Gender, Power and Relationships

Gender, power and relationships

The publication of Gender and Power in Families (Routledge 1990) marked a milestone in the application of feminist thinking to therapeutic work with families and brought important new ideas into the thinking and practice of students, trainers and professionals. This second volume of contributions from leading practitioners shows how these ideas have been taken up by those working with different approaches in a variety of settings, and reflects the move away from a model of therapists as experts to one of therapists as collaborators who put their knowledge at the disposal of the client. Two areas of work which have been particularly challenging to feminist-informed systemic approaches are those of sexual and physical abuse and ethnicity. The chapters in this book explore and extend previous debates by addressing some of the contradictions and dilemmas inherent in this work. The book also considers gendered experience in changing family forms, such as stepfamilies, as well as the place of men within these structures. It explores gendered aspects of HIV prevention, and describes a new approach to work with women drug addicts, and sets these different perspectives in the context of an overview of feminist theories of the family. The contributors: Robert Bor, Charlotte Burck, Nollaig O’Reilly Byrne, Jane Dutton Conn, Barbara Dale, Gwyn Daniel, Peter Emerson, Stephen Frosh, Virginia Goldner, Gill Gorell Barnes, Sharon Henessy, Elsa Jones, Sebastian Kraemer, Annie Lau, Imelda Colgan McCarthy, Robert Palmer, Lawrence Ratna, Heather Salt, Lynne Segal, Gerrilyn Smith, Gillian Walker, Maria Wheeler, Julie Wilkes.

Gender, power and relationships

Edited by Charlotte Burck and Bebe Speed

London and New York

First published 1995 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. © 1995 The editors for the collection, and individual contributors for each chapter. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN ISBN ISBN ISBN

0–415–10636–2 (hbk) 0–415–10637–0 (pbk) 0-203-13475-3 Master e-book ISBN 0-203-18549-8 (Glassbook Format)

Contents

Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction Charlotte Burck and Bebe Speed 1 The construction of gender in family therapy Elsa Jones 2 The wounded prince and the women who love him Gillian Walker and Virginia Goldner 3 Abuse, risk and protection: a Fifth Province approach to an adolescent sexual offence Nollaig O’Reilly Byrne and Imelda Colgan McCarthy 4 Reclaiming a female mind from the experience of child sexual abuse: a developing conversation between writers and editors Gill Gorell Barnes and Sharon Henessy 5 Hierarchy in families where sexual abuse is an issue Gerrilyn Smith

vii xi 1 7 24

46

69 86

6 Autonomy and connection: gendered thinking in a statutory agency dealing with child sexual abuse Jane Dutton Conn

100

7 Gender, power and relationships: ethno-cultural and religious issues Annie Lau

120

8 Race and gender issues in adult psychiatry Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler

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9 Dangerous liaisons: issues of gender and power relationships in HIV prevention and care Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer 10 The importance of being connected: implications for work with women addicted to drugs Barbara Dale and Peter Emerson

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11 Moving on: gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamily process Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel

185

12 What are fathers for? Sebastian Kraemer

202

13 Unpacking masculinity: from rationality to fragmentation Stephen Frosh

218

14 The social construction of a caring career Julie Wilkes

232

15 Feminism and the family Lynne Segal

248

Index

266

Contributors

Robert Bor CPsychol AFBPsS is a clinical and counselling psychologist and family therapist. He worked for five years as an HIV/AIDS counsellor and applies a systems approach to psychotherapy with people with medical problems. He is a senior lecturer in counselling psychology and director of the Medical Counselling Unit at the City University, London. Charlotte Burck is a family therapist, trainer, and organising tutor at the Tavistock Clinic, and a clinical supervisor and teacher at the Institute of Family Therapy. She is currently involved in researching the process of change in family therapy and its connection with gender. Nollaig O’Reilly Byrne MB FRCP is a consultant child psychiatrist and senior faculty member of family therapy training in the Department of Child and Family Psychiatry, Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Dublin. With her colleagues, Fifth Province Associates, she has published articles and presented workshops in a variety of national and international fora. Jane Dutton Conn MPhil is a qualified teacher, social worker and a registered family therapist. She is a senior lecturer in social work at Middlesex University and a staff member of the Institute of Family Therapy. She has published widely on systemic ideas and gender differences. Barbara Dale is a social worker and family therapist at the Tavistock Clinic where she is organising tutor of the MSc in Family Therapy and Vice Dean. Her current research relates to gender patterns in parenting and family illness. She is a trainer at the Institute of Family Therapy. Gwyn Daniel is director for training at the Institute of Family Therapy and codirector of the Oxford Family Institute. She is co-author (with Charlotte Burck) of Gender and Family Therapy (London: Karnac, forthcoming) and is engaged in a research project on growing up in stepfamilies.

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Contributors

Peter Emerson MA(Cantab) MSc(Family Therapy) is a social worker and family therapist in Norfolk involved in consultation and training. He is undertaking a clinical PhD in Child and Family Psychology and his area of interest is the impact of feminist developmental theory on assumptions about male development. Stephen Frosh is a senior lecturer in psychology at Birkbeck College, University of London and a consultant clinical psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic. He is the author of several books, including Sexual Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis and Identity Crisis: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and the Self. Virginia Goldner is on the senior faculty of the Ackerman Institute, New York, where she is co-director with Gillian Walker of the Gender and Violence project. She has written numerous articles integrating feminist theory, systems theory and psychoanalytic theory which address issues of gender and power. Gill Gorell Barnes works as a therapist with individuals, couples and families at the Institute of Family Therapy and the Tavistock Clinic, London. She teaches and lectures internationally and writes as much as she can. Sharon Henessy has worked in a variety of business settings in the USA and in Europe. She currently lives and works in America with her two children and intends to write more in the future than she has done in the past. Elsa Jones is a family therapist and clinical psychologist working freelance as therapist, trainer and consultant. She is one of the British pioneers of the attempts to integrate feminist critiques with systemic theory and practice. She has recently published books on working with adult survivors of child sexual abuse and on developments in the Milan-systemic therapies. Sebastian Kraemer BA MRCP FRCPsych is a consultant child and family psychiatrist at the Tavistock Clinic and Whittington Hospital, London. His principle interests and publications are in family therapy and psychosomatic disorders, training of child and adolescent psychiatrists and the origins and roles of fatherhood. He is married with two sons. Annie Lau is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist working for Redbridge Healthcare Trust and clinical director of the Child and Adolescent Services, Mental Health Care group. She is a member of the Institute of Family Therapy, London. Of Chinese ethnic origin, she teaches and publishes on transcultural family work and consults widely on race and ethnicity for courts and local authorities.

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Imelda Colgan McCarthy PhD MSocSc is director of the Families and Systemic Therapies programme, board member of the Family Studies Centre, and lecturer in social policy and social work at University College, Dublin. With her colleagues, Fifth Province Associates, she has published and presented on child sexual abuse, violence, power and gender throughout Europe and North America. Robert Palmer has been a director of London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard and a founder worker for the East London HIV resource, The Globe Centre. He is now the HIV and AIDS development officer for the London borough of Tower Hamlets. Lawrence Ratna MBBS DPM MRCPsych is a consultant psychiatrist at Barnet General Hospital and associate professor at St Georges University. He is the author of The Practice of Psychiatric Crisis Intervention and Family Therapy with the Elderly Mentally Ill. He has worked for twenty-six years with families, the elderly, crisis intervention and community care. Heather Salt is head of Health and Counselling Psychology Services at Northwick Park Hospital and is a consultant lecturer for City University. She has clinical, research and training experience in HIV/AIDS and has published works nationally and internationally. Lynne Segal is professor of gender studies at Middlesex University. She has published a number of books on feminism, including most recently Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, and Sex Exposed: Sexuality and the Pornography Debate (edited with Mary McIntosh). She is currently writing a book on heterosexuality. Gerrilyn Smith is a chartered clinical psychologist and family therapist, and clinical director of Limewood, a therapeutic residential unit for young women, many of whom have been sexually abused. She was course lecturer for a government funded initiative for Area Child Protection Committees to develop assessment and treatment services for sexually abused children and their families. Bebe Speed worked for ten years at the Family Institute, Cardiff before moving to Birmingham in 1989, where she now combines a private practice with clinical work in the National Health Service, teaching and co-editing the Journal of Family Therapy. Gillian Walker, co-director with Virginia Goldner of Ackerman Institute, New York’s Gender and Violence Project, is the author of two books, Brief Therapy with Single Parent Families and In Midst of Winter: Systemic Therapy with Families, Couples and Individuals with AIDS Infection.

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Contributors

Maria Wheeler SRN RMN is a counsellor and systemic family therapist in Hertfordshire. She started her career in community psychiatric nursing, gaining experience in crisis intervention, family therapy and lecturing, and trained in systemic family therapy at Kensington Consultation Centre where she now works as a tutor supervisor and consultant. Julie Wilkes is researching social constructionism and management at Loughborough University. She has an MSc in social work, and a Diploma in Systemic Management from Kensington Consultation Centre. She works as an Education Adviser for CCETSW and has edited a book on Sexuality, Young People and Care.

Acknowledgements

To the contributors who have engaged with us so thoughtfully in the recursive process of producing this book. Our special thanks to Jan Cooper who was centrally involved in organising the Third Conference on Feminism and Family Therapy in 1992 – where many of the contributors to this volume presented their ideas – and in the conception of this book. Our thanks also to the Henry Gorell Barnes Trust for a grant towards the cost of the conference, and hence to this volume. To our mothers: to Charlotte’s who by training as an engineer against great odds, taught her the possibilities of challenge, and to Bebe’s who by being ‘only a housewife’ provoked her to rebel.

Introduction

Charlotte Burck and Bebe Speed

This book reflects the continuing development of ideas and practice arising from the interplay between feminist and systemic thinking. The first British book about gender issues in family therapy Gender and Power in Families (Perelberg and Miller 1990) put the examination of gender and power more firmly on family therapy’s agenda. Many of its chapters argued for the incorporation of a feminist perspective into family therapy, a position which, by this volume’s publication in 1995, seems much more taken for granted. This present volume shows the way in which practitioners have taken further some of the ideas addressed by those authors in areas such as child sexual abuse and race and cultural issues and also turns the gender lens towards further issues such as violence within partnerships, drug abuse, AIDS, working with child perpetrators of sexual abuse and post-divorce and stepfamily process. Reflecting the broadening use of a gender focus, this volume contains chapters which range from applications in contexts wider than the family such as adult psychiatry and social services, to the intimate context of two women’s joint experience of a therapeutic relationship. Family therapy’s growing interest in, and influence by, feminism is part of a wider context of helping professions, such as individual therapy (e.g. Ernst and Maguire 1987), social work (e.g. Langan and Day 1992), and clinical psychology (e.g. Ussher and Nicholson 1992) developing similarly. Feminist influenced family therapy in Britain should also be viewed in the context of similar work in other countries and of a growing international network of family therapists concerned with gender and countering oppressive practice.1 Many British practitioners were originally inspired by the work of American feminist family therapists and found Goldner’s ideas (e.g. 1985; 1987) to be particularly congenial. In the first chapter of this book Jones explores the interaction between feminism and family therapy and highlights some current issues for feminist practitioners.

2 Charlotte Burck and Bebe Speed Subsequent chapters examine a variety of applications of feminist informed systemic thinking and therapy. The last chapter of this volume does not concern therapy directly; rather, in giving an overview of the development of feminist ideas about the family in its changing political and social contexts, Segal offers family therapists a detailed view of the feminist critique and its development over time. Feminism is often assumed to be a homogeneous whole, particularly when attacked and stereotyped by its critics and the media. As Segal and Jones both indicate, it is more accurate to talk about feminisms because of the diverse and sometimes even contradictory ways in which feminists conceptualise and apply their thinking about gendered arrangements. Contributors to this book are no exception, offering implicitly and explicitly, a range of opinions of what constitutes a feminist view, from radical feminism on the one hand to gender sensitivity on the other. We think it is important that such diversity be supported and that the growing respect within feminism for difference arising from different racial, cultural and class backgrounds as well as ideological positions, continues to be fostered. Contributors to this volume also reflect a range of views about what constitutes systemic theory and practice. Although all agree that systemic implies a focus on wider context and the significance of relationship and interaction, they diverge considerably according to which particular systemic approaches have most influenced their work. There are significant differences too in the ways they borrow from such diverse theories as psychoanalysis and social constructionism to forge systemic connections with those parts that traditional systemic thinking did not reach. The feminist critique has profoundly influenced family therapy in recent years in drawing attention specifically to the gendered nature of clients’ and therapists’ experiences. It has also radically affected systemic theory and practice in a more general way. Feminist emphasis on the wider context of gendered power relations has encouraged a greater awareness of the significance of other wider contexts in shaping our clients’ and our own lives. Feminist thinking has also, via work in the areas of sexual and physical abuse, fundamentally challenged the traditional systemic view that all participants in an interactional pattern contribute equally to maintaining that pattern. This has enabled practitioners to think more explicitly about the idea that some individuals within families may be more influential than others in maintaining any pattern, not just one where there is an abuse of power. Connected with this, some systemic practitioners have recently shifted ground in their view of the acceptability of working with individuals and the admissibility of individuals’ inner experience in understanding problems and relationships. Work with individuals in areas of particular interest to feminist therapists, such as sexual abuse

Introduction

3

and violence (see Goldner et al. 1990), has contributed to a growing acceptance of the relevance of the intrapersonal level in other areas of work. Many family therapists nowadays (e.g. Pinsof 1994) draw more explicitly on theories of individual functioning and recognise the usefulness and even the necessity of thinking and intervening at multiple levels to respond to complex problems. In recent years, feminist family therapy has also strongly influenced a change in style within the systemic approaches away from a technical, arm’s length, distant expert approach towards that of a collaborative model with an emphasis on empathy and mutuality, where therapists recognise their ideas, their position and special knowledge but respect and learn from those of their clients (as shown here particularly in Gorell Barnes and Henessy’s account of their work together). Feminist therapists have strongly challenged a tendency within the helping professions (fed by wider social beliefs) to hold women unfairly responsible for their own and other family members’ difficulties. For example, Smith (Chapter 5) argues that professionals (including some family therapists) have often over-emphasised the responsibility of mothers in patterns of child sexual abuse and that it is necessary to challenge such ‘mother blaming’. Trained to see the interactional aspects of behaviour, however, systemic practitioners with feminist views have had to struggle with the issue of what contribution women themselves do make to their problems, both in their personal and wider social and political contexts. Challenging ‘women blaming’ should not lead to exonerating women from any responsibility at all, as this would diminish women’s sense of effectiveness and agency altogether. Work on the ways in which women’s premises about gender affect their lives (as in Walker and Goldner, Chapter 2) can enable women to take appropriate responsibility for their share in the perpetuation of difficulties. This issue is also addressed by Salt, Bor and Palmer (Chapter 9), who show how, in the context of HIV and AIDS, changes in girls’ and women’s attitudes to responsibility for their own sexuality may be life and death issues. In contrast to Smith’s view of the importance of removing blame from mothers, Henessy (Chapter 4), writing from a client’s perspective, describes how vital it has been to acknowledge her mother’s responsibility in her father’s abuse of her. Such differences indicate the importance of holding in mind both our culture’s tendency to blame mothers and the complexities and variations in women’s own experience. As the examination of gender difference proceeds, first driven by women but now joined by growing numbers of men, definitions of masculinity and men’s experience are on the line as never before. Kraemer (Chapter 12), speaking from personal experience, explores what fathers are for in their children’s early years, and Burck and Daniel (Chapter 11) address this question in relation to the experiences of parenting when

4 Charlotte Burck and Bebe Speed couples separate, divorce and remarry. Traditional family therapy has been criticised by feminists for protecting men in families while pushing women to change. While Frosh (Chapter 13) puts the case for why men’s vulnerability should be a focus in therapy, Walker and Goldner (Chapter 2) skilfully unravel societal assumptions about the entitlement of men based on this vulnerability in a violent relationship. How to address these issues without having men’s tears ‘wash away’ the reality of male power (Segal 1990) and without replicating the neglect of women’s needs for the sake of men’s, are current dilemmas for practitioners working with families. Some of the different ways in which men and women manage stress and vulnerability and how and whether that difference is dealt with is also crucially relevant, as Conn (Chapter 6) shows, for social workers responding to child abuse. Systemic thinking, with its emphasis on multiple views, has taught us that it partly depends on where we stand in a system as to what we see. The recent influence of social constructionist thinking underlines the significance of with whom we are standing in also determining what we see. Contributors to this volume reflect the wide range of views within feminism and the systemic field about the status of reality and how and what we can know (see Speed 1991). Although all the contributors to this volume would agree that patriarchy is a reality, they take different positions on the nature of knowledge and the possibility of ‘objectivity’ which in turn affects their practice. For example, Dale and Emerson (Chapter 10) write about their use of research findings about women’s experience in transforming their way of working with women addicted to drugs, while Wilkes (Chapter 14), drawing on social constructionism, brings into question the validity of the notion ‘women’s experience’ and challenges the reader to reflect on the social purpose of the stories – including those about women’s experience – we tell. Burck and Daniel (Chapter 11) use ideas about the social constructions of mothering and fathering to enable different ways of parenting to develop when couples separate or remarry. Feminists take different positions on how they construct the fact of patriarchy, and its meanings. For example, Wolfe (1993) asserts that women are at risk of underestimating the power they have won by continuing to see themselves as powerless victims. While power relations are partially constructed, i.e. influenced by beliefs about power (see Burck and Daniel forthcoming), they also have some reality basis; they do not just reflect a point of view. A balance of power between the sexes exists (Elias 1970) and both varies in different social contexts and changes over time. Therapists have to be aware of the realities of their clients’ lives – the constraints that not only gendered relations but also the social inequalities that poverty, race and class impose. But they must also monitor the degree to which they and their clients construct

Introduction

5

those as completely disempowering, when they might be frameable in a more empowering way. Aspects of race, culture and gender interact in highly complex ways and raise particular dilemmas for practitioners working cross-culturally or cross-racially. We have to beware of talking of culture as if cultural values in a society are universal. In all societies there will be diverse groups and subcultures, with different views and with differential access to decision making. The assumption that gender constructions are problematic and constraining for both women and men in all cultures raises challenging questions for therapists. How do we show respect for the family’s culture if we think there are aspects which clearly disadvantage and even abuse women? How do we work without abandoning our own principles and values, yet keep in mind that our own values are culture-specific? How can we engage family members in being open about the advantages and constraints of their gendered interactions in a racist context where minority cultures are under attack? Can women raise their voices against some of their culture’s practices without fearing the devaluation of their culture as a whole? These contradictions are painful and not easily solved. Lau (Chapter 7) and Ratna and Wheeler (Chapter 8) struggle with the issues of balancing a respect for cultural difference with enabling greater manoeuvrability for women (who are often particularly constrained because they are the ‘culture carriers’). Feminist family therapists have become skilled at holding contradictory and complex positions and avoiding a polarised and oppositional stance. Byrne and McCarthy (Chapter 3) demonstrate the usefulness of maintaining rather than resolving contradictions when working with clients and professionals in the area of sexual violence, where professionals often push for clarity and early resolution. This move from certainty towards curiosity about the complexities which power and gender raise for us all has led to an atmosphere of growing respect for difference within the feminist family therapy field. The current fashion for the championing of a position which recognises ‘necessary contradictions’ and ‘complexity’ is far removed from the propositions of family therapy of former years as well as from some earlier feminist positions. Accepting the legitimacy of contradictions offers a way out of seemingly irresolvable situations and is thus a compelling position. For many feminists though (for example, Kitzinger and Perkins 1993), for whom feminism provides a moral framework proposing views about good and bad, right and wrong, this may be far from satisfactory. Many of the practitioners in this volume have developed their thinking about gender differences and power in the areas of men’s violence against women, child sexual abuse, AIDS and drug addiction. These are situations in which women and men

6 Charlotte Burck and Bebe Speed face dangerous consequences of gender premises and they are particularly challenging and emotional areas of work. It is in such relationships, where gendered power relations are seen in their most extreme form, that we can most clearly grasp some of the central questions concerning gender and the crucial importance of change. A fundamental aspect of the therapeutic project for those concerned with issues of justice is, without underplaying societal constraints, to challenge taken-for-granted gender assumptions – enabling both a different view and a choice of ways to conduct our intimate relationships. This is also the project of this book.

NOTE 1 The editors are currently involved in planning an International Conference on Gender and Family Therapy in Britain in 1996.

REFERENCES Burck, C. and Daniel, D. (forthcoming) Gender and Family Therapy, London: Karnac. Elias, N. (1970) ‘Sociology of knowledge: new perspectives (Part 2)’, Sociology 355– 370. Ernst, S. and Maguire, M. (eds) (1987) Living with the Sphinx, London: Women’s Press. Goldner, V. (1985) ‘Feminism and family therapy’, Family Process 24: 31–47. —— (1987) ‘Generation and gender: normative and covert hierarchies’, Family Process 27: 17–31. Kitzinger, C. and Perkins, R. (1993) Changing Our Minds: Lesbian Feminism and Psychology, London: Only Women’s Press. Langan, R. and Day, L. (eds) (1992) Women, Oppression and Social Work. Issues in Antidiscriminatory Practice, London: Routledge. Perelberg, R. J. and Miller, A. C. (eds) (1990) Gender and Power in Families, London: Routledge. Pinsof, W. (1994) ‘An overview of integrative problem centred therapy: a synthesis of family and individual psychotherapies’, Journal of Family Therapy 16: 103–121. Segal, L. (1990) Slow Motion. Changing Masculinities. Changing Men, London: Virago Press. Speed, B. (1991) ‘Reality exists O.K?: an argument against constructivism and social constructionism’, Journal of Family Therapy 13: 395–411. Ussher, J. and Nicholson, P. (eds) (1992) Gender Issues in Clinical Psychology, London: Routledge. Wolfe, N. (1993) Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How it Will Change the 21st Century, London: Chatto & Windus.

1

The construction of gender in family therapy1

Elsa Jones

BACKGROUND Family therapists were slow, compared, for example, with psychoanalysts (e.g. Mitchell 1974) to allow the voices of feminist critique to influence theory or practice. Many explanations for this might be advanced. Family therapy got off the ground in the 1950s, when the ideology of the return to ‘traditional family forms’ (i.e. father as breadwinner and mother as home-maker) was in its heyday, following the trauma of the Second World War, and accompanying the need to free up jobs (done by women during the war) for returning male soldiers. During the 1960s and 1970s, when resurgent feminism started to question the traditional roles of men and women and the idealisation of the family itself, family therapy was just beginning to find its feet, to build its theories and to expand its applications. It might be that family therapy, as a relative newcomer amongst the psychotherapies, avoided internal dissension in order to maintain strong boundaries while engaged in establishing itself as a viable new psychotherapeutic approach. We could therefore only allow ourselves to begin to question our practices when we started to feel sufficiently secure. In Britain, the feminist critiques of theory, and attempts to establish gendersensitive practice, received their first impetus from the work of four American family therapists, Betty Carter, Peggy Papp, Olga Silverstein and Marianne Walters (Carter et al. 1984; Walters et al. 1988), who brought their Women’s Project workshops to the UK in the early 1980s, and from the writings of American pioneers such as Rachel Hare-Mustin (1986) and Virginia Goldner (e.g. 1985a, 1985b). Following this, a group often British women family therapists met in Cardiff in 1986: this small beginning has, to date, given birth to three conferences, two books (Perelberg and Miller 1990, and the present one), the creation of local networks, and many other, less specific consequences. An increasingly rich international network of feminist family therapy

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Elsa Jones

writings has become an invaluable source of mutual influence for women and men therapists.

FEMINISM IN FAMILY THERAPY When we first started in Britain to challenge orthodox ideas about gender roles, inequity, and power abuse in families, it was done with much hesitation and a sense of breaking taboos. Many of the feminist critics of accepted family therapy theory and practice had long been schooled in the discipline of feminist politics and awareness. Nevertheless, we had also taken on board the idea, mediated through our trainers and colleagues, that these views were personal, value-laden and political, and did not belong in the therapy room, and thus we continued to exercise self-censorship. Expressing an interest in the gendered arrangements of clients’ lives, in the history of their gender socialisation, and in the differential access they might have to decision making or money was seen as tantamount to exerting undue influence, and might attract the label of ‘hysterical feminist’. Yet somehow, not paying attention to these issues, or to the use and abuse of power between therapist and client, was not regarded as demonstrating personal, value-laden and political views. Thus we all, for a long time, supported the status quo, and kept silent about many issues, even though, as systemic thinkers, we also knew that it is impossible not to communicate, and that what we were perforce communicating must have been seen by clients as condoning the violence, narrowing of options, unhappiness and frustrations that they were experiencing. Feminist critiques arise from theoretical stances which offer the tools to analyse and deconstruct the premises underlying received truths in family therapy, as in many other disciplines. The exploration of the construction of gender within individual, familial and social contexts has often been easier for therapists to take on board, whereas the wider implications of a theoretical and political analysis of androcracy2 has remained somewhat daunting or unpalatable to many practitioners. This may reflect the a-theoretical stance of many family therapists, for whom practical application remains the priority. Thinking and talking about gender in family therapy remained, for some time, a marginal activity. Increasing lip-service was paid to it, and many brief seminars on gender (and race) were added to the ends of training courses, when they could be fitted in. Family therapy teams began to talk with each other about their own responses to the gendered aspects of client dilemmas, and even – carefully! – about the way that gender could be seen to be relevant to the structures and relationships of therapists’

Construction of gender in family therapy 9 working lives. While it may have seemed innovatory to consider gender influences for the purposes of therapy, it began to seem downright dangerous to turn the same lens on to working relationships and questions about pay scales, status and power. However, for many, gender remained – and to some extent remains – a ‘woman’s issue’. Conferences or workshops with the words ‘gender’ or ‘feminism’ in their titles tended to attract men in the ratio of about 4–100. This situation has changed somewhat, largely perhaps because family therapy courses started to integrate ‘gender-sensitive’ training into their curriculae. Nevertheless, it is still sufficiently the case to warrant attention. It is as if ‘gender’ means ‘woman’. A similar phenomenon has been commented on by those working in the field of anti-racist training, where it seems that, for many, words like ‘racism’ or ‘race’ or ‘colour’ connotes problems that black people encounter. Thus gender is seen to be something women have, or have a problem with. There are of course many male family therapists who prove the exception to this rule (for example, Mason and Mason 1990; Reimers and Dimmock 1990; Doherty 1991; Kraemer 1991 and Chapter 12 this volume; Frosh, Chapter 13 this volume), but it remains true that the proportion of men attending forums such as, for example, the 1992 ‘Gender, Power and Relationships’ Conference, continue to be extremely small. An associated phenomenon is that those (predominantly women) who write and offer workshops on gender-related themes tend to become ‘ghettoised’; that is, they begin to be seen as people who are able only to speak on gender, and may risk being edged out on to the margins of the family therapy field. At the same time that feminist perspectives were beginning to be included in family therapy approaches, the entire mental health field was being required to come to terms with the revelation of widespread sexual and physical abuse of children, and to develop and refine therapeutic approaches to working with all the members of systems within which abuse had occurred. It seems to me that this (client-driven) phenomenon, together with the feminist focus on social, cultural and familial structures which embody misogyny and constrict the psychological and relational development of women and of men, has been the most significant influence for change in the work of family therapists. Family therapists, like those working in other models, have had to learn from their clients how to integrate ideas in relation to mutuality and empowerment, and have looked to feminist therapy, as well as to new theoretical developments, for ideas about how to help clients free themselves from the tyranny of abusive relationships and beliefs. The recursiveness of the therapeutic process has meant that therapists themselves could not go through these processes without changing either. Although somewhat tardily, the practice and teaching of family therapy in Britain

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Elsa Jones

has been responsive to feminist critiques, and has even been described as exemplifying ‘the flowering of the “second wave” of feminist analysis and agitation: the move from a basic critique to the reconstruction and rehabilitation of systems theory and therapy’ (Goldner 1991: 341). It is relevant to note that here, as in the field of feminist scholarship generally, one must now speak of pluralities, i.e. of feminisms and feminist critiques, rather than of one unitary orthodoxy. The guidelines set out by the British Association of Family Therapy for training courses requires attention to be paid to the development of gender-sensitive therapy, in tandem with other anti-discriminatory (e.g. non-racist and anti-oppressive) stances towards practice. Workshops, articles and training curriculae testify to the fact that ‘gender’ is now out of the closet and on the agenda. However, it is crucial at this stage to avoid complacency. The research of Coleman (1990) and her colleagues in the USA3 makes it evident that the existence of professional guidelines for anti-sexist practice and gender-aware training does not guarantee that these matters will be given more than lip-service. Without fundamental changes in our theories and ourselves, the difficulties brought to the attention of family therapy by feminists will not alter our practice. Instead, a tokenist addendum will result in a superficial nod in the direction of ‘gender roles’, leaving untouched the difficult and risky territory of the social and political construction of gender, and the role played by therapists in the maintenance, adaptation or subversion of family systems which may operate to the advantage or disadvantage of some or all of their members.

