This chapter will describe ten "laws" of family life derived from family theory. The purpose here, however, is not merely to offer more insight. It is rather to accustom the reader to think in terms of family process. This is not easy in a world used to the individual model, particularly where our own professional training, if not our own therapy, was conducted in that context. Thinking in terms of family process involves more than the application of new ideas. It represents a shift in paradigms, a change in the very manner of conceptualizing emotional phenomena. Thinking in terms of family systems rather than individual personalities is analogous to a shift between algebra and calculus, between Newtonian and quantum mechanics, or perhaps between seeing the crazy as bewitched or as emotionally troubled. As with all such paradigmatic shifts, there is a tendency to explain the new model in terms derived from the old.

In other words, family emotional process is not reducible to individual model psychodynamics any more than chemistry is reducible to physics. Molecules, for example, may contain atoms, but other forces are at play on the molecular level that cannot be explained in terms of elementary interactions. Worse, collecting data at an inappropriate level of inquiry tends to produce misleading information. This chapter, therefore, is an effort to demythologize several assumptions about family life that have resulted from the effort to conceptualize families as the interactions of individuals rather than individuals as the components of families.

BENEFITS FOR THE CLERGY

Familiarity with these laws of family process can also bring other benefits to members of the clergy. First, rather than having to keep in mind a catalog of all the symptoms known to the human species and their different remedies, these rules provide criteria for what information (in the encyclopedia that every family "publishes" about itself) is significant.

Second, these laws transcend culture. They are equally applicable to families from any background and are particularly useful when counseling cross-cultural couples who think their background differences make a difference.

Third, these rules are equally applicable to emotional processes in personal families and congregational families. They provide a map to the crossovers whereby problems in either of those relationship systems create symptoms in the other; conversely, they are also the keys to learning more about either family by observing emotional processes in the other.

Throughout this chapter, therefore, the word family always means church or synagogue as well as one's network of relations.

EMOTIONAL DISTANCE

When family members use physical distance to solve problems of emotional interdependency, the result is always temporary, or includes a transference of the problem to another relationship system.

Most family members think of distance as a physical category rather than as an emotional category. Accordingly, when they want more separation, they tend to resort to physical solutions. A husband who finds his wife's constant anxiety disturbing may spend more time on the golf course, in a bar, or at work; a wife who wants to get away from the constant surveillance of a perpetually critical husband may start taking half-hour showers; a child who finds her parents' constant focus oppressive may marry early or move far away.

While such efforts often bring relief, generally they require a great deal of energy to maintain the relief, and in many situations the same intensity just surfaces elsewhere. It is not really possible, in fact, to become totally independent from one's family except by fusing with another relationship system of equal intensity, for instance, a marriage where the spouses are poorly differentiated, or overinvolvement with one's child, a cult, or a volunteer organization.

Distancing comes about because there is not enough distance to begin with. Marriage partners may separate because they have grown distant, but most couples probably separate because they are not able to achieve any separation at all. Children may wind up undisciplined because their parents pay them no heed, but as many are problemed because they are the objects of too much investment. Emotional distance is perplexing. If there is too much, it is not possible to have a relationship; if there is not enough separation, it is also not possible to have a relationship.

The problem goes to the very essence of existence. It has been shown that if two microorganisms of the same species become close enough, often one or both will begin to disintegrate. But, the disintegration is not the result of aggression. It seems to come about as an adaptation to the relationship. It would appear that there are destructive processes at the very essence of protoplasm that can take over when loss of distance occurs with respect to other protoplasm.

For the human species, however, getting distance must go beyond obtaining physical space. As will be shown throughout this work, the capacity to define self in a relationship, and to control one's own reactive mechanisms, also creates space. The opposite is equally true: The quickest way to destroy distance is to overfunction anxiously in another's space. Emotional distance must be measured in terms of resiliency rather than in inches. The trick is to be able to have different distances at different times. It is the failure to understand this notion that makes ineffective most efforts to improve communication or show more feeling, by having people get closer.

It is also this confusion of physical distance and emotional distance that leads to the assumption that the family is breaking down. Actually, no matter how many miles apart people live, or how infrequently they communicate, it only takes a letter or call every now and then to trigger the programmed circuits. The family has only gone underground. Its emotional potential is always there. The family umbilical cord is infinitely elastic.

LOSS AND REPLACEMENT

To the extent a family rushes to replace loss, its pain will be lessened, but so will the potential for change that the loss made possible.

Nature also abhors a vacuum in emotional systems. When individual members leave a family, whether through death, marriage, relocation, or a cutoff, the system will generally be quick to replace the person who was lost. Whoever the replacement is, new child or new spouse, new in-law or new boarder, clergyman or clergywoman, in the same generation or the next, he or she will replace in all the family triangles the person who has left. They will have grafted onto them all the expectations associated with their predecessor, and un-worked-out problems that may have contributed to their predecessor's leaving (or becoming symptomatic) are likely to resurface in the new relationships. Replacement is a function of grief, and grief is always proportional to the un-worked-out residue of the relationship that was lost.

