As Mario Puzo informed us–and he ought to know–”The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.” So far, so good. But loyalty to, precisely, which part of the family and when–and what does that have to do with, say, the price of tea in China? […]
January 24, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
I’m a bit of a softie for sibling roles in family dynamics, and although there are definite limits to the validity of utilizing birth order to explain behavioral and personality traits, some value yet remains. Older research asserted a variety of characteristics to various birth-ordered children. It ranges from the 1975 Wark, Swanson and Mack […]
January 22, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
Remember the wondrously insane and macabre Addams family? (“They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky/They’re all together ooky. . . .”) They were the anti-Partridge family, the inverse Brady Bunch, fabulously perverse, with two ghastly children, Wednesday (as in “Wednesday’s child is full of woe”), and her partner-in-crime Pugsley, whose unique hobby is stealing […]
January 21, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
In his book, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls, Robert Burney writes that “there are four basic roles that children adopt in order to survive growing up in emotionally dishonest, shame-based, dysfunctional family systems.” The children take these roles because they sense that the family’s dysfunction is so great, without their wearing the mantle of […]
January 21, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
As some of the past posts have shown (take the post on triangles, for example), utilizing the genogram within the family systems approach often has significant explanatory powers for why a person finds him or herself stuck within current relational patterns. But it can do more than that, too, I believe, if we use it to […]
January 16, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
Molly is a difficult [in my more honest moments I think of her as nearly tyrannical] early adolescent, who makes her mother’s life a horror. She picks on Mom’s clothes, her hairstyle–the way she chews her toast in the morning. It seems little escapes Molly’s critical eye, despite the fact that her mother Marge has […]
January 15, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
As you may have noticed from that genogram on the first post, family systems therapists are into shapes. A line, a squiggle, a square with an ‘X’ through it–these make our days. But the fundamental unit of relationship is that beautiful, potentially-pythagorean shape: the triangle. Of course, you might argue, isn’t the fundamental unit of […]
January 11, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” You only had to make it through the first chapter [first line, to be honest] of Anna Karenina to find this out–and there will be no quizzes assessing your knowledge of the novel after, so you’re home free now. Despite Tolstoy’s […]
January 8, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
So triangles are fascinating enough when viewed as entities in themselves, say between Molly, Marge and Mark, or Sara Delano and Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, and much work can be done in breaking up triangulated relationships with a good family systems therapist. But in my mind triangles even further earn their keep when you can […]
January 6, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
Consider yourself not just the run-of-the-mill linear thinker? Maybe even dabbled in learning to read some Asian languages? Well–ever seen anything like this before?: (see Mary Daly et al’s “Exploring Family Relationships in Cancer Risk Counseling Using the Genogram” for this example) My guess is, unless you’re a family systems therapist, this just might be something […]
January 4, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
Judith and Jay had a checkered relationship, as so many long-term marrieds do. They had weathered raising the children, as well as the empty-nest syndrome. Sometimes she drove him round the bend with her non-stop chatter and tendency to cheer-lead; she not so infrequently considered offing him when he began one of his political tirades, or went […]
December 24, 2011 by candidaabrahamson
We left off with the story of Lou, the poorly behaved terrior, who got whipped into shape in the last post with a little bit of tough love. That story has a couple of lessons about control that are crucial when you’re ready to re-assert yourself. Near top on the list of how to regain […]
February 4, 2012 by candidaabrahamson
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