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Family of Origin Explorations
(This essay is offered as an introduction to family of origin studies and family of origin research.)
The late Murray Bowen and those who have continued to develop Bowen Family Systems Theory and other multigenerational approaches, suggest that knowledge of family history is a valuable asset in life. Being curious about one’s immediate and extended family, and working at changing one’s role in the family, is an important step in personal development. It is also a significant step in the preparation of those who choose to work in the helping professions.
Being curious about one’s immediate and extended family, and working at changing one’s role in the family (from one that is assigned to one that is chosen), is an important step in personal development.
Exploring your own extended family will provide you with a viewpoint from which to make changes in your personal, social and professional life. Through an exploration of family of origin, you will have an opportunity to appreciate how characteristics you bring from your family of origin are likely to support and, sometimes, hinder you in your relationships in all aspects of your life.
An excellent book to get you started is Monica McGoldrick's book, You Can Go Home Again. Reading it will acquaint you with the basic prinicples and techniques of family of origin studies and assist you to be aware of how these principles and techniques may be applied to your own family of origin.
To go home may be impossible, but it is often a driving necessity, or at least a compelling dream . . . Home is a concept, not a place, it is a state of mind where self-definition starts; it is origins – the mix of time and place and smell and weather wherein one first realizes one is an original . . . Home . . .remains in the mind as a place where reunion, if it were ever to reoccur, would happen . . . It is about restoration of the right relations among things – and going home is where that restoration occurs, because that is where it matters most.
A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise
1) Introduction
The late Murray Bowen, a psychiatrist and one of the best-known theorists and clinicians of MFT, began to develop his interest in family systems theory because he was perplexed by how those patients with a serious mental illness, who made a satisfactory recovery in the hospital setting, frequently relapsed when they returned home. This observation led Bowen t (1) change his focus from the individual, as the identified patient, to a focus on the family emotional unit, and (2) develop family systems theory as a way of organizing his clinical and theoretical findings. Bowen discovered that the more familiar someone became with his or her family of origin, the more he or she was able to move towards differentiation of self. The more differentiated the individual, the more he or she was able to break away from historical patterns and personal characteristics that prevent change.
Because we are all involved in an ongoing process of differentiation of self, the benefits of the process are as true for those who consider themselves mentally intact as for those labelled mentally ill. The process of exploring the family system and the process of differentiation is frequently referred to as family of origin therapy or family of origin work. Everyone can benefit from family of origin work. Through it we can come to a better understanding of ourselves in relationship with members of our own family. We can also become more aware of our relationship with others outside the family, who we frequently relate to in ways we have learned in our families. The more differentiated we are: the more likely we will be able to respond rather than react, the more likely we will be able to treat each interaction as a unique encounter rather than a shadow from the past, and the more likely we will be able to realise our unique potential rather than living according to others’ expectations.
The process of differentiation through family of origin work is especially important for those who counsel others. It is important that counsellors are knowledgeable about the multigenerational process so that they can guide those who seek their help in their own explorations. Differentiation of self is also important so that counsellors are able to relate in ways that are not reactive because of their own unexamined family of origin issues. For example, if I never had a close relationship with my father, I might be reactive to another father-son relationship in one of two ways: (1) I might underestimate the importance of a son attempting to build a better understanding and closer relationship with his father (because I have never acknowledged the importance of the father-son relationship in my own life); or (2) I might overemphasize the importance of a son attempting to build a better understanding and closer relationship with his father (because I am so preoccupied with the father-son relationship in my own life). Either of these reactions will prevent me from attending fully to the issues of the person who is seeking my help regarding a father-son relationship, or some other set of concerns. It is not that we cannot be of service to someone who is struggling with issues over which we also struggle. Rather, we are limited in the way we can help another unless we are aware of how our own history, beliefs and values may affect the way we perceive another’s history, beliefs and values. Know thyself.
2) Why go home again?
2.1) Importance of family heritage
McGoldrick suggests that learning about our family heritage is a way of freeing ourselves to change the future. Family ties are the most important connections in life because our family gave us our first concept of “home.”
Wherever we go, whatever we do, we remain connected with our family:
Family will inevitably come back to haunt us – in our relationships with our spouses, our children, our friends and even at work. Beneath each family’s idiosyncrasies there lie patterns that cut across cultural and time differences. And though the specifics of family structure and roles are changing dramatically, the basic ways of family are universal. (McGoldrick, p. 22)
Using illustrations from biographies (including Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud, Queen Victoria, and Benjamin Franklin), McGoldrich introduces us to the ways in which family impacts on individual lives, often unconsciously.