This is a homeostatic principle. It is the way the family maintains its balance. In work systems, it helps explain why the introduction of new blood often brings little change. In Section III, this principle will be applied to situations where a member of the clergy takes a new post, and it will provide some answers to how one may avoid the dangers associated with replacement.

As Table 2-1 illustrates, the replacement phenomenon also provides a reading on the degree of differentiation in any family around the time of nodal events. The table describes seven important life-cycle changes with respect to marriage, birth, marital dissolution, and remarriage. It shows that to the extent that family members make such transitions as a replacement or, to the contrary, are unable to separate at all from a loss, their decisions can be correlated to the time periods they allow for the new relationship to develop. Individuals who fall within the "benchmark period" are generally entering the new relationship with the least likelihood that they are using it as a replacement (everyone does to some extent). This benchmark period may be seen as an expanding slide rule that shifts along the continua, depending on the specific period or the cultural context. Its presence is there to highlight the extremes, and all these continua are more accurate as one moves toward the extremes. At either end, however, we will find family members who are most likely to have fallen into the replacement trap. This does not mean their decision was bad, or that those who fall within the benchmark period will be guaranteed success.

But to the extent that individuals make decisions within these extreme time frames, it is more likely that they are bringing important un-worked-out family residue with them. Thus, when problems surface in a new relationship, the problems of the old relationship are more likely to surface right along with them. Families and congregations that function near the extremes appear to ricochet down the alley of time, bouncing from loss to replacement to loss.

Skin Deep: A nurse who was dealing with various problems of loss, divorce from her husband, separating from her children, and changing her own family position as a replacement for her mother's mother, was helped through these dilemmas when she came across the following biological fact in a medical journal: "When a wound occurs, there are two kinds of tissue that must heal, the connective tissue below the surface, and the protective tissue of the skin. If the protective tissue heals too quickly, healing of the connective tissue will not be sound, causing other problems to surface later, or worse, never to surface at all." She was able to make the analogy that in some families emotional wounds also close too quickly and, when they do, it is often very difficult to reopen them again, despite the promise of a more fundamental healing.

CHRONIC CONDITIONS

If a family problem is chronic (perpetual or recurrent), there must be reactive or adaptive feedback from somewhere in the system to sustain it.

This rule helps explain why it is often more effective to work with a family member who is not dysfunctional (and is unwittingly contributing feedback), rather than with the symptomatic family member.

Most traditional theories of behavior say that a person's problems in the present are influenced largely by his or her experiences in the past. More significant to the formation and perpetuation of a symptom, however, may be the past experiences of other family members who are important to the symptom-bearer (the identified patient).

There are major problems with the assumption that "past is prologue," it does not adequately explain why the pattern has remained chronic. (Clergy are in a position particularly suited for noticing this anomaly; we are almost unique in that our vocation allows us to become acquainted intimately with families who have no serious problems, but who have many of the same patterns that, when they appear in problemed families, are used to explain why they are troubled.) Second, this cause-and-effect reasoning only seems to work well backwards. If the past is so determinative, why can't it be used to make more definitive predictions? (Some would answer that no two situations are exactly alike. But with that logic, how is it possible to theorize about human behavior at all?) Third, linear, cause-and-effect reasoning is deceptive because, depending on other variables, any "cause" in emotional life can have exactly opposite effects, and any effect can result from exactly opposite causes, Over- and underaffectionate parents have the equal likelihood of producing either over- or underaffectionate children. (See "Symmetry," below.)

All human beings are programmed for far more pathology than could possibly become manifest in a lifetime. The major variable that selects out of anyone's past the behavior patterns or ways of thinking that are most likely to become symptomatic is the adaptive or reactive response of the most important people in our lives, our parents or our spouses. Furthermore, these selectively chosen patterns of behavior will be precisely those found in the "uptight" areas of other family members who are most important to the symptom-bearer. The chronic aspect of a symptom in a husband, wife, or child has primarily to do not with his or her own past, but with the spouse's or parent's past, not with his or her own childhood, but with the spouse's or parent's childhood. Otherwise the pattern would not have become chronic, nor perhaps even symptomatic to begin with.

A subtle proof for this comes from a frequent response nonsymptomatic family members offer when it is suggested that they change their response to the symptom. Frequently they will answer, "You are asking me to do something that is totally out of character." Were it not out of character, they probably would not have a problem. By definition, no one gets the problem he or she can handle. One family will tolerate and, indeed, not even notice what another family considers immediate cause for alarm. Family problems generally are not interchangeable.

