Learner Therapist (54) … 1 person 4 roles

Torrey Orton
February 17, 2015

Parent, sibling, peer, partner

 

Many couples have been illuminated by the following idea: we all get to play any one of four roles in relation to each other – parent, partner, peer or sibling. If we are competent partners we know that our other half may at any time need us to be their peer, parent or sibling for them, and that we may need the same from them. Our need for others to relate to us in these roles may be upon us before we are aware, usually signalled by role specific behaviours like being needy (parenting), competitive (sibling), cooperative (peer) or interdependent (partner).

While it is totally normal not to be available in the appropriate role at the appropriate time because of our engagement in role needs of our own, what is more confusing and confounding is discovering that our respective capacity in the roles may be very different because our original learning was unbalanced (so a role got less developmental attention than is required to grow it to workable levels). We may not even really know the role because our upbringing did not contain it. An only child, for example, is likely to have an underdeveloped sibling competitiveness, unsurprisingly and wholly unknown to them, and unknowably so, too!! It is beyond their experience, existing perhaps only as a sense of aloneness exposed when in the presence of other families’ siblings.

So, who am I for you today?

The most obvious role is parenting. We need this throughout life whenever we approach significantly novel steps or stages in our paths, especially unpredictable ones and even more enervating those which we could have predicted but failed to. The parent for the day is needed to be unreservedly supportive, to be unconditionally accepting – a hard row to hoe under any conditions.

Sibling associations most clearly come into view when we relate to partners as brothers or sisters, deferring to them or competing with them while being bound together in a wholeness which affirms us all. Similar dynamics may be found in work place, spiritual and leisure associations with all the variety and less control since we do not understand such settings as family. Other cultures see them as always family in the sense that the various expectations of leaders, for example, are bounded by parental expectations.

Peers are our equals more or less. The equality comes from shared experience not shared outcomes, aspirations or inspirations. If you are 10 years older or younger than your partner, the peer potential is low, even within families, where 10 years makes often for an unshareable childhood by the same parents and siblings. They bring to us a kind of experiential corroboration which parents and siblings cannot – that of the world outside the family but inside the same history! The extent of moving home in one’s life, increased by any distance which makes neighbourliness with old acquaintances only sustainable by conscious action is a demonstrable destroyer of such peer potential in our lives.

First amongst equals, our partner - the one who makes us whole and for whom we do the same in return. In fact we are inextricably implicated in our partnership needs, even more clearly so by our lack of a partner. Of all four roles this is the most fundamental and it seems at the same time the most perilous, hence perhaps the importance of the others as backstops for the ones which pass through even the keeper. Who would invest in a role which has a reliable 40% chance of failing? The other three roles provide fail safes against the almost inevitable failure so easily imagined that its play in our awareness and not is one of the major themes of literary and moral history – deception and infidelity.

…and, who are you for me?

Probably by this point you are noticing that these roles may be covertly in play throughout our lives, most clearly so in the major everyday interpersonal settings like work, sports, religious, and various avocational and political groups. They are the means of establishing and maintaining deep bonds in the relatively distant relationship worlds of post modernity. These may resist the pleas of justice, honour or prudence, as we can see in various instances of groups which prefer their publically guilty members to the rights of victims of various abuses. Add identity dynamics to such group and we have the material of gross discriminations against out groups, especially easily stigmatised ones.

Learner therapist (47)…… Background factors affecting family relations

Torrey Orton

July 8, 2014

Background factors affecting family relations

Understanding families and their dynamics is helped by a few ideas about people and relationships. These ideas provide handles for our experience of family life and structures which support it. The following factors must be understood as all existing in the context of the others, so they are an interacting set of factors contributing to family life. Each may have greater or lesser parts of biology, sociality, spirituality, economy and so on contained within it. The factors themselves may change from generation to generation and culture to culture. Immigrant families have the benefit and challenge of embracing multiple cultures as they become settled in new places

Gender, and sex

“..the pattern of behavior, personality traits and attitudes defining masculinity or femininity in a certain culture.”  Psychology Dictionary

 

Birth order – in a family each child has a different developmental experience with the same parents. It differs because the parents change over the term of their parenting (they learn to parent and treat their children differently) and the environment of the family changes (social, economic and other systems change)

Family roles – child, parent, sibling, friend, partner

At any time we may be all of these roles at once. That is, as a child we may also be a sibling (of other children in a family), parent of our own children, friend to our sibs and parents, and partners. These roles provide different human development functions within families, which come into play over the life span

Development stages – baby, child, adolescent, young adult, adult, ageing, aged. There is some disagreement about life stages because the boundaries between them (however they are defined) are quite porous and unpredictable. Simply, we can’t run until we can walk and so on. Life skills have a stage nature.

