Origins and Originality in Family Therapy and Systemic Practice by Maria Borcsa & Peter Stratton

Author:Maria Borcsa & Peter Stratton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Guilt , Blame and Pathology

Linear cause–effect theories, when dealing with people, unavoidably introduce guilt and blame in the discourse. When parents are seen as the cause of disturbance in their children, they get the blame, to the extent that the most terrible things have been written, for example in psychoanalytical literature, about the mothers of children with autism or anorexia nervosa.

The mere description by a therapist of problem behaviour or problematic relations in terms of cause-free, blame-free and guilt-free patterns of interactions can provoke a deep relief and free people to behave differently.

Moreover, when the therapist does not use a linear causal model , he manifestly does not blame anybody himself. This has a very fundamental impact on his relationships with his clients. Therapists who think linearly and reductionist in terms of cause and effect, cannot avoid looking for culprits. A therapist using a linear model will try not to blame anybody, but merely by thinking in terms of cause and effect, he is blaming. Analysis of videotapes we made in training-situations of therapists who were used to a reductionist linear thinking model, clearly showed that the blaming often happened in subtle, non-verbal and verbal ways, of which the therapists were unaware. For example, at the beginning of the training program, a very emotionally intelligent French child-psychiatrist, whose psychodynamic model made him think that the psychopathology of the mother was the cause of anorexia nervosa, was unaware of the fact that in a session with the family whenever the mother started talking he would spontaneously cross his legs, lean back and cross his arms. When he uttered statements of support to the mother, at the end of the sentence his tone of voice went up, making it sound like question, as if he doubted what she said. Even a simple affirmative “Yes” sounded like “yes?”. He was shocked when we analyzed the video of that session. Notwithstanding this experience, he later unknowingly behaved similarly with the mother of an autistic child. Of course he did not want to blame, but he was blaming because his model made him see these mothers as the cause of the problem. It took some time, but his spontaneous behaviour towards mothers changed when he progressively became convinced that the behaviour of the mother was also “caused” by the daughter, the son and the father in a rigid pattern of interactions.

Hence the best result a linearly thinking therapist can hope for is not to appear to be blaming. In reality this is very difficult, if not impossible. The client will leave the session with a feeling of being blamed even if not a single blaming word has been spoken.

The blame of therapists is often wrapped in the notion of pathology . However, from a systems point of view, whether behaviour can be labeled pathologic or pathogenic depends on the social space in which it takes place and the arbitrary choice of the systems level and boundaries . A particular behaviour can be considered constructive or

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.