Feedback and Change

The notion that chronic conditions require feedback also suggests strategies for change. (See Figure 2-1). The sine wave (A) represents the ups and downs of a chronic condition: depression, drinking, a school problem, a recurrent physical condition such as back pain or migraine, or the backsliding of a religious congregation. Generally, there is predictability about the highs and the lows of symptomatic behavior, and the frequency with which the symptom reappears, no matter what its nature. Chronic symptoms rarely go below or above certain thresholds, and they tend to reappear with a certain rhythm. (Anyone who doubts this should try to make a problem worse and keep it at that level.) This curve, therefore, is the curve of a relationship rather than a description of only the symptom-bearer's functioning. For it is the feedback of an anxious other that gives any chronic condition its shape and continuity and, thus, provides its homeostasis. Where the person in the feedback position (family member or spiritual leader) can be helped to reduce his or her anxiety about the other's condition and to change his or her way of adapting or reacting to the symptom, the curve will often change to the dotted line (B). Paradoxically, the problems will appear to get worse at first, and it will take a longer period to go back to its previous best. Related here is the notion that it is not possible to eliminate any chronic condition without going through a phase that is acute. Acute stages are more painful, and most family members would prefer peace to progress. But if the nonsymptomatic member can sustain a nonreactive response, the condition will often get better than ever before. The problem in changing the curve comes at (C), when the nonsymptomatic family member (increasingly anxious when things seem to be getting worse) must avoid going back to merely adaptive or reactive feedback behavior. Where this can be done successfully, the change that occurs is more likely to be a fundamental (systemic) change rather than a recycling of the symptom.

Many family members or leaders can take the first step of trying not to respond with their usual adaptive or reactive patterns. Very few, however, can maintain their resolve to hold that position when the identified patient's symptoms become more intense. This increases their anxiety, sabotages their resolve, and begins to draw them back into the triangle again. Focusing on this feedback aspect of chronic conditions is basic in the "coaching" approach to counseling (to be described in Section II), and in the "nonanxious presence" view of leadership (to be discussed in Section Ill). It involves the concept of family responsibility: If we work on the areas of our own emotional inflexibility, those important to us will begin to function better, specifically in those same areas, generally in relationships, and eventually throughout their lives.

PAIN AND RESPONSIBILITY

If one family member can successfully increase his or her threshold for another's pain, the other's own threshold will also increase, thus expanding his or her range of functioning.

While recent research has shown that the brain can release its own analgesics called endorphins, which actually block pain signals, beyond such physiological phenomena the degree of pain felt at any moment, as well as its debilitating effects, has something to do with threshold. Thresholds for both physical and emotional pain are lower when we are functioning dependently and are higher when we are motivated to accomplish something. But there is also an interrelational aspect to this threshold dimension of pain. Where members of a family are too quick to spare another pain, the resulting dependency tends to make the other's threshold fall. In addition, he or she will become addicted to having pain relieved through someone else's functioning. Conversely, where family members can begin to increase their threshold for another's pain, the other person's threshold is likely to rise, even though he or she may at first go through "withdrawal" symptoms when the "addiction" is taken away. Those who focus only on comfort, on relieving pain, or filling another's need, tend to forget that another's need may be not to have their needs fulfilled.

Many symptoms first surface in children, for example, around the time mother has begun to think more about herself and has inadvertently ceased to respond (positively or negatively) in ways that were comforting or familiar to her child. {Maternal anxiety may be the original addiction.) To some extent, the child's reaction will depend on the extent to which mother used the child as her own addiction, fusing with the child to ward off rejection or pain in her own life. The withdrawal phenomenon in a child is more severe to the extent that the child was originally mother's analgesic. Either way, the intensity of the symptom that surfaces will be proportional to the amount of pain the child was originally spared. This need for a "fix" can occur in any relationship, however, even between a shepherd and his flock.

A Low Threshold: An efficient, hard-working woman found it very difficult to function after a major automobile accident. Although able to move about, she was under heavy sedation to relieve her pain. Unaccustomed to an inactive life, she became more and more depressed. Her husband, a good-natured, helpful person, took over totally, doing all the shopping, the household chores, and the child-rearing, to make it as easy as possible on her. After her suicide, when the funeral was over, he turned and plaintively said, "I guess I should have kicked her in the ass."

But am I not my brother's keeper?

The Responsibility Triangle

The problem is that we cannot make another family member responsible by trying to make him or her responsible. The very act of trying to make others responsible preempts their own responsibility. This is equally true whether the issue is study habits, drinking, or failure to come to church. Harsh scolding generally should not be seen as inflicting pain. It often only succeeds in taking the sting out of their indolence, thus taking away the stimulus for motivation.

There is, however, a way to be our brother's keeper, to manifest responsibility for a fellow human being without getting stuck in a triangle between that person and his or her failure to be responsible. It is called "challenge," but it requires one to nonanxiously tolerate pain, and sometimes even to stimulate pain, thus forcing the other to increase his or her threshold.

A Stimulus for Motivation: A woman found her husband coming home from work ever more tipsy. Her anxiety increased. She tried everything she could to keep him sober, from constant warnings in the morning to harangues in the evening. As in all such emotional triangles, her own stress increased, and her husband seemed to feel more freedom to drink. Worried that she might be left a widow with two children, she was encouraged to get out of the triangle between her husband and his symptom, to shift the pain, by telling him (when he was not drunk) in as calm a manner as possible, "Honey, I've been thinking things over. I have decided that you have a right to drink all you want, to enjoy life to the hilt, and to risk it. After all, it's your life. I would like to stop nagging you, but I've got a problem. It's fairly clear to me that you probably won't make it for too much longer, and I don't want to be stuck with the mortgage and the car payment, so I'll make an agreement with you. If you will agree to triple your life insurance, I will agree never to mention your drinking again." Sticking someone with the pain of responsibility for his or her own destiny is far more "sobering" than giving the person black coffee afterwards.

