The Family Crucible
Augustus Napier, PhD and Carl Whitaker, MD
Early Chapters
Discussion of why to include young children in the family…the youngest member divulges she is afraid her sister, Claudia, will go away or commit suicide and then her parents will divorce. The younger members of the family talk about the structure of the family without being guarded, without overly focusing on the IP. Napier discusses the togetherness versus autonomy paradigm that the marriage faced. That it is common…The couple became afraid of the closeness, when the couple starts to back away, if they could tolerate the loneliness, they would be fine, but instead most people find a subsititute closness. Provocative questioning like: It sounds like both of you started having affairs: him with his work, you with your kids and mother?
The family dynamic is hypothesized. The adolescent daughter is in crisis and her crisis heats up the stale marriage. The reframe to the family is that the symptoms and fighting had reached such a clip, that outside help had to be sought, unlike many families who plod along as Thoreau said in quiet desperation.
Napier warns the family not to fight at home the following week. That such a revealing session can get the implication to the family that they should be more open with each other, but in unskilled hands, they will go home and fight and prove “it won’t work,” so the directive was giving, do not fight.
Key Point: The structure of this initial interview will not be repeated. The session is directed by the co-therapist. In the next session, the therapists sit back and force the family to guide therapy, in an effort to assert that they will have to be the owners of their family and experiences.
Great Questions: Can you say how you fit into this? How do you see the family and your part in it?
What do you think is behind the arguments over the messy room? “Idk”…If you had to guess?
Shift from directing to the family initiating and directing. Started with a long waiting period that could be anxiety provoking even for the therapists.
The family takes initiative and at the end of the session, the co-therapists tell them what they have seen. This is how sessions will progress from here forward.
Mid Chapters
Keypoint: Initially the therapist is “fighting with the family”…for who will attend, for how the case will be defined. The family usually likes to identify the problem member; the therapist is fighting to redefine the family as the problem. The symptomatic member is the scapegoat to get the whole family into therapy.
Eventually the family and therapist will work together to define goals but not yet.
By coming to therapy the family is admitting that their model of interacting has failed.
It’s not even certain if the family wants to change. This pattern is comforting, all they have. If they change, what then; will things be worse still?
The assumption is that families will fight change.
The therapist’s job is to make observations about the family. The following are patterns that exist in most families.
- stress: acute situational, interpersonal, intrapersonal
- polarization and escalation: also known as positive feedback spiral where positive feedback (tells the system that things are changing) and negative feedback (tells the system that returning to normal) interact to achieve periods of homeostasis
- triangulation
- blaming: during this behavior each has an intense awareness of the other but lacks self awareness, often not recognizing their own feelings or potential for action and change.
- diffusion of identity: in families with significant problems, there is not a level of comfort with any member being free and autonomous. They refer to this as a “family wide symbiosis”
- statis: the greatest fear of the family…the fear of losing each other, of immobility and statis or death.
-Each of us brings too many needs to marriage
-Initially we strive to meet a partner's needs, but the needs become more complicated or frequent, etc., then we begin to worry that we won't meet his/her needs. As punishment, one will turn to an "substitute interest" such as work, children, drinking, an affair, etc.
-During this "help me" struggle one can come to see the other as a parent, symbolically.
It is conceptualized that the struggles between mother and daughter are mainly happening became of the parents' marriage challenges.
Of parenting Whitaker says:
"I also don't believe parents can always be in control. There's too much to control. A family has to operate with a kind of intuitive synchrony."
Final Chapters
As one may expect, Whitaker is provocative and he does not care if the family likes him per se. He asks infamous questions such as, "When did you divorce your husband and marry the children?"
This book reads like no other therapy book I have encounter. On the one hand, it is the narrative of the Brice family, but it is chalked full of great questions and insight about the nature of people and families. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in working with families or symbolic experiential approaches to working in session.