Invisible Loyalties

Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317839354
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Psychotherapie

First published in 1984. This book was written in order to share the authors' experience as family therapists not only with professionals but with families. We live in an age of anxiety, fear of violence and questioning of fundamental values. Confidence in traditional values is being challenged. Waves of prejudice seem to endanger our trust in one another and our loyalty to society. The strength of family relations or their effect on individuals is extremely difficult to measure. The authors of this book believe that observable changes in the family do not necessarily alter the member to- member impact of family relationships. Invisible loyalty commitments to one's family follow paradoxical laws: The martyr who doesn't let other family members work off their guilt is a far more powerfully controlling force than the loud, demanding bully. The manifestly rebellious or delinquent child may actually be the most loyal member of a family.

1

Concepts of the Relational System

The structuring of relationships, especially within families, is an extremely complex and essentially unknown “mechanism.” Empirically, such structuring can be inferred from the existence of lawful regularity and predictability of certain repetitious events in families. Through the years, much of our concerted effort has been directed clinically and conceptually to spelling out these multiperson system laws.

Certain families carry easily recognized multigenerational patterns of relationships. In one family we learned that for generations there were recurrent episodes of violent death of women caused by the men with whom they were sexually involved. In another family we saw a recurrent pattern of wives being allegedly martyred by their husbands through their obvious and constant involvements with mistresses. In another family three or four generations revealed the pattern of one daughter ending up as an outcast because of the “sin” of disloyally marrying outside the family’s faith. We have seen families in which incest sequences occur for at least three or four generations.

The determinants of such recurrent relational organizations within families are only beginning to be discerned. Careful, long-term study of multigenerational systems of extended families under stress may reveal some of their crucial “pathogenic” determinants. But in order to construct a true multigenerational patterning of family relationships we have to rely on retrospective information, including the memories of the living about the dead. Without an interest in these formative, long-range, vertical family relational laws of function, the therapist will remain handicapped in dealing with pathogenicity and health in families. We distinguish here between ameliorating here and now interactions and thoroughly, i.e., preventively, intervening in the system.

We believe that health and pathology are jointly determined by: (1) the nature of the multiperson relational laws, (2) the psychological characteristics (“psychic structure”) of individual members, and (3) the interlocking between these two realms of system organization. A degree of flexibility and balance regarding the individual’s fit into the higher system level contributes to health, whereas inflexible adherence to system patterns may lead to pathology in individuals.

We want to avoid the pitfall of reductionism in describing the complex realm of relational structuring. A number of dimensions described in the literature are pertinent to the nature of deep relational patterns, but none are sufficient by themselves to describe the complex whole of their dynamic organization. Some of the main elements and forces that determine deep relational configurations of the system are interactional patterns of functional or power characteristics; drive tendencies which aim at one person as another’s available drive object; consanguinity; patterns of pathology; collective aggregate of all unconscious superego tendencies of the members; encounter aspects of ontic dependency among members; and unwritten and unspoken accounts of obligation, repayment, and exploitation and their changing balance throughout the generations.

It is probable that one of the main contributions of the family therapy approach has been the multiperson or system concept of motivational theory. This concept conceives of the individual as a disparate biological and psychological entity whose reactions are nonetheless determined both by his own psychology and by the rules of the entire family unit’s existence. Generally speaking, a system is a set of mutually interdependent units. In families, psychic functions of one member condition functions of other members. Many of the rules governing family relational systems are implicit, and family members are not conscious of them. The vicarious or implicitly exploitative role of a mother in a father-daughter incest, for instance, may not become apparent in early phases of family therapy.