2.2) Shaping influence of family biography
McGoldrick suggests that every fact of your family’s biography is part of the many-layered pattern that becomes your identity.
Whatever has happened in your family shapes you. Events that occurred long before your birth, never mentioned in your family during your lifetime, may influence you in powerful, though hidden ways. Take, for example, a child who dies before another’s birth, for whom the next child becomes a replacement. If the “replacement” child tries to leave home as a young adult, the entire family may go into crisis. Yet no one links the upheaval to the loss that occurred years earlier (McGoldrick, p. 30).
2.3) Family life cycle
In order to understand your family’s biography and its patterns, it is necessary to develop a perspective on the shared multigenerational evolution of the family life cycle.
A family life cycle perspective:
- Tracks famlily patterns over time, noting especially those transitions at which families tend to be more vulnerable because of the necessary readjustments in realtionships;
- Frames problems within the course that families have moved along in their past, the tasks they are presently trying to master, and the future to which they are moving;
- Situates the individual life cycle witin the family life cycle;
- Recognises that problems are most likely to appear when there is an interruption or dislocation in the family life cycle (whether because of untimely death, chronic illness, divorce, migration that forces family members to separate, inability of family to launch a child, or inability of the family to tolerate the entry of a new in-law or grandchild.
3) Family of origin in context
Family therapists, as we have seen, regard the family as the primary social unit. It is the unit that they meet with, the unit they attempt to understand, and the unit they attempt to affect in the interests of change. Until recently, most family therapists have been relatively quiet about systems beyond the family. Increasingly, however, there is an acceptance that, as well as the shaping influence of the extended family, there are strong shaping influences in the political-economic and social realms that must be taken into account.
One writer who expresses these larger systemic issues is David Smail in his book The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress. Smail suggests “emotional and psychological distress is brought about most fundamentally through the operation of social-environmental powers which have their origin at considerable distance from those ultimately subjected to them” (Smail, p. 160). Drawing on a critical appraisal of psychological theory and psychotherapy, a series of rich and detailed case studies, and his own clinical experience, Smail develops a systemic theory of psychological and emotional distress. He argues that so-called “psychopathology,” rather than being attributed to psychological processes inside people, is better explained when viewed in the context of the environment in which it occurs.
“Power is the social element in which we exist” (Smail, p. 26), yet it is a topic about which psychologists, who have claimed motivation as a focus of interest, have had little to say. It is impossible, Smail suggests, to think of human experience that is not structured by power – those pressures that shape our activity, whether by incentive or persuasion, on the one hand, or by manipulation or intimidation, on the other. We are born into a highly charged field of power, and the disparity of power between infant and parent is greater than it is ever likely to be again in a person’s life. From the outset, “at the root of experience is a message of overwhelming significance – that we have to deal with a world which is immeasurably more powerful than ourselves” (Smail, p. 26).
If we are fortunate, our whole experience may be grounded in an essentially uncritical confidence in the world. If, on the other hand, we experience near abandonment or isolation, the rest of our lives may be haunted by fear, vulnerability to panic or an insatiable drive for security. As a result of our earliest confrontation with reality we have no option but to develop attitudes and strategies through which to position ourselves in the field of power surrounding us: “Do we love or hate, fight or flee, trust or fear, comfort or dissemble, confide or hide?” (Smail, pp. 26-27). The facts of this experience have been stated many times before; for example, in evidence supporting object relations theory and attachment theory. But Smail’s reading of the facts is different. Instead of interpreting them in terms of intra-psychic dynamics, he situates them within a social structure and process where power relations are key. In this social approach to personal distress, Smail follows a tradition that has included Alfred Adler, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, Harry Stack Sullivan, and R.D. Laing. All these writers considered social factors as important determinants of psychological behaviour. But none of them have pursued their findings as far into the social structure as Smail.
The disparity of power that an infant experiences in the hands of his caregivers is only the beginning, for throughout our lives, the world is structured and we are controlled, to a greater or lesser extent, by powers at varying degrees of distance from us. Proximal powers, those closest to us, are the most salient, the closest to our attention, the subject matter of psychology, the most amenable to personal intervention, and the weakest. Distal powers, those furthest from us, are the least salient, those we spend least time thinking about, the subject matter of sociology and politics, the least amenable to intervention, and the strongest. Emphasising the immediacy and intensity of proximal powers and the distance and relative lack of awareness we have of distal powers, Smail writes:
It is not that proximal powers don’t have the more immediate, and potentially devastating effect on the person – indeed they must do, since it is only through the operation of proximal power that the person can be affected by anything – it is rather that the operation of these powers depends in turn on influences much further afield (Smail, p. 38).