DEVELOPMENTS IN FAMILY THERAPY At the same time that feminist voices were becoming part of the discourse of family therapy, the field also underwent other significant changes. Some family therapists became interested in exploring more democratic ways of working, and began to characterise the process of therapy and change as co-constructed between all the participants, all of whom (therapists and clients) were engaged in the creation and shift of meanings. Many therapists no longer described themselves as standing outside that which was being observed, but rather as subjective participant-observers together with clients. Radical ideas from other disciplines such as biology and chemistry changed the way in which mutual influence was characterised, so that family therapists became more interested in how to present their ideas so that these might usefully be taken up by clients, rather than assuming they could unilaterally cause clients to change in directions desirable to the therapist (cf. for example, Andersen 1987; Cecchin 1987; Hoffman 1990; Jones 1993).

Construction of gender in family therapy 11 The increased flexibility and diversity within the field of family therapy, together with a diminished concern with ideological purity, has meant that ideas from other psychotherapies, and other disciplines, can more easily be brought to bear on the thinking of family therapists in order to facilitate our attempts to make sense of the complexities with which we struggle in our desire for just and effective ways of working. Many of the family therapy practices characterised as belonging to ‘second order cybernetics’ are coherent with aspects of the practice of feminist therapy (e.g. Gilbert 1980): the idea that the therapist acknowledges and takes responsibility for the imbalance of power which exists at the beginning of therapy and works in such a way as to ‘shed power’ and allow clients to empower themselves; the greater openness and demystification of therapeutic processes, and the sharing of hypotheses and tentative ideas with clients; the willingness to explore the influence of contexts outside the family, such as androcracy, racism, or socioeconomic factors (Andersen 1990; Holland 1992; Jones 1991 and 1993; Waldegrave and Tapping 1990). In attempting to understand the difficulties experienced by an individual woman or man, alone or in interaction with each other and their wider families, we may need to consider more than the interactional systemic regularities of their mutual patterns of behaviour. If we look only at the patterns in the here-and-now we may fall into that familiar systemic trap of assuming that each participant disposes of equal access to choice, influence and power (cf. Goldner 1985a; Jones 1991). Thus we may usefully direct our attention to: (1) the ‘internal’ world of the individual; (2) their family history with its myths, gendered and other roles and its teachings about the nature of the world we inhabit; (3) the social and cultural context in which the individual (client and therapist) lives, and by which she or he is shaped; as well as (4) the observation of systemic regularities and the maintenance and change of interactional patterns (Goldner et al. 1990). Observation at any of the four levels described above may contradict observation at another level. One of the strengths of the systemic approach is that it enables us to take a ‘both/and’ perspective on contradictory data. The assumption that no one observation or position is exclusively true can enable us to experience the creative tension of struggling with ‘necessary contradictions’ (Goldner 1992). For example, a couple locked in a relationship where he is physically violent towards her and she repeatedly shows more concern for his vulnerability than for her own safety, may well be cooperating in the maintenance of a complementary system, and at the same time be acting on the basis of roles learned within their original families and their internalised assumptions of who and what they are. In addition, their assumptions and beliefs about the freedoms and constraints of their gendered roles will be shaped, as will those

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of their therapist, by economics and by the social and cultural construction of gender which permeates their lives at conscious as well as unnoticed levels of influence. The systemic paradigm and feminist theory may be seen as occupying contradictory positions in relation to each other when it comes to the consideration of problems such as inequity or power abuse in relationships. While feminism has focused, understandably, on issues concerning the status of women within androcratic society, systemic therapy has found it difficult to incorporate any thinking about inequity into its theory or practice, whether this applies to differences between people of varying gender, age, class, colour, race, economic status or ability. Family therapists continue to balk at acknowledging the easily observable differences in systemic influence between, for example, male and female, white and black, or adult and child within most societies, and continue to act and write as if the problem of power will disappear if we can find words to render it meaningless (cf. Simon 1993). Systemic therapists, understandably, are wary of fundamentalist positions about right and wrong, which would erode the valuable multi-positional ‘dis-position’ (Kearney et al. 1989; and see Byrne and McCarthy, Chapter 3 this volume) which renders us able not only to empathise with or understand the perspectives of all members of a client group, but, even more usefully, to bring new flexibilities, options, points of view and potential meanings into the explorations of the therapeutic system of which we form a part. The apparent polarity between feminist and systemic views is maintained by our failure to apply our own theories to our own dilemmas – we apparently find it difficult to maintain a ‘both/and’ position in relation to our own deeply-felt dilemmas (cf. Krüll 1987 for a very interesting examination of this issue).

THE DIFFICULTIES OF CHANGE Why is it so difficult for systemic therapists to deal with the problems raised by a contemplation of gendered relationships, or of power use and abuse in relationships? When family therapists pioneered the therapeutic inclusion of family contexts in the understanding of human problems, why have we so often shied away from a consideration of the wider cultural and political contexts within which we and our clients live? We have recently given ourselves permission to think again about the internal worlds of ourselves and our clients, and to include the self of the therapist as a relevant participant in the (mutual) influencing of the therapeutic endeavour. Can we become brave enough to include, consistently, speculations and hypotheses about the effect of cultural, social, political and historical patterns on the lives of our clients, even when such speculations may threaten our desire, as therapists, to consider

Construction of gender in family therapy 13 ourselves as even-handed, value-free and non-directive? However can we do evenhanded, equitable therapy when we ignore differences between our clients in regard to freedom of choice, sense of entitlement, economic power and other factors sensitive to the constraints of gender? It may be helpful to remind ourselves that Bateson, on whose ideas much of systemic therapy rests, pointed out that experiencing and struggling with contradiction or paradox invites curiosity, stimulates our interest, and can lead us to potentially fresh ideas and an opening up and diversification of our thinking (Bateson 1978). It may well be that those therapists who choose to work with families – and who often do so in teams, with or without one-way screens – bring to their work a particular talent for being comfortable with the tensions that arise from membership of more than one system, or from the holding of contradictory premises. Observation suggests that family therapists more than other therapists may have developed these talents in response to particular formative influences. Such influences would include growing up in families experiencing emigration, speaking more than one home language, subscribing to different religious or political beliefs, coming from different ethnic, racial or national groups, having parents divorce or living in stepfamilies, or being mobile in terms of home, school, or class. These kinds of experiences might lead a therapist to be comfortable at the margins of systems, to move easily from membership of one system (family/therapist) to that of another (therapist/team), or to respond creatively to the contemplation of different, contradictory or paradoxical ideas. Whatever its origins, such flexibility, if family therapists could lay claim to it, should help to maintain an openness to challenge in our thinking and our practice. However, family therapists do frequently avoid the tension generated by attempts to include the influence of wider contexts in our understanding of the problems experienced by women and men in interaction. Why is this? While many reasons could be advanced, a few that seem particularly relevant to current family therapy practice will be discussed.

Being part of the system under observation Therapists are as influenced as their clients are by the gender discourses4 which – often outside awareness – shape, constrain and determine our assumptions about normality or deviation (Jones 1991). It may therefore be much harder for us to notice how the premises, beliefs, identities or actions which arise from these discourses function in a way which makes the choices and well-being of some participants central and obvious to all those interacting in a system, while the choices, well-being, etc. of

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other participants may become marginal or invisible. As Foucault (1980) has pointed out, a dominant discourse functions in such a way as to silence the voices and perceptions of the subjugated narrative. This means that even those of goodwill may not think that particular practices or taken-for-granted behaviours are unjust or exceptionable, until and unless their system of meaning is perturbed sufficiently by new input to make it possible for them to think and see differently. A few examples from recent history may flesh out this point. While slavery was regarded as ‘normal’ and acceptable to many societies, people who would have considered themselves to be decent, religious and compassionate used slave labour or profited directly or indirectly from it. Some great British cities still show the glorious architectural consequences of the financial profits of slavery. The racism which was one of the concomitants of – and perhaps the necessary precondition for – slavery, has only relatively recently been challenged on a large scale, and anyone living in Britain today will know that this challenge has far from completed the transformation of society it seeks to bring about. A visit to any major art gallery in the western world will show the observer a multitude of images of the romanticisation of rape, dressed up, usually, in mythological clothing, but fitting well with predominant social attitudes towards women’s control of their own bodies, and gendered premises about the meaning of consent. We are so accustomed to living in a society where women’s bodies are displayed to the observer in a range of contexts and guises (Berger 1972), from the commodities of the advertising industry to the cheap thrill of nude ‘availability’ throughout the media, that we do not notice that the passivity with which she sits under the gaze of the observer is part and parcel of the construction of the female gender role. Those who point out these and similar aspects of ‘brainwashing’ about the proper conduct of femininity and masculinity are frequently dismissed as extremist. We are all like the islanders who, on the first arrival of Captain Cook’s ship (Bateson 1978), stopped ‘seeing’ it because its scale did not fit with their previous assumptions about what was possible. Our blindness is reinforced by our fear that an acknowledgement that, in certain societies at certain times, some may be more equal than others, will diminish our valuable theoretical insights about interactional reciprocity. In addition, the continued ethos of non-partiality makes us fearful of seeming to ‘take sides’. We should perhaps remind ourselves that non-partiality may simply be the acceptable face of that icon of our discarded medical and psychological cradle, namely objectivity. As Bertrand Russell said, objectivity is ‘a delusion which other lunatics share’ (Russell 1953).

Construction of gender in family therapy 15 The taboo on doing ‘world therapy’ Family therapists often feel distressed by the accusation that we are in the business of maintaining family cohesion at all costs, and many clients are anxious about seeing us because they also hold this assumption about our likely bias. Family therapists will protest vociferously that we are even-handed and open-minded, and seek to help people achieve the outcomes they would consider best and most achievable for themselves. Nevertheless, many a young (and not-so-young) family therapist has been admonished not to take on matters which lie outside their own sphere of influence. These matters generally seem to include money (for example, the mother of several young children cannot leave her violent partner because she has no job skills, nowhere to go, there are long waiting lists for housing, and the women’s refuges are full and underfunded); politics (for example, the depression of those without work or prospects of work, who learn to blame themselves rather than the policies which require ‘acceptable’ levels of unemployment); and the social construction of gender (which includes the taboo on male vulnerability or female rage, so that men ‘self-medicate’ on alcohol or violence, and women are drugged into silence by medically prescribed ‘tranquillisers’). Yet inclusion of these matters in our understanding of, and work with, clients would surely indicate that we are being true to our theories which require us to see individual behaviour within its many influential contexts.

Paralysing paradoxes or necessary contradictions? At times, family therapists find that those stances and premises which seem most likely to enable us to work ethically come into conflict with one another, and lead to a fear of proceeding on the routes of curiosity, challenge and support which might otherwise have been taken, and so produce a kind of paralysis demoralising for the therapist, and probably unhelpful to the client. This clash of values seems most typically to occur in cross-cultural work; that is, where the therapist comes from a different ethnic, religious, class or cultural group to the client’s. Thus the therapist’s commitment to working in such a way that each family member may have the space and permission to speak freely, to have equal access to therapeutic validation, and to explore the possibilities of diversity and choice5 may appear to be in conflict with family, cultural or group rules which restrict the options of some family members for reasons that seem acceptable to the dominant ideology in the family. If the therapist hypothesises that the expression of these dominant norms constitutes part and parcel

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of the difficulties the family experiences, or sees the family’s request for help as constituting a desire that the therapist should make an aberrant or rebellious member acquiesce to a subordinate role, this will be experienced as a dilemma. The therapist’s desire to be respectful of diversity could then be described as being in direct conflict with her ethical responsibility to increase choices for all. In addition, therapists may become so fearful of imposing their own values, derived from their own unique background, that they lose energy and passion in their work, and start following a safe, colourless, bland and ineffectual middle road. This fearfulness can become operative in a variety of circumstances, determined by the uniqueness of therapist and client. Again, a few examples are proposed, mainly in order to stimulate the reader’s recall of examples from their own repertoire: the therapist belongs to a dominant subculture (white, or male, or middle class) and the clients do not; the therapist belongs to a subjugated subculture (black, or female, or working class) and the clients do not; clients present with subtle but profound gender stereotypes (he holds all the financial power and shouts when he is displeased, she has headaches and sees martyrdom as her destiny); or clients present with behaviours which they define as culturally normal, but which deviate from the therapist’s own assumptions about acceptable behaviour, e.g. for ‘westernised’ therapists, the practice of polygamy or female circumcision. These problems of ‘contradiction’ will be acute in particular for those therapists who hold feminist views about the cultural and familial roles of women and men while also adhering to a non-directive, second order cybernetic stance in family therapy. Therapists holding only one, or neither, of these positions are unlikely to recognise the existence of a problem at all. The struggle of trying to work in ways coherent with ethical aspirations, which are probably part of most therapists’ value base, while also behaving in a respectful and non-oppressive manner towards clients, is the challenge which may enable family therapy to continue to move forward. As we face our own difficulties, confirm our entitlement to hold true to our own beliefs, and the clients’ entitlement to be heard and respected, we may enrich our repertoire of practice and force our theory to expand in order to contain these ‘necessary contradictions’ (Goldner et al. 1990; Waldegrave and Tapping 1990).

Dominator cultures and their dominant discourses Ideally, most therapists would probably like to find ways of dealing with the inequities between men and women in therapy in such a way that both female and male clients (not to mention therapists) could emerge from the experience with wider options,

Construction of gender in family therapy 17 increased flexibility and a sense of self-enhancement. One of the obstacles to doing this work, or even to thinking clearly about it, is probably the fear that thinking about it at all will give rise to enmity. We are all, after all, male or female (although these are probably not the unitary identities we often pretend they are). Our language is full of phrases that denote the riskiness of the material lying just underneath the surface – ‘the war between the sexes’, ‘sleeping with the enemy’, etc. In a sense, whether we are heterosexual or homosexual, we all in our daily lives sleep with the enemy, unless we live in wholly enclosed separatist communities. We have working, or neighbourly, or friendly, or intimate relationships with members of the ‘opposite’ sex. Facing some of the hurtful, destructive and sometimes violent or fatal actions that constitute part of the war of the sexes may spill over into our pleasant, cooperative or loving relationships with partners, colleagues or friends. We may find ourselves beginning to think along the lines that ‘all men...’ or ‘all women...’ do this or are like this. A useful counter to this type of unacceptable categorisation is offered by Riane Eisler’s proposition regarding ‘dominator’ and ‘partnership’ cultures (Eisler 1987). Looking at the very long record of human civilisation, she suggests that cultures can broadly be divided into two types: the dominator model, in which difference is ‘equated with inferiority or superiority... the ranking of one half of humanity over the other’, and on the other hand the partnership model, in which ‘social relations are primarily based on the principle of linking rather than ranking... [and] diversity is not equated with either inferiority or superiority’ (ibid., p.xvii). For those who would like to explore her valuable and revolutionary insights further, see Eisler 1987. (I have considered some of the implications of her work for the practice of family therapy in other publications; see Jones 1990; Jones 1993.) I will here briefly explore the implications of this thinking for family therapy’s struggle with the meaning of gendered role difference. It could be argued that most contemporary world cultures are to a greater or lesser extent based on dominator models, i.e. these are cultures in which difference (male/ female, white/black, young/old) becomes the signifier for superiority or inferiority, for privilege or oppression. If we accept this as a categorisation of our social organisation, then it becomes possible to ask how, in a dominator culture, gender has been constructed. Thus we are dealing not with the aggressiveness of each individual male or the propensity for martyrdom of every female, but with the problem of how the culture constructs and instructs their gendered identities. Which aspects of their human diversity are encouraged and which suppressed? What are they allowed or not allowed to do, encouraged to feel or express, and what not? What are the assumptions about maleness and femaleness which the wider culture fosters, and how do these assumptions express themselves in subcultures and local social groupings, in families and in the self-

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characterisations of individuals? What are men and women taught about what they may be allowed to get away with? Eisler makes a further useful point when she discusses the concept of domination and actualisation hierarchies. In her view, a dominator hierarchy is based on force or the implied threat of force, whereas an actualisation hierarchy functions to maximise the organism’s potential. The latter would then apply both to ‘types of hierarchies found in progressions from lower to higher orderings of functioning’ (e.g. in the area of biology) and to human hierarchies such as good-enough child-rearing (Eisler 1987: 205). Adopting this view of hierarchy would go some way towards resolving the difficulties of family therapists who either deny that power differentials exist between clients or between clients and therapists, or who on the other hand see all concepts of power or hierarchy as inevitably negative, and try to get rid of them by ‘sleight of language’. Thus as therapists it is important to acknowledge that, whether we are women or men, all the selves we are and could be are organised, and sometimes constrained and warped, by the various layers of the culture in which we live. For most of us, this culture is one which construes difference as an indication that one must be right, good or superior, and the other wrong, bad or inferior, so that those who find themselves in positions of influence, choice and attributed power often use these positions to exploit, ignore, diminish and control others. The question, then, is what options people may have access to within dominator patterns, and what the influences may be that will incline them to use these options to the benefit or detriment of others. We can therefore see that men who beat up women, and women who beat up children are acting on the basis of certain assumptions about (among other things) a pecking order, and might behave differently when they find themselves in a different place in that pecking order. They might behave even more significantly differently were they to find themselves able to try out the rewards of participation in a partnership culture.

PRACTISING FEMINIST SYSTEMIC THERAPY The problems posed for family therapy by our increasing awareness of the significance of gender discourse and relations of dominance to the interactions of our clients with one another and with ourselves, have not yet been resolved. Nevertheless, we are able to practise our craft in ways which make it more likely that the troubled women and men who seek our help will emerge from the encounter with an enhanced sense of their options for choice. Some of the components of this way of working will be noted briefly.

Construction of gender in family therapy 19 If the therapist sees herself as part of an observing system called therapy, it follows that the most useful focus for change will be on her own attitudes and actions in her work rather than on how she may change her clients. It is important then that the therapist should allow herself to occupy a passionate and sceptical stance towards the observations she makes as well as towards her own beliefs and premises. Either passion or scepticism alone will not be good enough – the one will lead her into a sense of smugness and justification and the other will rob her of the very qualities of ethical compassion which motivate her work. Recognising the power imbalance which exists – particularly at the beginning of therapy – between client and therapist makes it more likely that the therapist will avoid abusing this. She can then take responsibility for those areas where power (in the sense of ‘ability to...’) is realistically attributed to her by the client and society, and use her skills and expertise to create a safe and containing environment in which clients may discover their own resources for change, and in which the therapist’s technical expertise may introduce new perspectives, areas of enquiry and options into the therapeutic exploration. She can also work, gradually and appropriately, to ‘shed power’ and share skills, knowledge and responsibility with clients. Therapists, whether male or female, can be aware of the degree to which their own gendered premises and prejudices are likely to affect their perceptions of clients. This awareness makes it possible also to notice where the clients’ premises and prejudices in relation to their own gender and that of the therapist are relevant to the work of therapy, and to discuss these in ways that increase systemic curiosity for all participants. When hypothesising about possible patterns of interaction and influence in the lives of our clients, we can include speculations about the influence of gender in the various contexts which impinge on their current dilemmas. How did they learn how to be female or male in their families and their cultures? How clear or subtle, overt or covert, freeing or constraining were these messages and rules? What might happen if they changed them? How are their views about their gender – whether biologically, familially or culturally constructed – being expressed in their current lives, and to what extent are these part of the problems they bring to therapy? How do they divide up the tasks of family maintenance such as wage-earning, childcare, cooking, cleaning and repairing, and how do decisions about who does what get made? What are their experiences and beliefs about power and influence, equity and domination? How may these be relevant to their current lives? Having asked ourselves these questions about our clients, we can fruitfully ask them of the clients themselves, should they seem relevant. It has long been clear that

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the recursive process of questioning informed by systemic curiosity acts, if appropriately responsive to client concerns, as a profound perturbation of the client and therapeutic system, which is then likely to lead to meaningful change. The therapist who is interested in issues of power and gender does not have to beat a political drum: asking interested and interesting questions about gender premises and arrangements in family life will of itself allow clients to think about, and change, those aspects of their lives which they consider redundant. If we assume that clients are motivated by ill-will, and will continue to choose to abuse one another by choice, that constrains us to use force ‘in their best interests’. If we assume, on the other hand, that people would rather live lovingly and creatively with one another if they could find ways of doing this, then we will assume that our task is not to point out the correct road but rather to help them remove the obstacles which prevent them from travelling on the road of their choice. This stance applies whether or not we are dealing with overtly gender-linked topics.

CONCLUSION Can we continue to move towards partnership models in our therapy, as we have been attempting to do (Andersen 1990; Hoffman 1990; Jones 1993)? Can we allow ourselves to hope that the effects of our therapeutic interactions with clients do not stop when they leave therapy, and do not stop at the boundaries of the family, but may spread out, like seepage from a river, to help also to influence our societies towards structures and beliefs that will make equity and diversity more possible? The feminist critiques have been powerfully influential in the changes which have occurred in recent years within family therapy. We can no longer pretend to a stance of theoretical purity and valueless objectivity. Nor can we believe that we, as impartial outsiders, know what is good for our client, and that it is our benevolent right to steer them towards that good. We know that power is used and abused between our clients, and between ourselves and our clients (Aghassy and Noot 1990), and we know that we cannot not take a stance in relation to this. My own stance, as will be amply evident from the above, is subjective and shaped by my values, which derive from many and varied influences, as are those of all my colleagues. The changes in family therapy theory and practice over recent years have made it much more possible for us to grasp hold of the difficult questions surrounding relationships between women and men, and the construction of gender – to struggle with them, experiment with them, disagree over them, and begin to integrate our conclusions into our practice. Nevertheless, it is evident that we have not yet resolved

Construction of gender in family therapy 21 the (necessary?) contradiction regarding ways of tackling the problem of power and gender inequities on the one hand, and systemic stances on the other. I hope that these contradictions, and the tension generated by them, will continue to stimulate our creativity.

NOTES 1 This chapter is based on a plenary lecture given to the Third Conference on Feminism and Family Therapy, London, 15/16 May 1992. 2 I follow Eisler’s (1988) usage of androcratic, i.e. ‘ruled by men’ as preferable to patriarchal, i.e. ‘ruled by the father’. 3 Coleman et al. (1990) investigated family therapy training programmes in the USA and elsewhere to establish the extent to which they were complying with the guidelines for gender-aware training set out by professional associations. They found that, despite these guidelines, most programmes ignored the topic of gender, or paid it only superficial attention. 4 By discourse I mean all the ideas, images, mythology, rules, conversations, etc. pertaining to a particular subject, communicated overtly and covertly. Thus the discourse on femaleness would include all of a particular culture’s tenets about the female gender, from Madonna to the madonna, from educational policies to clothing fashions, from visual representations to jokes and idioms, etc. 5 Von Foerster (1990), in his attempt to define ethical practice, has suggested that a therapist should try to act in such a manner as to increase choice for clients.

REFERENCES Aghassy, G. and Noot, M. (1990) Seksuele Kontakten binnen Psychotherapeutische Hulpverleningsrelasies, ’s-Gravenhage, VUGA. Andersen, T. (1987) ‘Reflecting teams: dialogue and metadialogue in clinical work’, Family Process 26: 415–428. —— (ed.) (1990) The Reflecting Team: Dialogues and Dialogues about the Dialogues, Broadstairs, Kent: Borgmann. Bateson, G. (1978) Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology, London: Paladin/Granada Publishing. Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books. Carter, E., Papp, P., Silverstein, O. and Walters, M. (1984) Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters, Washington, DC: The Women’s Project in Family Therapy, Monograph Series 2:1. Cecchin, G. (1987) ‘Hypothesizing, circularity, and neutrality revisited: an invitation to curiosity’, Family Process 26: 405–413.

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Coleman, S., Avis, J. and Turin, M. (1990) ‘A study of the role of gender in family therapy training’, Family Process 29: 365–374. Doherty, W. (1991) ‘Can male therapists empower women in therapy?’, in T.J. Goodrich (ed.) Women and Power: Perspectives for Family Therapy, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Eisler, R. (1987) The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future, San Francisco: Harper & Row. Foucault, M. (1980) Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (ed. C. Gordon), New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Gilbert, L. A. (1980) ‘Feminist therapy’, in A.M. Brodsky and R.T. Hare-Mustin (eds) Women and Psychotherapy, New York: The Guilford Press. Goldner, V. (1985a) ‘Warning: family therapy may be hazardous to your health’, The Family Therapy Networker 9 (6):19–23. —— (1985b) ‘Feminism and family therapy’, Family Process 24: 31–47. —— (1991) ‘Essay book review: Rosine Jozef Perelberg and Ann C. Miller. Gender and Power in Families, London and New York: Tavistock/Routledge 1990’, Journal of Family Therapy 13 (3): 341–345. —— (1992) ‘Making room for both/and’, The Family Therapy Networker March–April, 55–61. Goldner, V., Penn, P., Sheinberg, M. and Walker, G. (1990) ‘Love and violence: gender paradoxes in volatile attachments’, Family Process 29: 343–364. Hare-Mustin, R. (1986) ‘The problem of gender in family therapy theory’, Family Process 26:15–27. Hoffman, L. (1990) ‘Constructing realities: an art of lenses’, Family Process 29: 1–12. Holland, S. (1992) ‘From social abuse to social action: a neighbourhood psychotherapy and social action project for women’, in J. Ussher and P. Nicholson (eds) Gender Issues in Clinical Psychology, London: Routledge. Jones, E. (1990) ‘Feminism and family therapy: can mixed marriages work?’ in R. J. Perelberg and A. C. Miller (eds) Gender and Power in Families, London: Tavistock/ Routledge. —— (1991) Working with Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, London: Karnac Books. —— (1993) Family Systems Therapy: Developments in the Milan-Systemic Therapies, Chichester, New York: John Wiley & Sons. Kearney, P.A., Byrne, N. and McCarthy, I. (1989) ‘Just metaphors: marginal illuminations in a colonial retreat’, Family Therapy Case Studies 4: 17–31. Kraemer, S. (1991) ‘The origins of fatherhood: an ancient family process’, Family Process 30: 377–392. Krüll, M. (1987) ‘Systemic thinking and ethics. Political implications of the systemic perspective’, in J. Hargens (ed.) Systemic Therapy: A European Perspective (1990), Broadstairs, Kent: Borgmann (originally in Zeitschrift für systemische Therapie 5:4). Mason, B. and Mason, E. (1990) ‘Masculinity and family work’, in R.J. Perelberg and A.C. Miller (eds) Gender and Power in Families, London: Tavistock/ Routledge. Mitchell, J. (1974) Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Perelberg, R. J. and Miller, A. C. (eds) (1990) Gender and Power in Families, London: Tavistock/Routledge.

