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| Family Therapy |
Family Therapy
The third school of therapy to be considered, the family systems approach, also reflects masculinist perspective and values in its inception and outlook. Introduced as an objective, meta mathematical approach (Watzlawick1967) that closely approximates technological systems thinking, it deals with observable behavior or communication based on a presumably neutral cybernetic model-that is, families function according to the same principles as do computers. Yet the major theorists have clearly interjected their own world views. Of the founders of famíly systems therapy, all but Virginia Satir were men, and they have typically approached families as regulated, rulegoverned systems, like computers, or as hierarchical, executive-run systems, like businesses. Satir neither endorsed nor made use of either of these models.
The male theorists have also viewed parenting by mothers and fathers as necessaríly differing, just as the culture at large does, without questioning this assumption. They trace the source of problems all too frequently to the overinvolvement, or enmeshment, of the mother with her children, neither acknowledging the bias inherent in the use of these terms nor understanding the patriarchal basis for this circumstance, but locating the problem within individual women (Hare-Mustin 1978, 1987). They blame women for being just what the culture prescribes: intensely involved with their families and children. The family systems approach was introduced in the 1950s, the decade that saw the rise of the modero, white, middle-class, nuclear family, and took the familia!configuration of the father in the executive role and the mother in the affective role as the norm and the normal--objectively, of course. In fact, these families were "more nuclear, more socially isolated, and more gender dichotomized than any in previous hístory" (Goldner 1985, p. 44). Although Jay Haley (1969) and others have recognized power maneuvers as a factor in developing symptoms, the basic power inequity of gender difference and the influence of larger social systems such as gender arrangements have been deemed irrelevant and thus steadfastly ignored by mainstream family systems theorists.
The systems approach, as a result, turns out to be a closed system that does not provide a means to assess differential power orto attribute responsibility to different parts of a system or to allow for external influences. For example, if a woman is being battered by her husband, the systems theorist is required to look at how this behavior is both serving and being maintained equally by both partners. Far from being value-free, this approach ís misogynist and victim blaming (Bograd 1984). lt also values the family more highly than any of its individual members and, in practice, often sacrifices the welfare of the individual to that of the group. For example, in a well-known, typical intervention by Salvador Minuchin, a family member, usually the adolescent daughter, is anorectic. Minuchin's strategy involves introducing the distant father into parenting as an expert who can teach the "overly enmeshed" mother a few things about parenting an adolescent. An outcome is considered successful when the anorectíc symptoms are removed. 1 have yet to hear what happens to the mothers, who have implicitly been informed by an expert not only that they have not done their jobs correctly but that their relatively uninvolved husbands have the necessary expertise to correct the situation. How many of these mothers wind up quietly depressed after this "successful" family outcome?
The client fearful of open spaces would be approached with her partner or spouse and perhaps her whole family. Were she not currently in a partner or family relationship, her family of origin would be the focus of the therapy. The function of her symptom would be sought within these relationships. A typical analysis would consider her fear as a means to exercise power in a primary relationship, for example, to keep her husband or partner by her side. The couple relationship would be more 6nely calibrated so that closeness could be achieved more openly and the symptom would no longer need to serve the function of creating closeness. This might occur through open negotiation or by manipulating the situation so that the woman would back off and her husband or partner would then presumably come forward in a well-calibrated dance.
She would see that she had actually been participating in preventing closeness by the very act of seeking it. The work of the therapist is to recalibrate the cybernetic system, all parts being assumed to exercise equal power. As in behavioral therapy, removal of the symptom would be the goal and an indication of a successful out- come. The meaning or sources of this fear in other spheres of her life as a woman would not be considered, nor would its relationship to other fears, feelings, or experiences. Ironically, this approach was developed in order to consider the larger system in which an individual functions, namely, the family. However, the leaders in the field, as well as the multitude of other nonfeminist practitioners, have, by and large, chosen to ignore both the historical roots of the patriarchal family and its relationship with larger social systems, and in-stead to focus narrowly on the current organization of the family as the best and only means of understanding it. Feminist critics have insisted that competent and consistent application of systems theory must necessarily include formulations about the effect of larger systems such as class, race, ethnicity, and gender on the family and its members (Goldner 1985; Luep-nitz 1988; Kaschak 1990). lt rtlust also include acknowledgment of the values, perspective, and gender of the theorist or therapist. Only after the development of a feminist critique of the 6eld have feminist critics been able to begin to develop a perspective that is consistent with and explicit about feminist principles (McGoldrick, Anderson, and Walsh 1989; Walters et al.1988; Luepnitz 1988). These are certainly not widely accepted among more traditional family therapists; they are passionately repudiated by some and dispassionately ignored by others who persist in applying misogynist and ethnocentric principles to their work with families.