Aspects of the basic motivational structuring of family systems may manifest themselves through certain patterns of tangible action organizations or rites, for example, sacrificial offerings, treason, incest, family honor, interfamily vendetta, scapegoating, grief, care of dying ones, anniversaries, family reliquiae, wills, etc. These rites fit into unconsciously structured relational gestalts, affecting all members of the system. Besides performing specific functions, each rite has its contribution to the balance between exploitative versus giving positions and attitudes. An unspoken family script or code guides the various individuals’ contributions to the account. The code determines the equivalency scale of merits, advantages, obligations, and responsibilities. A cluster of interrelated rites characterizes the manifest relational system of a family at any given time. Rites are patterns of learned reactions, whereas the intrinsic script of the system is grounded in genetic and historic relatedness.

This distinction has practical significance for the family therapist. Ritualistic patterns interlock with the existential substrate of the family’s multiperson system in unique ways which may puzzle the outside observer. The often described difficulty in dealing with apparently meaningless communications of a family in treatment is partly caused by the therapist’s understandable need to find a “logic” in the way the relational rites causally interlock with one another. It takes time and special learning to assess the basic accounts of the historic, vertical, and depth dimensions of action systems. Without an understanding of the hierarchy of obligations, no logic will be apparent.

A major system aspect of families is based on the fact that consanguinity or genetic relatedness lasts for a lifetime. In families the bonds of genetic relatedness have precedence over psychosocial determination, insofar as the two realms can be conceptually separated.

My father will always remain my father, even though he is dead and his burial ground is thousands of miles away. He and I are two consecutive links in a genetic chain with a life span of millions of years. My existence is unthinkable without his. Secondarily or psychologically, his person imprinted an indelible mark on my personality during the critical stages of emotional growth. Even when I rebelled against all that he stood for, my emphatic “no” only further confirmed my emotional involvement with him. He was obligated to me, his son, and subsequently, I have become existentially indebted to him.

My father-in-law is not blood-related to me, yet I am reminded of kinship whenever I notice my son’s physical resemblance to him. I keep wondering whether my son’s mental characteristics will be like his just because some of my son’s spontaneous mannerisms and facial characteristics remind me of him. The in-law relationships attain a further quasi-blood-related aspect through the birth of grandchildren. Furthermore, my father-in-law and I become connected through the emerging extended familial balance sheet for reciprocity of give and take.

Literature on systems theory in family relationships began with notions influenced by “sick” or “abnormal” function. Expressions like “symbiotic,” “guilt-laden,” “double-binding,” “schizophrenogenic,” etc., would suggest that the only language that exists for description of the phenomena of relationship patterning has to be tinged with notions of pathology. The needs of the family therapist pressed for more effective explanatory concepts as guideposts for his work.

In the family therapy movement, the concept “pseudomutuality” of Wynne et al. constitutes the first major systematic attempt to explain the fundamental determinants of family relationship patterns. They state: “The social organization in these families is shaped by a pervasive familial subculture of myths, legends, and ideology which stress the dire consequences of openly recognized divergence from a relatively limited number of fixed, engulfing family roles.”^{93, p. 220} In an obvious effort to integrate the sociological with the psychoanalytic point of view, Wynne et al. characterize the “internalized family role structure and associated family subculture which serve as a kind of primitive superego which tends to determine behavior directly, without negotiation with an actively perceiving and discriminating ego.”^{93, p. 216}

The implications of a subculture of familial expectations constitute a milestone on the road toward defining the structure of relationships as sets of obligations imposed on family members. When Wynne et al. compare familial secrecy and investigative mechanisms with anxious superego surveillance, they come very close to our early formulation of an important family pathogenic mechanism, the “counterautonomous superego.”¹¹ It is easy also to recognize a kinship between the concepts of primitive family superego and long-range balance sheets of merit in families. The efforts of Wynne et al. formed an important bridge toward the truly multipersonal dynamic model. Their use of such individually based concepts as superego, ego, repression, dissociation, or role in a familial context reveals their struggle for transcending the boundaries of psychology when approaching the field of what we call dialectical relational theory. Their language is essentially psychological when they elaborate on “internalization of role structure,” and “sense of reciprocal fulfillment of expectations.” The main struggle in the pseudomutual family is described in cognitive terms as “efforts to exclude from open recognition any evidence of noncomplementarity.”