Construction of gender in family therapy 23 Reimers, S. and Dimmock, B. (1990) ‘Mankind and kind men: an agenda for male family therapists’, Journal of Family Therapy 12: 167–181. Russell, B. (1953) The Good Citizen’s Alphabet and History of the World in Epitome, London: Gaberbocchus. Simon, G. M. (1993) ‘Revisiting the notion of hierarchy’, Family Process 32: 147–155. Von Foerster, H. (1990) ‘Ethics and second-order cybernetics’, Paper delivered at the International Conference on Systems and Family Therapy: Ethics, Epistemology, New Methods, Paris. Waldegrave, C. and Tapping, C. (1990) ‘Just therapy’, Dulwich Centre Newsletter 1: 3– 46. Walters, M., Carter, B., Papp, P. and Silverstein, O. (1988) The Invisible Web: Gender Patterns in Family Relationships, New York: Guilford.

2

The wounded prince and the women who love him

Gillian Walker and Virginia Goldner

INTRODUCTION A recent American sculptural memorial to the women who served in Vietnam says it all. A woman in army fatigues cradles a dying soldier who lies across her lap in the pose of the Pieta. The focus of course, is not on her, the putative honoree of this memorial. Rather, directed by her gaze of compassion and sorrow, the sculpture’s focus is on the soldier’s agonized, dying face. A bandage hides his eyes so that (predictably) he cannot see her. Minus his reciprocal gaze, the woman does not exist as herself because she has been defined in relation to him, the man, the subject of our story. As the ‘(m)other’ in this tale of heroes and martyrs, she is the object of our complex fantasies about the second sex. For example, she is powerful and survives while he is weak and dying. She may be the nurse who comforts him in the hour of his death, but she is also the mother who trained him to risk his life in his father’s wars. As a French woman once said to the poet, Adrienne Rich, who bore three sons, ‘Vous travaillez pour l’armee, madame?’ (Rich 1976). In this particular sculptural metaphor of war, the wounded soldier is the traditional sentimentalised picture of heroic male suffering. He is not a servant of his country’s war machine with its indulgence in the slaughter of women and children, nor does the viewer experience him as an active participant in the violence which has killed him. He is merely the victim of war, and she is the traditional female nurse-mourner. The cultural subtext of their relationship, almost detectable in the image, includes an implicit thought that since the nurse-mother both cares for and survives him, she is somehow implicated in his death. The image of the wounded male nursed by the compassionate woman is embedded in the psychology of gender relations. The cultural mandate that a woman should nurse her man (by placing her power to love and to heal at his service) is one of the

The wounded prince 25 myths which allows women to excuse inexcusably tyrannical or abusive relationships. Whether the relationship is mother/son, daughter/father, or husband/wife, the mandate organises all of them into a variant of ‘mother-to-wounded/martyred-son’. In an incest survivor’s group, for example, one woman described her father’s apology when, at age 12, she confronted him with his sexual abuse. He answered, as if this explained everything, ‘honey, I didn’t think you would remember. I know it was wrong and I am sorry, but I was so vulnerable at the time.’ Despite her father’s terrifying rages, his verbal abuse towards her mother (who made excuses for him) and his sexual inappropriateness even after the actual abuse had stopped, the daughter was more aware of his state of ‘woundedness’ than of her violation. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the emblematic father/daughter drama, Cordelia is ultimately sacrificed to Lear’s vulnerability. No matter how appalling Lear is to Cordelia, after a brave initial protest when he tries to bribe her love, Cordelia recognises her father’s essential vulnerability, stays loyal to him and loses her life as a result. Her reward is to become literature’s archetypal heroine daughter, the agent of her sinful old father’s redemption. Since the story centres on Lear (of course), the daughters are merely arranged around him representing the familiar categories: Goneril and Regan, ‘transgressive’ women who want their own power and autonomy versus the strong but self-sacrificing, good daughter/wife Cordelia, whose reward is our approbation and some quality time with Dad in jail along the way. Western mythologies about gender positions in relationships are constructed to elicit sympathy for the father (as in the incest story described above), or admiration for the archetypal good caring daughter (mother). These mythologies support the power system of patriarchy at a subtle psychological level. They make relational altruism the dominant motif of woman’s psychology, while damning her as selfish, even diabolical if she has a will or desire of her own. It is via a woman’s desire to be experienced as altruistic and to maintain connections through care-giving that the martyred son makes his irresistible claim for special treatment. The image of the wounded (thereby entitled) lover, son or brother is supported at all levels of myth with origins in the ancient mythology of Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia (Bly 1990; Frazer 1959; Graves 1955). The myths of Attis, Osirus, Tammuz and Adonis are all similar in structure and meaning. In all of them, the youthful male god, who represents the life force of providence and vegetative life, is wounded and dies, most often at the hands of a male god, either a father figure or a jealous brother. And it is the female earth mother goddess who mourns, searches for his dead body – sometimes dismembered – buries him and, by nursing him, prepares the way for his ritual resurrection.

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In the Greek myth Venus and Adonis, the boy Adonis, a god of vegetation, the lover of the mother goddess Venus, is fatally wounded by the war god Ares, disguised as a boar (Frazer 1959; Graves 1955). Ares is not only Adonis’s rival for Venus but as an older god he represents the omnipresent avenging father. Adonis dies, and Venus, unable to protect him from her rival’s murderous castrating impulse, is depicted in classical sculpture mourning her lover-son, sometimes cradling his dead body. This myth sits at the heart of western culture. It is transformed into ceremonies for the death and resurrection of Christ where the principal mourner is His mother Mary, the Christian version of the mother goddess, love stripped of sexuality. The ancient mother goddesses at least had their own power. While they could not protect their sons-lovers from the destructive impulses of other males, they could, in their own right, be both benign and destructive forces to be reckoned with. But as the role of woman changes over time, she becomes more compliant and ultimately more passive. Figures such as Shakespeare’s Cordelia, Homer’s Penelope and the Bible’s Mary send a powerful message that dictates what women should be, and by implication, what they should not be. Penelope’s career is to await the return of her war-weary husband Ulysses, so that she can soothe his wounds and submit to his sexual desires. Ulysses, of course, has had a far better time of it, dallying with Circe and the Sirens during years of exotic travel. Penelope by contrast, waits at home, enduring the mindless tedium of weaving and unweaving a tapestry, in order to resist sexual temptation from her ardent, numerous (and potentially sexually desirable) suitors. Homer implies that Penelope was rewarded for her fidelity by having a good time in the marriage bed when her twenty years’ absent husband deigned to return. Unfortunately, the archetypal good woman of western mythology, Mary, the mother of Jesus, had no such fun. Interestingly, Mary is the antithesis of Eve, the mother of us all. Unlike Eve, who wants to know and thus transgresses God’s command, Mary passively accepts her destiny. She has no sexual desire of her own, whereas Eve is Adam’s seducer. Mary gives birth without her hymen being ruptured and without Eve’s labour pains. But perhaps the most important aspect of Mary’s story is her absence and her grief. She disappears as soon as her son receives public acclaim and reappears only when, wounded, He staggers up Calvary to His death. One of the most powerful and haunting images of western art is the Mary of the Pieta. Here, the passivity of her sexual life is extended to her grieving. Anger is an emotion foreign to her. In many paintings and sculptures she is depicted like the nurse in the Vietnam memorial, cradling her dead son with a face of grief and compassion. Her reward for passive acceptance is ‘derivative’ power: she is the woman behind the man.

The wounded prince 27 The Marys, Penelopes and Cordelias are idealised versions of passive, selfsacrificing women against which we living women are measured. Moreover, we also absorb equally strong mythic warnings against becoming ‘transgressive’ women: those who seek personal power, intellectual or sexual, or those who have power over men. Such women are castigated and punished in classical and popular mythology, and are seen as versions of Eve, Circe, Helen, Jezebel, Goneril and Regan, ‘the witch’, the intruding mother-in-law and in the most recent example of demonising a powerful woman, Hillary Clinton.

GENDER PREMISES AND PATTERNS OF VIOLENCE These mirror images, the compassionate nurse/mother and the transgressive, wilful siren, are instilled as psychic polarities in the mental life of men and women alike. Moreover, in our work with violent men and their partners, we have found that these split images play a central role in rationalising both violence and victimisation. In the extreme circumstance of a violent encounter, the man typically justifies his behaviour by describing his partner as some kind of transgressive woman: she is provocative; she is, or will be, unfaithful, she is indifferent to his needs and insensitive to his vulnerabilities; she is selfish. And then, in the honeymoon of contrition and forgiveness which follows the violence, this evil female figure transmutes into the longed for, irreplaceable nurse/mother, who knows and cares for this hurt man/boy better than anyone ever has or could. In both descriptions, the woman is never constituted as an outside ‘other’, a subject in her own right. She is always and only an object of fantasy in his internal world. But it is not only the men who rationalise their abuse. Women, who are also caught in the web of their culture’s gender myths, excuse the men who hurt them. The ideal of female altruism in relationships, and as a corollary, the female practice of establishing a sense of self through connection and care-giving, serves to rationalise female subordination to men and perversely provides women with some measure of selfesteem for ‘standing by their man’ even though he is violent. But perhaps the most powerful means by which women tolerate victimisation is their dogged belief, induced and supported by the culture, that no matter how abusive or violent a man may be, ‘a bad man is really a hurt child who needs a good mother’. Thus both the men and the women in the gender and violence project were caught by the split-screen polarities of gender. Where the men oscillated between viewing their partners as the idealised Mary and the hated Delilah, the women split their picture of the men into the ‘wounded child’ and the cynical, vicious oppressor. These

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intense reversals constitute the explosive flack that fuels both the violent act and the remorseful reunion that follows it (Goldner et al. 1990). As we unpack the dense thicket of fantasies, beliefs and affects that constitute the glue of these painful relationships, we can begin to narrate the story between the couple. The woman is often bewildered, and eventually beset by self-doubt as her partner shifts between seeing her as an angel of mercy and as evil incarnate. To protect the relationship, indeed to make any sense out of it at all, she holds on to her perception of the man as wounded and in need of care. He frequently comes from an abusive background that resembles her own. In order to connect with him emotionally, as she recognises her experience in his, she offers him the care that neither of them has ever had. Paradoxically and dangerously, through the process of being cared for, the man gets in touch with childhood feelings and yearnings which frighten him and lead him to experience the woman as weakening him by the very act of her care-giving. He defends against this by withdrawing and repudiating any feelings of vulnerability. And, as the couple then begins to move apart, tensions and suspicions rise, and the cycle begins anew.

Case example In the following case, where GW was the therapist, and VG the consultant, a central theme, that of the wounded prince and his nurturing consort, was explored over the course of therapy. Our interventions challenged the gender premise, shared by the couple, that the role of the wife was to nurture the man and heal his feelings of vulnerability. Prior to therapy, the man’s violence had been seen by both partners as an inexorable outcome of male vulnerability, an extreme ‘sensitivity’ to almost any action or failure to act on the part of the wife. These beliefs were paralysing for both members of the couple. The man saw himself as without the capacity for taking action about anything and the woman experienced herself as worthless except for her ability to heal the man. One argument against conjoint therapy which the anti-battering movement has used with some wisdom is that psychology, almost by definition, emphasises psychic vulnerability. Feminists have argued that couples therapy will play into the notion of male vulnerability, using it to exonerate the man from his moral responsibility for the violence. In our conjoint therapy, it is the construction of the gender premise, ‘the vulnerable male/bleeding son joined-at-the-hip to the nurse/mother’ that is deconstructed and

The wounded prince 29 becomes the subject of therapy. Throughout the couple’s work, we highlight how this metaphor supports abusive behaviour, and we trace it back into its multi-generational origins. In our work with the couple Danny and Arlene, this theme of man as a wounded prince and woman as his nurturer was central to the couple’s narrative and thus to the therapeutic text. The husband, Danny, saw himself as an emotional cripple like his father, who was also literally crippled by polio. Over time his wife Arlene experienced her world shrinking under the barrage of his demands and abuse. He was also afraid of her having any relationships outside their dyad, which included her relationship with her own young daughter of a first marriage. Not only was her relationship with her child swept away in the storm of his demands and her resentful acquiescence, but any sense of a self apart from her self-in-relation-to-him eroded as her focus became confined to managing him and their volatile relationship. In our clinical work with this couple, as with all couples where violence is an issue, the primary goal is to get the man to take responsibility for stopping his violent behaviour. This usually involves eliciting and then challenging the idea that the man is psychically injured and therefore helpless to prevent himself from acting violently if his wife ‘provokes’ him. The first step in debunking the myth that it is her ‘misuse of her power over him’ that somehow ‘makes him do it’, is the therapist’s use of language which emphasises choice and volition. Questions like ‘tell me about a time when you chose to manage your anger and didn’t hit her’, or ‘tell me about a time when you chose to hit her instead of getting out of the situation’, utilise Michael White’s (1989) idea of the unique outcome. We use this construction to demonstrate implicitly that the man is capable of restraint and of moral action, and that no mythology of woman’s ‘power’ or of male vulnerability can be used to escape responsibility for one’s actions. In the initial consultation phase, the therapist uses a gender-focused genogram to explore the power relations and gender premises in the family of origin which shaped (along with the larger culture) each partner’s ideas about men, women and power. The genogram provides a depoliticised forum for exploring and demonstrating how power relationships of domination and submission are transmitted across the generations and re-enacted between the couple. In the initial interview with Danny and Arlene, the therapist did a brief genogram of both families of origin, and connections to the present were underlined. For example, both partners had identified Arlene’s jealousy as a major catalyst for their fights. When the therapist explored this theme in Arlene’s family of origin, it was clear that Arlene’s mother had a similar experience. She was humiliated by her husband’s many affairs, but powerless to do anything about them. We pointed out that although Arlene’s hypervigilance on this issue was a way of insisting that she would not suffer

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the same fate as her mother, her relationship with Danny was itself a re-enactment, insofar as it began as a secret affair while each was married to other people. As the therapist explored Danny’s family of origin, he described all the men in his family as having ‘male tempers’ and being ‘male know-it-alls’. In the following segment of the interview, the therapist guides Danny towards making connections between his stance of coercive dependency vis-à-vis Arlene and the way power was enacted between his father and mother. Danny:

Therapist: Danny:

Therapist: Danny: Therapist:

Yeah. There has been an evolution from the apes in my family. I am almost off all fours now (laughs) . . . . My mom took care of the whole family incredibly competently, took care of my father who acted like a baby. OK. So I see that’s why you say ‘I’m the baby’. You learned from him that a man can act like a baby and get cared for by a woman. He was the big baby. He pouted for everything. He was difficult for me to deal with . . . emotionally demeaning to me. Nothing I did was good enough. Your mother sounds like an early version of Arlene. She was loving and she was needed. And she needed to be needed. She adored him even though he was a shit to her. I guess from your fights one could surmise that at least you and Arlene are attempting to have a more honest relationship.

Both partners saw their mothers as subordinate to domineering, babyish and tyrannical fathers towards whom the mothers were devoted, and around whom their lives revolved. They both laughed when they saw the similarity to their own relationship. This brief use of the genogram introduced the idea that gender premises structure relationships. It also made it easier for the couple to observe issues of injustice between men and women and to recognise gendered strategies which are used to rationalise them. By the fourth session, Danny’s self-presentation as sulky, babyish, threatening to explode, and subtly asking the female therapist to soothe and comfort him, provided the emotional backdrop for a deeper exploration of the culturally conditioned gender myths which supported his behaviour. Arlene had already confirmed that Danny’s angry silences usually pre-figured the initiation of a cycle of violence. In this session, the therapist begins to draw connections between this pattern and its meaning in Danny’s family of origin. The therapist asks Danny for his associations to silence. He is reminded of his relationship with his father, whom he has previously described as absent, other than

The wounded prince 31 as his mother’s enforcer. It emerges that Danny’s father was also moody and silent, demanding that his two sons ‘do things for him’, although making sure that they could never please him. Therapist: Danny: Therapist: Danny:

Therapist: Danny:

You don’t know how to talk to him? You stay silent with him? I never talked to him until my ass was against the wall, and I came crying home to my father until I’d come clean. To come clean? For me to come clean. Like when I’d quit college, I’d taken it as far as I could go, pretending to be going to classes, but then it was eating me up inside. He was the one that I finally told when I couldn’t go any further, when I was falling apart. So you can’t talk to anyone in good times, only when you are really up against the wall. Yes I had to let go of it, had to get it out, get it out . . . I think the only time he was soft was when I was more vulnerable than he was.

Here Danny introduces the critical theme of male vulnerability and its misuse in relationships. The therapist begins to ‘unpack’ the word and to explore its relational meanings. Therapist: Danny:

Do you see him as vulnerable? I see him as vulnerable. That’s probably how he feels about himself . . . . He was a man who grew up with polio and he never felt good about himself and I think he always took that out on everybody around him, especially his children.

Here Danny rationalises his father’s patriarchal privilege by a sentimentalised description of his father’s life as defined by a tragic illness. Therapist: Danny: Therapist: Danny:

But I know people who’ve grown up with polio and felt terrific about themselves. He didn’t seem to be one of them, he didn’t seem to be a very happy man. You attribute that to the polio. I guess I always needed an excuse for why he was such a bastard to me. I guess I felt sorry for him . . . so I didn’t answer him back. I let him run his shit on me – not that I ever had much of a choice about it, but I let him run his shit on me because I felt sorry for him.

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Therapist: Danny: Therapist: Danny:

You felt sorry for him. Now where did you get the idea that you should feel sorry for him? It comes from my mother, if anybody. How does she convey that? She always catered to him. She took care of him like he was crippled.

Notice how the description of the father begins to move from ‘the bastard who cannot help what he does because he is wounded’, to a relational description in which both parents cooperate in constructing and enacting the underlying (bizarre) premise that an abusive man is a helpless man. Because Danny identifies with his father, it is critical to identify the underlying premises which construct the way that father and son enact and experience masculine identity and behaviour. The therapist wants Danny to see his father’s bad behaviour as a choice, not an inevitable ‘effect’ of masculinity, just as she wants him to see his own moodiness and subsequent abusiveness as choices he makes. As the therapist gently challenges his description of his father, Danny begins to speak about his father’s behaviour in volitional terms. Danny:

Therapist: Danny:

Therapist: Danny: Therapist: Danny:

He’d whine and he would make demands and she would ‘yes him’ . . . ‘yes, sir’, kind of. So she catered to him like he was – I mean she was more capable than he was to take care. She conveyed the message that we should all feel sorry for him if anyone did. Did he convey it too? Well, how did he act that he permitted her to cater to him in that way? There must have been some collusion. He whined . . . . He whined, he acted like a spoiled brat and then he’d get angry at her and be very vicious and then if he didn’t get his way he’d throw a temper tantrum. (Smiles.) What are you thinking, Danny? (Laughs.) What are you laughing at? As I talk about it, the apple never falls far from the tree.

This is the moment of the ‘ahaa’ experience for Danny, when he begins to see that he has carried on the male tradition of coercive dependency into the next generation. Therapist:

And how are you the apple with Arlene? . . . When you said you are the apple that does not fall far from the tree, you do act like your dad in that distant, tortured, crippled mood. Stuck with your emotions. Can’t really walk or talk. Do you relate to Arlene in the same way as your dad

The wounded prince 33

Danny: Therapist:

related to your mom? How are you the same? How are you different?. . . (Long silence.) I’m trying to answer the question and having trouble. That’s a good example.

Here the therapist uses the transference to underline how the stance of coercive dependency is over-determined: it is played out in the session in Danny’s looking to her to help him out of his ‘trouble’ by answering her questions, it is played out between the couple in their daily battles around his needs, and it is played out between his parents in his family of origin. As Danny looks at each parent, he can see the pattern of his behaviour. It now becomes much more difficult for him to see his violent behaviour as instigated by Arlene, or as unique to the couple’s relationship, since it has now become too clear that it stems from Danny’s belief system about men in relationships, received from the culture, enacted in his family and memorialised in his behaviour. Therapist:

Danny: Therapist: Danny:

What would you expect Arlene to do right now if I weren’t sitting in the room, if you were in a . . . paralysed . . . mood . . . that’s a good metaphor! What would she be likely to do? What would I expect her to do? What would she be likely to do? Depends on what’s going on at different times. If it was fresh, she’d probably talk to me and if it’s gone on a while, she’d be very leery of hanging around me, particularly leery of trying to make conversation. She probably would have had her head chopped off a few times by now.

By moving the focus towards Arlene, the therapist is inviting Danny to begin thinking about the effect of his coercive dependency on his wife. Moreover, by suggesting that she and Arlene have a similar oppressive experience induced by Danny’s brand of silence, she is again using the transference to underline the power of his insistent covert demands. Moreover, in putting words to this experience, she gives Arlene a language for her wordless experience and a voice in the couple’s conversation. This is not only psychologically helpful to Arlene, but it can increase her safety because Danny’s lack of empathy for Arlene’s experience leads him to invent his own paranoid meanings for her behaviour, which then increases the likelihood that he will become violent. As she helps Danny put himself in Arlene’s shoes, the therapist is helping him act out of conscience, rather than acting out of a distorted kind of self-interest. Danny is not a man without a conscience, but he does feel entitled to the behaviour of an

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emotional cripple. The memory of the few moments of warmth, safety, love and forgiveness which he experienced from his father when his ‘world was falling apart’ are so powerful that he constantly strives to repeat the experience. Therapist: Danny: Therapist: Danny: Therapist: Danny:

Therapist: Danny:

Therapist: Danny: Therapist: Danny: Therapist:

So the only time that you could get that close to your father was when you were falling apart? Yes. And then he made you feel safe. Is that the strongest experience of closeness that you’ve had in your life? (Holds back tears.) What’s sad about it? I have such mixed feelings about him . . . . I guess what’s sad is that it couldn’t be like that more often. That we hardly ever knew each other except for those times. Those catastrophic times for you . . . . It’s sad because I hate him most of the time. I mean not that I hate him – my memories of him were harsh except for those moments, you know when I – he was there for me. He was there for me like a rock – with all the abuse, I have a very warm place in my heart for him. Last time you talked about always having to please somebody in order to be loved. The strongest thread in my life. I always feel I have to please everybody to be loved. But then you put this to a test. You went to him as a complete fuck up . . . . What did you find out? That I still had a father and a home. Like a big test. You had to go through this trial and come out the other side.

The therapist now turns to Arlene to learn of her experience of the session. Arlene:

Therapist: Arlene: Therapist:

It was very interesting in that I thought this could be me. And I’m off the hook, it’s you and Danny. And looking at this I could relax. Usually I’m such a wreck when we are at that impasse and I get so involved in it that we end up fighting like cats and dogs. You mean the impasse of Danny being so stuck. So paralysed? Right. When he says to me, ‘talk, why don’t we talk’ and today I just felt like. . . ‘whew’. . . . I’ve never seen or felt it like that. In the impasse – When Danny says ‘talk’ what do you feel?

The wounded prince 35 Arlene: Therapist: Arlene:

Therapist: Arlene: Therapist: Arlene: Therapist:

Arlene: Therapist: Arlene: Therapist: Arlene:

I feel scared and angry. Scared because . . . ? Scared because I’m in for trouble ahead. I don’t know if I can talk . . . and I don’t know if I can feel comfortable. I don’t know how I can get things moving to get Danny off that position. Alright, so today you sat back and relaxed. I watched you throw the ball back at Danny – If you had done that what would have happened? I’ve done that at home plenty of times and he’ll start yelling and we will get into a fight. So you feel at this point there’s no way that you can – when he does that to you, you are totally stymied. He says talk, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do. Not unless I just kind of get lucky and hit the right nerve, I don’t know, the right sentiment, the right thought. Like his mother, you feel you’ve got to cater, you’ve got to fix it, you’ve got to make it work. Fill the holes. Fill the holes. I don’t even know what I’m saying half the time . . . keep it up . . . I come out with things . . . pull him out . . . keep it up. . . . And then I just retreat.

Arlene now begins to explore the gender themes which will be central to her therapy: her belief that she is responsible for healing Danny in order to make the relationship work, the extent to which her sense of identity is tied up with her success or failure in this role, her fear that if she is not needed by Danny in this way, she will have no value to him and he will leave her, etc. Later in the therapy, we have a session with Arlene, her mother and her daughter to explore the way in which the women in all three generations operate with these premises, to their detriment and to the detriment of their relationships with each other. The therapist ends the interview by tying together the themes of the session in a final challenge. Therapist:

Danny, my last question to you is, how are you going to construct the same situation with Arlene that ‘worked’ so well with your father? By which I mean, to what lengths do you have to go to feel enough of a failure, to hit ‘rock bottom’ so that you could enact with Arlene what you did with your father, and get something of the same response?

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Danny remains silent for a long time but Arlene answers. Arlene:

What you said reminds me of everything we go through with those episodes when there is violence attached to it. He’s got to do something that’s very aggressive physically to me, and feel shitty about himself. If he hurts me, then he can feel really shitty. I thought about that when you asked the question, and then I thought about the time he had hit rock bottom, and he turned around and said to me, ‘I’m not afraid anymore!’ (She goes on with great emphasis.) He started talking to me. He was talking to me about what he wants, what he needs to do, how he’s frightened of losing the relationship. How . . . all kinds of things. And we just talked for four days!

In Arlene’s response we now see the particular, idiosyncratic meaning and power of the cycle of violence for this couple. A new explanation is in place which underlines the powerful bond between this couple and the peculiar role that violence has come to play in it. This lays the groundwork for a strategic intervention which both underlines the volitional aspect of Danny’s moods and depression and creates a playful challenge that brings forth the rebelliousness that underlies Danny’s passivity. The couple was spending a week in Florida with Danny’s parents and the therapist suggested that he should ‘test’ the idea of only being loved if he was being pleasing by making sure not to be pleased or pleasing about anything. Arlene was encouraged to continue to play out the role of the passively nurturing mother in order to see if and how she could affect his moods. When the couple returned, there had been no violence but both partners enacted their roles to the hilt. Arlene described her devoted efforts to lift Danny out of his moods, a task that was made more difficult by the presence of both her daughter and his daughter. Not surprisingly, she felt she had to compensate for Danny so that the children’s vacation would not be spoiled by his moods. She was clearly ‘in the middle’ trying to make everyone happy, but especially Danny. Her happiness with the children was predicated on her being able to get Danny into a better mood. The therapist decides to explore Arlene’s side of the problem more fully. The consultant joins the conversation at this point. Arlene: Therapist: Arlene:

I feel I have to keep showing Danny how much I love him. I feel I need to be needed. On the surface it looks like I don’t play a role in this . . . . That you have no control over the outcome. But if I am not important to him, it feeds on an insecurity in me. What

The wounded prince 37

Therapist: Arlene:

Therapist: Arlene: Consultant: Arlene:

Therapist: Arlene; Therapist: Arlene: Consultant: Arlene: Consultant: Arlene:

Consultant: Arlene: Consultant:

is he going to need me for, if I can’t get him out of this mood? It makes me more special because I went through this hell with him over and over and over. When we first went together he always told me that the reason he loved me was that I was always there for him. I used to say, ‘What about my personality?, What about me? And the things we do together, all the things which make us the couple we are?’ He kept saying over and over – ‘the key is that you are always there for me’. My insecurity is my fear that if I am not there for him like that, I won’t be me, I won’t be useful to Danny. My insecurity is that I could be anybody if I don’t play my role in that situation. Where did you learn that idea that you define yourself by your usefulness to your spouse? From my parents, subconsciously at least. I would see my mother and my father. My mother was there for my father, always there, needing to be needed. Her whole life revolves around my father . . . . Can he act like Danny? Moody like Danny? Yeah. If you were to discuss this idea with your mother, that you have no worth outside your usefulness to Danny, what would she say? She would relate to that. She would say it’s like that with my father. But she would be afraid to tell me to be different because if I came to her and said things are bad between us, it would make her upset. The explicit message is that it’s a terrible way to live your life. But the subliminal message is how much she can’t stand it. She tells me how abusive my father is to her. Physically? Emotionally, verbally. Does she fight back? At times. She looks like she doesn’t. Do you fight back more than she does? Yeah. What goes into your decision to fight more? I hate her as my role model. I hate her for being in the situation she is in. I love her as my mother but I wish I could have had a really strong individual woman role model. I don’t want to be like her. Part of you fights and the other part acquiesces. Yeah. When do you feel closer to your mother, when you fight or when you acquiesce?