A similar phenomenon occurs in work systems where leaders are always trying (usually unsuccessfully) to delegate responsibility. A far more effective form of leadership can be to delegate anxiety: "I just want you all to know that our collections have been so low to this point that we probably won't last to the end of the year. It would be my suggestion, therefore, that we establish a committee to see if we can still get a good price for our building, and merge with our rival across town."

Challenge is the basic context of health and survival, of a person, of the family, of a religious organization, or even (in the course of evolution) of an entire species. When it comes to life and growth, therefore, surely one of the most fundamental advances in modern healing, is that it is no longer limited to treating symptoms after a disease has struck, or even to eradicating the causative agents in the environment. Today it is common practice to inject the germs and viruses directly into an organism so as to stimulate and help it develop its own system of defense.

THE PARADOX OF SERIOUSNESS AND
THE PLAYFULNESS OF PARADOX

The seriousness with which families approach their problems can be more the cause of their difficulties than the effect of the problems. Efforts directed at the seriousness itself often will eliminate the problem.

Seriousness presents a paradox. If family members are not serious about their responsibilities, the family may become unstable and chaotic. But seriousness can also be destructive. Seriousness is more than an attitude; it is a total orientation, a way of thinking embedded in constant, chronic anxiety. It is characterized by lack of flexibility in response, a narrow repertoire of approaches, persistent efforts to try harder, an inability to change direction, and a loss of perspective and concentrated focus.

Families that evidence such seriousness are as if surrounded by volatile fumes of anxiety, and any small incident can cause a flare-up. They will always assume that it was the incident that created the problem, but it is the way they relate and think that gives any incident its inflammatory power. The family, thus, tends to overlook the cause of its misery by focusing on the object of its discontent. On the other hand, if changes can be made in such a noxious atmosphere then the fumes of anxiety disperse, and the sparking incidents of life (that are necessary for creative existence) lose their explosive potential.

The antidote to seriousness is the capacity to be playful, which is not to be equated with making jokes. Some of the world's greatest humorists led personally tragic lives; and it is not unusual for the office wit to lose his timing in the presence of his wife. What gives to any playful response its remedial power is its relational affect and not its cleverness. This notion of playfulness has less to do with "one-liners" than with the concept of flexible distance; it has less to do with good "come-backs" than with the ability to distinguish process from content. Ultimately, it is more connected with responsibility for others than with being light-hearted. When playfulness is introduced into a "serious" relationship system, family or congregation, it can break the vicious feedback cycle that is keeping a problem chronic. In the family field, it is often called "paradoxical intervention." If we assume that any chronic condition that we are persistently trying to change will, perversely, be supported not to change by our serious efforts to bring about change, then it is logical to consider the possibility that one way out of this paradox is to be paradoxical.

Reversing Direction: A good husband and dedicated father found that his wife had chronically been having affairs. He took her once to a marriage counselor, but she refused to go again. He continued for two years, desperately trying to make her see the light. He showed anger. He threatened. He tried making her jealous. At his wit's end, ready to throw in the towel, he heard a discussion at church about how families never teach their members to push one another away. We are trained to hang onto others, or to withdraw (pull away). Pushing people we care about at others, or into activities we don't care about, is almost inconceivable. When a relationship is caught in a skid, we almost never think to turn the wheel the other way. The next day, when the husband came home, he found his wife on the phone. Predictably she hung up quickly. Resisting the urge to berate her, he said, "Listen, honey, I know you want some privacy. I'll go for a walk around the block." Predictably, the wife's behavior escalated. At the end of the week, she informed him she was going to Miami to visit an old boyfriend. He went to a travel agency and got her brochures on places to have fun in southern Florida, adding some suggestions based on his own experience. She took them without comment and flew off, returned within three days, and announced that she had had a terrible time. The following week she joined him in counseling and continued long after he dropped out.

Some may hear this tale as gimmicky, manipulative, or game playing. But that would be a "serious" way of listening. Others may label this approach as simply reverse psychology. It is important to point out, therefore, that the major effect of playfulness and paradox is on the perpetrator. It takes him or her out of the feedback position. It detriangles and changes the balance of the emotional interdependency. It is the change in the structure of the triangle that gets the other person functioning or thinking differently. It is less the words than the emotional envelope in which they are delivered that determines whether any comment will be a put-down or a therapeutic challenge.

There is an important personal ramification here for members of the clergy. If it is generally true that it is not possible to be playful with those for whom we feel too responsible, it is especially true when we feel a responsibility for their salvation! Few religious traditions make much of playfulness, and even less of paradox or challenge. Or is that the way that we who are responsible for our traditions hear them?

SECRETS AND SYSTEMS

Family secrets act as the plaque in the arteries of communication; they cause stoppage in the general flow and not just at the point of their existence.