Think on these observations of Smail’s as you explore the family histories in the McGoldrick text and as you begin to learn more about your own family of origin.
Glossary
Bowen Family Systems Theory
Bowen family systems theory (FST) is an important step toward an integrative theory that provides a systematic way of collecting, organizing and integrating information from many levels of information. The development of FST, by Dr. Murray Bowen, occurred in psychiatry during the 1950s and early 1960s. FST is important as a theory because: (1) it defined an important new set of variables that influenced the physical diseases, emotional illnesses, and social acting-out problems; and (2) it demonstrated that the interrelationship of these newly defined variables could be understood within systems thinking. FST radically departed from previous theories of human emotional functioning by virtue of its conceptualization of the family as an emotional unit (Kerr & Bowen 1988, p. viii).
Proximal Powers
Those closest to us, are the most salient, the closest to our attention, the subject matter of psychology, the most amenable to personal intervention, and the weakest in their influence (Smail 1993, p. 37).
Differentiation of Self
A concept from Family of Origin Therapy that defines a family member’s ability to function autonomously in the context of being emotionally connected to other members. It has also been used to describe the process whereby a family member learns to regulate anxiety by objectively coordinating thinking with emotional responses (Jones, 1994; Schnarch, 1991; Kerr and Bowen, 1988; Bowen, 1978) [See Family of Origin Therapy]
Distal powers
Those furthest from us, are the least salient, those we spend least time thinking about, the subject matter of sociology and politics, the least amenable to intervention, and the strongest in their influence (Smail 1993, p. 37).
Family Life Cycle
Family life cycle is a concept from family theory that describes predictable patterns or cycles as a family progresses through developmental stages. Such stages may include: separation from family of origin, marriage, child bearing, child rearing, divorce, retirement, aging and death. The family therapist attempts to normalize the family’s presenting problem in the context of the family’s respective developmental stage. (Carter & McGoldrick, 1989; Nichols, 1984)
Family of Origin
Family of origin is a concept that defines the family origins of one’s birth (i.e., the biological family). The role that a family member plays within their family of procreation may be determined by her/his former roles in that family of origin. (Framo, 1992; Bowen, 1978) [See Family of Origin Therapy]
Family of Origin Therapy
A clinical approach, developed by Murray Bowen, which asserts that individuals and families should be understood in the context of their multiple generations and not as isolated individuals. Bowen believed that relationship patterns within the family system developed and repeated across the generations. He described eight interlocking concepts: differentiation of self, triangles, sibling position, nuclear family emotional processes, family projection process, emotional cutoff, multigenerational transmission, and societal emotional process. The goals include: (1) reducing the level of chronic anxiety in the family system; and (2) increasing the level of differentiation of self in family members in order to interrupt maladaptive relationship patterns (Framo, 1992; Kerr and Bowen, 1988; Bowen, 1978)
Family Systems Theory
See Bowen Family Systems Theory
System
A concept that defines the basic set of units or elements interconnected in a consistent relationship or interactional stance such that whatever affects one part of the system will affect other parts. Systems can be open or closed, depending on their receptiveness to environmental information. (Nichols and Everett, 1986; Steinglass, 1978; von Bertalanffy, 1974, 1968)
References
Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. New York: Aronson.
Carter, B., & McGoldrick, M. (1989). The changing family life cycle: A framework for therapy. Boston: Allyn & Bacon
Everett, C. A. (2000). Family Therapy Glossary. Washington, DC: American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.
Framo, J. (1992). Family-of-origin therapy: An intergenerational approach. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Jones, J.E. (1994). Chronic anxiety, the adrenocortical response and differentiation. Family Systems, 4, 165 – 172.
Kerr, M.E., Bowen, M. (1988). Family Evaluation. New York: W.W. Norton
McGoldrick, M. (1997). You can go home again: Reconnecting with your family. New York: Norton.
Nichols, M. (1984). Family therapy: Concepts and methods. New York: Gardner Press.
Nichols, W.C., & Everett, C.A. (1986). Systemic family therapy: An integrative approach. New York: Guildford Press.
Schnarch, D. (1991). Constructing the sexual crucible: An integration of sexual and marital therapy. New York: W.W. Norton
Smail, D. (1993). The Origins of Unhappiness: A New Understanding of Personal Distress. London: Harper Collins.
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