Sigrun Juliusdottir PhD, professor
Department of Social Work, Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Iceland
Systemic Family Work and Postmodernity
-the concepts of change, flexibility and globalization
Introduction
The article[1] focuses on a changed concept of family therapy and the role of family workers in a global perspective. Social change of the last decades is reconsidered in an attempt to explore its profound reflexive consequences for the lifestyle and interactional modes in smaller and larger units. The question of how to understand what is happening in our postmodernistic times is adressed with reference to the writings of contemporary social theorists. The extensive knowledge, professional experience and human understanding of family workers is claimed to be quite fruitful for management of some critical phenomena in postmodernity. In this context the neccessity of working with connectivity as a global effort to mend the broken world(s) of individuals, families and groups is discussed. Thus, new challenges of the family workers´ role in present times are dealt with in the perspective of a revised ethical social responsibility. This relates to issues like fragmentation, isolation, inclusion/exclusion and ambivalence towards traditions and diversity. Special attention is given to the critically correlated concepts of solidarity and flexibility as they emerge at the macro and the micro level in a world characterised by turbulence to a higher degree than ever.
Key words: social change, family relations, role of family worker, obligations, individualization, fragmentation, globalisation.
Family therapists - what kind of a profession?
Family therapists come from the most different directions and have different roots coming from the various behavioral sciences e.g. social work, psychology and psychiatry. Someone might say that we are not a homogeneous profession but an artificial construct from diverse sources. This diversity is, however, primarily our strength. We see the flora in the field radiate or spread out in the health system, in the social system, in schools, in the court system and in private and public institutions of various kinds. This flora is growing at various levels, in the clinics, in training, teaching, and research, - often with close connection to policy making.
We do not, either, insist on being heard as one voice. On the contrary, our voice is polyphonic but as in the good choir there is a concordance in always referring to the central theme: the health and welfare of children and families, with a strong ethical connection to the social context and development. That is our common denominator in spite of the global spectrum of positions and locations.
In spite of the different roots there is a “blood relationship” as we have been mixing with each other for nearly a century, or since the multidisciplinary team of pioneers in Palo Alto started their research-based clinical work with families in the first part of the last century. The youngest generation of family therapists is not only the offspring of diversities, but as in parallel process they are representatives of the diversities of modern time.
The professional title, family therapist, carries associations in our minds with caring and responsibility or even obligations. Thus, we are usually thought of as “good soldiers” rather than guerillas, and as a companion or ally rather than an enemy or someone who can be expected to intrude, damage or hurt. We are however acting in a very fragile domain when activating inherent creative forces to promote health and well-being in the family system, and we then often work in the field of tension between help and guiding control. This is of cource most striking in social work when children need to be protected from parents´ misbehaviour or abuse. Our diversities and the contextual understanding coming from the systemic approach make us “farsighted”, reaching out from the family core to the broader, social environment. It was the consciousness of this which united the American family therapists who 1977 founded the AFTA, The American Family Therapy Association - now American Family Therapy Academy, since 1995. It was brought together by people who were on the cutting edge, a small group of mental health professionals who had been active during the early years when the field of family therapy was emerging. They took pride in living on the margin, and the margin is always changing. The identity of such an organization is therefore never set, - and so is with the profession. Family workers are now as ever supposed to monitor how we can increase acceptance and respect for each other and from others in times of global conflicts and fissures. Although “we may not all have family therapy in common - but we all share the ecosystemic view of social change” (Roberto-Forman 2001/2002).
Being sure of our main goal and rather secure in our role we have traveled through the developmental stages of society over a century now: The industrial society, the modern society of new communication and the postmodern times of high-tech revolution and now the risk society. By risk we are referring to endless choices and changes - and risky activities - as well as riskful passivity. Our postmodernity is all about uncertainity ( Beck, 1992). Each period has developed a special prerequisite for means and methods for the helping professions. The ideas of social welfare and solidarity, interventions and control have obtained a new relevance which actualizes badly a critical reconsideration of our role. Already ten years ago it was stated that “family therapy has become further and further removed from the changing economic and political realities of professional practice as well as to the worsening everyday social realities of the many millions of potential clients that the field purports to serve” (Epstein 1993). The message in this article is similar and the ambition is to throw further light on the challenges of today. During the last ten years our understanding of the reflexive social processis has become clearer, although not enough. The development of the new methodological tools/vocabulary from the systemic, constructivist thinking have made us better furnished to deal with our clients´ needs in their postmodern chaotic existence.
