Rules of Family Dynamics: Intro

I have previously credited Edwin H. Friedman (Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue [NY: Guildford Press, 1985]) with helping me to understand congregational families and how they function. In previous posts I explored Friedman's conceptual ideas:

• Homeostasis 
• Extended Family Field 
• Identified Patient 
• Differentiation of Self 
• Emotional Triangles 

The two most important terms are homeostasis and differentiation of self. Family will seek to maintain equilibrium and will do what it is necessary to recover whatever previous balance has been lost. Families will often inflict more damage on themselves and others attempting to regain homeostasis and what is often lost by those observing this process, is that the attempt to regain is largely unconscious and automatic. When someone within the system can gain the vantage point to see what is going on in a family and then choose to act differently, this individual is differentiating himself from the system.

For example, husbands and wives often find themselves in the same argument over and over again. One spouse may say something, the other spouse understands the comment to be demeaning, an argument ensues over "semantics," Next one spouse shuts down and becomes sullen, the other spouse pursues, now trying to open the other up. The stalemate sets in. Some time goes by and the cycle starts over again and can go on for some time. The parts are predictable and we are usually willing to play our parts.

Husband: Where did you hide my socks?
Wife: I did not hide them anywhere. Have you looked in your sock drawer?
Husband: I wouldn't be asking you if I had not looked?
Wife: Why are you accusing me of hiding your socks?
Husband: I can't find them (but implying, "so you must have hid them").

Maybe you had this conversation this morning and it usually goes the same way. There are a couple of ways to get out of this cycle but it requires presence of mind. First, the husband who is really just looking for a pair of socks could asks ask, "Do you know if I have any clean socks? Do you know where I should look for them?" That alone, could end the cycle before it begins.

However, we usually don't know that we have said something that someone else could take wrong until they respond. So the wife could derail the normal cycle of what sounds accusatory to her with humor. "Yes, dear, I hid them in the clothes basket by the dryer."

The other three concepts involve realities that either challenge or support family homeostasis. The extended family field creates the larger context in which homeostasis is maintained. All families, including congregational ones, exist is in a larger world of other interconnected relationships. Thus, changes in the extended family field can have an impact on the balance of the various families that are connected to it. Thus, insights into what is going on in the extended family field can explain what might be happening in a particular family within that field.

Families will often create identified patients (black sheep, scapegoats, the one with the problem) to help maintain family balance and lessen the pressure on the other members of the family. At one end, a mother may project her anxiety on a child until the child begins to "act out" the mother's concern. This move can "stabilize" her relationship with her husband so for the time being they don't have to notice the deterioration of their relationship. When churches create identified patients, it is often so the congregation can reduce its sense of responsibility when something has gone wrong.

In each of the examples just given, we have emotional triangles at work. We form triangles in our attempt to stabilize the family or congregation under consideration. Triangles easily create the odd man out and so are places where "false" alliances can form between two people with a common enemy or who have allied together to solves a common problem (usually another person).

I have recapped these concepts to remind us that these concepts are interrelated and will be at work in any given family at all times. During times of anxiety these become more readily visible, but they are always operative.

Friedman goes beyond his original concepts by offering ten "rules" of how families work. These "rules" were not intended to be laws that were immutable but rather points at which one could observe how families work. What I would like to do in the next several posts is repeat Freidman's rules, which are often wordy, and then translate it through my experience of working with families and churches. I hope the church leaders among my readers will find that these ring true with their experience as leaders.