Life skills – may be developed, under-developed or over-developed; both over and under-development may be dysfunctional, and ‘normal’ development may be inadequate to present circumstances!!

Relationship Needs - dependence, independence, inter-dependence. Early in life, and sometimes thereafter, we are dependent on others for our survival; as we grow we seek to be independent in many practical ways.  Some of us may learn to be interdependent. In that case we negotiate the shift of our dependence and independence with our partners.

Values – fairness seems to be a universal human value (shared to some extent in our near human ape cousins); we seem to be programmed by nature to seek fairness and this may be because it is a deep foundation of group survival.

Culture of origin – all the above factors have specific and often different approved forms in different cultures. These forms reflect aspects or interpretations of the factors which follow. Culture is the gathered wisdom of a group’s approach to making a life together.

 

 

 

Learning to act right (11)… No molestar

Learning to act right (11)… No molestar
Torrey Orton
June 23, 2010

No Molestar

(= Do Not Disturb - Spanish sign for hotel room doors)

In the borderlands

This is not a hotel story, yet the false friend offered by the sign is topical. It's an ethical decision making story which involves a failed defence with no negative after effects, except being reminded how threatened I can be by implicit violence. Why does this matter? What's the point, as Charles asked about an early draft?


The point has to do with situations in which the point is not at all clear but seems demanding to be clarified in an unavoidable way. There are life circumstances where correct perception of danger is the most important thing to have. Without the perception, correct action cannot be taken, or is likely to be compromised by the delay to ponder the facts. Trouble is, we can't always or reliably tell what's dangerous and what not in the facts. The following example is one of such. Our times are riven with them. These are the borderlands.


They are also relativity heaven, where judging the intent of others does not easily resolve itself into objectivity. Hence the detail in what follows! Its objectivity was hard to bring clearly into view. The flush of demanding factors in the process was almost overwhelming – in fact, to some extent I can now see that the whole event can be interpreted as an attempt not to fall into overwhelm …into that state where no action is as likely to arise as some action, right or not!! That's sometimes a very bad thing.


Wandering down The Ramblas in Barcelona at any time of day may be a challenging task moderated by the endless varieties of humanity surging around, even in the rain, as that day. A known but unidentifiable danger lurks thereon – the local pickpockets. I know they are there and carry my wallet in my left front pocket, my gold pen out of sight and camera in a backpack.


History

I once was the subject of a similar attempt in the Paris Metro about 8 years ago, with a similar outcome to this story, but much less explicit confrontation. So, there was nil subsequent hyper-vigilance or feeling of powerlessness. In the streets of Melbourne a related incident occurred four years ago across from the Telstra offices and just down the street from the site of "Doing little goods badly" a month ago. This was a case of beggar thuggery, or thug beggary as it turned out. A handout seeking hand protruded from a well-coated and trim bearded guy who said, "Why don't you look at me when I speak to you?" and followed up with, "Next time I see you maybe I'll take your wallet off you" (confirming the implicit threat of his initial question). That one populated a terror spot in me for a few weeks. Charles also pointed out that the underlying personal dynamic of this post and the one linked above is similar!


What follows is subject to all the distortion factors you can imagine, but, as elsewhere, it's the only evidence I've got*. The whole incident took 20 or 30 seconds I guess. It had been raining on and off that morning (we'd just gotten in from Bilbao), so I was carrying a tightly closed folding umbrella in my right hand by its crooked handle. My left hand was free and I had a small, lightweight, but heavy-duty backpack on.


First approach

At about this spot a guy around 30 drew along from behind my right shoulder waving a menu sheet about two feet in front of my face. Jane and I had been walking along for about 15 minutes by that time. We had just finished a very pleasant seafood lunch at the Boqueria Mercato with power assist from a bottle of rosé. He asked if we wanted to try something at one of the Ramblas restaurants. I walked on, maybe saying 'no', maybe just dismissing him with disregard, or some of both.

Upping the ante

He continued with the sheet and drew closer, touching my right shoulder with his left and starting to talk about learning the tango. The tango talk was punctuated by swings of his left foot across my right as we walked, each time trying to get further around my foot with a swing recognisably tangoesque if you've seen enough movies. It was certainly the first time I'd felt the fine fit of the swung foot to the other's steps, and the potential for a misstep to be a trip.


About the third swing I was feeling invaded! I can't pick what switched my attention from patientputtingup to impatient suspicion and irritation. I stopped and turned with the rolled umbrella in a useful though not threatening position, unless you know that a stab is better than a whack for defence. Almost at the same time, I was aware that his hand was on my right rear pocket (which had nothing but a handkerchief in it) and I faced him saying "get your hand out of my pocket." He denied having it there and threw an offended / angry look along with the denial, but also started backing off, and by the time I was fully turned he was jogging slightly away. He was about 180 cm, medium build, shortish black hair and cold eyed. I cannot reliably recall the guy's face, though I have a sense of classically attractive Spanish male.


