In my last blog, I dealt with two of Friedman's Family Systems concepts: Homeostasis, or balance, and extended family field. In part two, I will deal with the remaining concepts: identified patient, differentiation of self, and emotional triangles.
The Identified Patient (IP) is the symptomatic person. In a family (or church) crisis, the member of the family that seems to be having the problem is the identified patient. However, in Family Systems Theory (FST), the identified patient is more accurately the symptom-bearer (or even the scapegoat) of the family's anxieties. Often, in a family, this will be the person with either the greatest responsibility or greatest vulnerability.
A couple of illustrations might help. Johnny is the youngest of three children. He recently starting acting out by hitting other children at school and his grades are suffering. Johnny easily becomes the IP in the family. The family begins to mobilize to "fix" Johnny who clearly has the problem. Oddly, the family counsellor wants to focus on what is going on between Johnny's parents. They are stressed because Dad can't get enough work to keep the family financially stable. Johnny has become concerned that his parents may be on the edge of a divorce. In response to financial stress Mom begins to focus on (project her anxieties on?) Johnny. Within a few weeks, Dad lands a sufficient job, the stress in the family decreases, and Johnny's symptoms disappear.
During intense times, families (and again churches) will create identified patients. One of the roles that the IP serves is to reduce responsibility in the other members of the family. When a family is fixated on fixing one of their members, you can be sure that other members of the family are not accepting their full responsibility for the current state of things. Furthermore, families can perpetuate the myth that if we can fix another, we will somehow come to paradise. However, this is elusive and just as one IP is solved, another seems to pop up in his or her place.
Biblically, this is the old blame game. When paradise is disrupted it happens around creating IPs. The serpent blames God for the woman's lack of perfection; later the man blames God for giving him the woman in the first place. Every character in this story seeks to make another responsible for their plight.
In church life, ministers are particularly prone to becoming IPs. After all they are the most responsible members of the community as they will certainly receive blame if things don't go well. They are also the most vulnerable members as no one else will have to move if things don't go well. Ministers, therefore, need a strong sense of calling to weather these times. They also need strong resolve to be self-differentiated (next concept).
Let me see if I can illustrate this. Ted was a well-educated, seasoned minister. He had helped his congregation through a particularly difficult time and now things should have been getting better. Yet, he found himself not as engaged in the life of the church. He was tired and a bit listless. The stressful years had left the church more polarized than ever before. One of the polarized factions pressed on the elder board to remove Ted because he just wasn't getting it done as he had earlier. The truth was that entire church systems had not found a new homeostasis after the crisis and this left everyone a bit uneasy. The faction had turned Ted into the IP and the only way to fix it was for the scapegoat to go into the wilderness.
IPs always function so as to absolve communal guilt (responsibility?). One of the best questions to ask when you recognize that someone has become the IP is "Who is not taking responsibility for his role in this situation?"
Differentiation of Self. Friedman considers this concept to be the key to survival within any family system. Differentiation is not a sense of cool detachment; to be self-differentiated is to remain a self (yourself) in the midst of all of our families. Perhaps a good way to get to this idea is to deal with its reverse. Have you ever met a couple who finished each other’s statements, corrected the other, but you were certain that they were running on one battery. It was as if there was not enough "self" there to run both of them. Sometimes these marriages are touted for their harmony and the fact that they never ever argue. Of course, they don't; someone had to become brain dead for both of them to function in the relationship.
A side note here: when God declared that a husband and wife should become one one, he did not mean either one should be absorbed in the other, but that the two make a new “oneness.” So when a husband and wife becomes one, they should enhance each other and not require the other to become less of a self.
Groupthink would be the opposite of being self-differentiated. A self-differentiated individual can hold to her believes regardless of the fact that everyone else in the room thinks the same thing except her. Being self-differentiated means that you are comfortable where you are though you know that others are in different places. That is, when you state your opinion, and someone states their opinion, you don't change your mind just to agree with them. Being self-differentiated will allow you to change your mind, if so persuaded, but not simply to keep peace at all cost.
Within a crisis, a self-differentiated person will be affected by the anxiety of others but not infected.
This is a difficult concept because it is paradoxical. A self-differentiated person will both take a stand and remain connected to those creating or generating the anxiety. As Friedman would remind us, no one is perfectly self-differentiated: we are always both an individual and a member of families. As humans, we have simultaneous needs to be "me" and "we," that is, the need to be separate and together at the same time.
Emotional Triangles are actually commonplace in human relationships. Our most satisfying relationships are those involving us and one other person; these relationships can be quite intense. However, they also have the tendency to be quite unstable. When a relationship begins to destabilize, we will reinforce it by bringing in a third person or issue. We create issues to refocus the relationship so that the relationship is not so uncomfortable; we bring in a third person either as an ally to fix the other person and thus reduce the discomfort of the relationship. Triangles are fluid and shift rapidly within and between relationships. Triangles both serve to stabilize anxious one-on-one relationships as well as creating an ally should the one-on-one relationship fall apart or become imbalanced. Triangles are the social device we commonly use to restore homeostasis.
Here is an illustration I use often to illustrate triangles. A mother and daughter are interlocked in conflict since the daughter has taken up smoking. The mother had given up smoking years ago and so she has experience with the addictive side of smoking. However, the more she prevails upon her daughter to quit, the more the teen seems to smoke and the more public her smoking becomes. The mother has pleaded, warned, cajoled, and even belittled the daughter to get her to quit. Little does the mother know that her daughter's smoking is not the "problem.” In Family System thinking, there is really only one argument: "You don't look like me and I insist that you do."Smoking becomes a red herring here. What is really awry here is that the mother and daughter's relationship has deteriorated to the point that all they can now talk about is the daughter's smoking. So now every time they are together, the subject always comes up.
Imagine now, given what you know about the mother and daughter, that the daughter happens into a new relationship with a boy. The chances are great that the mother will not like the boyfriend, no matter how noble he is. Since the "real" issue is what is happening between the mother and daughter, nothing the daughter does will be appropriate to the mother. However, the conversation might shift from smoking to how much time she is spending with the boyfriend. If mother harangues on about the boyfriend, there is a greater than even chance that daughter will run off with the boyfriend.
The previous scenarios have used "issues" as the third point of the triangle. People are also triangled into unstable relationships. Just a guess, but I would bet the hypothetical mom above is in conflict with her mother and that the daughter gets along wonderfully with her grandmother.
If a church is in crisis, then triangles will be present and morphing throughout the congregation. Typical triangles you find in the church would be, say, leading members of the congregation not on the board against the board of elders with the minister mediating between the two. Another example might be an elder's wife against the minister with her husband as the go-between.
For a good biblical example of triangles, remember Isaac and Rebekkah and their two sons. Isaac favored Esau against Rebekkah/Isaac while Rebekkah favored Isaac against Isaac/Esau. There are many more triangles at work in the children of Abraham and Sarah.
Summary. This blog and the previous covered the most important concept for understanding how families really work. These five concepts give you tools to begin to see congregational and family life in a new light.
In the next several posts, I will be exploring Friedman's ten "rules" of family process which I have found immensely helpful in understanding congregational dynamics.
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