim was to study the interrelation of various social and psychological factors within each family considered as a social system. Attempts at rudimentary statistical correlation did not make clear how one factor affected another. Attempts to correlate segregation of conjugal roles with factors selected from the generalised social environment of the family did not yield a meaningful interpretation. I turned to look more closely at the immediate environment of the families, that is, at their external relationships with friends, neighbours, relatives, clubs, shops, places of work, etc. This approach proved to be more fruitful.

The external social relationships of all families appeared to assume the form of a network rather than an organised group. In an organised group, the component individuals make up a larger social whole with common aims, interdependent roles and a distinctive sub-culture. In network formation some but not all of the component individuals have social relationships with one another. They do not form an organised group and the component external units do not make up a larger social whole; they are not surrounded by a common boundary.

Although all the research families belonged to networks rather than to groups, there was considerable variation in the connectedness of these networks. By ‘connectedness’ I mean the extent to which the people known by a family know one another independently of the family. I use the term ‘dispersed network’ to describe a network in which there are few relationships amongst the component units, and the term ‘highly connected network’ to describe a network in which there are many such relationships.

A detailed examination of the research data reveals that the degree of segregation of conjugal roles is related to the degree of network connectedness. Those families with a high degree of segregation in role-relationships had a highly connected network; many of their friends, neighbours and relatives knew one another. Families with a relatively joint role-relationship between husband and wife had a ‘dispersed’ network; few of their relatives, neighbours and friends knew one another. There were many degrees of variation between these two extremes. On the basis of our data, I should therefore like to put forward the following hypothesis: the degree of segregation in the role-relationship of husband and wife varies directly with the connectedness of the family’s social network. The more connected the network, the more segregation between the roles of husband and wife. The more dispersed the network, the less segregation between the roles of husband and wife.

If one is to understand segregation of conjugal roles, one should examine the effect of the family’s immediate social environment of friends, neighbours, relatives and institutions. The question remains, however, as to why some families should have highly connected networks whereas others have dispersed networks. In part, network connectedness depends on the family themselves. One family may choose to introduce their friends, neighbours and relatives to one another, whereas another may not. One family may move around a great deal so that its network becomes dispersed, whereas another family may stay put. But these choices are limited and shaped by a number of forces over which the family does not have direct control. At this point the total social environment becomes relevant. The economic and occupational system, the structure of formal institutions, the ecology of cities and many other factors affect the connectedness of networks, and limit and shape the decisions that families make. Factors associated with social class and neighbourhood composition affect segregation of conjugal roles through direct action on the internal structure of the family, but indirectly through their effects on its network. Conceptually, the network stands between the family and the total social environment. The connectedness of a family’s network depends, on the one hand, on certain forces in the total environment and, on the other, on the personalities of the members of the family and on the way they react to these forces.

Methods of collecting data²

Although this paper will be devoted primarily to discussion of the effect of external social relationships on the role-relationship of husband and wife, the research as a whole was designed to investigate families not only sociologically but also psychologically. The research techniques accordingly consisted of a combination of the field-work method of the social anthropologist, in which the group under investigation is studied as a working whole in its natural habitat in so far as this is possible, and the case-study method in which individuals are studied by clinical interviews. No attempt was made to use statistical procedures.

The families studied were ‘ordinary’, in the sense that they did not come to us for help with personal or familial problems, and they were usually able to cope themselves with such difficulties as they had. We sought them out, they did not come to us. In order to simplify the task for comparison, only families with young children were selected. In order further to restrict the number of variables, only English families of Protestant background were selected. All 20 families lived in London or Greater London, but they were scattered all over the area and did not form an organised group. Although the families resembled one another in phase of marriage and in national and religious background, they varied considerably in occupation and in socio-economic status; the net incomes of the husbands after tax ranged from £325 to £1,500 (at 1953 values).

Much difficulty was encountered in contacting suitable families, and the effort to find them taught us a good deal about the way families are related to other social groups. The 20 families were eventually contacted through the officials of various service institutions, such as doctors, hospitals, schools, local political parties and through friends of the family. Introductions were most successful when the contact person was well known and trusted by both husband and wife, and the most satisfactory channel of contact was through friends of the family.

After the contact person had told a prospective family about the research and had got their agreement to an explanatory interview by one of the research staff, one of the field workers visited the family at their home to describe what the research was about and what it would involve for the family. The field worker explained the background of the research, the content of the interviews, and the time they would take, and made it clear that the family could withdraw at any time, that the material would be treated with professional discretion and that if we wished to publish any confidential material that might reveal the couple’s identity, we should consult them beforehand. The research staff also undertook to pay any expenses that the couple might incur as a result of the investigation. Although the provisional and explanatory nature of the first interview was always emphasised, we found that most of the couples who got that far had usually decided to take part in the research before they met the field worker, chiefly on the basis of what the contact person had told them. We have no systematic information about couples who were consulted but decided not to participate.