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Arlene: Danny:

Neither. I would have said the same thing. She is always angry at her mother.

Danny explains that Arlene becomes angry at her mother when she puts up with Arlene’s father’s abusiveness but complains about it. ‘On the other hand,’ he adds, ‘she adores her father. Arlene’s role is to protect everyone.’ This confusing scenario is replicated in the relationship between Arlene, Danny and their respective children. Arlene plays the difficult role of ‘monkey in the middle’ trying to keep peace between Danny and the children but, as a result, she is never able to have separate time with her daughter. Therapist:

Who loses the most in this arrangement, the kids or Danny, when you are in the middle trying to make everyone happy?

Both the therapist and Danny are surprised at Arlene’s immediate answer ‘Danny’. Both thought she would say the kids. Arlene explains that Danny suffers emotionally when threatened with the loss of centrality, but the children have already learned to defer their expectations. Therapist: The kids lose you then because you are most attached to Danny? Arlene: Definitely. Consultant: Which one of you would have the most difficulty giving up the idea that Arlene could fix things and make them better? Is it Arlene, who would lose the idea that she was special if she were not the instrument of Danny’s redemption, or is it Danny who would not feel loved if Arlene did not give him constant proof that he can be loved despite his bad behaviour? Danny: I guess me and I guess her reaction would be to agree with me. The intervention by the consultant which follows is lengthy but is closely followed by the couple. In the starkest terms, it lays out the dilemma of male privilege and entitlement, which, in this family, is primarily predicated on the belief in men’s fundamental vulnerabilities: that men are helpless to control their emotions and their actions, and that women’s raison d’être is to make men’s lives work. The consultant summarises the crucial themes which have been developed in the treatment so far, and expands on their implications. She points out that Danny has identified with a tyrannical father whose abusive privilege was justified by the family belief that Danny was a vulnerable cripple, physically and psychologically. Since father and son did not have a real relationship, Danny did not have the opportunity to

The wounded prince 39 form a ‘personal’ identification with his father, one based on a satisfying, full and complex father/son experience. Instead, he had to settle for a ‘positional’ identification with his father, where he substituted behaving like father for being with father. The only time that Danny could resurrect a positive ‘being with father’ experience was when he forced Arlene into those ‘rock bottom’ encounters that ended with his feeling loved and forgiven. Once he constructed that moment, he could then make Arlene into a better, truly loving ‘father’ who would then listen as he ‘really talked’ about his deepest feelings. Moreover, having felt sacrificed by his mother, he turns to Arlene for reparative mothering. In so doing, he demands that Arlene sacrifice her daughter in much the same way that he had been sacrificed by his mother, since his father’s neediness took precedence over the children’s needs. The perfect fit between Arlene and Danny comes from Arlene’s ‘positional identification’ with her mother, her role model, who, though emotionally close to her, none the less also chose her tyrannical husband over her children. Arlene repeats her mother’s behaviour by predicating her own sense of identity on being special to Danny by being able to rescue him from his uncontrollable moods. In recompense, she hopes for a position of ‘primacy’ from him which she did not experience from her mother. The consultant plays with the idea that were Danny to begin to change his idea that he was an emotional cripple, unable to control his own moods, vulnerable and dependent on Arlene to rescue him when he ‘hits rock bottom’, he would no longer be able to justify his position as the central figure in the stepfamily vis à vis Arlene. Tyranny is only made acceptable because of the myth of the wounded prince. She also warns Danny that if he were to change this belief about himself, he might lose his forgiving attitude towards his father (the original model of the wounded prince). The consultant then gives the couple a ritual. Danny is told to do a private ‘odd days/even days’ experiment which he is to keep secret from Arlene by not telling her on which days he has decided to explore which position. Every other day of the week, he is to visualise himself as acting (1) fragile, (2) needing special care and attention from Arlene, and (3) entitled to that special care. He is then to observe Arlene’s reaction. On the other days, he is to visualise a different set of behaviours and beliefs predicated on the view (which is not his view at present) that he is resilient and able to take care of himself. On these days if he has setbacks, he should think thoughts like ‘if I saw myself as resilient rather than helpless, how would I be thinking about this little tangle I am in? How would I operate differently in this moment?’ Danny quickly asks if he should behave differently on these days and is told that he should not change behaviour, only think about what the world would look like and

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how it would feel to have a different idea about himself. Arlene is instructed to watch Danny carefully, and on the days when he seems fragile and demanding she is to be ‘devoted to him in the usual way’, in order to carry out her belief that she can only be special to him if she ‘is there for him’. When she feels that Danny is exploring alternatives to vulnerability and dependency on her magical healing powers, she is to explore mentally the question: ‘What would I risk if I saw Danny as more resilient and less fragile? What would my life be like if I were not the only one who could save him, indeed, if he could save himself? How would I see my mother differently, my parents’ marriage differently, my father differently, if Danny and I had a different way of thinking and behaving?’ Arlene answered immediately, ‘The first thing that comes to mind is that were I to view Danny differently, it would make me angrier at my father!’ The intervention had a startling effect on both members of the couple. Danny found himself not just thinking about the task but experimenting with controlling his moods. He found himself identifying those times when he felt that he was going to be swept away by feelings, and when normally he would allow the mood to build until Arlene was drawn into it. He began to predict the usual interaction between the couple which often ended in violence, experience disgust at his usual behaviour, and talk to himself about ways of mastering the mood. Arlene in turn began to reflect on the isomorphism between her relationship with Danny and the relationship patterns in both families of origin. She looked at herself through the lens of Danny’s parents’ relationship, suddenly seeing a reciprocity between Danny’s father’s emotional paralysis and his mother’s frantic filling up an interior sense of emptiness with ‘good works’. She wondered whether, if Danny and Danny’s father could have taken care of themselves, there would have been room for her mother-in-law, and for her ‘to think about who I am, my needs, what I want with my life’. Both partners found these ideas and practices exhilarating. In the months to follow, over the middle stages of therapy, these themes were elaborated and many changes occurred. But about six months later there was an important set-back, as Danny began to resist the pace of change. Some segments from the interview in which these issues became apparent are given below. By this point in the treatment, we were seeing the couple on an every-other-week basis. Slowly and subtly, we began to sense that Danny was ‘resisting’ us in the sessions. Before we had actually begun to formulate this for ourselves, the couple arrived for a session in a very heated, agitated state. It became clear in the early phases of the interview that Danny had ‘regressed’. He seemed to have lost all interest in differentiating from Arlene, which of course revived his panicky dependency and, more dangerously, his sense of angry entitlement regarding

The wounded prince 41 Arlene’s obligation to take care of him. He was ranting and hovering, and had begun to act somewhat menacingly. Arlene, on the other hand, seemed to have kept on track. She had begun to see friends, to become a more responsible and interested mother, and to tackle personal issues like weight and smoking without looking to Danny for advice and counsel. Faced with Arlene’s burgeoning independence, Danny began coercively using his misery and aggression to intimidate and guilt trip Arlene to, in Murray Bowen’s words, ‘change back’. As the interview progressed, Danny became increasingly defensive and argumentative. During a break, the therapists decided that he had induced in us the same feelings he induced in Arlene: anger and helplessness. We decided, just because it was a change, that the consultant would continue the interview while the therapist went behind the mirror. Beginning by addressing the immediate problem of the therapy, which was Danny’s ‘resistance’ and the feelings of fear and anger this induced in his two therapists, she began. Consultant: What I didn’t like about the picture that was forming of both of you in this session was that Arlene was doing everything right and you were doing everything wrong. You were doing everything to sabotage yourself, to keep the relationship stuck, to hide from life and she was finally beginning to get out of the cave, see the world and to go for it. And the thought I was having is who would want to take a chance and do something different under a description like that? I had an image of the therapy as a foot race, and since Arlene had such an early lead, I could see you having the thought, ‘I’m not going to compete with her in this race because she’s already out in front. What I’m going to do instead is die at the starting gate. I’ll just throw the race, so that she will win because there will have been no contest’. By framing Danny’s ‘stuck’ position as a motivated strategy, rather than a sorry state, the consultant reframes the complementarity between them, ‘Arlene is up, Danny is down’, into a symmetrical relationship: both are competing for first place in the therapy. This shift loosens something for Danny, since he makes an unexpected contribution to this formulation. Danny: Yes, it’s kind of what I’ve done with my life. Consultant: Like what other things fit this paradigm? Danny: Oh, in school and my general career and where I ended up definitely fits

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Gillian Walker and Virginia Goldner it. I mean I never tried, so I really never had any idea where I could go with this. I just sabotaged it at the beginning so that if I didn’t succeed like my father told me I wouldn’t, I might as well give up before I try. Not working hard is always the key.

Notice how Danny introduces his father into the failure story, with the throwaway line, ‘not succeeding like my father told me I wouldn’t’. Danny:

Consultant: Danny: Consultant: Danny: Consultant:

Danny: Consultant: Danny:

Consultant: Danny:

Consultant: Danny:

I always felt like I was smarter than everybody else, but look at me. What have I gotten out of it? Mediocrity at best – a miserable life. I look at myself – I’m pathetic. That’s how I feel. Well, but now we see how brilliantly you set this up. It wouldn’t have been my conscious decision. In some way you made an implicit decision. I must have. I mean it’s too coincidental, it carries through every thread of my life. It’s too coincidental. Who do you think benefited most from your decision to fail before you tried? To lie down at the starting gate and throw the fight? Whose star shines as yours falls or you make sure never to lift it? (Long pause.) Well, I guess it’s hard to face but obviously my father’s. Can you spell it out? It sounds so crazy, I mean even after all these years it sounds so crazy. I just – I don’t think my father could ever have dealt with either of his sons being very successful as much as that’s what a father wants. He says he wants what every parent wants for their children, but he never treated us like that. There was never any ‘I’m proud of you’ or a pat on the back or ‘you can do it’. There was never any support. So I guess not having his support is one thing; having him clobber you every time you try to do something to please him is worse. I just don’t think he could have dealt with it. Well let’s follow that a little bit. What would have been hard for him if he had produced a successful son, which ostensibly every father wants? Because he’s somebody who – (slowly and deliberately) because wherever he came from he couldn’t do it. He’s – he never felt successful himself and . . . he’s the way I am. (He holds back tears.) He’s me. In what way? (Through his tears.) He’s a bitter, angry man who never lived up to his potential. He’s very much like me. He’s very much like me. He’s just

The wounded prince 43 meaner. And I guess I got a lot of that too. Yes, I think he pulled the plug on himself for whatever reasons he did and I don’t – and as much as this hurts also, he probably – my mother was probably not a good choice for him as far as sabotaging himself, she was probably a bad choice to marry. She let him play little boy his whole life. He played it and she nourished it every step of the way. He could play little boy until the day he dies. And mommy would take care of him . . . my whole life I say, ‘How did she live with him?’ I feel so bad for her, but she’s one of the worst things that ever happened to him – you know they’ve been together for a long – I mean I never even thought of it before, but she was probably not very good for him. Consultant: Because she helped him be a baby . . . Danny: She was good to him, you know she took a lot of abuse, but you know, that’s what I know. He abused her for forty-five years. And she took it and still made his meals and still wiped his ass and . . . Consultant: Exactly. Danny: And kept him to be the – instead of saying, ‘Fuck you’ like Arlene’s trying to say to me. Danny’s deepening recognition of his identification with his father as a ‘failed, angry man’, a theme that was developed early in the treatment, continues the process of his taking full responsibility for his actions. He also begins to hold his father accountable. As we had earlier predicted, the more Danny took responsibility for himself, the less sympathy he would feel for his ‘paralysed’ father. Indeed, as the sentimentalised view of the failed, fragile father further gives way in this session, Danny is now free to see his father as also actively choosing passivity. ‘He pulled the plug on himself too’ is an important addition to his understanding of his father’s misery. Moreover, as he further elaborates the early insight about the terms of his parents’ bond – the crippled baby and devoted servant – he is finally able to see Arlene’s attempt at separation as a positive act and not a betrayal. Consultant: So your mother helped him stay a cripple instead of telling him to get on with it, as Arlene is trying to say to you. Danny: Absolutely, and he will die a cripple. And bitter and angry (long silence) . . . and I love him. Consultant: Well one of the ways that you seem to need to express it is by doing his life all over again.

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Here again we see in Danny’s touching and ironic statement about his father, ‘And I love him’, an expression of the psychological consequences of a love that cannot be recognised or acted upon. As we said earlier, men like Danny have to substitute ‘being like’ father for ‘being with’ father. This is what was meant by the consultant’s statement, ‘You need to express [your love] by doing his life all over again’. The session ended with both therapists joining Danny, without Arlene, to discuss his plans for change. Consultant: (In a playful tone.) Now, if you were deciding that you’d given your father forty years and not a penny more. You’d reached middle age – no threat, don’t worry – you may look young, but the fact of the matter is you are middle-aged and you have yet to make your mark. And he has no reason to fear. If you continue this way, your father will go to his grave not feeling like his son was any threat. Now, if you made the decision – and of course as we said, Arlene is the one who certainly at this moment looks much better in the therapy – definitely as we would score it today. Danny: What a surprise! (Laughs.) Consultant: Right, what a surprise. So if you decided forty years and not a penny more, what would your first act of being in the competition be – getting in the competition, throwing your hat in the ring? It could be in relation to Arlene, your father, your brother, all of them – because they’re all sort of versions of the same issue – your therapists . . . what would it be if you were saying ‘watch my dust?’ Danny: (Long pause.) To me it would be an internal declaration. Consultant: Internal declaration? What would it be? Danny: Declaring that . . . starting today I’m gonna show my stuff! After this session, although Danny has had minor set-backs and temptations to revert to his ‘demanding baby self’, he has never really abandoned his newer, more mature and responsible (for himself) stance. The themes of his struggle, suggested in the first session, and articulated most profoundly and mutatively in the fourth session, continued to weave their way through subsequent sessions, and were here reiterated and further elaborated six months later.

CONCLUSION It is now six years since we first began our work with Arlene and Danny. They are now the senior members of a couples group we have formed of men and women who are

The wounded prince 45 struggling with the after-effects of a violent relationship. They are enormously helpful in innumerable ways to the other group members. Danny has become very ‘militant’ on the subject of non-violence for men. He supports and challenges the other men to stay the course, and he is sympathetic to the women’s experience. While occasionally he still reaches for his ‘wounded prince’ costume, he catches himself quickly. He jokes that he is nostalgic for the ‘one brain’ model of relationship. In the past when he assumed the role of ‘Danny boy’, the injured, helpless prince, Arlene inevitably gave up any independent thoughts to join him. Now she very much subscribes to the ‘two brain’ school and refuses to dance attendance (most of the time) no matter how plangent his plaint. Arlene has also become a role model for the other women in the group. She has been where they are, not only in terms of having been battered, but also in terms of having lost herself by becoming consumed in and by the relationship. And she brings her own brand of ‘tough love’ to the men who are not as far along the line as Danny with regard to non-violence. We believe that this case illustrates the power of gender to structure relationships in particular ways. The dispersal of power and the allocation of roles and responsibilities between the sexes are organised by cultural narratives as old as civilisation itself. Each of us makes meaning of our lives by situating our own particular family drama into these available story-lines. We have found the use of the genogram particularly helpful in articulating how these themes are constructed, repeated and resisted across the generations. We have probably not heard the last of the wounded prince and his devoted consort, but perhaps we can create a space to observe and critique the endless variations on this powerful and problematic theme.

REFERENCES Bly, R. (1990) Iron John, New York: Vintage Books. Frazer, J. (1959) The New Golden Bow, T. Gaster (ed.), New York: Mentor Books, New American Library. Goldner, V., Penn, P., Sheinberg, M. and Walker, G. (1990) ‘Love and violence: gender paradoxes in volatile relationships’, Family Process 29: 343–364. Graves, R. (1955) The Greek Myths, Middlesex: Penguin Books. Rich, A. (1976) Of Woman Born, New York: W. W. Norton. White, M. (1989) Selected Papers, Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.

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Abuse, risk and protection A Fifth Province approach to an adolescent sexual offence Nollaig O’Reilly Byrne and Imelda Colgan McCarthy

INTRODUCTION This chapter aims to explore the moral and political constitution of violence, risk and protection in the arena of family life and professional intervention through a case study where a 15-year-old boy has committed a sexual offence. The family is not the only site of cultural and gender oppression, particularly when ‘the family’ enters the domain of professional treatment and investigation. The response of society (via its institutions) to protect vulnerable groups, while drawing on values of justice and civil rights, can also be understood as an exercise of power drawing on normative, moral postulates and wider political agendas in contemporary western society. A model of practice, The Fifth Province Model (Byrne and McCarthy 1988; Kearney et al. 1989; McCarthy and Byrne 1988), is referred to by the authors. The model proposes a dis-position for therapists in the deconstruction of taken-forgranted meanings which firmly isolate the issues as merely personal, familial and therapeutic, not political. Dis-position refers to a movement away from the taking of a certain position but does not infer moral or political fence-sitting.

MORAL PURPOSE The faults and frailties of personal lives are expounded upon by a variety of experts – moral and legal reformers, social scientists, politicians and therapists. In time, these decontextualised ‘deficits’ obscure the moral premises which have shaped professional discourses1 in the first instance. The use of the language of risk and the necessity for the protection of women and children as a vulnerable group has such a moral purpose in society. This is clearly articulated in projects which aim to identify and remedy ‘deficiencies’ in parenting. An

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idealised childhood is proposed in professional discourse which manifestly is remote from the expectations and experiences of the majority of children and the achievements of their parents. Parents quickly emerge as ‘moral failures’ who lack commitment, are weak, dangerous or ignorant, and their children become objects of moral and psychological evaluation. Faulty parents and damaged offspring are the dominant premises forming the mainstay of child protection practice and affect a wide range of interventions. Severed from their material base of astounding inequality, issues are individualised as spiritual and psychological catastrophes of personal and family failure.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SPHERES: THE DEPOLITICISATION OF ISSUES In western societies, culture and law define the family as a private domain. This is an example and a reinforcement of the reification and privatisation of contemporary western social life in general. Such a distinction produces private families who seek refuge or salvation (or fail to find it) behind their four walls. Detaching the family from political, economic and wider social contexts is similar to traditions which have privatised and silenced women’s and children’s concerns. The isolating and silencing of women and children is intrinsically connected to the prevailing political and economic system of patriarchy. The problem of attributing stark social problems to particular ‘detrimental’ family forms (e.g. welfare dependants, single parent families) overlooks how institutions generating wealth, poverty and rapid social changes have battered, bruised and invaded community forms that once were ‘family’. (Goldner 1985; McGoldrick et al. 1989; Perelberg and Miller 1990). The question is, under what circumstances did the family become a privatised domain and in whose interest is it to be thus maintained? The dominant social order upholds the privatised family – a rarefied stratosphere of devotion and contentment! The failures are theorised and treated as marginal enclaves of deficit–deviance which are then thoroughly exposed to the scrutiny of state institutions. The desire for privacy on the part of these families (promoted by the state as appropriate for all families) is seen to be motivated by the desire to hide their difficulties and obstruct the authorities. If anything, such a marginal family is a casualty not by its deviant pursuit of privacy and secrecy, but from the social isolation which privatisation brings. Privatising and marginalising of families occurs in the same arena of history and politics. What is privacy for the conventional family is isolation for the marginal one. What is obscured and denied are the wider contextual abuses which historically and politically constitute marginalisation.

48 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy In family therapy, the concept of ‘neutrality’ in the systemic model (Palazzoli et al. 1980), as practised in the early 1980s, has been justifiably criticised for its lack of political insight, i.e. the non-recognition of the family as a site of oppression of women and children (MacKinnon and James 1987). Ironically the systemic view, while privileging relationship and context over individual, shifted from one domain of privacy to another. The depoliticised family as a conventional form was easily trapped on a procrustean bed of systemic theory. As a ‘science’ of systems, family therapy prided itself on the absence of political and moral content. However, new developments, giving primacy to the language of daily experiences, cultural contexts and gender inequality, have re-formed systemic theory and practice. Two major re-formative movements may be identified. The feminists reintroduced the concepts of power and social justice politicising and revitalising family therapy (e.g. Hare-Mustin 1987; Jones 1993). The social constructionists reintroduced a focus on language and the ethics of reflexive participation in clinical conversations (Andersen 1990; Anderson and Goolishian 1992; Fruggeri et al. 1991; Hoffman 1992; Lang et al. 1990; Salamon et al. 1991; White and Epston 1990).

TREATMENT AS AN ALIBI OF SOCIAL CONTROL The non-acknowledgement of inequality in the relationship between client and therapist favours the imposition and power of the ‘expert’. The client enters as a spectator to professional discourses and enlists as an obedient imitator – as a member of a patient class. Rituals of professional practice, i.e. observation, enquiry and commentary, author a narrative where the client is fully disclosed in abject otherness. From this professional vantage point, protocols of recuperation and reformation are enunciated as final closures. For example, despite apparently different stances towards victim and perpetrator, in this view the politics of the practice addressing both is colonial and impositional. A ‘victim’ is co-opted into a professional discourse of ‘victimisation’ and ‘recuperation’, a perpetrator into one of censure and correction.

PROTECTION AS PATERNALISTIC CONCERN Protection relies on societal values which have an intensely moral content. It is a coercive authority which justifies its involvement by asserting that it acts on behalf of subjects who do not have voices. Its premise favours response to particular domestic crimes while ignoring the context from which they are derived, i.e. inequality. These ‘domestic crimes’ are represented as if they were transparent neutral phenomena

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outside the professional discourse which establishes them. However, a feminism which cites the behaviour of particular males in the private domain of the family as the foundational site of power and domination, and without reference to their social position, i.e. race, class or level of ability, is also misleading. It is an unlikely feature of marginalised families that they are suspect of being sanctuaries of male privilege. The widespread acceptance of the belief in the protection of civil and human rights apparently requires no justification. Likewise the protection of children’s rights arouses strong emotions of espousal in most of us. The premises of protection propel workers to intervene with the alarm and surreptitiousness of soldiers going into battle. ‘Air strikes’ (for example, the Orkney dawn raids) are performed when political appraisal and dialogue might be more useful. They soothe worker anxieties in relation to their functions of social control especially in work with those who are under state-mandated vigilance for a suspicion of failure to meet socially designated standards of living and caring. As O’Donovan (1984: 80) points out, however, ‘protection is a concept which must be carefully analysed. Protection – for whom, from what, from whom?’ Likewise when we talk about ‘risk’ we also need to begin to ask, risk to what and to whom, risk from what or from whom? Such discourses reflect the wider societal anxiety about contamination and the erosion of dominant social norms. Hence the goal of intervention is primarily that of containment. The mobilising motifs of punishment and obedience ensure the paternalistic orientation of the practice. The reward is ‘protection’ of women and children. The sacrifice is a ball and chain captivity for women as child watchers and domestic protectors. The effect is the casual exit or discharge of men from families. In maximising the variable of protection there is often no room for asking the question, might less protection with a sub-optimal outcome for those thought to be in need of such protection be more desirable for all in some circumstances (Kearney 1988)?

THE FIFTH PROVINCE MODEL The Fifth Province Model was developed in the early 1980s by the authors and a third colleague, Philip Kearney. The model takes its name from the ancient Celtic myth of the Fifth Province and its orientation from the work of two Irish philosophers, Hederman and Kearney (1982). The Fifth Province may have existed or it may not. There are many versions. Some say it was a province of imagination and possibility which was other to the pragmatic concerns of the ‘real’ world. Others site it as a druidic place at the centre of Ireland where the four provinces met and where kings and chieftains came to receive

50 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy counsel and resolve conflicts through dialogue. Today, its only remaining trace is in the Irish language where the word for province is ‘coiced’ which means ‘fifth’. In our work we have used this metaphor and the political metaphor of colonisation to review issues of power, justice and language. The implied structure of the five provinces has also inspired a figurative principle in our work, otherwise known as ‘diamonds’ (see pp. 54–55).

A critique of power Power, as it grows more opaque, requires the lives of citizens to be entirely transparent. The ideal of life without secrets corresponds to the ideal of the exemplary family: a citizen does not have the right to hide anything at all from the Party or the State just as a child has no right to keep a secret from his father or mother. (Kundera 1988:111) The concept of power has been challenged by social constructionism as being essentialist and foundationalist, meaning that power is seen as an entity, force or characteristic of an individual, a class or a group. We in contrast, hold that, just as equality is a social phenomenon, power is also relational and as such is part and parcel of social discourse (see also Lannamann 1990: 7). To deny discourses of power has many social implications, especially for those who do not count themselves or are not counted among the elite. Every conversation we engage in with clients is saturated with power – how we ask questions, to whom we address questions, what we ask questions about, imply decisions which include certain subjects and exclude others. Where the exclusions concern the lived experiences of those we converse with (hence defined by default as illegitimate, not normal), we generate situations of domination in our practice. The question is, how can the social practice of therapy reflexively reproduce itself as a credible non-coercive practice? Under what circumstances can clients as subjects validate their own subject matters, their own stories from the mess and entanglement of intimate ties, and still not be reduced by an ‘expert culture’ to an edited, punctuated, corrected or completely rewritten version? The first step is to recognise that the relationship of family to a state institution, such as social services, is a moral and political one. In focusing attention on power in a conflictual situation using a moral and political lens, a questioning practice is proposed as an alternative to expert opinion. In this way attention is not on the ‘objectified’, ‘pathologised’ difference of the other but on the appraisal of the other’s wider context as just or unjust. Therapy in the first

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instance is a concrete social situation where articulation of cultural beliefs, normative standards and action regimes must be tied to a protocol of mutual understanding and legitimation. This requires that the professional system must understand that the social norms invoked must apply equally to their practice as to those who are in receipt of care and help.

Justice The non-recognition by professionals that family and state institutions begin from unequal bargaining positions is a tacit endorsement of the structural inequality which pertains. In this context, acceptance of professional viewpoints and consensus often reflect obedience rather than understanding or agreement of the disadvantaged party. For the process of therapy to be just, it must reflect ‘procedural equality, participation, non-deception and non-manipulation’ (White 1988: 76; see also Waldegrave and Tapping 1990). Such practice is one of open conversation where many voices and a kaleidoscope of perspectives emerge which disrupt the didactic impulse of the privileged discourse (Colgan 1991). Here a different kind of power can emerge which Heilbrun (1988:18) defines as ‘the ability to take one’s place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one’s part matter’. Reciprocity in client–professional relationships replaces the conventional authority–obedience theme of a moral narrative (Shotter 1989).

The figurative aspect of the model The moral and political premises of a wide range of treatment models are often hidden. Our research project, the Fifth Province Associates (FPA), has attempted to elaborate such premises by proposing a linguistic model which figuratively constitutes in diamond form an ensemble of political actors and the discourse in which they are embedded. The free play of opposition and contrast, as a structural principle or rule of the discourse (Barthes 1988), aims for standpoints to be explored, not for the premature capture and resolution of opposing elements. FPA, as participant, imposes a structural principle of ambivalence, which as a political model illustrates the power differential between parties; coupling the marginal and dominant themes in this way (con)textualises the relationship as political and re-presents an ambivalent social field of contradictory and contrasting propositions in an ongoing dialectic. The intention in this process is to uphold the marginal voice not in terms of its exotic and extreme difference, whether of deviance or victimisation, but to explore its dialectical play with the dominant other.