The communication system of many families is riddled with secrets. Favorite subjects are an affair, illegitimacy, elopement, terminal illness, abortion, adoption, institutionalization (crazy or criminal), previous marriage, black sheep in previous generation (skeleton in the closet), finances, and any minor matter where one family member says to another, "But don't tell Dad (Mom, etc.)."

Far more significant than the content of any family secret is the ramification of its existence for the emotional processes of the entire family. These effects are specific and predictable.

1. Secrets function to divide a family, as an avalanche would a community. Those "in" on the secret will become far better able to communicate with one another than with those in the outsider group, about any issue, not just about the secret. For example, a minister once complained how he was unable to help four sisters who were recuperating from an accident because they had yet to be told that their brother had died in the same crash. He spent so much time prethinking everything he said, for fear it would lead to questions about the brother, that he was totally unable to be the spontaneous self that was the basis of his pastoral effectiveness. When that same emotional phenomenon occurs in a family over a long period of time, very rigid triangles result.
2. Therefore, a second effect of secrets on a family system is that they create unnecessary estrangements as well as false companionship. For example, a father and daughter conspire not to tell mother about the abortion. Mother and daughter's relationship is likely to be affected well beyond the specific issue. An overall atmosphere of unnecessary distance will develop between them. On the other hand, father and daughter will become closer, but it will be a shallow togetherness.
3. A third major effect of secrets on a family is that they distort perceptions. Family members will become confused or misled by information they obtain because they really are seeing only part of the picture. An ironic example of this is the husband who was considering leaving his wife because she had become "cold, selfish, and distant." She was having an affair, which she kept a closely guarded secret for fear that he would leave her if he found out. When she finally told him the truth at the urgings of the counselor, though he first expressed deep hurt and rage, breaking almost every glass in the house, he then began to feel better about things because he was now able to put together, in a comprehensive way, many messages and actions that had not made sense. Almost immediately, they found they were able to communicate better on every subject.
4. The most important effect of secrets on a family's emotional system is that they exacerbate other pathological processes unrelated to the content of the particular secret, because secrets generally function to keep anxiety at higher energy levels. When secrets are revealed, despite the fact that family members might at first be upset (either over the information or the fact that the secret is out), the anxiety level of the family generally decreases. This is particularly the case if the family continues to work at the issues that then surface, issues that often had precipitated the forming of a secret. The formation of a family secret is always symptomatic of other things going on in the family.

To some extent, secret formation feeds back to the previously mentioned issues concerning pain. Family members will say that they kept a secret "to spare" someone's feelings; the truth is more likely to be that they did so in order to spare their own feelings. Few of us are irreparably hurt by upset. Chronic anxiety, on the other hand, kills.

All of the above is equally true in the parish. The clergy are constantly triangled by various clandestine messages that parishioners report to them about one another, or about the other minister. That network of interlocking triangles is always in operation. But to the extent that messages about the minister are reported back and forth between "family members" in secret, then such secrets will promote pockets of pseudomutuality and unnecessary estrangements throughout the emotional system of the entire congregational family.

The ultimate proof of the function and the power of secrets within a family is that when they are revealed, more change usually takes place throughout the entire system than could have been attributed solely to the content of that secret. In short, secrets create and perpetuate triangles; they are always on the side of the existing homeostasis, the labeling process, and the chronicity of symptoms. They are never on the side of challenge and change. Secrets are very serious stuff.

SIBLING POSITION

The position we occupy within the sibling constellation of our nuclear family of origin foreshadows our expectations of the opposite as well as the same sex, our degree of comfort with our own various offspring, and our style of leadership in succeeding nuclear groupings.

Many studies have been published correlating sibling position to various social phenomena. The major pioneering work in the field is the very large cross-cultural investigation done by Walter Toman. He found, for example, that individuals are more likely to be satisfied if they marry someone of a compatible sibling position. An oldest would do better not to marry an oldest; a man who had an older sister should ideally marry a woman who had a younger brother. Toman has also suggested that parents tend to have the most sympathetic relationship with the child whose sibling position is closest to their own. A father who himself was the youngest would understand his youngest child best, even better if it were a boy; if he himself had an older sister, then it would be best if, before the youngest were born, he and his wife had a girl.

There are many exceptions to these feelings. Handled in too doctrinaire a manner, they can sound like astrology. Many individuals have rather complex sibling positions, and size of the family also makes a difference. Still, for all its exceptions, the general formulations about sibling constellation can be useful in counseling, helpful in understanding how people get along in work systems, and an aid in charting how emotional processes are transmitted from one generation to another, as well as from one emotional system to another. Sometimes it has such astonishing predictive power as to resemble an emotional genetic code. It probably, has far more impact on a child's attitude toward relationships than whether he or she was "natural" or adopted. The following are some examples of its application in counseling situations:

1. In premarital counseling, if both consultees are "oldests," the potential for a king-queen conflict can be pointed out, as well as the dangers of always trying to resolve conflict by finding a middle ground that will satisfy neither. If he wants meat and she wants potatoes, they should not have hash.
2. An "oldest" mother disturbed by the "immaturity" of her youngest daughter (who is a delight to everyone else) can be shown that the extreme oppositeness of their sibling positions simply makes them function differently. She would do well not to graft the expectations of her own sibling position onto this child. Oldests are rarely as playful as youngests, and youngests rarely as superresponsible as oldests. Conversely, where both parents came near the bottom of the sibling line, their oldest is likely to be odd man (or woman) out. She, for example, will "naturally" want to go her own way, but she will find that her parents, used to tagging along, constantly thwart her desire. Neither child nor parent will really understand the other.
3. When assessing how to coach a family member not to be thrown off course by homeostatic resistance, oldests generally have the "go power" to push straight ahead. However, when an oldest is on the side of no-change, it is not likely that a youngest, married to this oldest, will be able to win a contest of wills. If, on the other hand, the youngest has some of the mischievous or playful qualities more natural to that position, she (or he) can often learn to skin the cat another way.

While other variables are always present, it can be generally said that the more reinforced the sibling position has been throughout successive generations, the more accurate the predictability of sibling theory. For example, if a man complains that his wife is spending him out of house and home, won't let him take responsibility for the children, won't come in for counseling, and won't stop nagging him about getting a better job, but he, his father, and his grandfather were each the youngest brother of three sisters, forget it!

Sibling constellations also function as semiautonomous systems in their own right. A trio of young adults, or even married siblings, can make seemingly independent decisions, about jobs, moving, college, or marriage, that really have been made relative to one another. The key is often the family's need to have at least one child close to home. A sibling system can also create herd-like panic, as when the marriage of one daughter triggers the marriage of all of her sisters within a year. This can look as if the houseboat is sinking, and it's every woman for herself. But it's more likely a game of hide-and-seek in which mother has just announced, "Anyone around my base is it!"

Sibling constellation theory can also be applied to work systems. It can help explain relationships, as well as be used to tone down conflicts between, for example, co-ministers, rabbis and cantors or educational directors, clergy and lay leaders, any two members of a religious hierarchy, "brothers" in a rectory, "sisters" in an order, or nuns in the way they respond to the mother superior and the way in which she responds to each of them.

DIAGNOSIS

The diagnosis of individual family members stabilizes family homeostasis and makes it more difficult for the diagnosed member to change.

Diagnosis in a family establishes who is to be the identified patient. It is inherently an anti-/systems concept. It is linear thinking. It denies other variables that are present in the system. Existentially, it makes someone "other," and allows the remainder of the family to locate their troubles in the diagnosed member. It also disguises opinions and judgments; in an intense "congregational family" struggle, this hidden effect adds to the polarization.

Within the personal family, the labeling effects of diagnosis destroy the person. It decreases, in the diagnosed member, a sense of control over the situation, increases his or her dependency, and thus lowers their pain thresholds. The effect on nonsymptomatic members is that it fixes their perception of the diagnosed person's capabilities. Eventually a family member's label will become confused with his or her identity. Diagnosis also tends to concretize. It makes everything and everyone more serious.

Parents who are trying to make their young child concentrate in school, or their adult child clean up his or her act, will have an even harder time responding to that child's resistance if he or she has had psychological testing and the parents' perception of their child has been "corrected" by the lens of authority. This can be true even with the most disturbed children. In one instance, 80-year-old parents brought in their 45-year-old "schizophrenic" son who had never left home and could never hold a job, although he was obviously quite bright. The parents assumed that his failure to succeed was due to his "schizophrenia." It had to be pointed out that downtown (in Washington, D.C.) there were an enormous number of psychotics functioning quite effectively and that their son's problem had less to do with his condition than with the overlay of immaturity (which is a family symptom). This can be true even where the condition upon which the immature functioning is blamed is physical, for example, mental retardation, cystic fibrosis, or cancer. With the elderly, the same identifying process fosters or reinforces senility when the family receives a diagnosis such as "chronic brain syndrome." (See Chapter 6.) To the extent that family members see the dysfunctional member as having a "condition," they will always stop short of those measures that are needed to bring about fundamental change

Labeling also retards rehabilitation. For example, no one functions at peak capacity. Indeed, few people function at better than 50% of capacity on the average. Once a person has been diagnosed, however, there a tendency to assume that he or she cannot do any better because of his or her condition. This is particularly true regarding the aged. To the extent the anxiety of others (family members or helpful professionals) causes them to rush in and be "supportive," their overfunctioning will preempt the potential functioning of the diagnosed one and fix their "actual" as their "potential." See Figure 2-2.)  This can be true in any situation, but if someone has been diagnosed, there is more of a tendency to accept that he or she is not capable of functioning closer to peak capacity.