Recovery?

We continued along the same path to the end of the Ramblas at the start of the harbour, paused for a few moments reflecting on the event, and decided to go back the way we came. I was in mild shock…a slight sense of damage with steady apprehension that he would reappear and there was nothing I could do but be vigilant; hence, hyper-vigilance set in and lasted for an hour or so.


My state of vigilance had been reasonably high all the time we were in the street, but not high enough to pick a set up in the making. I didn't react immediately to his invasion of my visual space with the menu sheet. Why not?


Two reasons come to mind. One, I didn't assume he was anything other than a restaurant spruiker (though that is not a common practice on The Ramblas), and two, I'm a small town kid with an innate first assumption face-to-face of benign intent in others (the underlying vigilance came from the published fact of pickpocket presence there). Of course there's the rosé effect, too. So, I didn't push him away, turn to face him or do other distancing things because they would have broken the first assumption. Even when he crowded my visual and then physical space, the first rule continued in force.


About now you might be noticing that this rule suite is also a rationale for an intrinsic passivity, or a conflict avoidant attitude. This is an underlying factor for me, but if it were not I'd still face an ethical dilemma something like this. His activities could all be explained, and so deflected, by a story about his spruiking role: need for employment, presently stressed financial straits and sick child….etc. And this would contextualise his invading my space from his viewpoint, and partly mine, too. I unconsciously provided that story, just as I have fabricated it now here. It's the story of a recognisable life role of low threat, but some invasiveness.


Perceived invasion

But, to explore the perceived invasion would have deepened a relationship I did not want to have at that time. It was not a casual encounter of the daily sort (a light acknowledgment of others in passing transactions – buying newspapers, croissants, coffee; or, managing passage in crowded streets: who goes first at the lights, which side of the pathway to tend towards, etc.) which arise and flow away briskly with a slight lift in general interest and affect, but no continuing commitment. Spruiking implies a potential commitment which is about to be negotiated. I did not even want that amount of engagement.


He knew, and I do too, that an initial response to another can be modified by expression of real intent. So, good spruikers are good at persisting up to the point of irritation, of explicit rejection. And, we both know that as a generalised social expectation. This makes both of us responsible for maintaining the appropriate distance…but, that but again, the responsibility is not symmetrical. The spruiker has more responsibility than I do (than one has!), and here comes the potential conflict.


To question a spruiker's expression of his/her intent is to implicitly question their conduct, to challenge it and potentially to reject it. The likelihood of an inquiry becoming a challenge increases when both parties are under pressure. For me this prospect reduces my capacity to defend against the unwanted, while not reducing the perceived invasion. An eventual query then tends to be over-expressed as the unexpressed offense gathers energy under my repression.


No refuge..

The underlying dynamic crosses many kinds of public (and presumably private) relationships, sharing the platform of perceived powerlessness, which can be as strong with the destitute (beggars, needy, homeless, temporarily down) as with the destroyers (thugs of various sorts). The ethical challenge is to act out of powerlessness usefully. Understanding my powerlessness is a starting place. The epistemological challenge is to understand something both ephemeral and terrifying – my powerlessness. There is no refuge from being disturbed by life.


*In fact, there were two guys in the restaurant pictured who I noticed noticing the latter stages of this brief incident. Of course, my noticing them noticing is also suspect... and so it goes. I think they were still seated there when we walked back along the same path five minutes later.

Rectifications (9) – Client, patient, customer, consumer…a psychologist’s work dilemma

Rectifications (9) – Client, patient, customer, consumer…a psychologist’s work dilemma.

Torrey Orton – May 26, 2009

My rectification fire is deeply stoked by our current confusion of life roles. This appears in the tendency to turn all life roles into variations on consumption – as if we’re eating our way through life. No wonder we’ve got an “obesity epidemic”. This seems a particularly appropriate expression for a time when overconsumption abounds in a spiritually anorexic culture.

One deep source of confusion is the ever thinner boundaries for our life roles and activities. For example, not-for-profit organisations increasingly mimic in structure and self-description the modes and moods of commercial ones. They ‘manage’ things, including themselves, while claiming to engage in helping the dispossessed, dissociated, etc. This has been forced on them over the last 20+ years, with the effect of turning their activities often into agencies of the existing powers and systems which produce the dysfunctions they are addressing. I do not say this with blame or disdain for their efforts. It is endemic in our social and workplace cultures.