Changed family concept - from obligations to individualization
The concept of family is changing and we can ask to what extent it is a realistic unit for treatment any more? Ten or fifteen years ago we talked appropriately about the family. We are beyond that stage now. In the 21st century structures, forms and orderof things are on the retreat while content and continuous transformations within and around families are gaining importance. We see people’s life and the whole world in fragmented parts at the same time as globalization is increasing. I will come back to that below.
The original meaning of the term for family in Icelandic, fjölskylda, comes from the root fjöl (as fler –feolu- in the Nordic language) which refers to diverse, multi- or many in English. The other part of the word skylda whichmeans obligation. Thus the composite word fjölskylda can be read as referring to multiple obligations. The family institution was supposed to consist of a team, a group of individuals, who had reciprocal obligations towards each other. This relates closely to the idea of solidarity and altruism rather than egoism or individualism. People who cared were supposed to interfere and not leave others alone when in need or trouble. It was the primary group of obligated significant others (Juliusdottir, 1993).
This is still quite applicable in Iceland as we have considerable palpable obligations to other family members in a way somewhat different from the other Nordic countries. I will not delve deep into statistics here, but just give an idea of some demographics in Nordic context (European Com. & Eurostat, 2001): We have close to two (1,9) children per woman, in rather young age. The average household is the biggest in Scandinavia and the percentage of elderly is high (life expectancy is at the highest in the world). The educational level of women is high and working hours are long for both men and women. On the other hand, the social support and institutional care – both for children and elderly - are the least developed. Instead the informal family support is strong and it is specially demanding for people in the (most) active age of 25-45 (Hagstofa Islands, 2001). They are the generation carrying the collar, pulling the load. Today we sometimes hear them jokingly refer to the original meaning of family in Icelandic: “I am now going home to my “multi-obligation””.
The family was for centuries looked upon as a small social structure in a stable society, like Aristotle described it, supposed to secure political stability. In the middle of last century the family was defined, in Nathan Ackerman’s terms, as a psycho-social unit in a dynamic interaction with the social forces. The family bloomed as an acknowledged unit for treatment for some decades which - in historical terms – is a very short time. Twenty years ago a family therapy team would refrain from starting a family session if all the members were not there. We were working with the whole family as a system, as a manifest unit, with a definite number of members. This stable structure is not there – as such- any more! Families are having trouble defining who is who, in what roles. Children are confused about the content as well as the boundaries of their primary group. We see pre-school teachers and child therapists busy helping them make family-maps with drawings and nametags to identify persons, relations and roles. They are trying to help children clarify and organize their chaotic relationships with people in endless connections of systems in the private and the social arena.
Instead of the family we may now rather refer to various dynamic shapes of family forms or life styles, but, above all, family relations. Moving away from the structures but emphazising the content our target of treatment is no longer the whole system. Our frame of reference is systemic but the focus is on the emergent relations. The dyads, triads or other pairs of relations as an ad hoc or operationally defined subsystem is the client. In a new book on “parent therapy”, the authors are in this same sense presenting a modern treatment paradigm claiming that “there is no identified patient, only a parent-child relationship to which both parent and child are continuously contributing. The relationship itself becomes the focus of the treatment and the deconstruction of its multiple meanings the primary goal” (Jacobs and Wachs, 2002).
In spite of all the changes in the micro as well as the macro niveau the basic assumption in family work is our ethical and ideological belief in the value of helping people to join each other and relate through their emotional obligations towards each other. The increasing individualism in postmodern society is however strongly affecting human relationships, life styles and personal interaction. This implies that the question of solidarity in family relations is no longer a matter of course and might therefore imply some reconsideration in our practice as will be further developed later on in this paper.
A changed meaning of change and interventions
The concept of change is changing. In last century family workers looked at themselves as change agents. Our role was to promote a previously defined change. There was no question that this change was supposed to bring about some corrections within the psycho-social unit towards adaptation and therebyenhance stability in society. In that sense the change was aimed at a certain solution. It was oriented towards helping people to better handle their family obligations and roles; reach stability in work and personal life; feel harmonious in their primary group; be part of the social environment, and thus be included in society.