When it comes to "psychological" conditions, there is an additional, more subtle reason why diagnosis inhibits change. Analyzing another person's being is a very slippery affair. It is not that the traditional interpretations are wrong; it is that, at any given moment, it is almost impossible to know if one has guessed right, because, in emotional life any cause can produce exactly opposite effects, and any effect can come from completely opposite causes. Worse, individuals are most likely to resort to diagnosis of others when their own anxiety has gone up. In fact, a good rule of thumb is that if you catch yourself diagnosing someone else, there is probably something in you that you are trying to hide. Recognizing these problems of objectivity, no psychiatrist would ever take his or her own spouse into therapy, yet every day husbands and wives are doing just that in the kitchen.

Diagnosis in a Congregational Family

The alienating and ad hominem qualities of diagnoses carry over to the congregational family philosophically and practically. Philosophically, religion has come a long way from the Inquisition. But the inquisitional potential in diagnosis is enormous. The word sick (and its various synonyms or euphemisms) has become one of the most pernicious words in the English language. It reeks of authoritarianism and allows labelers to think that they are being objective rather than judgmental. When we judge another person's form of existence in the disguise of diagnosis, it becomes too easy to consider what we do not like or cannot agree with as a symptom. Diagnosis thus used becomes a convenient tool in the armamentarium of a new "omni-science." However, when clergy employ diagnosis, they may be guilty of theological regression.

The practical ramification for congregational families is that anxious systems diagnose people instead of their relationships, Therefore, the amount of diagnosing of others going on in any religious institution is an indication of the amount of anxiety present in the system. And, since a major by-product of "chronic diagnosis" is polarization, the resulting alienation usually leads to two (or more) enemy camps.

SYMMETRY

In emotional life, every cause can produce exactly opposite effects and every effect could have come from exactly opposite causes, with the result that the more polarized things seem to be in a family, the more likely they are somehow connected.

This systems concept can be a powerful tool for explaining how parts of a family are related, for making predictions about other forces that may be operating unnoticed, and for noting what is being transmitted from generation to generation. Focus on symmetry rather than cause and effect also forestalls diagnosis. The most basic characteristic of a system is symmetry, the concept that all the emotional pushes and pulls in a family add up to zero. That is, they cancel one another out in a way that enables the overall family system to retain its homeostasis. In emotional space, paying attention to extremes can be more productive than focusing on specific emotions. In physics, where it is called "parity" or "complementarity," this homeostatic principle has enabled physicists to make accurate predictions about the existence of hitherto undiscovered particles by estimating what unseen forces must exist in order to keep what is observable in balance.

Here are some examples of symmetry, asymmetry, and crossover of causes and effects in family life They will be followed by illustrations of how this concept can be used in charting family process.

Examples of how the same "cause" can lead to opposite effects in family life:

• Parental investment can promote overachievement or underachievement.
• An overly strict father can produce an overly strict son (when he is a father) or one who is too permissive.
• Alcoholic parents can produce alcoholic offspring or offspring who marry alcoholics.
• Dependency can lead to helpless or controlling attitudes.
• A "nice guy" clergyman may be beloved by his congregation or taken by them.
• Well defined stands can lead to admiration or revulsion.
• Surrendering and taking over are both ways of adapting.

Examples of how the same effect could have come from opposite causes:

• Someone who sleeps a great deal could be depressed or content.
• A family problem could surface after a business failure or a business success.
• An extremely rigid offspring can be produced by an extremely rigid parent or an overly flexible parent.
• Lack of change can be a by-product of polarization or of too much togetherness.
• Ineffective leadership can result from stands that are too authoritarian or too concerned with consensus.
• A crisis in faith can develop because of lack of self-examination, but the overexamined life isn't worth living either.
• Chronic means always; it also means never.

In the intensity of family life, we are prone to see only one of the possibilities in any chain of cause and effect, and the possibility we never think of is usually connected to our own emotional inflexibility in that particular category. In other words, we will tend to think of the explanation that makes us comfortable. Failure to keep this symmetry principle in mind leads to self-serving diagnosis or blaming of other family members, to the creation of a singled-out identified patient, to an artificial distinction between the unhealthy and the normal members of the family, and to a concentrated focus on the other family members' past and a blindness to our own.

Three tables of polarities (Tables 2-2, 2-3, and 2-4) show how the systems concept of symmetry can be used to understand the emotional forces in a given family. Table 2-2 shows how its application to any individual family member indicates an area of that person's inflexibility. When any family member's functioning can be placed at either extreme in this table, the category in the middle is an uptight area for them.

Table 2-2 can also be used in understanding chronic conditions. It suggests that to the extent that any family member tends to function at either extreme of an emotional category, other family members probably have difficulty functioning in the same category; otherwise the extreme behavior of the symptomatic member could not have become or remained chronic.

Tables 2-3 and 2-4 apply the symmetry principle to nuclear and extended families, respectively. And it is here that the predictive power of this principle stands out most clearly. These tables suggest that, to the extent both of the opposite extremes of any emotional category are present in a family simultaneously, the following is predictable:

1. it is an uptight area in that family;
2. the extremes in some way add up to zero; that is, they are complementary and in some way maintain one another;
3. both extremes probably come from a similar source;
4. to the extent that any movement for change goes from one extreme to the other, it is transformation rather than change (in change something remains the same); and
5. if only one of the extremes listed in either end column is obviously present in the family, its opposite extreme must be around somewhere. (And in Table 2-4, to the extent that any of these extremes is present in one generation, it or its opposite extreme is likely to surface in the next generation.)