From our point of view, the basic issue of family relationship theory is: What happens in the action context and how does it affect the family’s propensity for keeping the system essentially unchanged? According to this framework, although loss by death, exploitation, and physical growth are inevitabilities of change, every move toward emotional maturation represents an implicit threat of disloyalty to the system. Unaltered survival of the system is then the contextual aim of the interlocking expectations, obligations, and loyalty. An unaltered balance of the system includes the law of mutual consideration for optimal avoidance of causing unnecessary pain to anyone e.g. through facing grief. The ancient tribal and biological basis of the family system was production and raising of offspring. In our view, the child-rearing function has remained the core existential mandate of contemporary families. Loyalties anchored in the requirements of biological survival and of integrity of human justice are subsequently being elaborated in accordance with the historic ledger of actions and commitments.

Viewed from the vantage point of these deeper dialectical connections, patterns which constitute pseudomutuality or other psychosocial arrangements represent merely secondary “psychological” elaborations of fundamental existential realities; they are examples of particular rites in the context of a relationship system. The core of family system dynamics is part of the basic human order which is only secondarily reflected in cognitions, strivings, and emotions of individuals. The basic human order relies on the historical consequences of inter-member events in the life of any social group. Each member’s motivations are embedded in the contexts of his own and his group’s history.

A clinical example illustrates the interweaving among the symptomatic individual, a dyad, and the total gestalt of multigenerational accounts in a relationship system. The family was referred for Diane’s tense, irritable behavior, recently noted both at home and school. Diane, 10 years old, talented in art, was closely attached to her grandmother, Mrs. H, 58. When Diane was only 6 days old, her mother became psychotic and she has been in a mental hospital ever since. Mrs. H has raised Diane. As an apparent side comment, it was also mentioned that there are violent arguments with physical threats between grandmother and grandfather.

The first family therapy session was conducted in the home. It revealed a severe marital tension between the grandparents. Contrary to the expectations of the caseworker assigned to Diane, the grandmother actively sought the attention of the therapist almost from the beginning. Although initially she sounded incoherent and evasive, she became very clear and explicit when she started to point out her resentments toward her husband: “There are two things I wouldn’t forgive him as long as I live,” she said, explaining the reasons for her refusing him sexually.

As Mrs. H described her lack of sexual responsiveness toward her husband, she added: “When I needed and wanted him in my younger years, he was running around.” Noticing the therapist’s interest in her background, she proceeded to give a strikingly personal account. With little apparent hesitation she described that when she was 14, one night while her mother was on a trip, her stepfather had come into her bedroom and attempted to rape her. She tried to obtain her mother’s moral support the next day, but her mother sided with her stepfather and she was shipped to her grandparents. All her life she could not tell anybody about this incident except for her mother and grandmother. As this very lonely, secluded woman began to talk more openly, it was easy to empathize with the outpouring of her genuine life-long pain and despair.

This initial session demonstrates very clearly the dialectical approach to exploring relationship systems. No single account or individual statement is taken to be absolute. The child’s problems are explored from the beginning in the context of the family’s vertical dimension of three generations. This has led into the exploration of the horizontal dimension of grandmother’s marriage. From there it has been natural to shift again to the vertical dimension of Mrs. H’s childhood conflicts with her parents. It is easy to see how an unsettled account between herself, her mother, and her stepfather will have to be “taken out” on her marriage. The resulting helplessly hostile and frightening atmosphere of the home must have been reflected then in the child’s desperate call for attention at school.