The third school of therapy to be considered, the family systems approach, also reflects masculinist perspective and values in its inception and outlook. Introduced as an objective, meta mathematical approach (Watzlawick1967) that closely approximates technological systems thinking, it deals with observable behavior or communication based on a presumably neutral cybernetic model-that is, families function according to the same principles as do computers. Yet the major theorists have clearly interjected their own world views. Of the founders of famíly systems therapy, all but Virginia Satir were men, and they have typically approached families as regulated, rulegoverned systems, like computers, or as hierarchical, executive-run systems, like businesses. Satir neither endorsed nor made use of either of these models.
The male theorists have also viewed parenting by mothers and fathers as necessaríly differing, just as the culture at large does, without questioning this assumption. They trace the source of problems all too frequently to the overinvolvement, or enmeshment, of the mother with her children, neither acknowledging the bias inherent in the use of these terms nor understanding the patriarchal basis for this circumstance, but locating the problem within individual women (Hare-Mustin 1978, 1987). They blame women for being just what the culture prescribes: intensely involved with their families and children. The family systems approach was introduced in the 1950s, the decade that saw the rise of the modero, white, middle-class, nuclear family, and took the familia!configuration of the father in the executive role and the mother in the affective role as the norm and the normal--objectively, of course. In fact, these families were "more nuclear, more socially isolated, and more gender dichotomized than any in previous hístory" (Goldner 1985, p. 44). Although Jay Haley (1969) and others have recognized power maneuvers as a factor in developing symptoms, the basic power inequity of gender difference and the influence of larger social systems such as gender arrangements have been deemed irrelevant and thus steadfastly ignored by mainstream family systems theorists.
The systems approach, as a result, turns out to be a closed system that does not provide a means to assess differential power orto attribute responsibility to different parts of a system or to allow for external influences. For example, if a woman is being battered by her husband, the systems theorist is required to look at how this behavior is both serving and being maintained equally by both partners. Far from being value-free, this approach ís misogynist and victim blaming (Bograd 1984). lt also values the family more highly than any of its individual members and, in practice, often sacrifices the welfare of the individual to that of the group. For example, in a well-known, typical intervention by Salvador Minuchin, a family member, usually the adolescent daughter, is anorectic. Minuchin's strategy involves introducing the distant father into parenting as an expert who can teach the "overly enmeshed" mother a few things about parenting an adolescent. An outcome is considered successful when the anorectíc symptoms are removed. 1 have yet to hear what happens to the mothers, who have implicitly been informed by an expert not only that they have not done their jobs correctly but that their relatively uninvolved husbands have the necessary expertise to correct the situation. How many of these mothers wind up quietly depressed after this "successful" family outcome?
The client fearful of open spaces would be approached with her partner or spouse and perhaps her whole family. Were she not currently in a partner or family relationship, her family of origin would be the focus of the therapy. The function of her symptom would be sought within these relationships. A typical analysis would consider her fear as a means to exercise power in a primary relationship, for example, to keep her husband or partner by her side. The couple relationship would be more 6nely calibrated so that closeness could be achieved more openly and the symptom would no longer need to serve the function of creating closeness. This might occur through open negotiation or by manipulating the situation so that the woman would back off and her husband or partner would then presumably come forward in a well-calibrated dance.
She would see that she had actually been participating in preventing closeness by the very act of seeking it. The work of the therapist is to recalibrate the cybernetic system, all parts being assumed to exercise equal power. As in behavioral therapy, removal of the symptom would be the goal and an indication of a successful out- come. The meaning or sources of this fear in other spheres of her life as a woman would not be considered, nor would its relationship to other fears, feelings, or experiences. Ironically, this approach was developed in order to consider the larger system in which an individual functions, namely, the family. However, the leaders in the field, as well as the multitude of other nonfeminist practitioners, have, by and large, chosen to ignore both the historical roots of the patriarchal family and its relationship with larger social systems, and in-stead to focus narrowly on the current organization of the family as the best and only means of understanding it. Feminist critics have insisted that competent and consistent application of systems theory must necessarily include formulations about the effect of larger systems such as class, race, ethnicity, and gender on the family and its members (Goldner 1985; Luep-nitz 1988; Kaschak 1990). lt rtlust also include acknowledgment of the values, perspective, and gender of the theorist or therapist. Only after the development of a feminist critique of the 6eld have feminist critics been able to begin to develop a perspective that is consistent with and explicit about feminist principles (McGoldrick, Anderson, and Walsh 1989; Walters et al.1988; Luepnitz 1988). These are certainly not widely accepted among more traditional family therapists; they are passionately repudiated by some and dispassionately ignored by others who persist in applying misogynist and ethnocentric principles to their work with families.