In both Tables 2-3 and 2-4, the parties also can be a congregation and its clergyman or clergywoman.

SURVIVAL IN FAMILIES

The major human factor that promotes survival in any environment is the same that has led to the evolution of our species since creation: an organism's response to challenge.

There is a general tendency to assume that the harmfulness of an environment is simply proportional to the strength of its noxious components. Such linear, cause-and-effect thinking is appropriate in certain cases (exposure to radiation, for example), but when it comes to family crises and many conditions of ill health, another and often more crucial variable also exists: the repertoire of one's responses to challenge. When that repertoire is narrow, either/or thinking develops, resulting in either an attitude of helpless victimization or all-out efforts to escape. When, however, the repertoire of responses to challenge is rich and varied, other alternatives can also be realized. One is a transformation of the organism, and a second is modification of the environment. Victim attitudes that measure the harmfulness of an environment only by the strength of its toxicity preclude these other two vital, evolutionary possibilities.

Responding flexibly to crisis, however, is not the same as merely being flexible (manipulable). It has more to do with resiliency (ability to maintain shape despite manipulation). After all, there are family members who are flexible because they do not know any other way to respond. Sooner or later the tendency to be automatically adaptive will catch up with them, particularly when they are caught between interlocking triangles. The "rigidly" flexible family member is victimized by environments that require him or her to take stands.

Hostile Environments

To clarify, hostile environments can be divided into two categories: those where the human response is irrelevant, and those where it can make a difference. Category I hostile environments are absolutely hostile; the organism contains no resources that would enable it to adapt. Examples would be a land-based animal locked in an unbreakable tank of water, a "fish out of water," or a human organism near ground zero who could not withstand the heat, the aftershock, or the radiation.

The vast majority of survival crises that human beings experience with regard to relationships or their health belong in Category II, where the response of the organism is a variable in its own survival. Included in Category II are such hostile environments as plagues, epidemics, economic depressions, gas shortages, slavery, racial prejudice, ghettos, ship sinkings, miserable marriages, genetic defects, exposure to germs and viruses, many cancer and heart conditions, and a church or synagogue highly critical of its spiritual leader. In fact, much of what we label stress is the response of the organism rather than the impact of the environment. (See Chapter 5.) There is a marked tendency among human organisms to assume that whenever they are in an extremely hostile environment, ipso facto they are in extremis.

The Human Response

Even in Nazi concentration camps the human response to challenge could make a difference. Here was a hostile environment that came as close to Category I as could be found in human experience. Not only was it totally hostile by the nature of its harmful components, but also "dumb" chance, luck, fate seemed to rival the all-determining unintelligent selection forces that have shaped evolution. So often was this the case that it came to be called "selectzia." It was as if a "natural," that is, environmental, selection process was totally in charge. The truth is that even the natural selection processes in the evolution of our species were affected by the repertoire of an organism's responses. Concentration camp survival literature consistently shows that even in that environment the response of an organism could optimize the possibility of survival. It did not guarantee survival. What can, anywhere? But it could make a difference where a difference was possible. As small as the crack in the door of fate was, some saw it and some did not. Indeed, some apparently looked for it and some did not.

One way to preserve the importance of the human response variable, yet also allow for the variables of luck or other determinative factors in an environment, is to think of all these forces as dials on an amplifier that can vary the mix. This avoids the opposite alternatives of linear cause-and-effect thinking, on the one hand, or simplistic mind-over-matter solutions, on the other hand. In some circumstances the dial marked "chance" is low, and in some situations it is all the way up; the same is true for the dial marked "physical environmental determinants." But there is still the dial for the "human response to challenge." It also can be tuned low or high, and most often the final "mix" is dependent on its fine tuning. In fact, this is the real difference between Category I and II; in Category I the tuning of this dial does not matter.

Today the contemporary phenomenon that perhaps most emphasizes the survival ratio between challenge and response is recombinant DNA. Many have expressed concern that in recombining DNA from different organisms a new toxic substance will be created for which there is no remedy. But, as several less anxious scientists have pointed out, the fact that something is inherently toxic to the human organism is not enough to destroy it. The toxic substance must also have the capacity to bind itself to the cell wall and defeat the immunological response. Toxicity, therefore, may be viewed as a relational category, not merely as a matter of a Category I, noxious threat.

In family relationships, as long as individuals focus primarily on the toxicity of their relatives' behavior instead of what makes them vulnerable, they will fail to realize that it is a far healthier response to work on their own "cells," as a way of immunizing themselves against "insult." Actually, such responses accomplish more than self-protection; they also tend to modify the insulting behavior.

A couple asked to have in their wedding vows "I vow not to abandon (the other)." They had seen a family counselor for 6 months during courtship and learned that this is what they had been doing to one another. The minister replied, "That is an unworkable basis for marriage." He suggested: "I vow not to be abandoned, when (the other) abandons me?"