52 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy Language The Fifth Province Model heightens the affectivity of ambivalence (expressed in language as contrast and contradiction) by a type of enquiry referred to as ‘questioning at the extremes’ (Colgan 1991). Exaggeration, humour and ambiguity give a form to these questions whose orientation is not the truth of the situation, but a stark and dramatic illustration of conflict. The relationship of counter-claims is explored at the extreme limits of presentations of fear, risk and protection. This process appears like a reversal of the usual ‘masculine’ and conventional order where the aim is to resolve the contradiction, mask the fears and capture the conversation exactly, which inevitably leads to a colonial project with one ‘correct’ viewpoint overriding others. Our model entertains a violent dimension in its utilisation of dramatic language which explodes fixed categories, claims and meanings by exaggeration. Here the rival domains of expert and client open out to and are modified by each other. The alarm of exaggeration and the confusion of ambiguity affectively charge a discourse that is held together in the application of our structural principle. The appropriate way to enable people to speak in this social organisation is theatrical. By contrast, the confessional and confidential structure of traditional client–professional narratives may promote the dominance of the expert as the voice which usurps the confidence and confidences of clients and closes the conversation in pursuit of the ‘correct’ opinion.

At risk protagonists: at risk conversations Traditional treatment models are premised on the observation and measurement of some objectified other. To counter this surveillance impulse lurking in treatment and intervention, we have displaced ‘risk’ as an objectified standard in favour of the exploration of the discourse emerging in the therapeutic relationship. By this we mean that ‘risk’ is not only a tangible or imaginary threat to the safety and welfare of a designated vulnerable party. It is also implicit in every therapeutic moment where differences occur. As such, a professional discourse embodying prescribed norms is also placed at risk. Subjects, no longer ‘measured’ and ‘observed’, engage in a process of dialogue. However, this process also is not without risk of closure. For example, powerful normative claims may exclude the marginalised ones. Alternatively, the marginal voice may be prematurely exposed as deviant when pitted as a runaway against a dominant professional discourse. In both situations oppression and abuse may occur (see Figures 3.1 and 3.2).

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A FIFTH PROVINCE DISCOURSE: CREATING A ‘SAFETY NET’ In the following case, the main emphasis is on the creation of a ‘safety net’ constituted by the family and professional networks of a 15-year-old boy, Roddy. This network was convened by FPA in the aftermath of a serious suicide attempt by Roddy, subsequent to his rape of a 6-year-old girl. The family comprises long-separated parents Sonia and Raz, daughter Dunya who has left home, and Roddy. The professional system includes medical staff from the hospital where Roddy was admitted (following his overdose), social workers and their seniors from social services, a family friend and FPA. The six consultations took place over a six-week period.

The articulation of power Roddy’s grave sexual crime has created an account which strengthened the voice of his victim’s family while grievously offending his own. This is the polarised discourse of victim and perpetrator. It has become publicised in community anger directed against Roddy and his mother, who are forced from their home and into hiding. In this crisis, Roddy makes a suicide attempt and is hospitalised. In the wake of the crime Roddy and his mother are suspect. He is a deviant and, both as mother and protector of a deviant, Sonia is also suspect. His subsequent suicide attempt and her engagement with professional and police systems temporarily holds in abeyance their suspect identity. Sonia, brought up in an institution, shifts from the suspicious ground of ‘deviant family’ to the security of the professional platform. As a childhood recipient of institutional care, she appears comfortable in her acceptance of professional involvement. Here, ambiguously exposed as mother and as aligned with social services’ view, she finds refuge in the co-authoring of the professional text. Father, Raz, erased from the family since Roddy’s birth, comes into the margins of this text, a shadowy presence echoing agreement with Sonia. A suicide attempt in the wake of physical danger and ostracism is a marker opening the text to ambiguity. Roddy is now seen as both victim and perpetrator, threatening cleavage in the original discourse. Now, he is both a subject and an object of concern or scrutiny. He has committed a grave crime but he is also homeless, forced to leave his school, has tried to kill himself and is in some physical danger. His suicide attempt speaks to this isolation and is also a mute reparative gesture for the many lives he has shattered. His parents, qua parents, are less visible to him because of their cooperation with social services. He appears to cooperate with professional involvement but may be doing this more on the grounds of prudence for his mother’s sake. Thus his own more ‘heroic’ choices, severing himself from parents and

54 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy professionals, lie in the contemplation of suicide and/or in the embracing of community anger.

Issues of justice Social service professionals, by requesting a consultation, show their desire to insert the claims of protection and treatment as a mutual rather than a coercive agreement between all parties. Rather than become impositional or coercive, they were anxious that the parents would recover their just entitlement to speak as parents on their own behalf and on behalf of their son. The question then became whether ‘another meaning (an ethic of justice) could be applied to Roddy’s silence, enabling and entitling him to speak on his own behalf and not just defensively?’

The figurative–theoretical principle The figurative principle, spatially organised in a diamond form in this model, illustrates the power differential and hence the speaking sites among the principal participants. At the initiation of consultation the professional system of social services, hospital staff and FPA, along with the parents, appear to be in a cooperative relationship from which Roddy, as victim and perpetrator, is the complementary and contrasting exclusion (see Figure 3.1). The political organisation re-presents a powerful parens patriae where social services act by proxy for the parents. However, should the parents begin to speak on their own behalf as parents they may be pathologised and risk the same exclusion as Roddy (Figure 3.2). Herein lies a dilemma for consultation.

At risk protagonists The professional monopoly The professional monopoly, i.e. social services, hospital staff, submerged parents and FPA, from which Roddy is excluded, runs the risk of schism by reason of the ambiguous insertion of parents who may shift their ambivalent allegiance from social services to their son. This shift may promote a split in the professional group where the battle to establish Roddy’s identity as victim or perpetrator ensues. Is he a victim meriting protection or a perpetrator meriting exposure and correction? Emphasising protection may obscure and silence the crime. Premature exposure, exacting remorse and reformation, may deliver Roddy into an unhelpful obedient acceptance in which he

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would comply without consideration of his own unique reflections on the grave situation in which he finds himself.

The parents The submerged parents belong to the professional monopoly on tenuous grounds (Figure 3.1). If the history of their parenting and their own relationship is exposed (desertion and physical abuse), one or both may become excluded, silenced and suspect. Blamed and seen as ‘bad parents’ they may become unable to speak from their own position (Figure 3.2).

Roddy Roddy is at risk of further silencing in the guise of obedience to the monopoly or, if he dares to speak, he may further accentuate his deviant and excluded status.

FPA FPA, as consultant in the professional system, is at risk of promoting, between the professionals and between the family and professionals, splits which are lurking in the ambiguous text of protection and correction where the accounts of Roddy and/or his parents are excluded (i.e. Figures 3.1 and 3.2).

56 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy Languaging in the Fifth Province Exclusion, as the complementary motif to professional monopoly and the site of Roddy’s silence, is explored in the first consultation. Speaking to his exclusion and enabling him to talk from his own position and his own definition of the extremes of his act, allows Roddy to stay connected and not be dismissed by professionals and parents.

First consultation: ‘the lowest of the low’ The meeting comprises social services personnel, hospital staff, FPA, mother and Roddy.

Exclusion by homelessness and deviance Interviewer: If your mother cannot care for you, what will happen? Roddy: I don’t know. I suppose I’d have to go somewhere. Interviewer: You’d have to live somewhere. Would it be a kind of a hospital place or an institution? Roddy: I don’t know. Wherever I’m going . . . I think I’m going to a home. Interviewer: A home. A home for people without a home? Roddy: I don’t know. No, I think it is a home (lowers voice) for people like me, and people that have been evicted and all that. Interviewer: Or is it for boys who have been offenders? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: That’s where you’d like to go? Roddy: No. That’s where I think I’m going. Interviewer: How do you think you will fit in with boys who are offenders? Roddy: I don’t know. Interviewer: Do you think of yourself as an offender? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: A sexual offender? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: When did that begin to dawn on you? Was it before that happened with Natasha (6-year-old victim) when she started to bleed, or were you thinking about that during the year? In this brief conversation, a proposition based on how others are speaking about

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Roddy is proffered by the interviewer. Roddy accepts the proposition and the interviewer begins to elaborate further the context from which and in which this designation arose. She cites it as a social and discursive action and extends it beyond any individual or objective sphere. Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Mother:

Afterwards. Afterwards. When your mam took her to the hospital? Yeh. Do you think that your mam thinks about you differently now . . . now that you have become an offender? Yeh. In what way? Does she love you less? Eh, I don’t know, it’s just . . . Is it harder to love an offender? I suppose it is, yes. Why? Eh, I don’t know. Knowing what they have done makes it harder. Makes it harder from your mam’s point of view? Is there anything worse you could have done than this? It’s the worst thing I could have done. There is nothing worse, is that right? Yes. He has done the lowest of the low.

Citing the designation ‘sexual offender’ within the realms of social action, the interviewer goes on to give it a relational ground. The implications of the abusive action and the designation are explored in the context of the boy’s current relationship with his mother. By asking him when and how he accepted this term connects him to its meaning rather than as a label given by others. This opens up the possibility of a dialogue in which the participants begin to shape the context of their meanings, descriptions and actions in their particular situation. Mother posits her son as ‘the lowest of the low’. Roddy remains in the hospital.

Second consultation: one week later: father attends Immediately prior to this session the situation had changed somewhat and Roddy had moved to live temporarily with his mother while the professional system offered ongoing appraisal and support. Father offers to support mother by keeping in contact with Roddy. He requests help from a member of the professional system to find ways

58 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy to make a connection with his son. On exploring with Roddy his perception of police involvement, he suggests that the member of the professional system ‘who most knows about it’ tell him what the current deliberations and likely outcome are. At his mother’s request, Roddy ‘agrees’ also to attend a psychiatrist in the hospital for weekly meetings. Social services keep in close contact with the family.

Third consultation, 1: ‘I trust nobody’ Since Roddy’s return to his mother’s house there had been angry outbursts between them and Roddy bad begun to threaten his mother with violence. Mother complains to social services about his aggression. Social services are concerned that Roddy will become more out of control and that the vulnerable mother–child relationship will collapse. The impulse is to control and correct Roddy’s behaviour and recreate his exclusion status. Roddy, however, challenges the legitimacy of his mother’s attack on him. Their mutual ‘abuse’ is thus contextualised and father finds more words to include himself as a potential resource to mother and son. Social worker: (To Roddy.) Then what about . . . you have been verbally abusing your mam? Roddy: Yeh. Social worker: Yeh. Roddy: She does the same to me. Father: (To Roddy.) She is your mother. Roddy: Oh, that gives her the right, does it? Father: She is just asking you . . . Roddy: Oh sorry, sorry. So that gives her the right . . . to call me what she wants, does it? Does it? Father: You are not pulling your weight. You have to pull your weight. Roddy: (In a raised voice.) Does that give anybody the right, does it? Father: (Also in a raised voice). She is chastising you, that’s what it is. Roddy: Does that give her a right? Father: Yes. Roddy: Does that, does that give my mother the right to call me names just because she is my mother? Father: Yes, I suppose it does. Roddy: Yeh, well that’s the first I heard of that. Interviewer: What is your view about that? Roddy: Well, she doesn’t have a right to call me whatever she wants. I didn’t ask

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Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer:

Roddy:

Interviewer: Roddy:

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to be here . . . so I don’t see why I should take any shit from her like. I don’t see that. I don’t see the point in that. So you think your mam abuses you? Yeh, she calls me names. She always did it. So if it’s all right for her to call me names, then it’s all right for me to call her. It’s as simple as that. If you can give it, you can take it. That’s the way I see it. So these days more like you and your mam are two equals, rather than mother and son, is it, from your point of view? Yeh. Is this just since all these things happened around you? I’m no different now, am I? Well indeed, you have been through a very trying and difficult time and you may be a very different person now than you were a few weeks ago. Yeh. Well, she wants me to act like an adult, right, and she says that we will be equals, so . . . she doesn’t treat me like one so I don’t treat her like one. Is it your experience that you feel humiliated? I don’t see why I should sit back and let people call me whatever.

In accepting Roddy’s statements of hostility and pitting questions at the extreme of Mother’s fears – that she now had an abusive son – it was possible to get to Roddy’s explanations. Rather than convert Roddy’s version into a professional judgement, his contrasting but complementary version of mother as abuser was inserted. Interviewer: Roddy: Interviewer: Roddy:

These days what is the most difficult thing for you? How do you mean? In what way? In terms of your feelings and reactions. I don’t know. I suppose I don’t know what I think of people. I’m not so sure if I can trust them or not. Interviewer: Even your parents? Roddy: Yeh, so I just. . . Interviewer: So you think your mother would hand you over to social services just like that . . . or the police? . . . And your father, would he do the same? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: So you are waiting for it any day? Would you trust social services more than your parents? Roddy: (Shakes head.) I trust nobody. In his accusations against his mother, Roddy is none the less proclaiming his entitlement

60 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy as son, albeit an unruly one. Father’s spontaneous interjections in support of mother signify his status as father. From the platform of family, Roddy has spoken of his feared exclusion. In the first meeting he passively accepted whatever was being arranged for him. Here he loudly protests his entitlement and his doubts about being understood.

Third consultation, 2: how dangerous is Roddy? The fear of professionals and parents is now brought into view by asking Roddy to reflect on the threat he poses to his mother and others. He divulges his mistrust and lack of control. With this emergence Roddy went on to talk about his humiliation as a context for his untoward behaviour towards his mother. Marking the context in this way opens up further opportunities to explore the fears of the professionals that Roddy is dangerous, not only to himself but to others as well. Interviewer: Well, what about the idea that you might still be dangerous to other people? Roddy: The way . . . the other thing? Interviewer: Yes . . . sexually. Roddy: That people might think that I am still dangerous? Interviewer: Yes. Roddy: (Long pause.) I’m still not too sure . . . now. Interviewer: But in a way it is even broader than sexuality. It has to do with these intense feelings. When you got frustrated with your mam, you said to your dad, ‘I feel like getting a knife and killing her and killing myself’. It sounds like in that moment at least in fantasy, you were extremely dangerous. Or are they just words that spill out? Roddy: I suppose. When you are angry you will say anything, you know. There’s nothing wrong in saying anything, you know. There’s no law against it. There’s nothing wrong. No one can do anything about you saying something. I suppose I was pissed off, you know, really angry, you know. That’s it, as well as that she humiliated me as well, you know. Interviewer: I understand that, from your point of view you were provoked. But the question that we will be asking of you Roddy, in that moment, how dangerous did you feel? Roddy: (Long pause.) I suppose dangerous enough ’cos I did have the feeling to do it, you know. Interviewer: Em. Roddy: You know, that’s the way I feel.

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Fourth consultation: ‘I don’t fancy getting thrown around, you know’ Roddy’s perceived dangerousness is likely to reform the professional monopoly in which the parents are submerged. Father meekly follows Sonia’s initiatives as the only action open to him, given his history of abuse and abandonment of Sonia and their children. Their relationship as parents at this critical juncture remains untested. Roddy remains fearful that mother will push him away from her. Father’s status remains suspect and Roddy may fear that a connection with his marginal father will exclude them from mother. However, mother, surprisingly, begins to present Roddy with a different father. Interviewer: Well, I know you are very interested in your mother and her life and all. But how come you are not interested in your father? Is he just a shadow person? Roddy: I see him more as a friend, a friend than as a father, you know. Like I’m only getting to know him. You can hardly expect me to start jumping into his arms. When he was in my life, he disappeared, then he came back into my life and then he disappeared again, you know . . . just sort of a rag doll like, in a way, like a novelty sort of thing. A new toy. You get bored with it and then you see it again and then you start liking it, you know. . . . I don’t fancy getting thrown around, you know. I don’t need it, you know. Mother: Roddy, I’m stepping in here! Roddy: Well step in. Mother: Now I have to say it – Raz has been great. Roddy: Yeh, I know. Mother: Excuse me I’m talking. Roddy: I know. Mother: Just be quiet a second. Your father has been very good from the time of this horrible crime you have committed. He was the one who went to the hospital every night to you. He was the one who took you in. He was the one who did all those things, Roddy. He is there 100 per cent and more now, behind you. He is trying to make up for lost time. But it will be a while, a while for the two of you. But he is trying to make up for lost time. Family friend: I think they are both right. It does take time. You can’t just – it doesn’t heal overnight. Is that fair comment? Mother: But don’t mistrust him . . . ’cos . . .

62 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy Roddy: Mother: Roddy: Father: Roddy: Father: Roddy:

I don’t mistrust him. I see him just as a friend, because it is easier to lose a friend than a father. Who said you were going to lose a father . . . him . . . now? Well, who says I am not going to lose him? I do. Well, you said that before and you did it. When did I say this? When you were in Barrystown, you know, that seemed the impression me and Dunya were getting – that you were there for good and the next thing we knew you were gone.

Fifth consultation, 1: ‘breaking the bond’ Roddy continues to keep father at arm’s length. However, despite Roddy’s resistance, father has arranged more access visits. The parents agree to meet once weekly to discuss Roddy and the theme of potential exclusion emerges again in the senior social worker’s address to mother. Interviewer: (To Roddy.) So we have it all sewn up now? There is no escape for you. You are in our safety net, eh? Family friend: Have you a sleeping bag and some gear? (Refers to planned camping weekend.) Interviewer: (To Roddy.) Do you want to make a strong statement about any of this? Roddy: It suits me fine – the way he has to change, you know (i.e. that father has to spend more time with him). Interviewer: What? Roddy: The way he has to change towards me. Mother: No, Roddy, it’s both. Roddy: If I don’t like it, he’ll find out anyway. Interviewer: Yeh, but I’m going to hold on to my hunch – the reason you won’t like it is your way of staying loyal to your mam, to the fifteen years she has spent with you. I think you are very loyal to her. Mother: Break the loyalty, go on. Interviewer: No, I think we have to honour the loyalty. Mother: Honour it. But then you can go across I think. You are getting the chance now Roddy, for yourself and Raz. Break the loyalty, go on. Interviewer: Yes but there is a contradiction. It involves breaking the bond with you and that’s a problem and we are all aware of that.

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Mother: Roddy: Mother: Roddy: Mother:

Well Roddy, I don’t mind. You tried it before. I tried what before? To break the bond? Yeh. But Roddy, you are not going to be breaking the bond as in breaking the bond as a permanent break. You are getting the chance to know your dad and to share things with him. Senior social worker: I just wonder Sonia, if sometimes you should just let Roddy say those things, not try to convince him about what you are saying. (Here the senior social worker, on behalf of the professional group, articulates an appreciation of Roddy’s experiences of exclusion and henceforth his caution in reestablishing connections.) Mother: Yes – just let him. Senior social worker: Just hear it and say nothing. Then maybe Roddy will feel that you listened and he can go. Otherwise I think he may feel pushed out. Roddy: I just want to say. It’s not going to be easy.

Fifth consultation, 2: ‘I shouldn’t have a life’ Interviewer: If you were trying to explain to Ivan [friend] what happened to you . . .. Roddy: Well, I suppose I could rehearse it now, for the next twenty years and if I was to say it to him, I’d . . . it wouldn’t be the exact . . . it wouldn’t be the words I had rehearsed. I could have it in my head but I could say it anytime no matter what state I was in but when it comes to explaining something to someone, it’s difficult, you know. Interviewer: I know, yeh. Roddy: The words are there on the tip of your tongue but you can’t say them, you know. I don’t know the way . . . what it’s going to be like when I explain to Ivan, I don’t know. It hasn’t happened before. Interviewer: Do you have any idea why this kind of problem happens to young lads like you? You are not the only young person with this kind of problem. I am not saying it is common but it does happen to young people of your age.

64 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy Roddy:

I don’t know . . . I never thought of that . . . all I. . . I never really thought . . . all I think of is what I have done, what I deserve. That’s all I ever think of. Interviewer: You deserve to be put away for life? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: That long? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: Why so long? Why for life? Roddy: I don’t know . . . . I suppose I ruined someone’s life so I shouldn’t have a life in a way. In the safety net of the professional and parental system, Roddy’s accounting of his crime is approached as an imaginary dialogue with his friend Ivan. He demonstrates that in this imaginary dialogue with a significant other, meaning changes in each telling. In his interior dialogue with himself, meaning is closed in self-condemnation.

Sixth consultation: re-sourcing motherhood: a story of abuse and acknowledgement Following her son’s acknowledgement of ruining someone’s life, mother brings the family saga to a confessional closure. Father’s acknowledgement of his history of abusiveness and her story reshapes her entitlement to ‘speak out’ in a community of listeners and re-forms his previous marginal status as father. Both mother and father have previously laid the ground for this closure – in father’s support of mother’s right to discipline and in mother’s support of father’s new relationship with Roddy. As such the interviewer thus frames mother’s story as a context for the possibility of father and son’s relationship and paternal accountability. Interviewer: What’s the story you and your sister had about why your mam and dad were not together? Roddy: Just the story my mother told us and we just went on that and then we never really . . . talked about it. Interviewer: Is that repeatable, that story? Roddy: No. (Laughter.) Mother: The story is very repeatable, Roddy. Roddy: No it isn’t. Mother: Yes it is. (To interviewer.) I will repeat the story for you. Interviewer: (To father.) Do you know the story that was told? Father: I don’t think so.

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Mother: Well, I think he will admit to the story I’m telling now. Interviewer: (To Roddy.) Did you feel that your father had treated your mother badly from the story you have heard? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: And did you ever ask your father about it? Roddy: No. I don’t fancy digging up . . . reopening the wound or something like that. Interviewer: Whose wound? Roddy: His wounds . . . the way he acted. Interviewer: You don’t want to hurt him? Roddy: Yeh. Interviewer: (To father.) Is he right to protect you? Father: I’m not sure what Roddy is talking about. Roddy: Well, the way I say something and it sort of triggers something. . . in that you’ll be shocked that I know, you know. Interviewer: He’ll be shocked that you know. Roddy: Yeh, so I just don’t mention it. Mother: (To interviewer.) Would you like to know the story? Interviewer: I’m resisting my curiosity here. (Everybody laughs loudly.) Mother: To give you a wider picture . . . Interviewer: Well, it is not so much a wider picture. I am more interested in the things that might block them being father and son. It might be this unrepeatable story . . . but if it’s not . . . Mother: Well, it’s quite simple. I was a battered wife. I could not cope with it and at the same time he was out womanising, at discos, out everywhere and I was at home trying to make ends meet. So I said, ‘this is it’. So I threw him out on a real cold night, but beforehand I was charged with assault on him, because I just cracked. It was after having Roddy, even the day I came home with Roddy, he started. And I was going through a postnatal depression and I didn’t even have any milk. I had nothing for him and I said, ‘I have a boy now and there is no way he is going to have the life or see the life that I have got’. I certainly didn’t need it. ‘He will have respect for the female’ and then my husband came in one night and he started again. I just got mad and threw him out in the cold, just out the door and said, ‘go, I don’t want to know’, into the snow and all the rest of it. I was reared in an orphanage and I know I trapped him into marriage, but I didn’t expect this, didn’t want this so I decided they (children) shouldn’t have this. I could manage with two as well as with one, so

66 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy that’s how it is, Roddy. I threw him out when Roddy was less than a month old and Roddy didn’t see him until he was six months. Now Raz can say differently if he likes. Father: No, I’m not denying any of it. Mother: But he was young and immature as well, you know. One of us had to be the strong party, so it had to be me. But I was lucky because I had girlfriends that I was reared with in the orphanage and we all helped each other out. We stuck together. We were children rearing children, so we just didn’t know any better. We were always told to look after our responsibilities. That was how we needed each other. Interviewer: (To Roddy.) So that was the unrepeatable story? Roddy: Yeh, there was a few ‘F-ings’ and ‘B-ings’ missed out but that’s it. Interviewer: (To father.) What’s the story that you would like to tell your son? Father: What Sonia has said is true – most of it anyway. There were good times, very few, but there were good times as well. I don’t know, I was a crazy mixed up kid then. But I wasn’t a kid. How old was I? Twenty-three or something, very naive. Mother: Well, both parties, both sides were to blame, you know. I was probably looking for a bed of roses, a man . . . to be a strong person. Father: I just felt conned. She told me that Dunya was going to be taken away from her if she wasn’t married and I believed her. So we got married. It was just a mistake at the time, a bad mistake. Having said that though, here we are.

CONCLUSION In this situation a catastrophic event (rape) brought about a particular social organisation of professionals and parents, of itself fairly typical when a child is deemed to be deviant, dangerous or out of control. The problem, however, is that the more one speaks about another the more that other is excluded. This often happens when parents become helpless. They allow professionals to speak for them. This becomes even more confusing when parents speak as if they were professionals and the latter speak as if they were parents. The potential exclusion of Roddy, as the counterpart of professional monopoly (Figures 3.1 and 3.2), was deconstructed not in the challenging of monopoly claims, in which FPA was also implicitly embedded, but in the exaggeration of exclusion by way of questioning at the extremes so that the voice of Roddy proclaimed itself. The parents responded to this deconstructed text by taking an active part as parents in the protection of their son. Here the boy’s speaking and a parental response brought forth a new social organisation, where the double constituency

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of family and professional system were more clearly defined. Roddy reappeared as a subject, empowered now to speak on what mattered most to himself. In this way, the parents re-established their protective status as mother and father in partnership with social services. With the re-emergence of Roddy and his parents as ‘responsible’ subjects in the deliberations, social services were released from their dominant insertion of control and protection.2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Nollaig O’Reilly Byrne was the principal author of this chapter. The authors wish to acknowledge the contribution of their associate Philip A. Kearney in the generation of many of the ideas in this chapter. They also wish to express their gratitude to their colleagues in social services, especially Olga Garland, Head Social Worker, and Mary Tallon, Social Worker.

NOTES 1 Discourse: a discourse sets out not what is true or false but what can have truth-value in society. In other words it is about what is statable and what is privileged (Foucault 1972). 2 Roddy was subsequently referred to an adolescent sexual offenders’ programme in which both parents participated. Eighteen months later, the case has now been satisfactorily closed by social services, with no further police or legal involvement.

REFERENCES Andersen, T. (ed.) (1990) The Reflecting Team: Dialogues and Dialogues about the Dialogues, Broadstairs, Kent: Borgman. Anderson, H. and Goolishian, H. (1992) ‘The client is the expert: a not-knowing approach to therapy’, in S. McNamee and K.J. Gergen (eds) Therapy as Social Construction, London: Sage. Barthes, R. (1986) The Rustle of Language, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. —— (1988) The Semiotic Challenge. Trans Richard Howard. New York: Hill & Wang. Byrne, N.O’R. and McCarthy, I.C. (1988) ‘Moving statutes: re-questing ambivalence through ambiguous discourse’, Irish Journal of Psychology 9: special issue, V. Kenny (ed.) Radical Constructivism, Autopoiesis and Psychotherapy: 173–182. Byrne, N. O’R., Kearney, P. and McCarthy, I. C. (1993) ‘Gender, power and social justice: the Fifth Province Model, two-day workshop’. Turku, Finland, March. Cecchin, G., Lane, G. and Ray, W. A. (1992) Irreverence: A Strategy for Therapists’ Survival, London: Karnac Books. Colgan, F. I. (1991) ‘The Fifth Province Model: father–daughter incest and systemic consultation’, Ph.D. dissertation, University College Dublin. Foucault, M. (1972) The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York: Harper & Row.