What follows explores some aspects of this situation, with emphasis on health and backup from education. Starting at home, for me as therapist the question of what to call those who I treat (itself a wonder word) is increasingly fraught. ‘Client’ is the preferred term among psychs, but from the viewpoint of the agency which pays half their bills – Medicare – they are patients. And my professional association, the APS, is busily propelling itself into the medical arena on the foundation of “evidence-based” care. Now a mantra, evidence-based care is a professional aspiration turned into a quality compliance mechanism linked directly to funding. It has been growing among medicos for 20-30 years, depending on your reading of its history .

A Medical Deviation

From patient perspectives, there is questionable reduction in cost or increase in effectiveness of health care delivery from that history. This is partly because, in some domains of practice, the patients don’t care what evidence says, they just want a pill (e.g. - antibiotics for viral events; anti-depressants for life-constraining social or physical events, and so on). This is a public consciousness residual, sustained to this day by the big pharmas, of the early revolutionary successes of the antibiotics (penicillin and co’y.) and antipsychotics (lithium to Prozac). If you catch it, you can pill it.

And, in other respects, health is a political matter, not merely a scientific one. So evidence-based practice can’t control consumption rates and types – e.g. there are over-priced and over-consumed treatments which have marginal rates of return in wellness. It’s increasingly argued that shifting medical focus to prevention is the only serious hope for increased wellness. Seriously doing this would uproot the health economy as we know it – which, like other parts of the economy, are geared to growth through innovation and profitability, and tend to resist change. In particular they tend to resist investments in public goods which cannot be individualised (and then amortized).

The medical model of services provides the accounting underpinnings of hospital and medical practice funding – the item numbers we psychologists use on our Medicare referred invoice. Item based funding and service payment to professionals tends to encourage focus only on the diagnosed and diagnosable problems which fit the remuneration system. This also encourages speedy throughputs.

Part of this movement towards consumerist language and constructs has occurred in tandem with the greater economic culture’s focus on service effectiveness for customers (mainly understood as consumers) and service efficiency for corporate stakeholders (narrowly construed as shareholders). This is a combination which can provide a rationale for almost any ‘management’ undertaking you can imagine. If everyone is a customer (or, more basically, a consumer) then there is no question except what “value-for-money” can be achieved in the eyes of the customers. the behavioural / emotional markers of which are determined by focus groups (establishing the mind of the consumer) and comparative dollars establishing the measure of service ‘outcomes’. Some struggle against this current occurs at global (corporate social responsibility, sustainability protocols) and local levels (neighbourhood climate groups, social enterprises, etc.).

Back to therapy

If psychology clients are really patients, it cannot be long before the design and delivery of therapeutic action is wholly medicalised, more like treatment for a cut or break than a long-term sadness, anger or anxiety. Such feelings are the underlying evidences and sources of most normal psychological problems which appear almost always in long-term human relationships. That is, they are developed in, and sustained by, relationship systems like families, work groups and affinity groups.

The increasing specialisation in psychology spreads hand in hand with service dis-integration. That is, each piece of a treatment process is analysed into measureable segments that also fit within normal therapeutic requirements. Service specialisation (which also derives from knowledge specialisation in the endless pursuit of ‘solutions’ to main morbidity effects, medical or psychological) in turn drives licensing specialisation and the concomitant professional training silos.

So what?

So, what am I arguing here? Just what I said at the start – the boundaries between life roles are too thin and the weight of incentives is in the direction of collapsing their differences into unified sameness – in this case, consumption. This way of arguing is unlikely to be very persuasive to anyone. I can only hope that I get better at grounding the argument as I inevitably will be singing this plaint elsewhere in my mad man travels. If you know interesting examples, please share.

Some channels to reconnect these key role terms with the world of experience and need might be:
1- Establish the appropriateness of a role term by applying the backward fit test; so, if your clients can also be patients, try out whether the patients can also be clients; similarly, if your patients can be customers, can all customers be patients in all their life activities; and, thirdly, can anyone consume everything in their life that they need? Can all those needs be handled with instruments (forks, knives, spoons, etc.)?
2- Notice the emergence of new role names into public space. ‘Carer’ comes to mind. This is a role with a history of millennia, extending into the non-human genera and acknowledged as such by our use of the term for cat, dog, roo, spider, fish behaviour, but not plants or rocks. Caring has been transformed from a normal role in the household economy to an accountable role in the consumer economy, driven by the latter’s penetration of every cranny of life.
3- Engage others with you in the small scale drawing of important boundaries around our professional domains and relationships. For example, honour the role meanings of client or patient, or student or citizen…and what is expected of them and what they should expect of us in the caring, teaching, helping roles.