Family nexus
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psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
, a family nexus is a common viewpoint held and reinforced by the majority of
family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
members regarding events in the family and relationships with the world. The term was coined by
R. D. Laing Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illnessin particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment o ...
, who believed that this nexus "exists only in so far as each person incarnates the nexus...maintaining his interiorization of the group unchanged". The concept is similar to the "family psychic apparatus (FPA)...an unconscious psychic basis, common to members of the family group, inducing a specific experience of belonging".


Laing and schizophrenia

Laing was particularly interested in
schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
, which he believed could be understood if seen from the viewpoint of the person concerned. He saw how a powerful family nexus could
victimise Victimisation ( or victimization) is the process of being victimised or becoming a victim. The field that studies the process, rates, incidence, effects, and prevalence of victimisation is called victimology. Peer victimisation Peer victimisati ...
one member, usually a child, who found themselves in the position of not being able to speak or even think the truth without being chastised by the group, who often had vested interests in perpetuating the family myth and excluding reality. In Laing's opinion, "what is called a psychotic episode ''in'' one person, can often be understood as a crisis of a peculiar kind in the ''inter-experience'' of the nexus." Often described as part of the "
antipsychiatry Anti-psychiatry is a movement based on the view that psychiatric treatment is often more damaging than helpful to patients, highlighting controversies about psychiatry. Objections include the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis, the questionabl ...
" movement, Laing struggled to see things in terms of
existentialism Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and valu ...
, emphasising the difference between "being" or "being in this world" and being alive. "An issue essential to an existential analysis of action is to what extent and in what ways the agent is disclosed or concealed...in and through action." Being in the existentialist sense means being an object for others, and having others as objects, in other words carrying a model in our heads of all the significant others in our lives. This model provided the motivation for many of our thoughts and actions, and without it we "cease to be" in a very real sense. It is this need for others, in order to "be", which makes us afraid to contradict a family nexus, risking family exclusion. However "to a number of people the phantasy system of the nexus is a lousy hell, not an enchanting spell, and they want out...But within the phantasy of the nexus, to leave is an act of ingratitude, or cruelty, or suicide, or murder...Herein is the risk of defeat and madness." The distortion involved in not going against the nexus can force wrong thinking - leading to "not being in reality", which Laing saw as the essence of schizophrenia; and for Laing "one of the most important questions, therefore, is whether such mistrust of her 'feelings' and the testimony of others arises from persistent inconsistencies within an original nexus."


The closed nexus and the double bind

Laing and his colleagues suggested that a family nexus included both immediate family, and extra-familial people closely associated with the family and its world-view. Laing argued that a closed nexus would use its energy so as to unconsciously block out any threats to its identity, keeping all interchanges at a boring, repetitive level. Building on Kleinian accounts of social phantasy systems, and the sense of unquestioned reality they can generate, Laing argued that within such systems patterns of communication were multi-layered and deceptive. He also used
W. R. Bion Wilfred Ruprecht Bion DSO (; 8 September 1897 – 8 November 1979) was an influential English psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965. Early life and military service Bion was born in M ...
's account of how a group's basic assumptions could radiate "long silences, sighs of boredom, movements of discomfort...the hostility of the individuals was being contributed to the group anonymously". As his associate
Joseph Berke Joseph H. Berke, M.D., (January 17, 1939 – January 11, 2021) was an American–born psychotherapist, author and lecturer. He studied at Columbia College of Columbia University and graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Ne ...
put it, in such a nexus "a unique pattern of communication could be made out. People did not talk to each other, but at each other, and tangentially, not directly....what people said was often contradicted by the way they said it (tone of voice and/or facial and bodily movements)." Further light was shed on such interactions by
Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...
's concept of the
double bind A double bind is a dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more reciprocally conflicting messages. In some scenarios (e.g. within families or romantic relationships) this can be emotionally distressing, creating ...
- "a situation in which contradictory demands are being put upon a child (or patient) in such a way that there is no avenue of escape or challenge". Laing considered that the concept allowed a completely new understanding of what a familial environment could entail: "this paradigm of an insoluble 'can't win' situation, specifically destructive of self-identity" greatly illuminated the way the subject's "disturbed pattern of communication... asa reflection of, and reaction to, the disturbed and disturbing pattern characterizing his or her family of origin." In such a light, he considered that "mental illness" might be the outcome of a problematic configuration of a family nexus more than a necessary result of the nexus itself: in the words of
Charles Rycroft Charles Frederick Rycroft (; 9 September 1914 – 24 May 1998) was a British psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He studied medicine at University College London, and worked briefly as a psychiatrist for the Maudsley Hospital. For most of his caree ...
, the psychotic is "the overt casualty of a deeply concealed family tragedy...the end-result of complex and skew dinteractions within his family." As Laing was careful to point out, however, it was not "a matter of laying the blame at anyone's door. The untenable position, the 'can't win' double-bind, the situation of checkmate, is by definition ''not obvious'' to the protagonists...The man at the bottom of the heap may be being crushed and suffocated to death without anyone noticing, much less intending it".


Collier's criticism

Andrew Collier Vice Admiral Andrew Laurence Collier (June 3, 1924 – January 3, 1987) was a Canadian Forces officer who served as Commander Maritime Command from 14 June 1977 to 30 June 1979. Early years Collier was born in Kamloops and raised in Salmon A ...
has commented on Laing's dilemma, which Laing himself seemed never to properly identify. In much of his writing Laing assumed an uncorrupted natural state for the human
mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
, and tended to condemn
society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...
for causing
mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...
, in rather (early)
Marxist Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
terms. He saw schizophrenia as a possible healing process, a way of working through things, back to normality. Collier suggests that there is no uncorrupted state, no normality; rather that as social animals we all need to incorporate others into a nexus in order to "be". We must all perhaps be "mad" to some extent if we are to function in society, rather than as loners, but we must be uniformly mad. The nature of the madman's "must", however, remains unestablished.


Therapy

Psychotherapy today comes in many forms, following different schools of thought. Psychoanalysis emphasises childhood experience, and left-over feelings, though Freud did point to the role of society in his later works like ''Civilization and its Discontents''.
Family therapy Family therapy (also referred to as family counseling, family systems therapy, marriage and family therapy, couple and family therapy) is a branch of psychology and clinical social work that works with families and couples in intimate relationsh ...
concentrates on bringing families together and encouraging them to work out their interactions, but it might (depending on its theoretical orientation) offer little or no support to the victim of family nexus, who may then be punished for anything he dares to reveal or hint at, and (lacking a support network) submit to silent intimidation in family therapy, rather than risk exclusion and the "ceasing to be" that follows. The alert family therapist will however "avoid taking the family's side...''Or'' the scapegoat's. You mustn't take anyone's side because then you'd be joining in the blaming...You've got to treat the family as a system, without blaming ''anyone''...you need to make them ''all'' feel supported."Robin Skynner/John Cleese, ''Families and how to survive them'' (London 1994) p. 106


See also


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Family Nexus Psychosis Family Anti-psychiatry