68 Nollaig O’R. Byrne and Imelda C. McCarthy Fruggeri, L., Telfner, U., Castellucci, A., Marzari, M. and Matteini, M. (1991) New Systemic Ideas from the Italian Mental Health Movement, London: Karnac Books. Goldner, V. (1985) ‘Feminism and family therapy’, Family Process 24: 31–47. Hare-Mustin, R. (1987) ‘The problem of gender in family therapy theory’, Family Process 26: 15–27. Hederman, M. P. and Kearney, R. (1982) The Crane Bag: Book of Irish Studies, Dublin: Blackwater Press. Heilbrun, C.G. (1988) Writing a Woman’s Life, New York: Ballantine Books. Hoffman, L. (1985) ‘Beyond power and control: toward a “second order” family systems therapy’, Family Systems Medicine 3: 381–396. —— (1992) ‘A reflexive stance for family therapy’, in S. McNamee and K.J. Gergen (eds) Therapy as Social Construction, London: Sage. Hyden, M. and McCarthy, I.C. (in press) ‘Woman battering and father–daughter incest disclosure: conversations of denial and acknowledgement’, Discourse and Society 4. Jones, E. (1993) Family Systems Therapy: Developments in the Milan-Systemic Therapies, Chichester: J. Wiley & Sons. Kearney, P.A. (1988) ‘Family conversations and incest’, two-day workshop, University of Tromso. January. Kearney, P.A., Byrne, N. O’R. and McCarthy, I.C. (1989) ‘Just metaphors: marginal illuminations in a colonial retreat’, Family Therapy Case Studies 4: 17–31. Kundera, M. (1988) The Art of the Novel, Boston: Faber & Faber. Lannamann, J. W. (1990) ‘Power, equality, and other unintended dialectical constructions’, paper delivered at the International Communications Association Annual Meeting, Communication and Equality, Dublin. Lang, P., Little, M. and Cronen, V. (1990) ‘The systemic professional: domains of action and the question of neutrality’, Human Systems 1: 39–55. Le Brocquy, L. (1981) Louis Le Brocquy, D. Walker (ed.) Dublin, Wardriver Press. McCarthy, I.C. (1993) Serving those in poverty: a benevolent colonisation? Plenary Presentation at Fifth World Family Therapy Congress, Amsterdam, May. McCarthy, I.C. and Byrne, N.O’R. (1988) ‘Mis-taken love: conversations on the problem of incest in an Irish context’, Family Process 27: 181–199. McGoldrick, M., Anderson, C.M. and Walsh, F. (1989) Women and Families: A Framework for Family Therapy, New York: Norton & Co. MacKinnon, L. and James, K. (1987) ‘The Milan systemic approach: theory and practice’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy 8: 89–98. O’Donovan, K. (1984) ‘Protection and paternalism’, in M.D.A Freeman (ed.) The State, the Law and the Family: Critical Perspectives, London: Tavistock Publications/Sweet & Maxwell. Palazzoli, M.S., Boscolo, L., Cecchin, G. and Prata, G. (1980) ‘Hypothesising– circularity– neutrality: three guidelines for the conductor of the session’, Family Process 19: 45– 57. Perelberg, R.J. and Miller, A.C. (1990) Gender and Power in Families, London: Routledge. Salamon, E., Andersson, M. and Grevelius, K. (1991 ) The AGS Commission Model, Stockholm: AGS Institute. Shotter, J. (1989) ‘Social accountability and the social construction of “you”’, in J. Shotter and K.J. Gergen (eds) Texts of Identity, London: Sage. Waldegrave, C. and Tapping, C. (1990) ‘Just therapy’, Dulwich Centre Newsletter 1: 3– 46. White, M. and Epston, D. (1990) Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. White, S. (1988) The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas: Reason, Justice and Modernity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

4

Reclaiming a female mind from the experience of child sexual abuse A developing conversation between writers and editors Gill Gorell Barnes and Sharon Henessy

INTRODUCTION In this chapter we explore some aspects of the joint experience of reclaiming ‘mind’ in a therapeutic context that was female. In working together, two women – one having experienced sexual abuse by her father over ten years, the other working as her therapist – have as their goal in writing the wish to activate more thinking about the condition of all women in societies where men’s ways are privileged. The process of reclaiming their female minds from experiences of male oppression is complex and multi-layered. In considering a ‘mind that is free’, we mean a mind that is capable of thinking about and reflecting on experience rather than only being able to respond to events through the constraints induced by former terror, family or social requirements. This contribution represents a developing conversation between the authors over time and in response to questions from the editors whose curiosity has provoked further reflection a year after our work together ended. This chapter includes material which was written during the course of therapy, as well as reflections on that writing and on the therapeutic work and relationship now that the therapy has come to an end. Sexual abuse represents the extreme end of a spectrum of male/female relationships of which coercion may be a part. The focus of this chapter is on the impact of oppressive experience on the development of a woman’s mind in the context of sexual abuse and also in the larger context of oppressive experience within which women are kept from a knowledge of their own potential.

GOALS IN WRITING Sharon: My goal in writing about my experiences is my wish to lay something out as

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clearly as I can so that other women can be helped. I do worry about other women who may not be as strong at this as I am now and might be left out, remain imprisoned outside themselves unnecessarily. In sitting down to write for this chapter I initially experienced a sense of terror. I sat in front of my computer screen a bit tense for a variety of reasons and enshrouded in this sensation of comfortable, cruel, familiar, dangerous environment. There was a block until I found what I called a starting point, and I was able bring my mind up from the recesses with difficulty. The writing felt constrained. I realised that the fear was not one of self-doubt, it was the fear of fear itself; of breaking the silence of speaking. It was the fear of reprisal that he, my father, might arise from the pits, the bowels within me, strike and shut me up. Flashback: I am a child lying asleep in my bed, a deep peaceful sleep. I have slept alone for a while and have forgotten in my short memory that blankets provide anything other than warmth and protection. Slowly my blanket is lifted and a draught enters from the side of the bed. I am brought down by another body whose enormous weight causes me to sink. And there it stays, a dead weight at first, slowly coming to life and sucking me into a violent rhythm. Breathing shatters the silence, invading my ears and shattering my mind. He goes as quickly as he came, leaving an even flimsier dimension to sleep. There is very little rest for a haunted child expecting anything when it should be least expected. Gill: My purpose in writing this chapter with Sharon is to record some of the nuances of the joint therapeutic processes between us. Some of these may be an essential part of learning to trust oneself as a female in a new way, others are about mutual learning in many areas. The therapeutic encounter is not only one in which a client or patient encounters a therapist. I believe it is also when two human beings engage round an area of difficulty which may have some common aspect that reverberates for both. One may be currently more entangled than another, but through the struggle to understand the impact of the experience aspects of both therapist and patient are engaged in a joint search for new meanings. Thus while the boundaries of therapy to do with time, space, recognition of responsibility and steadfastness in the therapeutic endeavour remain the responsibility of the therapist within that framework, the mind and the spirit of both the participants are free to engage in a wider exploration. In our context this included the subjugation of women, the deprivation of a female mind in a variety of life contexts and the development of freedom as a necessary aspect of our own adult living. Both therapist and client are also free to engage in discoveries of strength and feminine triumph. In this sense the therapy between two women becomes subversive in relation to the culture within which both women co-exist. As well as the deconstruction

Reclaiming a female mind 71 of events specific to the therapy a different continuity develops. This stems from a joint scanning of many of the small tasks of daily life in which oppression may be actively experienced, such as childcare, cleaning, household finance, domestic administration and the confrontation of male belief systems. The conversation uses a joint legacy of females’ experience of growing up and forms an ongoing female critique of life and its daily hazards. This component of the therapeutic conversations is interactional and egalitarian, based on genuine mutual influence, often leading to new insights for both participants and a move to a new position for the conversations more specific to the therapy.

A PERSPECTIVE ON FEMALE IDENTITY Identity, and particularly sexual identity, does not develop in isolation. The child develops in mutual interaction with the males and females in her family and it is in relationship to the male and female images both of reality and of imagination that she constructs her identity according to her experience. The erotic sensitivities of the child’s body are interpreted through the meanings the child attaches to her body and its sensations through early experiences in a sexed family world (Jones 1986). Phallocentric power, and the constraints it imposes, are determined not only by her direct experience of a father, but by her mother’s perceived and experienced reactions to this, as well as by her perception of her mother’s experience or her sister’s experience of her father. In addition, direct access to her mother or other important senior women in her life will make a difference. These will all contribute to her own systems of selfperception and self-valuation. In families where sexual abuse by the father is an ongoing and regular part of the life of the family, not only will father play a disproportionate part in the family structure of power, but access to mother will be either prohibited or confused in relation to the role the daughter is, and experiences herself as, taking on ‘for her mother’. In Sharon’s family there were times when the burden of responsibility was too great for her mother. ‘Perhaps a mother, overloaded, devalued and impotent, finds whatever way open to shift the burden. The responsibility is handed down to the next female in line. In the case where sexual abuse is the legacy, this sharing of responsibility has horrifying ramifications for all – not only the abused daughter – like a highly contagious virus. We were all contaminated by sexual abuse.’ In such circumstances access to other adults who might offer different conceptions of the female child is likely to be blocked, out of reasons of fear, loyalty, protectiveness, secrecy and shame. Alternative models for viewing the self and other are unavailable; and the

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family system and resulting ‘mental representations of relationships’ (Main 1985) are highly constricted.

Constructing a different base for thinking about female identity French feminists (e.g. Cixous, Irigary and Kristeva – see Moi 1985/1988) believe that western thought has been based on a systematic repression of women’s experience and have emphasised the essential importance of establishing a ‘site de différence’, a different starting point from which phallogocentric concepts can be taken apart. Kristeva, in relation to this theme of female mind and female identity, suggests that first comes the question of how a young girl finds a way of refusing to identify with a father and with the logic of paternal discourse. Kristeva says, Women have a role to play in the assuming of a negative function: reject everything finite, definite, structured; loaded with meaning in the existing state of society . . . a feminist practice can only be at odds with what already exists so that we may say ‘that’s not it’ and ‘that’s still not it’. By woman I mean that which cannot be represented, what is not said, what remains above and beyond nomenclatures and ideologies. (Kristeva 1974: 21) The editors have asked us to expand on what this idea meant to us. To Gill it meant primarily that concepts which structure the gendered self at every level are available for questioning from a female perspective. This includes sexuality, spirituality and social and political domains. Sharon comments: ‘I interpret Kristeva as saying that we can only define ourselves as female by exploring who we are not. We cannot step outside the phallogocentric discourse which defines the feminine-female mind, only in relation to the masculine. We cannot formulate a new discourse since we cannot step outside language, exist outside western philosophy and the false dichotomies of male and female. When we refer to the female mind it is an assertion of difference and not a reference to essential unchanging qualities of femininity. We begin a feminist practice by recognising this difference, by acknowledging our lack of representation, by questioning the images prescribed for us, and challenging the fit.’ In relation to sexual abuse, Kristeva’s vital concept of difference may be prohibited internally as well as externally or hidden away in an inaccessible place. The struggle to regain a female mind using a family systems perspective includes the question of not

Reclaiming a female mind 73 only how to get out literally from under the father but how to get out from under the father-subjugated mother. The challenge is to find a way of being female which has a newly defined centre, not a phallus dominated centre with the attendant images of power and abusiveness that entails. The mind has to be liberated in the sense of being free to ‘think for herself’. We emphasise that it is not the single relationship of ‘fatherdaughter’ that has to be attended to but the way the daughter perceives the mother’s relationship with the father, as well as the way she herself is used as a consequence of this relationship. The ‘mind’ has to free itself from a series of abusive encounters and their interconnections with other networks of collusion and distortion. Aspects of Kristeva’s passionate statement then inform the therapist’s stance, ‘reject everything finite, structured, loaded with meaning. . . accept that which cannot be represented, what is not said’. Sharon: This idea was initially developed for me in my therapy with Gill – a place and a time where I felt I could discard preconceived notions about myself. I was free to wander in my imagination. I was safe. I had had some therapy sessions with a man. We seemed to spend much time talking at one another – like radio towers trying to transmit signals but trapped by too much interference. As a result, I shifted my focus from the topic of abuse to holding on to a buried and well protected sense of my own abilities – in order not to feel entirely responsible for the lack of communication. I would hint at my intelligence and even reveal my ability to grasp his ideas when I was feeling brave, but did not feel my efforts were recognised. There was a different quality to the sessions with Gill. I felt the sense of mutual understanding which she conveyed through a recognition of shared human experiences. I did not, at first, think of the difference between these two therapists as gender related. I chose to put my analytical, intellectual self to the side for a while and set free my trapped emotions. I made a commitment to myself not to read, and to allow the ideas created in therapy to be my primary influence. I was able to do this in the therapy with a woman, because Gill ‘allowed’ for my intelligence. The struggle to prove its existence became unnecessary.

THE EARLY WORK The early work: acknowledging the context for the child’s mind Sharon: I am the victim of sexual abuse inflicted by a man who gripped my mind and possessed my body. He created a world for us which no one else could enter. He created a realm of bizarre fairy tales for me to indulge in. They were acted out in pantomime but never read aloud. So now, ghost of my childhood, look me in the eye

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and tell me, did you fuck me. . . did you stick your finger in unwanted places and draw blood. How young was I. Did you play naughty games with me when mother wasn’t looking. You rubbed your rough hands over my smooth skin and stuck something on my tummy so we could see how big it would get when I touched it. Sometimes it was slimy and you told me it was my toy, my plaything and I believed it belonged to me. You weren’t brutal or violent then. You offered me a skewered reality where something very scary was denied. You didn’t say ‘this is what I’m going to do to you: fuck you, impale you, nail you to the wall’, but these insinuated threats pervaded the atmosphere. We played at make-believe and spoke in nursery rhymes, invented characters and gave them names, treating each other’s private parts as though you’d pulled them down from a box of toys. I was a dolly and you were a toy soldier engaged in battles and strange rituals; losing your posture and shedding fine form with your clothes as a camouflage of dignity gave way to another man – a naked soldier who spewed sticky stuff and retired to the trenches for a new phantasmal battle. (A particular memory of Sharon’s captures the permanent tension between the illusion of security and the knowledge that nothing was safe.) All the leaves were red and turning brown. I’d been out walking on this autumn day. Leaves were swirling around me when a hand reached from behind and grabbed my mouth to stifle a scream. He forced me to the ground, laughing and throwing leaves, burying me beneath a mound of autumn evidence. Even in such manifest innocence there is no peace. I was frightened; a tryst was suspected, and I was caught in the ambivalence of his warmth and the chill air, the crunchy leaves and his gravelly voice, the whipping wind and the shield by his wall of a body. The elements were in conflict with false security. There is no respite for an abused child, no safe haven when anything can happen anywhere. So one’s mind becomes a padded cell, a treasure trove of ideas and stories where language is the only freedom. Words are whispered internally; clarity is kept locked away in a safe. My mind was my only sanctuary, the safe place to which I could withdraw. When systems of power become absolute, as in dictatorships or families with persistently abusive patterns, there is no space for the child’s developing mind to include any sense of volition or active organisation of their own thinking or being. The rage of adults abused as children is not only that their bodies were abused, but their minds also. The way that this happens is different for each person, but the experience of fragmentation, of being deprived of coherence and of having to put part of the mind and the self away, dissociated, hidden to keep it safe, is common (Jones 1991). This encapsulated experience may start to clamour for attention in painful ways once abuse begins to be remembered; as Sharon puts it, ‘a mind by definition trapped in a tiny internal space’.

Reclaiming a female mind 75 The early work: private and public truths It is well known from many sources – not only that of child sexual abuse, but also other situations of entrapment and terror like imprisonment with torture, or living in concentration camps – that in order to function in adult life a survivor may have to make a division or compartmentalisation between their memories and their so-called ‘normal’ life. (As Sharon put it, ‘There is nothing worse than inhabiting the wasteland, fraught with anxiety, where the pen does not write and the mind has no focus and direction is directionless.’) The survivor always knows that the world can be dangerous, randomly cruel and contain unbearable pain under the facade of everyday behaviour. Keeping this in mind may always be a necessary part of true personal integrity. Finding a meaning from a traumatic experience that allows it to be resolved cannot easily be found and may never be found. Negotiation between the private truth and what the client thinks the therapist can accept or stand, the ‘public truth’, may take place many times, as the private self which, shamed, has hitherto withdrawn, risks further exposure to condemnation, disgust and contempt in the safety of the therapeutic context (Jay 1991).

TAKING CHARGE OF ONE’S OWN MIND Taking charge of one’s own mind: developing a voice Through finding our own words and weaving different connecting threads we can make a different sense out of lives in which we have felt ourselves to be the objects of other people’s will. Developing a voice that can be clearly heard leads to experiencing the possibility of future life in which one is an active and not a passive player. When Sharon began to remember and was unable to sleep, Gill suggested that she wrote her thoughts down. For eighteen months she wrote continuously. Initially she used scraps of paper, writing a memory down whenever it assailed her. At first she could not look at the words once they were on paper. It was necessary to keep the words and herself separate. Gill was the safekeeper of the words. Then Sharon began to keep her own words in an exercise book and gave Gill a copy. Sharon: Whose brilliant idea was the journal? I trust the journal whose often bizarre and confusing narrative has a will of its own which winds its way through labyrinthine thoughts to the only exit from my mind. I can refine and edit the journal, check it for lies or hints of subterfuge, go over it with a magnifying glass as if it were my own skin;

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a palpable extension of me. I am honestly here in these pages. My honour and credibility are at stake. I do not wish to bluff myself. In thinking further about the value of the journal two years later, Sharon adds: for a long time the journal seemed to write itself. I followed it through its often terrifying and debilitating course until I felt I could take charge of it and write about the truth instead of relying on reading the truth as it was uncovered in the journal. Later I discovered that I was not alone. Reading Kristeva and others was a visceral encounter with myself in language and ideas. I borrowed from feminist theory and transformed the abstract into a quest to find meaning beyond what I have learned. I learned to trust my own feelings and drop the logic I had inherited from the father who had abused me and then to question the education which had failed me when I tried to speak out.

Taking charge of one’s own mind: confronting the voices of others in therapy Taking charge of traumatic events also means changing the experience of being the passive recipient of the abusive experience of another. Gaining even a small amount of control within the adverse relationship can make a significant difference to other contexts. Obviously many other people may act as intermediaries in relation to such experiences: a partner, work colleague, the therapist or indeed a child. Here we will explore a small piece of one session between Sharon and her mother. Gill wished to ensure that Sharon retained the focus that she herself wished for in the context of exploring the triadic relationships in which she had experienced herself as interchangeable with, but organised by, her mother in relation to her father. Gill’s very small interventions which keep Sharon on track allow her to express her rage at being deprived of her ‘formal mind’, the education which she would have had but from which she was disallowed through the illicit relationship that she had with her father. Her mother’s mind had also formed part of this ‘context of disqualification’, as she had previously given up her own education to support father through college. The interview with mother therefore included a recognition of her own deprivation. The challenge was to stop her from drowning her daughter’s developing narrative with her own compelling needs. She had crossed the Atlantic for a visit to her daughter, knowing that coming to meet with myself and Sharon was on the agenda. She arrived halfway through the ninety-minute interview with a story to tell, the truth as she saw it. As so often in a family interview the potentially abusive pattern recreated itself in the room with mother’s voice overtalking Sharon’s voice. Gill therefore suggested that she should send her her own story on a tape which could be

Reclaiming a female mind 77 kept for her daughter to listen to if she wished. This gave her a sense of having been recognised while preventing the truncation of the purpose of the interview as Sharon had constructed it. As Sharon’s later commentary shows, however, the most important purpose of the interview was not what was said but the process. On the one hand, Sharon felt able to take effective charge of this, but on the other, this very attempt to get some clarity helped her to face how this could never be achieved because of her mother’s ongoing investment in maintaining the version of reality which was most functional for her own survival. Mother:

Sharon: Mother: Sharon: Mother: Sharon: Mother: Sharon: Mother: Sharon: Mother: Sharon: Mother: Sharon: Mother: Sharon: Mother: Sharon:

The ‘truth’ – I was busy, I was scared, I was traumatised, I was paralysed, he told me – one of the reasons I get crazed when people shut me up – I did not speak when I was married – he told me that I was the stupidest thing that ever walked – every time I opened my mouth I said something that embarrassed him to tears so I did not speak. He did that to me too. As far as I knew you were the smartest thing that ever lived. . . you were brilliant. . . So why was he jealous of me? He was a jealous man. He was insanely jealous of me, insanely. How about me – see if you can help me figure out me, not you. (They both talk very fast, nearly simultaneously.) (Talking over her.) I understand you. I understand what you are saying. Try, please try. I am subjective. I can only work through trying to recreate. Darling, that’s what I’m trying to do, I promise you. I need you to recreate for me . . . (not for you). But can I tell you what it was like . . . I can understand . . . we were together the whole time. (New sequence: overlapping.) (Strong.) Mother, I need you to recreate for me. I am trying. Try, really hard; you’re over here and I’m here and daddy’s there, please (showing with her hands). I’m trying to do that . . . Do that. But do you understand (shouting) that you were never alone with him. Then when you were there try and see how it is (showing with her hands), him and me and how it was.

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Mother:

He hated his daughters – it broke my heart – I overcompensated like crazy with you all, with my attention. (Gill takes up idea of mother making a tape and ‘going step by step in your own time . . .’. Goes back to Sharon.)

Gill:

Did you find that what your mother said about your father fitted with your mental representation, because you have often talked of feeling there was a lot of love between you and your father?

Sharon:

I do find that it fitted . . . I think that as a child I can see lots of shifting roles and memories. . . in the past couple of years I have seen things I thought was mother and things that were father the wrong way round. Do you know what I mean? (Turning to mother.) I know that you loved me . . . there have been times when I thought we have not communicated in the right way, but I always get back to knowing you love me.

Mother:

Oh sure.

Sharon:

But there’s a great uncertainty about daddy – so rather than accept the

Mother:

(Tries to interrupt.)

Sharon:

Please.

hate it was easier as a child to remember something that was an illusion.

Mother: . . . (Persists). Sharon:

Mother, please, this is really important. Can you let me finish please.

Mother:

I wanted to give you the whole picture.

Sharon:

The process is far more important than the whole picture, and if you have given me something to put things into a perspective in my mind, than if you had given me lots of details – the process is far more important (mother tries to interrupt) . . . than what you have to say. This is probably what made me feel I couldn’t turn to you . . . that you can do this to me . . . completely just taking it over and not letting me talk.

Gill:

You’re not doing badly.

Sharon:

(Laughs.) No I’m not.

Gill:

As long as you know your mother is doing it with love, and not because

Sharon:

(Strong.) I know . . . so it does make sense (crying) that he didn’t like me

she is trying to take your mind away. . . . and that he tried to destroy me, and he tried to destroy my mind, which is better than his, much; and he knew it, so I didn’t get the education I needed or wanted. He didn’t even offer it to me and I was the one out of the three of us, of the three of us I was the one who most

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Mother: Gill:

looked for it, wanted it, would have pursued it, out of the three of us I was that type, the one he tried to destroy . . . (Softly.) You’re right on, absolutely right on. And I guess you felt powerless to move in because he’d done that to you as well.

In reviewing the interview Sharon commented on the memory of herself as an aspect of her mother – the madness of not being separated from her, the truth she speaks is that we were not often separated. To that truth I add that I was where I should not have been because she felt me to be part of herself. In her fantasy when I was subjected to cruelty, it was her that my father was hurting. She saw me as reabsorbed into her, not born yet. At the best of times I was her companion, an imaginary friend, the doll she had when she was 5. (She had named her Sharon.) My internalised vision of a real physical space is suffocating space where they fitted me between them. I wasn’t there, yet I really was. This must be the saddest experience I have had thus far reading and hearing again my mother’s voice, her hypnotic singsong voice trying to lull me into believing there was nothing to fear as she engulfed me in herself. Her little Sharon was being offered to an impotent man by a powerless woman. Commenting further in the process of writing and reviewing Sharon added: ‘Do you know what is so sad for me? The desire to search, to explore, to be bold, to be daring, it reminds me of my mother. My father gave me intellectual discipline. My mother was the brave one in life, but her act of betrayal was the most fundamental; it was a primary and natural trust which she violated.’ In response to the editors’ request to comment further on the blaming of mothers, Sharon comments: ‘I am afraid of mother’s voice. She might just deceive me into a false sense of security; I might just get caught up in her story again; not get my mind away quickly enough and what would she do if she had access to it. She would take it to her own domain, and that is the abuse I think that she suffered. Someone, probably my grandmother, who was her guardian not her real mother, took her mind away from her and in her madness she never saw me as someone other than her self. She needed me to complete what wasn’t there. The session she attended marks the only time I tried directly to disengage myself from her by literally telling her to separate my narrative from her own which she could not do. The act of trying was a very important experience for me. It was the initial step into taking charge of my interpretation of events separating from myself what was my truth and thereby separating myself from her. In a way, it was an appropriation of my own mind.’

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Sharon’s perception of her mother is of a woman who could not differentiate her daughter from herself and could not therefore offer a ‘site de différence’ from which she could develop. Her father, paradoxically, offered her such an opportunity through the sharing and teaching of ideas. The power of a woman’s ambivalence and sense of betrayal in relation to such suppression from her mother may be greater than her ability to achieve a metaperspective on the intergenerational arrangements as a whole. The therapist then has to act as a springboard for this beginning differentiation in small but powerful ways. ‘It would not have been possible without your protection, Gill. I would not have risked making a statement about the quality of my mind to my mother. That statement might have been the first little opening through which the hidden self, hidden mind, began to emerge.’

Taking charge of one’s own mind: facing father’s intellectual discipline – attraction and dangers Sharon: My father fucked me in every orifice he found not too tiny but I find myself sobbing for his loss. There was a gentle man of summer evenings who cast a long shadow over my mind. He was the intellect in our family. He groomed me secretly, privately, to have an intelligent and independent mind as if I were his heir apparent. He wrote poems to me as a small child curled up in his lap. He taught me to play baseball, pitching endless futile strikes but never calling me out. And in spite of his own bitterness he taught me clear thinking through a peculiar logic which I tried to tuck away. He was a tortured soul, a violent man, a gentle man, a weak man. He forced a pact on me and now I am the keeper of it. The mad insane story is mine, part of me, sane me, blameless me. I loved my father; seeking safety and freedom in loving him and being taught a different lesson, one where saying no was taken as yes, tossing basic meanings into the air and landing them upside down. He stripped me bare, deprived me of my rights and in my nakedness sent a bewildering message where the beauty of his ideas was perverted and betrayed. He took away my power to say no to him; a power which is fundamental to the freedom of loving.

Taking charge of one’s own mind: co-evolving new constructions In the course of working together over eighteen months, Gill inevitably became experienced as the abusive parent. Sharon describes a dream about this which relates to her emergent voice: The dream about you has a real interpretation. At that time I

Reclaiming a female mind 81 wanted to be able to reveal more of myself, my real intelligence. At the time I was terrified. The dream represents the fear of what would happen to me if you were to know that I was very intelligent and found me interesting. You would try to destroy me for being too quick. I felt safe with you because you were one step ahead of me, quicker, brighter. I persistently disagreed when you tried to reframe this. You finally made a joke about me having to have it said in my way and we both laughed. My insistence stems from fear, a very pervasive sense of danger and violence. If I am found to be too clever by anyone else who is clever I will be silenced. What used to feel like random movements and shifts in direction in therapy I now see as choices I didn’t have the courage to recognise. To have said that my choices belong to me was to risk feeling the fear of reprisals, the attacks, the punishment, the violence, the silencing which had always followed when I suggested or even hinted at my autonomy as a child. Now I can explore the idea of freedom and how it is found in love. I think of them as necessary components of the reconciliation between my father and myself. We did love each other. It was extraordinarily difficult to allow this love to survive with the awareness of sexual abuse. I wanted to kill his love just as I had annihilated the memories of abuse. Part of me wanted to stay trapped and avoid the excruciating pain. The search and, in a way, the story, began by unleashing the first layer of terror and rage as if the narrative were situated in there, hidden in the anger and pain, waiting to be recognised. If we imagine an ending (the story is always ongoing) it was when I could see that my father and I were both a product of our culture, unique in the details of our family history but pervasive in our society. I hid with my anguish during many long nights working on this narrative, thrashing out the meanings of abuse and violation, trying to accept that they had existed in the same context as love. Eventually the fury of displaced memories was superseded by an acceptance of the past. Gill was the witness who neither despised nor judged either one of us. One evening at dusk I was standing in the kitchen, thinking about this reconciliation – the past, my self, and my father. I was looking out the window for him. And there he was – at his finest, a handsome young man, stocky and short, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist, short cropped hair and even features. The doors to the garden were open. The cats were running in and out. For a long moment the clock stopped ticking. It was a warm and still evening but a cool breeze moved along my back, wrapping itself around my shoulders, teasing me with this memory. It was my father’s breathing; his breath mingling with my own, too weak now to take it away. We stood there, silently staring at each other, our gaze locked at eye level until I told him to go away. And the involuntary pain which usually writhes inside held me gently instead, as if to say, I am your friend and the freedom in your mind is to be found in me as well.