Due to the transformation of society and new mentality our role is no longer that of promoting change in the same sense as before. As mentioned in the beginning the helping professions and their roles have been changing in an interactional process in accordance with the waves of the social processes during the last century. Epstein (1995) has penetrated how the different societal phases “the romantic period”, “the modernist period” “the postmodern period” shaped different ideas of “(mal) adjustment”, “identity themes” and now “narrative themes and constructivism”. Only when we are working with clear definations of what is true/right or false/wrong can we use concrete measurements and classifications of mental health and social functioning attainable by the usage of psychological tests or DSM IV/ICD-10. In postmodernity our thinking is moving away from the idea of objective reality towards what Epstein phrases as “a shift from a vocabulary that describes an object called self to a vocabulary of self that describes the self as a product of changing social intercource”. This releases therapeutic work from the vocabularies of the earlier periods as they are replaced by perspective, evolving context and meanings which are products of the context of (narrative) conversations. The changed meaning of change in therapy is thus the dialogical creation of new narrative. With other words, through the systemic narrative appproach it is possible to relate life events and situations of clients into the narrative context from which they derive their meaning (Goolishian & Anderson, 1990). Through such fruitful dialogical exchange we can co-create a new understanding resulting in “postmodern puzzles in almost limitless number of ways” (Epstein, 1995). The self-identity as well as the defination of the problem and its solution is always changing and actually “taylormade” in each case.
A part of the radical social changes is changed attitude towards interventions and concepts of responsibility and involvement in other people’s lives as well as the idea of human rights. The idea that the individual is responsible for himself and his destiny is related to what Rose (1996) discusses as the increasing effects of the centrifugal forces in society (a concept also well known from Helm Stierlin's (1981) theorizing about family dynamics), meaning that people have a tendency not to worry about other people’s eccentricities, distress, or even criminality as long as it does not touch their own terrain: “It does not bother me”, ”We don’t mind”. This centrifugal force is a phenomenon opposite to the centripetal force. That refers to the urge to interfere and wanting people to adjust, belong to the community and be included in the society.
The changed attitude – and sometimes- rejection- towards the maxim of being “your brother’s keeper” actually comes close to the tendency of ignorance and exclusion of individuals and groups which might in some way be troubling or threatening to own interests. People are considered to be responsible for themselves and have the right to destroy their lives if they “choose” to do so. The idea of public intervention, (paternalism) is rejected.
Theorizing about social modernity in similar vein is found in Young’s (1999) writings about the acceptance of disorganization, or what he calls (neg)entropi, a concept originating in physics, well known from the theoretical contributions about family interaction of the Milan group. In the social context it implies that people neglect the unusual, bizarre or deviant behavior, seeing variances and anomie in society as quite exciting or even thrilling, e.g. when seen on TV. It makes life more colorful and may be tickling. This acknowledgement of deviance is simultaneously an exclusion and rejection of it as a natural object of concern in human society. In this connection Young talks about bulimistic (throwing out) society as opposite, and almost contrast, to the earlier cannibalistic society (taking in). In this connection it is thoughtprovoking to think about how young people´s increasing eating disorders may be seen as parallell process to the transformation of these conflicting social forces.
That swallowing kind of a society was characterized by formal rules, and social legislation about people’s lives tended to control and guide them, often far beyond their human right to self-determination, as e.g. when the poor, criminals and other outsiders of society were objects of control and corrections. The forces of (neg)entrophy towards stability were implemented by public - and sometimes professional- authority. Today society seems to be more prone to accept human misery as something people have the right to keep. Legislation is moving towards less and less control and less interferance into people´s life thus widening their free space as individuals- for good and for bad.
This changed attitude to social responsibility and interference into personal matters is certainly making the role of social-, health-, and family workers debatable. One of the consequences it that the idea of helping or taking initiative to interfere becomes quite controversial as long as different approaches are not fully developed and acknowledged.
At the same time - as always - changed conditions enhance development and shape new solutions. Instead of seeing our situation in this impossible either-or / then and now context we may define it like being in the wake of a ship (Phillipson, 1989), where the conflicting forces and heavy ground-swell are full of new provocative and urgent issues to handle. In his discussion about the crisis of our rapid progress from modernity to post-modernity, Zygmunt Bauman (1995) also points out that we are not bound to be crushed or drowned by thees waves. On the contrary, we are confronted by challenging tasks as people need help and guidance to handle their anxiety and the disorganization which accompanies the turbulence of the wake. The new approaches build on the more democratic subject-subject ideology where the earlier theories of J. Habermas (1973) have been efficient as well as the revolting influence of constructivism developed from philosophy in accordance with the systemic approach in family work already descriebed, now increasingly streaching out to the broader environment, the working places, organisations and cultural work. I want to couple this discussion to another aspect of modernity, the effect of globalization.