bill,
your feedback on this point is well taken. literally, it is quite accurate to say that each family member has individual error signals and disturbances independent of each other. while you note that the perceptual range of error signals and disturbances of a family may metaphorically be greater than the sum of its parts, it is not logically or literally possible for one member to speak for the error signals and disturbances of any other family member.
It then follows logically that one member cannot reorganize for the family; but only can reorganize within the context of his or her independent homeostatic self correcting negative feedback loop. Yet, as you noted in an earlier email on this topic, some of the principles of psychodynamic psychotherapy may be applicable and translatable here into pct and mol terms and have significant relevance.
For example, even freud referred to anxiety as an error signal and disturbance which signifies to us that an inhibition can no longer be controlled for and the function of the symptom or anxiety, is to let the person know, there is a need which is requiring satisfaction.
Moreover, family systems therapists, most notably murray bowen have described families as having their own anxieties. As a culture, as you know from engineering principles, stress has mistakenly been identified as the culprit rather than adaptive; even hans selye, the founder of the term and concept of stress, wrote of stress without “distress”.
Our culture, erroneously wants to believe that anxiety is harmful, as well as stress. Rollo May, a prominent existential psychiatrist wrote of the meaning of anxiety and noted we live despite anxiety, not without anxiety. Social learning and motivational studies know the importance of some level of anxiety as required for optimal performance. Even psycholgists know that an unmotivated client in treatment is a client with flat affect, few error signals and disturbances defined by them (not by their parents or spouses) and absent minimal anxiety for growth.
Again, the organism, as you are aware, depends on stress as a kind of error signal and disturbance with reference to a comparator, as in the pct model you have founded and taught to so many. Another way, therefore, to look at families is to say that families purposively seek out those members it can to identify as the sources of stress (which subjectively may be defined as “distress”). I say subjectively as there is a perceptual range of family disturbance beyond which is intolerable and becomes identified by a family member(s) and then becomes the family problem with a designated family member as the symptom.
Families scapegoat to reduce each member’s own sense of guilt, anxiety, and responsibility. Systems scapegoat (institutions, governments, corporations, schools), as any real analysis of how systems function would indicate. In psychodynamic terms, we know individuals displace their frustration. For example, at the residential center here in vineland where i consult and where dr. david goldstein is clinical director, residents may be disappointed they cannot get home visits, so they fight with other residents. Individuals project qualities onto others of which they are ashamed in themselves. As humans, functioning in a social context, errors and disturbances, or in psychodynamic terms anxiety are perceived and externalized onto others.
In the 1950’s -1980’s it was the zeitgeist to refer to the chosen or designated family error and disturbance as the “scapegoated” or “index patient”. So, in the context of all families having their unique anxieties, there is, to my way of understanding families, a perceptual range of tolerable error signals and disturbances, beyond which a designated family member becomes the “symptom” or “disturbance”.
Families enter counseling when their perceptual range is “out of whack” and the error signals and disturbances are beyond the perceptual range which is tolerable. Hence, a mother will seek counseling for a 14 year old son who does not listen and stays out too late; a father or mother will seek counseling for an 11th grade high school son or daughter who is failing high school; a mother wants to bring her 9 year old son in to counseling because all he wants to do is play video games. According to one or more family members (typically a parent) the family’s homeostasis is thrown off balance. Yet, the referral is individual in nature. “My son has an anger problem.” “My daughter is not listening to me.” “My husband and I disagree on how to discipline our 15 year old daughter.”
I like to metaphorically refer to the “see saw” or “teeter totter” of the family as severely out of alignment. Its homeostasis needs adjustment. It is self correcting, by definition, when the family reorganizes around NOT making the designated family “error” member the “symptom”.
At that point, the family therapist, in my experience the psychologist becomes the facilitator of reorganization, so the family can reorganize and the family once again comes within the perceptual range of manageable error signals and disturbances or in psychodynamic terms manages its anxiety without making an individual family member an error, disturbance, or symptom. There is a family realignment and reorganization with new definitions of purpose in each family member and the family system.
If in a family, as so often occurs in our culture, parents have to learn how to set limits and appropriately, without violence, enforce rules, hierarchical issues of parenting require reorganization. This was the approach of structural family therapists, of whom salvador minuchin was the most prominent.
What happens in effective family therapy and explored is the perception of each individual family member and how it contributes to the family perception. In reality, the family perception, which as you noted bill can only exist metaphorically, controls the family’s behaviors, which is designed to “scapegoat” in its search for the cause of the family disturbance and distress.
the facilitator of reorganization, in my experience the psychologist, is mindful how the family uses the symptom to justify its error signals and disturbances. To understand family therapy in pct and mol terms then, requires the question be asked “what is the function of the disturbance?” In family therapy terms the question is “what is the function of the symptom?” Hence, disturbance (pct) = symptom (family therapy). Moreover, in family therapy, typically, the family focuses on attributing the disturbance to one member as the causal agent or the designated or scapegoated family member.
In other words, which family member is the carrier of the error signal, disturbance, and family anxiety? What is the 9 year old son doing to upset mom? How is the 15 year old son or daughter failing high school causing distress in mom and dad? Are their behaviors, which cause such distress in their parents, purposeful?
Here is where the purposeful behavior of each individual family member needs to be understood as a self correcting closed negative feedback loop. Hence, family therapy is really about the perceptions of each N as an independent, individual family member and N.1…N2…N3…N4… or the family perception. Is it a metaphor or does a family perception exist? If it does exist, what is its purpose?
What is the purposeful behavior, moreover, of the “victimized” family member (ie. child or parent)? Are they looking for error signals and disturbances? Are they creating error signals and disturbances and attributing the disturbance to another individual family member, eventually impacting that member’s perceptual experience, altering that individual family member’s purposeful behaviors? What about the error signal of a deprived, neglected or abused child? Who speaks for the child’s error signals and disturbances? Where is a child’s comparator and referent? How is the concept “blaming the victim” translated into pct and mol terms?
The therapeutic question asked in strategic family therapy, for example, jay haley’s contributions as well as milton erickson is what is the function of the symptom? The question i would add, however, is not only what is the function of the symptom, but what is the purpose behind choosing the particular independent family member as the bearer of that disturbance or symptom.
that’s how i see families functioning bill. i welcome this discussion with you and appreciate your feedback and comments. as dr. david goldstein has been aware for a while, this is my real area of interest in psychology and i do want to write and publish on the conceptual bridge between pct, mol, psychodynamic, and family therapy.
all the best bill. gary p.
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