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And I am able to say sometimes I was proud of him. He had a mind turned inward and saw beauty in ideas. He gave me an appreciation of ideas to match the fervour usually reserved for music and art. An idea grasped and held for perhaps only a short moment can be deeply moving and exciting. When I say to you, Gill, that I have a good mind, I am saying that I have taken out of this legacy what was good about me. I can separate myself and my intellect from the context of abuse and speak in my own clear voice. I can fashion something good, a morality, from what was at one time unspeakable. I have learnt that I can accept the abuse even as I continue to experience it in my life. It can resonate in very painful ways but I can move through the bouts of rage and use my mind to acknowledge the pain rather than become inured to it. I use your recognition – of strength, of talent, of resilience, of the society that limits opportunities for me – to hold on to who I am and how I would express myself if I only could. I try to convey this recognition of strength – a common ground for many invisible women.

Taking charge of one’s own mind: is there a potential for difference in the therapeutic encounter? What can be rescued, valued, reframed and amplified as a female perspective from the perspective of the abused child? Each of us was aware of the dangers of illusion in relation to the idea that there was something within the abusive relationship which could be valued. The evolution of a different sense of self should not be confused with a false reconciliation to abusive experience; but it is also a valid recognition of what has not been destroyed and has now emerged to be celebrated. In our society it is not only women who have to operate through false selves but in the context of abuse it is mainly women who have to hide their secret and free thinking selves away. A passage from Winnicott, which Gill had found very relevant in her own therapy with a woman some years before, had a powerful meaning for the two of us in the context of this piece of therapeutic work: The false sense defends the true self but the true self is however acknowledged as a potential and is allowed a secret life. Here is the clearest example of clinical illness as an organisation with a positive aim; the preservation of the individual in spite of abnormal environmental conditions. (Winnicott 1960:143) In discussing this dichotomy of ‘true’ and ‘false’ Gill wrote to Sharon: I find myself

Reclaiming a female mind 83 suspicious of this idea of a false self. Perhaps it is more useful to consider aspects of one’s own being or potential that are brought forth in particular contexts in ways which are functional at the time. If we stay with socially descriptive language we might say that for young girls this includes socially prescribed ideas about compliance and sweetness, especially to older men and women. Also powerful, at least in the decades following the war, was the idea of being pleasing to men. Thus the idea of cooperating in acts that are abusive to the self in order to please, were instilled for my generation through school, church and the wider media as well as through the more powerful distillations peculiar to each family. Most young women had sufficient opportunity to giggle or whisper with each other about the peculiarities of men and their daily sexual oddities (‘flashing’ at school fêtes, coats over the knees on the tops of buses with invitations to stroke penises underneath, men in dirty raincoats wanting to see your knickers in the park, etc.), and this gave them, the girls who giggled, a shared sense of being different from and immune to the impact of these behaviours. None the less, they did expect and accept that men behaved like that. However, for a young person locked into an intensified abusive relationship with her own primary male care-giver, there is a necessary submission to the perceived importance of male sexuality cut off from any sharing and giggling. Pain, humiliation and terror are compounded by an awareness, however unformulated in the early years, that there is no protector from he who is supposed to protect but in fact invades and destroys. Any attempt to think has no way to ‘language’ itself, and no person with whom language can be developed. As Maturana (1980, 1993) has described it, the operation of distinction, and the power of observation and distinction, is brought forth through language. The person abused from an early age does not have access to these distinctions, and therefore remains unseparated from processes imposed on them. In this sense I see the concepts less as ‘true self’ and ‘false self’ than as aspects of self not yet brought into being through distinction and being thought about. Later, when thought becomes possible in other contexts such as school, the self established in the abusive relationship is no less true or false than the other aspects of the developing self. However, some have been imposed or amplified at the expense of others which have not been chosen or evolved. The newly cognisant and observing self, developing in the context of school, will also despise those sexualized and imprisoned aspects of self that have been or still are cooperating in what is going on. There is a danger that they will therefore disqualify and invalidate aspects of their own being for which they are not responsible. To be able to incorporate both the cooperating self and the highly critical self may be an important move towards a ‘true’ self. In our work together, an approach to thinking developed which comes from not

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accepting what you are being told about your experiences because what you are told and the way it is told do not fit with the way you experience yourself in your own experiences. So thinking women become observers of their own experience in order to protect their truth. The form of the language we have inherited, our discourse of discourses – philosophy – privileges an objective knowledge of reality. We have found ourselves in search of new approaches to thinking and doubting the theories developed by men about women – theories which on close scrutiny have not helped to free us from bias but inherently represent an objective (phallocentric) knowledge of reality.

CONCLUSION Each of us wished the other to have ‘the last word’. Of course, there is no last word. This is only one contribution to the many words that came before, and that will need to follow. The keynotes belong to Sharon and Adrienne Rich. Sharon: Our conversation was not about right and wrong. It was about the freedom of the mind in a particular context. But this freedom can survive outside that context. We talked through our imaginations and we talked about the importance of imagination. We accepted the many paradoxes of my life and life in general without trying to make logical sense of them. We exchanged metaphors and let them float in the space between us. I would like to quote Adrienne Rich (1977: 285) because this is where I would pick up our conversation if we were to meet again now: ‘We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the genius of her own body. In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children (if and when we choose) but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console, and alter human existence – a new relationship to the universe. Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meaning; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin’.

REFERENCES Jay, J. (1991) ‘Terrible knowledge’, Family Therapy Networker, November/ December: 18–29. Jones, A. R. (1986) ‘Writing the body: toward an understanding of l’ecriture feminine’, in E. Showalter (ed.) The New Feminist Criticism, London: Virago. Jones, E. (1991) Working With Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, London: Karnac Books. Kristeva, J. (1974) ‘La femme, ce n’est jamais ca’, Tel Quel 59: 19–24. Main, M. (1985) ‘Security in infancy, childhood and adulthood; a move to the level of

Reclaiming a female mind 85 representation’, in I. Bretherton and E. Warens (eds) Growing Points of Attachment Theory and Research, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 50 (1, 2 Sen. No. 205), 66–104. Maturana, H.R. (1993) ‘Maturana’s basic notions’, Paper, Institute of Family Therapy of Santiago, Chile. Maturana, H.R. and Varela F.J. (1980) Autopoesis and Cognition, Dordrecht: Reidel. Moi, T. (1985/1988) Sexual Textual Politics, London: Routledge. Rich, A. (1977) Of Woman Born, London: Virago. Winnicott, D.W. (1960) ‘Ego distortion in terms of true and false self’, in D.W Winnicott (ed.) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment, London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis.

5

Hierarchy in families where sexual abuse is an issue

Gerrilyn Smith

INTRODUCTION This chapter examines the theme of gender mediated hierarchy in families where sexual abuse is an issue. Intra-familial sexual abuse highlights gender difference in that it is most frequently the male parent who abuses his power, authority and status within the family by sexually abusing the child or children of that family. It is also important to recognise that not only are children targeted and groomed for sexual abuse by individuals who have a sexual interest in children, but that partners can be similarly targeted and will be groomed to be less effective as external inhibitors to sexually abusive acts (Finkelhor 1984). This distance between non-abusing parent and child as well as the non-abusing parent’s effectiveness as a future protector will need to be addressed in rehabilitation work. The hierarchical position of the non-abusing parent – usually the mother – within the family is therefore crucial. However, restructuring the family by putting mothers in the hierarchically superior position runs counter to generally accepted notions of structure in traditional two-parent families. It also carries the additional risk that the father will be infantalised and not take appropriate parental responsibility within the family. Post-protection work must take into account the way in which the family was organised by the offender; in particular the undermining of maternal authority that would have been an essential part of the grooming process that any offender engages in prior to targeting a particular child. Hierarchy needs to be addressed at several different levels – within the parental dyad, the marital subsystem, and the family as a whole, bearing in mind that one member of the parental dyad has already violated and abused their authority.

Family hierarchy and sexual abuse 87 HIERARCHY AND THE EXECUTIVE DYAD The notion that hierarchy (or some form of order) is a necessary condition to the healthy functioning of any system is an accepted tenet of family therapy (Haley 1976). It is often difficult however to conceptualise order in any form other than vertical, where higher positions in the arrangement imply greater status and responsibility. Coupled with this notion of vertical hierarchy is the concept of an executive dyad, traditionally the parents in families. An executive dyad carries greater responsibility for the integrity of, the introduction of new members to, and the general smooth running of, the system. Whilst the functions of the executive are necessary, its exact composition can be flexible. However, social beliefs and customs can continue inadvertently to empower men as fathers even when they have sexually abused their children. This can happen because the treatment issues in relation to fathering are frequently obscured by those in relation to individual adult male needs. This minimises the offender’s parental responsibilities (Smith 1991). The individual adult male’s needs often remain central even after disclosure and conviction and in treatment work: events which clearly impact on all family members. Many rehabilitation programmes are not directed by the pace of the child’s recovery work, but by the need or readiness of the offender and his partner to resume their marital relationship. At the same time the mother’s parental responsibilities are often overemphasised at the expense of her individual adult female needs. This can be coupled with a belief that mothers are equally to blame or responsible for intra-familial sexual abuse (Alexander 1985; Bentovim et al. 1988; Furniss 1983; Gutheil and Avery 1977; Zuelzer and Reposa 1983). Recent research specifically focusing on female sexual offenders (Saradjian 1992) has examined not only the woman’s sexual offending behaviour but also her role as a parental figure. This can be contrasted with research on male sexual offenders which concentrates almost exclusively on the sexual offending behaviour and rarely looks at the male’s parental responsibilities. Within the dominant construction of the parental executive dyad, there is an unspoken assumption of equality between the pair. This ignores the wider social construction of gender and access to institutionalised power conferred by gender that is available to men (Goldner 1985a). Consequently, within the executive system there exists inbuilt inequalities and double messages about the relative importance of maternal and paternal tasks. The tendency to place offenders’ individual treatment needs so centrally in rehabilitation work is evidence of this.

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SYSTEMIC FORMULATIONS OF SEXUAL ABUSE Early systemic formulations of sexual abuse not only ascribed equal responsibility to both parents but also suggested that responsibility was shared by all members of the family ( Bentovim et al. 1988; Furniss 1983). This view provoked strong criticism from many quarters (James and MacKinnon 1990; MacLeod and Saraga 1988; Will 1989). This notion of shared responsibility is reflected more recently in the radical constructivists’ position which, according to Goldner, is one where ‘nothing is real beyond point of view... and inequality is entirely a matter of perspective’ (1985b: 22). Such a stance can lend itself to minimising offenders’ personal responsibility for sexually abusive acts. In describing rehabilitation work it is important that the separation of and difference between marital and parental roles is made clear by the language used to describe pattern. The interchanging use of mother/wife, father/husband descriptions exacerbates the hierarchical confusion frequently present in the family. Women are both wives and mothers simultaneously. The conflicting role demands can produce individual confusion which should not be amplified by professional interventions. Child protection agencies, of necessity and in the interests of the child, should prioritise parental roles over marital ones and place individual adult needs secondary to the responsibilities of parenting.

CASE EXAMPLES The case examples have been selected to illustrate hierarchy in families where sexual abuse is an issue. In each case, the non-abusing parent needs to re-establish or confirm her position as a parent to her children following the disclosure of sexual abuse. Her relationship to the offender also needs to be reconsidered. The first step in the reparative or preventative work is to establish maternal authority as an effective external inhibitor to future episodes of sexual abuse.

Case 1: K family Ellen had two girlfriends from school to stay overnight at her house. Mr K, her stepfather, came into the bedroom with requests to look at their private parts. The girls told their respective parents, who reported it to the school, who in turn contacted social services. After a delay social services came to interview Ellen who also disclosed. Prior to the disclosure there had been no contact with social services. Ellen’s mother and stepfather are white middle-class professionals.

Family hierarchy and sexual abuse 89 Mrs K knew of the allegations by Ellen’s friends and had responded to the disclosures made by the girls by taking away the torch Mr K used when he went into the bedroom. This was clearly totally ineffective as a protective measure. However, it indicates that she felt she had to do something. She did not use her knowledge of the other children’s disclosures to directly confront the issue with either her partner or her children. She cooperated with the statutory investigation. When confronted with her daughter’s disclosure, she believed and supported her. Both Mr and Mrs K did not want the children to be removed from the family home. They agreed that Mr K should move out and that they would all participate in treatment. Despite her cooperation with all aspects of the investigation, Mrs K was viewed as a colluding mother who had knowledge of the sexual abuse but had not acted. She was also seen as being more concerned with her partner than with her child who had been victimised. Mr K on the other hand was viewed sympathetically because he had admitted the offences and his offer to move out of the family home was seen as evidence of his sensitivity as a parent despite the fact that this was a plan worked out by both parents. Mrs K’s relationship with social services deteriorated, especially with the allocated social worker, who would come to do individual work with Ellen and her brother, excluding their mother. The children felt unable to talk, sensing the tension between their mother and the worker. Mrs K was continuing to see Mr K and was very committed to rehabilitation. They arranged to meet in Mr K’s flat at times when the children were visiting their biological father. The local authority felt Mrs K should end her relationship with Mr K and that her continued contact was indicative of her collusion with him. Mrs K eventually refused to work with the local authority social worker and requested referral to an outside agency. Before any treatment work began, a professional consultation was organised which dealt with the wider system issues that were impeding further therapeutic work. For the purposes of this chapter this will not be examined in detail. However, it was important that the authority of the social worker was not disqualified but realigned in relation to the existing hierarchy within the family and that she be re-defined as a potential source of help. The hierarchical structure of this family could be described as the mother in the one-up position in relation to the stepfather, who functioned more as a child than as an adult. Mrs K felt she had become more distant from her children than she wished. She was upset that Ellen had not been able to tell her about what Mr K was doing and that the individual work with Ellen excluded her. She wanted to be more actively involved in helping her child recover but did not know how.

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Following his move out, Mr K became very depressed. Mrs K became preoccupied with him and how he would survive. She started to organise him as she had always done. She was keen for him to begin his treatment work so that they could rebuild their life together as a family. Structural interventions with this family aimed at bringing Mrs K closer to her children and on a more equal footing with her partner. She was encouraged to use the separation from Mr K as a chance to get to know her children again. Together with the social worker, they looked at material devised for helping children to recover and the social worker would allocate homework for Mrs K to carry out with her children. (Mrs K was a schoolteacher, hence the didactic approach in the intervention.) By using Mrs K’s skills, she became more engaged in aiding her children’s recovery rather then reverting to old patterns of interaction where she was overly preoccupied with Mr K’s well-being. By doing this work with the social worker, Mrs K was able to redefine that relationship as a helping one. Mrs K could then encourage her children to meet on their own with the social worker as well as giving them a clear message that if they had worries and were unable to tell her, it was more important to tell someone rather than keep it secret. Work with her partner was more problematic. In part this was because the relationship prior to the disclosure was structured ostensibly with her in the one-up position. She found it hard not to organise Mr K’s treatment for him. A balance was needed that allowed Mr K to take responsibility for his actions but also recognised that, should he return to the family, increased vigilance on Mrs K’s part (as well as his own) would continue to be needed. In part the therapeutic intervention with the marital dyad, whilst addressing the imbalance within the couple, would ultimately reenforce Mrs K’s one-up position by placing a greater onus on her to monitor her partner’s interactions with the children. Given social constructions that the man should occupy the one-up position, Mr K was having some difficulty dealing with the idea that he should defer to Mrs K on issues of parenting but be more challenging on issues within the marriage. He saw Mrs K’s dominance of him as contributing to his sexual offending behaviour. A number of professionals within the network shared this view that it was Mrs K’s one-up position, being distant and unavailable, which caused him to turn to little girls for sexual and emotional gratification. As the work progressed, in his role as parent Mr K was able to apologise to the children and take responsibility for his behaviour. He told Ellen she was right to have made the disclosure and that he was getting help so he wouldn’t do it again. However, he was more conflicted about his relationship with Mrs K which was especially painful for her. It meant exploring the possibility that Mr K had not been

Family hierarchy and sexual abuse 91 attracted to her as a woman but to her children, in particular Ellen, and that now he might not want to continue in the marital relationship. The therapeutic team needed to find ways of dealing with the marital subsystem that realigned the relationship, allowing a more equitable distribution of responsibility for the marriage if it was to continue, whilst maintaining and respecting the necessary inequitable distribution of parental responsibility. Mrs K, by organising her husband’s treatment, amplified the family’s previous hierarchical structure in an unhelpful way. She needed help to disrupt this pattern and develop a closer relationship with her children. This case illustrates some of the ambivalence that professional networks have regarding strong women, as Mrs K’s wish to control and organise the situation was seen as pathological. She was identified as colluding with her husband in the sexual abuse, actively excluded from the recovery process of her children and yet overinvolved in her husband’s progress. Using the existing hierarchy creatively produced more obvious structural changes. Mrs K’s closer relationship with her children offset Mr K’s, which had previously been closer. She felt able to contemplate life without him when she focused on her life with her children. Although she found it extremely difficult, she recognised that Mr K had to take responsibility for himself and his behaviour if they were going to rebuild their life together. She came to see her over-helpfulness as part of the problem. Once this helpfulness was directed more appropriately towards her children she was more able to disengage herself from previous patterns within her marital relationship. Increasing her own self-confidence and assertiveness helped her to recognise that she could expect Mr K to take more responsibility for their marital relationship and still maintain greater parental responsibility herself. She became clearer that her prime motivation for maintaining the relationship was that she wanted a partner for herself rather than a father for the children.

Case 2: R family This family had been known to social services for some time. The children were poor attenders at school, often arriving inadequately dressed. The family is white and working class. Sheila, now 14 years old, told her mother when she was 9 that her father had been giving her sex lessons. Mrs R told Sheila this was wrong and that she would take it up with Mr R, which she did. Years later, Mrs R noticed that Mr R was picking on Sheila and would take her into the bathroom to discipline her. Mrs R spoke to her daughter who disclosed that dad was sexually abusing her. Mrs R called the police. Mr R

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admitted that he was sexually abusing his daughter, was later convicted and served a jail sentence. When this family came to treatment, the local authority wanted to remove all the children from Mrs R’s care because she had failed to protect Sheila. The earlier episode when Sheila told her mother about the sex lessons was cited by social services as evidence of mother’s collusion with the sexual abuse. Mrs R had dealt with the episode by confronting Mr R but did not follow this up by seeking more information from her daughter. However, it had been Mrs R who facilitated the latest disclosure by asking her daughter if anything was happening. In this family, the father occupied the dominant position. He was described as a bully by all his children. In Mr R’s absence the family presented a flattened hierarchy, more like a sibship with no parental figure. Mrs R was offered some individual time as well as family sessions. In the individual sessions, Mrs R described Mr R’s violence towards herself and the children. She also described his sexual violence. She had been to her GP to ask for help as she felt ‘his sex drive was too high’. Mr R refused to go anywhere for help. Mrs R felt that if she let him do these things to her she would be containing him. He regularly tied her up, spanked and raped her. His physical and sexual violence escalated throughout the lifetime of the marriage. As Sheila became older, Mrs R noticed her partner’s interest in their daughter and correctly identified it as inappropriately sexualised. This had prompted her to question her daughter. She was very angry that her own sexual compliance had not prevented her daughter’s abuse. This case demonstrates that far from being sexually rejecting of their husbands (Bentovim et al. 1988; Furniss 1983), many wives try to meet their husbands’ sexual demands. Mrs R saw her husband’s sexual appetite as excessive and deviant, yet she received little advice or support when she tried to get outside help. More detailed work with partners of sex offenders regarding their sexual relationship often reveals similar patterns. Family work involved Mrs R and the children in exploring the legacy of violence within the family. There had been very clear gender messages about the roles of men and women. Stuart expressed fears that he would become like his father; he had anger control problems and was frequently involved in violent exchanges, usually with neighbours. Mrs R in particular found it hard to control Stuart and was worried lest the little ones would also challenge her authority. It was clear that Stuart felt he was the man in the house, especially now that his father was gone. He felt it was his responsibility to discipline his siblings. Family work was needed to alter the hierarchy in the new family. Maternal authority

Family hierarchy and sexual abuse 93 had to be identified, supported and exercised. Stuart was enlisted to support his mother in the task of bringing up his younger brothers. Mrs R obtained a part-time job and initiated divorce proceedings. Mr R wrote long pleading letters from prison, apologising for his behaviour and asking for her forgiveness. These were discussed in family sessions. Strategies were planned and rehearsed as the children felt that Mr R would try to return to the family home and that Mrs R would find it difficult to stop him. The children role-played their father and demonstrated for both their mother and the workers what they thought would be the most likely tactic their father would use. This helped to generate specific solutions for each approach. Mrs R began to receive letters from intermediaries (the prison chaplain, the probation service) acting on her husband’s behalf. Social services helped clarify the situation by clearly indicating that the children would be removed if Mr R were to return. During family sessions Mrs R and the children rehearsed all the reasons why they didn’t want Mr R to return. Mrs R was still very frightened of her husband’s violence. However, she continued to plan her life without him. She still experienced control problems in relation to Stuart. After eighteen months of struggling as a single parent, she began a relationship with another man. She saw this as her best protection from her ex-husband and as a source of support in controlling her sons. Very soon after becoming involved with this new man, she dropped out of treatment. The gender patterns within this family were modified, but not radically transformed. Often the expectations of child protection agencies are unrealistic. In Mrs R’s case, the agency wanted her to function effectively as a single parent on reduced finances, get her children to attend school after years of messages from their father to the contrary, control her 15-year-old son, help her 14-year-old daughter recover from sexual abuse and continue to keep a violent and abusive ex-partner out of her life. Mrs R was effective in helping her daughter and her sons understand and recover from the experience of sexual abuse. She was less successful in challenging her sons’ aggression and anger control problems. She found a job for herself. Becoming involved with a new partner was the clearest way of conveying to her ex-partner that the relationship was over. It also signalled a new beginning for her as she felt more confident in herself and clearer about what she would and would not tolerate within a marital relationship.

Case 3: S family The S family were referred for a court ordered family assessment. When the family

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had moved into a new area, Mr S had gone himself to the social services department to inform them he was a Schedule One offender, with serious criminal convictions for sexual offences against children in his past. The family consisted of Mr S in his fifties, registered disabled, Mrs S in her twenties, and two children, Katy, 10, and Anna, 8. Mrs S was expecting a child. The local authority became concerned when Mr S came to be in the house alone with his daughters when his wife went to hospital to have the baby, and initiated legal proceedings. The family thought they were being persecuted, as they had informed social services of the Schedule One convictions voluntarily, and until the impending birth there had been no statutory involvement. A more detailed assessment focusing on the non-abusing parent’s capacity to protect (Smith 1994) was requested. As part of the assessment, Mrs S was asked to attend a number of sessions without her partner. In part this was to assess her degree of independence. From the supporting paperwork and background information it was discovered that Mr S was an old family friend and was said to have had a longstanding affair with Mrs S’s mother. Mrs S had been received into care following the discovery that she was being sexually abused by Mr S, for which he was convicted. She was the only child from her sibgroup to be received into care. Mr S disputes paternity of Katy and Anna, saying that they are his son’s (from another relationship) children. It is also believed that Mr S is the biological father of Mrs S. In this case the hierarchical confusion is evident, with many family members occupying different generational roles simultaneously. When Mrs S’s baby was born, he had several congenital defects. Given the theme of disputed paternity, the history of Mrs S’s mother’s affair with Mr S and the baby’s birth defects, the possibility that Mr S is indeed the father of Mrs S has to be considered. Mrs S was unable to discuss spontaneously Mr S’s Schedule One offences. She knew generally what a Schedule One offence was and recognised that because of his previous convictions, professionals were concerned that he would offend again. When confronted with the professional knowledge that one of his convictions was against her as a child, she volunteered additional information that she felt angry with her mother for ‘putting her in care’. She said everyone in the family was involved in the sexual abuse, so her separation from the family confirmed both her feeling of difference from her siblings and her confusion as to why she was singled out. She revealed that Mr S had abused her from a very young age and that he had lied about the age of onset in order to receive a lesser sentence. She was confused about what constituted sexual abuse, giving a text book definition but not relating it to her own experience. The local authority thought that she should tell her children about her

Family hierarchy and sexual abuse 95 own abuse by Mr S in order to protect them. She said she was able to talk to her children about sexual abuse and could tell them about Mr S’s convictions generally, but could not say that she herself had been victimised by him. She discussed the theme of disputed paternity both within her own family of origin and her current family and did not have any idea why Mr S would not accept paternity of her children. Mrs S had lived only three months of her life away from Mr S, which she described as the best months of her life. She did not decide to have a relationship with him. He lived with her, had sex with her and, because they claimed state benefit from the same address, they were classed as a family. Her mother continued to have an on/off relationship with him which made Mrs S angry. He threatened to have the children taken away from her and given to her mother if she made any attempt to move away from him. He constantly put her down. He told her she was a terrible mother, a lousy housekeeper and dreadful in bed. She stayed with him because she was frightened of him and he was the children’s father. She felt that if she began to recognise herself as a victim of his sexual abuse she would not be able to live with him. She derived enormous satisfaction from her children on whom she doted. She brought all of her children with her, because she didn’t want to leave them alone with Mr S. She was appropriately caring and attentive and managed all the extra care the baby required because of his birth defects (the older children were not present during the interview itself). The children were very attached to her, showed no signs of disturbance in school and functioned at developmentally appropriate levels. Mrs S expressed a willingness to come to future interviews to explore some of the issues raised in more detail. She was clear that if forced to choose between Mr S and the children she would not hesitate to choose her children. She did not attend any subsequent appointments. Mr S forbade it, saying he needed her to be with him because of his disability. Any alternative forms of care arranged for him were unsuccessful in freeing Mrs S to attend further appointments. Ideally, mother and her three children should have been received into care. Mrs S’s childhood experience of sexual abuse was continuing but because she was now over 16 and living supposedly of her own free will with Mr S, her experience was not defined as abusive. On the contrary, her relationship with him was being framed as one of common-law partner. The twenty-three year age discrepancy was not seen as relevant or of concern. The space and opportunity for Mrs S to define her relationship with Mr S and to reflect on her childhood experiences did not exist. The one session that did occur proved so threatening to Mr S that he exercised his authority and ensured she had no

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further sessions, ironically by assuming a one-down position of invalid. It seems most unlikely that Mrs S would be able to protect her children from Mr S. He will sexually abuse them when and if he feels like it. He has had no treatment. He continues to lie about his original offences and uses his current relationship with her as evidence of his enduring love for her. Removal of the children seemed precipitous however, as there was no evidence that sexual abuse had taken place or that the children’s development was not progressing. The children were well cared for at a physical level and clearly attached both to each other and to their mother. Had the local authority initiated proceedings when they were first informed that Mr S was a Schedule One offender, a different approach could have been taken. Allowing the family to live together with no intervention until the birth of the third child undermined any sense of urgency the local authority wished to convey. The idea that in the years previously Mr S had not spent time alone with the girls is naive. By not attempting to engage the mother separately, and dealing with Mr and Mrs S as a couple, they strengthened Mr S’s position within the family and weakened that of Mrs S. Mr S’s complete control of the situation was amply demonstrated when the case was heard in court. Both Mr and Mrs S were present with the baby. Mr S arrived in his wheelchair which required numerous members of court to help manoeuvre him into the court room. He clearly demonstrated how the needs of the disabled were not catered for. He sat at the back of court listening to the evidence, shaking his head at points of disagreement. Mrs S in contrast gave all her attention to the baby. When the case was finished (a supervision order was granted), Mr S was wheeled out from the court room and lifted out to the car-park for the couple to begin their journey home. As the professionals rounded the corner, also en route to the carpark, Mr S was seen to propel himself to his car, stand up, fold the wheelchair, open the car boot, place the wheelchair in the boot and get into the driver’s seat.