The purpose of this illustration is not to claim that an initial session would uncover the ultimate roots of the system determinants of a child’s symptomatic behavior. Despite the genuineness and great force of this lonely, hungry woman’s communication, it would be unrealistic to regard Mrs. H’s character development as fully explained by the simple relational metaphors of her condensed story. Nevertheless, the examination of her key childhood experience, exploitation by her stepfather and the seeming disloyalty of her mother’s response, pointed at a fundamental injustice which may have contributed to Mrs. H’s life-long pattern of distrust toward males and relationships in general. This session illustrates the interconnected dimensions of individual psychology, reciprocity in relationship systems, and justice of the human world, as they become invisible records throughout generations.

In conclusion, the violation of the justice of one person’s basic human order can make that event a pivot around which the destinies of his own and his descendants’ further relationships revolve. Just as it would be unwise while exploring individual motivations to consider a symptom to exist in isolation from the patient’s total personality, it is necessary to explore the whole family system as it relates to the signal function of the designated patient member’s “pathology.” Interest in the justice aspect of human order tends to lead to discovery of one member who at first appears as if having acted unjustly. The question arises: Is the unjust one an actor and initiator of deeds or is he a link in a chain of processes? Once this member’s own suffering through past injustices can be explored, the process of family therapy is well under way.

Martin Buber’s dialogic philosophy and certain existential authors’ writings point to a way of “using” others which forms another important dimension of relational dynamics. Yet, instead of stressing the exploitative aspects of the human relationship, Buber focuses on its mutually confirmative potential. In designating meaningful personal relationships as of the I-Thou type, he states that the basic pronouns are not I, Thou, and It but I-Thou and I-it. The existential phenomenological analysis of social existence presupposes a personal commitment dimension: I do not just happen to be around with the one whom I address with Buber’s “Thou.” The other thus addressed is not just an implement for my or his emotional expressiveness, but at least for the time, the “ground,” the dialectical counterpart of my existence. But even as ground for the other, the person is a distinct I for himself.

The genuine I—Thou dialogue transcends the concept of the other’s being a mere “object” or gratifier of my needs. The mutuality of care and concern is not only experienced by the participants, but it transcends their psychology through entering the realm of action or of commitment to action. The dialogue as defined by Buber becomes one characteristic of the system of family relationships. The experiential reciprocity between two humans, both of whom are confirmed by their meeting on an I-Thou basis, creates a mutually supportive base among family relationships. Perhaps this is connected with what Buber refers to as the zone of the “between.”^{26, p. 17}

While the concept of the mutually confirming dialogue unquestionably enriches our understanding of relationships, in general our position is that family relationships have their own specific existential, historic structuring. An accidentally met, yet profoundly responsive traveller on the train may qualify, for the moment at least, as partner to a genuine I—Thou dialogue. Psychologically, the aftereffect of such genuine dialogue might be a lasting confirmation of my person and identity, even if that particular relationship remains ephemeral. Thus, the Thou of the genuine dialogue can be found everywhere and replaced by another Thou. Certain dimensions of group therapy, marathon, and encounter group techniques, sensitivity training, etc., are based on the hopeful expectation that mutual confirmation will occur among persons not belonging to a consanquineal family system.

It is of great practical significance to recognize the specific nature of family relationships. After a life-long hostile relatedness, two brothers may make strenuous efforts to reconcile and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Foreword
• 1. Concepts of the Relational System
• 2. The Dialectic Theory of Relationships
• 3. Loyalty
• 4. Justice and Social Dynamics
• 5. Balance and Imbalance in Relationships
• 6. Parentification
• 7. Psychodynamic Versus Relational Dynamic Rationale
• 8. Formation of a Working Alliance Between the Cotherapy System and the Family System
• 9. Family Therapy and Reciprocity Between Grandparents, Parents, and Grandchildren
• 10. Children and the Inner World of the Family
• 11. Intergenerational Treatment of a Family that Battered a Child
• 12. A Reconstructive Dialogue Between a Family and a Cotherapy Team
• 13. Brief Contextual Guidelines For The Conduct of Intergenerational Therapy
• Epilogue
• References
• Indexes