After a family had agreed to take part, the field worker paid several visits to them at home in the evening for joint interviews with the husband and wife. He or she also went at least once on the week-end to meet the children and observe the whole family together. There were thirteen home interviews on the average, the range being from eight to nineteen. Each home interview began with half an hour of casual chatting followed by more focussed discussions on particular topics during which notes were taken. The topics discussed were kinship, family background and personal history until marriage; the first phase of the family from marriage until the birth of the first child; an account of family life at the time of interviewing, including a daily, weekly and yearly diary; a description of external social relationships with service institutions such as schools, church, clinic, doctor, with voluntary associations and recreational institutions, and more informal relationships with friends, neighbours and relatives; an account of the division of labour between husband and wife in overall planning, in the economic support of the family, in domestic tasks and in child care; and finally, questions about values and ideology concerning family life, social class, money and financial management, and general political, social and religious matters. These topics were used as a general guide by the field worker; their order and the form of questioning were left to our discretion. Usually he or she raised a topic, and the couple carried on the discussion themselves with occasional additional questions. The discussion frequently wandered away from the assigned topic, but little attempt was made to restrict such digressions, since all the behaviour of husband and wife towards one another and towards the field worker was held to be significant data. In addition to the interviews with the 20 families, discussions about families in general were held with various persons, particularly doctors, who had considerable knowledge of family life. Discussions were also held with various organised groups such as Community Centres and Townswomen’s Guilds. These groups had no direct connection with the families we interviewed, and in most cases they were composed of considerably older people, usually women. These discussions were therefore not directly relevant to the analysis of the research families, but they provided useful information on the norms of family life. In a public, group situation, especially one which lasts for only one session, people seem much more willing to talk about norms than to discuss their actual behaviour.

Classification of families

If families are classified according to the extremes of the two dimensions of conjugal role-segregation and network connectedness, four patterns are logically possible: segregated conjugal role-relationship associated with a highly connected network; segregated conjugal role-relationship associated with a dispersed network; joint conjugal role-relationship associated with a highly connected network; and joint conjugal role-relationship associated with a dispersed network. Empirically, two of these patterns, the second and third, did not occur. There were no families in which a highly segregated conjugal role-relationship was associated with a dispersed network; there were no families in which a joint conjugal role-relationship was associated with a highly connected network.

Six of the research families were clustered in the first and fourth patterns. There was one family that conformed to the first pattern, a high degree of conjugal role-segregation combined with a highly connected network. There were five families that conformed to the fourth pattern, a joint conjugal role-relationship associated with a dispersed network. These six families represent the extremes of the research set. There were nine families that were intermediate in degree of conjugal role-segregation and similarly intermediate in degree of network connectedness. Finally there were five families that appeared to be in a state of transition both with respect to their network formation and with respect to their conjugal role-relationship.

Among the 20 families, there was thus some clustering at certain points along a possible continuum from a highly segregated to a very joint conjugal role-relationship, and along a second continuum from a highly connected to a dispersed network. The families did not fall into sharply separated types so that divisions are somewhat arbitrary, but for convenience of description, I shall divide the families into four groups (shown in Table 1.1): 1) highly segregated conjugal role-relationship associated with highly connected network; 2) joint conjugal role-relationship associated with dispersed network; 3) intermediate degrees of conjugal role-segregation and network connectedness, and 4) transitional families. No claim is made here that these are the only patterns that can occur; further research would probably reveal others. In the following discussion I shall be chiefly concerned not with these divisions, but rather with the fact that the order according to degree of conjugal role-segregation follows the order according to degree of network connectedness, and I shall attempt to show the mechanisms by which this relationship operates.

Table 1.1 Relationship among conjugal segregation, type of network and type of occupation^*

Families in descending order of conjugal segregation	Type of network	Type of occupation
Newbolt	close-knit	semi-skilled manual
Mudge	medium-knit	semi-skilled manual
Dodgson (changing reluctantly from highly segregated to more joint)	transitional (move already made)	semi-skilled manual
Barkway	transitional (contemplating move)	clerical
Redfern	transitional (about to move)	semi-professional
Baldock	medium-knit	skilled manual
Apsley	medium-knit	professional
Wraith (becoming more joint)	transitional (several moves already made)	professional
Appleby	medium-knit	skilled manual clerical
Fawcett	medium-knit	clerical
Butler (changing eagerly from highly segregated to more joint)	transitional (move already made)	skilled manual
Thornton	medium-knit	semi-professional
Hartley	medium-knit	semi-professional
Salmon	medium-knit	semi-professional
Jarrold	medium-knit	skilled manual
Bruce	loose-knit	clerical
Denton	loose-knit	professional
Bullock	loose-knit	professional
Woodman	loose-knit	semi-professional
Daniels	loose-knit	semi-professional

* All names are fictitious

Highly segregated conjugal role-relationship associated with highly connected network

The research set contained only one family of this type – the Newbolts (Ns). They had been married four years when the interviewing began and had two small children. In the following discussion, I shall describe their actual behaviour, indicating the points at which they depart from their norms.

External social relationships

Mr. N had a semi-skilled manual job at a factory in an East End area adjacent to the one in which they lived. He said that many other men in the local area had jobs at the same place, or were doing the same sort of work at similar factories and workshops nearby. Mrs. N did not work, but she felt that she was unusual in this respect. Most of the neighbouring women and many of her female relatives had jobs; she did not think there was anything morally wrong with such work, but she said that she had never liked working and preferred to stay at home with the children. Mr. N said that he thought it was best for her and the children if she stayed at home, and added that he felt it wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Conjugal roles and social networks
• 2 Clinical reflections on the negative therapeutic reaction
• 3 Clinical experiences of projective identification
• 4 Varieties of envious experience
• 5 Kleinian thought: overview and personal view
• 6 On formulating clinical fact to a patient
• 7 Developments in Kleinian technique
• 8 Freud and Klein on the concept of phantasy
• 9 Psychoanalysis and psychotherapy: learning to understand oneself in contrast to being understood by another
• 10 On becoming a British psychoanalyst
• 11 Recognition of separateness and otherness
• 12 Melitta and her mother
• 13 Ten drawings by one of Melanie Klein’s child patients
• Index