DISCUSSION The clinical examples indicate that hierarchy needs to be attended to when intervening in systems where sexual abuse is an issue. However, the gender implications in establishing hierarchy must be recognised, as well as the inequality of gender arrangements between men and women which are weighted in favour of men even in the most ideal circumstances. Some of the basic principles identified by a model which attends to family structure are relevant to treatment interventions. It is important to restore or establish an

Family hierarchy and sexual abuse 97 intergenerational sexual boundary (Furniss 1983). The parental responsibilities of establishing authority and providing a protecting environment are priority clinical tasks (Smith 1994). Parental and marital relationships are not necessarily syntonic. In sexual abuse cases the state places the emphasis on the parental relationship. This should be reinforced by clinical interventions. Earlier formulations of the aetiology of sexual abuse encouraged clinicians to focus on the marital relationship, often to the exclusion of parental responsibilities. Parents as a concept is ungendered but parenting as an experience is. Phyllis Chesler (1986) in her book Mothers on Trial, uses the term ‘mother-reared children’ to help emphasise this. Maternal authority needs more attention, not only in and of itself, but also in interaction with the gender of the child. Both gender and generation play a role in establishing hierarchy in families (Goldner 1988). Sexual abuse often reinforces the former, while substantially undermining the latter, as in the case of the S family. In the R family, gender mediated messages were communicated through the sexual abuse in the targeting of the female child with male children as bystanders. This issue came up in the family sessions where the loyalties of the children, to gender or generation, were conflicted. This was especially the case for the boys in the family who had to decide whether to ally themselves with their sister who had been abused (generation) or with their father who had abused her (gender). Therapeutic work must address these conflicting loyalties. Hierarchy is not static and individuals can move between one-up and one-down positions. This in itself is not unhealthy, as the constant movement between these positions allows for the possibility of equality over time within a relationship. This movement generally operates in favour of the individual who has maximum choice, usually men by virtue of their greater gender privilege. Additionally a powerful member of a family can move to the one-down position when confronted by a greater authority such as legal intervention. The S case demonstrated this clearly. This is especially important in working with male sex offenders who may present themselves to male professionals in the one-down position but with female professionals attempt to move into the one-up position – asserting gender over professional status. Hierarchical confusion in sexual abuse cases, rather then diminishing over time, amplifies. Paradoxically though, it can come to be seen as normative as in the case of Mr and Mrs S where, by virtue of Mrs S’s gender and her age, she is no longer viewed as his stepchild or victim but his partner. In part the normalisation of perverted structures occurs because they mirror accepted gender inequalities within society. Age differences in favour of males in marital relationships, for instance, are seen as normal. Yet, despite Mrs S’s now being older, Mr S is still able to continue his oppressive

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sexual interest in her, and worse, to use her as a vehicle to produce other victims. In such a perverted hierarchy, it is easier for professionals to accept the apparent construction of husband, wife and children which allows them to view Mrs S as colluding and protecting her partner rather than recognising that despite the passage of time she remains Mr S’s victim. Whilst we may like to believe that there is no totally victim-like position, until Mrs S has the freedom to define herself, she remains unequally bound to Mr S as daughter and wife. She also has to struggle to retain her role as mother to her children. By refusing to reveal to her children that Mr S’s sexual offences occurred against her which social services requested her to do, she can be seen to be maintaining a boundary around information that she feels is inappropriate for her children to know. An appreciation and understanding of hierarchy including its perversions is essential in working with sexual abuse (Smith 1992). A failure to understand and address these issues within the therapeutic context can ignore the perversion of hierarchy and reinforce its normal facade. Equally, women assuming hierarchically superior positions in families, even when sexual abuse has been disclosed, can be viewed as pathological or their position can be seen to have contributed to the sexual abuse in the first place. Protection within families comes from the responsible exercise of parental authority in both its gendered forms (maternal and paternal). In identifying the abuse of authority as central to our understanding of sexual abuse, we must confront the concept of hierarchy and its connexion to wider systems of oppression be they gender, generation, race or class. This implies that hierarchy is intertwined with power. However, it does not deny circular reciprocity in relationships or the necessary interdependencies that exist between different individuals. Professional interventions should avoid insisting on unrealistic hierarchical transformations. Professionals should be aware of the difficulties of placing mothers in positions of greater authority both in relation to their children and in relation to their partners without due consideration being given to the wider social context, which confers little value but great responsibility on maternal authority. A perverted hierarchy is a structure in which existing notions are amplified in service of the needs of the perpetrator or the most powerful, at the expense of the needs of the victims or the least powerful (Smith 1981). Naming structured inequalities within family relationships does not mean that hierarchy itself must be abandoned. It does however require a more realistic approach that recognises those inequalities and works towards the ideal of equal but different roles within families.

Family hierarchy and sexual abuse 99 REFERENCES Alexander, P. (1985) ‘A systems theory conceptualization of incest’, Family Process 24: 79–88. Bentovim, A., Elton, A., Hildebrand, J., Tranter, M. and Vizard, E. (1988) Child Sexual Abuse within the Family, London: Wright. Chesler, P. (1986) Mothers on Trial, Washington: Seal Press. Finkelhor, D. (1984) Child Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research, New York: Free Press. Furniss, T. (1983) ‘Family process in the treatment of intra-familial child sexual abuse’, Journal of Family Therapy 4: 263–279. Goldner, V. (1985a) ‘Feminism and family therapy’, Family Process 24: 31–47. —— (1985b) ‘Warning: family therapy may be hazardous to your health’, Family Therapy Networker 9 (6): 19–23. —— (1988) ‘Generation and gender: normative and covert hierarchies’, Family Process 27: 17–31. Gutheil, T. and Avery, M. (1977) ‘Multiple overt incest as family defence against loss’, Family Process 16: 105–116. Haley, J. (1976) Problem Solving Therapy, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hooper, C. (1992) Mothers Surviving Child Sexual Abuse, London: Routledge. James, K. and MacKinnon, L. (1990) ‘The “incestuous family” revisited: a critical analysis of family therapy myths’, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 16: 71– 88. MacLeod, M. and Saraga, E. (1988) ‘Challenging the orthodoxy: towards a feminist theory and practice’, Feminist Review 28: 16–56. Saradjian, J. (1992) ‘Typologies of female perpetrators of child sexual abuse: an emerging perspective’, unpublished Master’s Dissertation, Department of Psychiatry, University of Leeds. Smith, G. (1981) ‘Incest and male power’, New Forum 7: 56–57. —— (1991) ‘Work with sex offenders: keeping it child centred’, unpublished paper presented at 1991 ROTA Conference, Liverpool. —— (1992) ‘The unbearable traumatogenic past: child sexual abuse’, in V. Varma (ed.) The Secret Lives of Vulnerable Children, London: Routledge. —— (1994) ‘Parent, partner, protector: conflicting role demands for mothers of sexually abused children’, in M. Erooga, T. Morrison and R. Beckett (eds) Sexual Offending Against Children: Assessment and Treatment of Male Abusers, London: Routledge. Will, D. (1989) ‘Feminism, child sexual abuse and the (long overdue) demise of systems mysticism’, Context 1: 12–15. Zuelzer, N. and Reposa, R. (1983) ‘Mothers in incestuous families’, International Journal of Family Therapy 5: 98–109.

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Autonomy and connection Gendered thinking in a statutory agency dealing with child sexual abuse Jane Dutton Conn

INTRODUCTION This chapter looks at the contributions which systemic and gender sensitive thinking make to analysing male and female roles in the world of paid employment. The specific organisational focus is social services, the individuals involved social work managers and practitioners, and the work content, child sexual abuse. The impact of gender difference on the relationship between workers and the effect this has on the work system itself (and therefore on the service) is explored through a small-scale research study and through the analysis of case conference material. Within social work, particularly in relation to child sexual abuse (CSA), there has been acknowledgement of the importance of gender difference and the unequal distribution of power between women and men (e.g. Dominelli and McLeod 1989; Hudson 1989; Parton and Parton 1989). Research in CSA work has found behavioural patterns that were gender related, with both family members and workers at times adopting stereotypical positions (e.g. male ‘doing’ and female ‘being’; see Chodorow 1989). The potential for men and women working collaboratively in such a context therefore seemed particularly problematic, and yet in this work the importance of collaborative working, within and between agencies, is considered imperative. Of course gender difference forms only one part of the use and abuse of power within organisations and between members of organisations and client groups. In a ‘dominator’ culture (Eisler 1987) any difference, for example, of race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, age and class, can imply inferiority or superiority. Different situations may particularly highlight one or more of these, and place different emphasis on the importance of each (Dutton Conn 1993: 41).

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CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND THE SOCIAL WORK SYSTEM The connection between the ‘public life’ of the work context and the ‘private life’ and psychological development of the individual has been examined from a number of different perspectives (e.g. Abott and Wallace 1991; Chodorow 1978; Gilligan 1982; Gorell Barnes 1990; Morgan 1986). Differences in personal feelings that men and women experience will have implications for working together within the CSA area. Workers of both genders have strong and often uncomfortable associations with aspects of their clients’ lives. CSA strikes at the core of the nature and definition of intimate relationships, and therefore evokes particularly uncomfortable feeelings. Inevitably these at times produce professional differences which may mirror some of the confusion inherent in the work itself. The Cleveland Inquiry (1988) in an attempt to address this, recommended interagency cooperation, and the setting up of area review committees to create ‘an habitual context of working together’. However, Whetton (1982) quoted in Stephenson (1989:18) comments: ‘Mandated cooperation creates a negative, fatalistic attitude in the organisation’s staff that sharply limits its effectiveness’. It is in the context of these rather contradictory notions that the debate has started to focus increasingly on the issue of power; that is, the relationship between the family and the state (Frost 1990). In a situation where power of adults over children is the key issue, the way in which professional and statutory authorities understand the power relationships within their own organisations becomes particularly important. These relationships are partly defined by the hierarchical structure of the organisation, partly by social constructs such as gender, and partly by the workers’ individual experiences which affect attitude and behaviour. When placed within the arena of care and control the potential for confusion and ambivalence is heightened. Over the past few years, child abuse enquiries (e.g. Jasmine Beckford Inquiry 1985; Cleveland Inquiry 1988) have constantly indicated a polarisation between workers’ concern with showing care in response to the family’s experience of deprivation on the one hand, and exerting control on the other. Recognition that girls are abused in greater numbers than boys and that a larger proportion of perpetrators are male has informed a gender sensitive debate around power in this context (e.g. Conn and Turner 1990; Hearn 1990; MacLeod and Saraga 1988). The Gender and Violence Project at the Ackerman Institute has particularly addressed the notion that ‘abusive relationships exemplify, in extremis, the stereotypical gender arrangements that structure intimacy between men and women generally’ (Goldner et al. 1990: 343). This includes male identification coming through separation and difference from the primary care-giver (almost always female), and female

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identification being forged through similarity with that care-giver. A social context which elevates the male perspective and devalues the female perspective contributes to creating a climate in which abuse can occur.

THE RESEARCH STUDY This was a small-scale qualitative research study designed to explore women’s and men’s experience of CSA work in a social services organisation. The study reported here is part of a wider study, an element of which, concerned specifically with supervisory relationships, has been discussed elsewhere (Dutton Conn 1991, 1993). The study examined gendered difference and similarity, particularly in relation to the complex power relationships within the organisation, which at times mirror some of the aspects of family life which workers are trying to clarify and untangle. The main research questions were: (1) what is the nature of gender related difference and similarity in this specific work context, if any; and (2) what is the impact of these differences and similarities on professional relationships, and subsequently on the service?

Methodology It was recognised that the research process itself might reflect similar issues about power and control, and a decision was taken to use a research style and approach which would explicitly address the power issues in the relationship between the interviewer and the respondent. Just as all knowledge is political (i.e. reflecting power relations; Foucault 1980) so all knowledge is gendered. Research has largely taken place within a structure of man-made rules, but there have been a growing number of studies which offer significant contributions to the development of a female-oriented research approach. Oakley’s (1981) study of the transition to motherhood of fiftyfive women is one. Her research strategy of ‘connection’ with her respondents was the antithesis of the ‘distancing’ techniques of traditional research. Ideas of separation and connection explored here similarly influenced the design of this study and the choice of methods. The researcher was striving to find a way of thinking about the research itself which valued the notion of connection and intimacy, without devaluing difference and separation. It must also be noted that the observations, themselves filtered by the participants context, are further filtered by the observer, in this case the researcher (Von Foerster 1981). The reflections, views and ideas

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propounded in the interviews were developed through conversation, and need to be seen as such rather than as objectifiable fact. Information was drawn from semi-structured interviews and case conference observations. The interviews offered the opportunity to use both ‘connecting’ questions and questions which required a more distanced response. It seemed important to describe the research method overtly to interviewees, to acknowledge and address the power relationships inherent in the work. The researcher (female, white European) conducted all the interviews. Differences or similarities of race and and gender between researcher and researched will influence the research interviewing process. In this study respondents were specifically asked their views about how this might influence their response.

Interviewees The systems targeted for study were area teams comprising community based field social workers, home care and domiciliary services and their administrative support. The intake and children and families teams were the primary sources for child protection referrals. Social workers were key workers, middle managers their immediate supervisors, and senior managers both supervisors of this group and policy makers. The organisation was said to offer male and female applicants equal access to posts at all levels. At the time of this study the representation of women at senior management level was 20 per cent in comparison to 80 per cent male representation: a higher proportion of women to men than found by Brock and Davis (1985), who found 91 per cent of senior managers were male. Among middle managers the gender balance was even and therefore so was the sample selection. Women were overrepresented at practitioner level with a 60 per cent–40 per cent bias towards female workers. For this part of the study, six people were interviewed at each level, selected randomly (apart from their gender) from staffing lists within the appropriate sections. The first eighteen people approached (initially by telephone) agreed to be involved. The context, content and aims of the research were discussed during this initial contact and each person was offered a copy of the research outline and areas to be addressed. Interviews were to be held at a venue chosen by the respondents; anonymity and confidentiality were guaranteed. A semi-structured interview covered four main areas: (1) Current work and organisational position; (2) Theoretical framework; (3) Working practice – self and departmental; (4) Use of self and of support systems. Data was collected via notetaking and audio tapes which were transcribed and coded.

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RESEARCH FINDINGS A range of variables within a small-scale study of this kind will have an impact on the findings. In this study, for example, an individual’s age, experience, class, race and cultural identity affected the way in which gender, power and difference were viewed in supervisory and managerial relationships. The semi-structured interview enabled these differences to be explored, and respondents were able to comment on the most important influences for them in the formulation of their individual belief systems around their professional roles. It was therefore possible to look for areas of commonality when coding these responses, and some key themes emerged. These will be reported under three headings – organisational issues, understanding of CSA, and personal issues – for the three different groups of workers: senior managers, middle managers and practitioners.

Senior managers This was the only group which did not contain an equal gender balance (four men and two women). This imbalance of gender at senior management level is an important organisational issue in itself, connected to how women are encouraged to see themselves and how others see them in relation to career advancement (Stamp 1986; see also Wilkes, Chapter 14 this volume). The six participants were all responsible in some way for policy making in relation to children and families and also for supervising middle managers.

Organisational issues All six participants agreed that the impact of people’s feelings was more strongly felt in CSA than any other area of work. They were all conscious of anxiety about making the wrong decisions, based on the difficulty of untangling information when the strength of emotion was high. They were also concerned about the stress involved for practitioners and their immediate supervisors, and practitioners’ lack of knowledge. All these factors potentially contributed to unclear decision making processes. There were however some marked areas of difference between the men and the women linked to gender. The connection between the issues involved in CSA and their professional role was strongest for the two women interviewed. They thought the complexity of this area of work frequently made their role and tasks unclear. In comparison, the men thought their role and tasks in this context were very clearly

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defined by organisational rules and expectations. In this area of work particularly they saw themselves having different roles at different times, and keeping these delineated was seen as helpful. Both women found being distant in their managerial role from the CSA work made them feel less in control of it. One of the women used the word ‘distant’, the other used ‘removed’. They did not think it was appropriate to be more involved because of their position, but found this personally difficult. The men, on the other hand, thought their distance from the work made them feel more in control (two used the word ‘distance’, two ‘overview’). The women described their management style as ‘concerned with process’, or ‘process focused’. The language they used when talking about this was facilitative and interactive, e.g. ‘helping question assumptions’, ‘help to feel less vulnerable’. The men all described their style in this context as ‘case focused’ and the language used to describe this was generally instrumental, e.g. ‘fact finding’, ‘use of evidence’, ‘acting in the child’s best interests’. Three of the men did not think gender issues were important in terms of their role. The work for them was focused on policy, information and the legal possibilities, rather than on the relationship between aspects of the work and personnel. In contrast there was a definite connection made by the women between the sensitivity of the work, potential blame or exclusion of the abuser (usually male), and the relationship between supervisors and supervisees of different sexes. They were both clear that this related to gender difference (their words), but were unable to be more specific about this connection and therefore were not sure how to use this understanding in the context of their work. Both thought fewer women in the social services hierarchy meant there was generally a stronger emphasis on male ways of doing things.

Understanding of CSA The only point of similarity between the men and women was that they considered societal contexts to be important in contributing to the occurrence of CSA. They focused on different aspects of these however (apart from one man, who generally had the same views as the women). Both women and one man preferred not to generalise about families where CSA had occurred. They said they tried to consider each individual situation according to its context. The other men said they found it helpful to have definite if general views about a ‘type’ of family in which CSA might occur. The wider societal context contributing to CSA was, for these three men, lodged in sexualised male attitudes towards women and children, validated and exacerbated by socialisation processes and the media, pornography and strip clubs.

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The women had general views about some aspects, however, which informed their thinking. For example, they were concerned with the monopoly of power both without and within the family by men over women and children, and saw this as instrumental in contributing to a general validation of domestic abuse. They saw the greater number of male abusers as a reflection of this monopoly of power and use of power over people, rather than an authority invested in the self which is then used in relationships with others. They saw female abusers as acting within the context of male power, i.e. although clearly responsible for their actions, these took place within a wider context of male domination. Three of the men said they felt more anger towards female abusers than male. They could not understand how women could act in this way and thought that either the women had been abused themselves or had been coerced by men.

Personal issues All participants said they were aware of their own family experiences, particularly as parents in relation to this area of work. Only one participant was not a parent. None of the participants in this group sought support from others within the department in relation to this work because none of them felt that they could trust others sufficiently to do so. The women thought being able to discuss the issues raised by the work and to have some support was vital and therefore felt they were missing something, whereas three of the men did not think they needed any particular support.

Middle managers Organisational issues Three women and three men were interviewed, all of whom were responsible for supervising practitioners involved in CSA work. All participants saw their role as helping workers to maintain appropriate boundaries and ensuring that procedures were followed. They were also all conscious of discussions about gender within the work force, both in relation to supervision and to allocation of work. They all said their male supervisees found it more difficult to discuss issues around sexuality, possibly because most abusers were male. Unlike the men, the women in this group all described their roles as ‘supportive’, ‘advisory’, ‘enabling’, ‘facilitating’. The language they used was very similar. The women thought the supervision they received was the major influence on their decision making, whereas borough policy and the legal system were the major influences on decision making for the men.

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Understanding of CSA Everyone in this group was actively concerned about the use and abuse of power by men over women and adults over children and saw themselves as influenced by feminism. They all had quite a strong sense of the relationship between themselves, their feelings and the work they were doing, and both men and women were interested in further training. The women’s understanding about sexual abuse was based on their own experience of relationships and through their practice. The men’s came primarily from reading feminist theory about power relationships between men and women and from their understanding of being part of a culture which validates pornography in the media. Both men and women had quite complicated reactions to abusers of their own gender. The men felt anger towards male perpetrators but also a sense of guilt as men themselves having power, which they experienced particularly when dealing with CSA. The women’s response to female perpetrators was complicated by their understanding of women’s experience in a patriarchal society. They all reported some confusion about these responses and wanted more supervision from another woman to explore and understand their reactions to this work. They were very aware of the impact of the work on themselves and the possible consequences of not understanding this sufficiently.

Personal issues Trust and safety, both reportedly lacking within the organisation, were important issues for both men and women. Only one woman thought she could explore issues safely with her female supervisor. Support systems were mainly outside work, with some peer group support within. Everyone in this group talked overtly about the importance of maintaining some distance from the work, recognising that the impact of the work at a personal level could lead them to become too closely involved to be helpful. They also thought that there were more differences of opinion, and more was left unsaid in this area of work than in any other. There were no major differences of view between the genders about personal issues.

Practitioners Organisational issues Three men and three women were interviewed and all used supervision, case conferences

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and specialist resources to contribute to their thinking and planning in CSA work. All the women had chosen to become involved in this area of work and had actively sought further training. They had also developed collaborative support networks, as they all saw this as their most challenging and difficult area of work. They considered gender to be very important in terms of who did the work, with whom they discussed the work and the implications of the worker’s gender for the child and the family. Their approach centred around empowerment of mothers (and through them of children) to enable them to identify their own needs and take more control of their own and their children’s lives. The men in contrast were unclear how to intervene in order to facilitate change. Lack of clarity was reflected in differences between them about what they considered the most important focus, e.g. one man mentioned poverty and social deprivation, another the impact of male sexuality in working with single female parents. None had chosen to train in this area of work, and they were ambivalent about being involved in it at all. If they did have to be, usually because of staff shortages, they always involved a female worker in some way. Gender issues were not consciously part of their thinking or discussion other than in their concern about the misuse of male power.

Understanding of CSA There was no similarity in the comments made by the different genders working at practitioner level. The women thought they had a clear theoretical understanding of the issues, based upon the abuse of power, {particularly male power) of adults over children. They thought that the training, joint work and discussions they had been involved in enabled them to feel more empowered to do the work. They experienced conflictual feelings about women in the course of doing their work, such as anger at mothers for ‘failing’ to protect and at girls for ‘putting themselves at risk’. The men did not think they had a clear theoretical understanding of the issues which they saw to be based on an abuse of power, predominantly male power. They also emphasised that the way in which men were encouraged to express their sexuality was important, but felt overall that their understanding lacked coherence. All the men felt uncomfortable and confused doing this work, but did not wish to use training or supervision further or to become more involved. They could articulate the discomfort they experienced but said they dealt with it by concentrating on organising and carrying out specific tasks.

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Personal issues All participants, apart from one man, said they brought their own family experiences into their work. Supervision was not mentioned by anyone as a forum for discussion of difficult personal issues raised by the work. The women had all developed support systems to talk about the work among their peers and friends within and outside the office. They deliberately did not discuss the work with their male partners (two interviewees said this was ‘protective’ of their men) as they thought it would be too upsetting or too difficult for them as men to contemplate other men abusing children. The men approached the issue of support differently, although not uni- formly. One man said he actively discussed his work with his female partner and he thought women were emotionally stronger than men. The others said they did not need to discuss the work at all in their personal lives.

SUMMARY OF THEMES In collating the themes elicited in the interviews at all three levels in the organisation, distinct differences emerge between women and men in their beliefs and understanding of CSA. These can be understood as a difference of ‘male’ and ‘female’ orientation. A ‘female’ orientation could be described as maintaining control of the work, of the self and of the context by a close involvement with the persons for whom the worker had primary responsibility (e.g. child/non-abusing parent, social worker, etc.). This involved individual discussion, training, personal development and so on. A ‘male’ orientation essentially maintained control through preserving some distance in these relationships, through for example a concentration on policy rather than close attention to individual experience. It was apparent that these differences in orientation affected working relationships, the way work was carried out and, at times, decisions about outcome. These differences were further observed in the case conference setting, of which the following are two examples.

CASE CONFERENCE ANALYSIS Three main areas of case conference functioning were selected for observation of possible gendered differences. These were (1) the relationship between social worker, senior social worker and the case conference group; (2) the relationship between senior and social worker; and (3) the decision making process. The researcher joined the case conference as a non-participating observer and the following observations have been selected for report.

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Conference A There were ten participants (four men and six women) at the first conference, plus the researcher. There was a clear division in the seating, with the four men sitting together. The female participants were as follows: chairperson (social services senior manager), child protection coordinator, specialist social worker (working with the mother), child therapist (working with the children), day nursery officer (the younger children attended the nursery) and the health visitor (concerned with the youngest child). The teacher (from the children’s school), the court officer, the senior social worker (middle manager and supervisor) and the social worker (for the whole family) were all male. The issues for discussion were whether a single female parent had adequate care and control of her six children and the nature of alleged abuse.

(1) The relationship between social worker, senior and conference group The male social worker made the major contribution to the conference. He referred to his senior only twice in relation to decisions made which they had discussed, and did not look to him to intervene or add anything to what he was saying. He added comments to the contribution of the specialist social worker, child therapist and day nursery officer and cut across contributions from the latter two workers twice. There was a clear gender division in the conference among those who were working directly with the family. The social worker (and senior) and the teacher (all male) particularly focused on issues of control, e.g. if mother could not exercise this the children should be removed. The specialist social worker, child therapist and day nursery worker (all female) were all primarily concerned with care, including care and support of the mother, in order to help her with her parenting. There was a further divergence around the nature of the abuse. The social worker saw this as physical, some of it stemming from lack of parental control, and mainly relating to three of the boys. The specialist social worker and child therapist were also concerned that there had been some sexual abuse of two of the children, although not by mother, and were particularly concerned that the one girl in the family (who was very withdrawn) was being overlooked. The chair of the conference took a strong position in relation to this debate and supported the concern about the female child. For example, she said: ‘Because girls may not act out as boisterously as boys and may be withdrawn and therefore easier to handle, they regularly receive less attention.’ She also strongly supported the notion of ‘caring’ for the mother, working with her individually as well as in the family

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context, and providing appropriate services within the home, rather than removing the children to respite care when the concern of the professional system became too great. She quite clearly contradicted the approach of the male workers, other than agreeing with them that the children’s names should remain on the register for further assessment.

(2) The relationship between senior and social worker As has been noted, both were male. There was no disagreement between them, and the senior’s contribution supported the social worker’s statements. The latter operated independently in the conference, largely without reference to his senior, whose role therefore appeared less important.

(3) The Decision making process As previously noted, the decision for the children’s names to remain on the register for further assessment was not disputed. The process of arriving at this decision was however different for the male and female workers. Both were concerned that the mother needed to be more in control of the children and their lives. The male workers thought that this should be accomplished by being clear and authoritative about the consequences of not doing this. The female workers saw it more as a process of exploring with the mother what made this so difficult for her and whether there were ways of helping her to change. Both were concerned with the best interests of the children; for the male workers this related to anxiety about their safety, to be resolved through respite care. The female workers thought that service within the home, preventing the removal of the children at this point, was a preferable way of dealing with this anxiety. In this conference, the person with the most power over decision making was female. She (the chairperson) made the major decision, specifically relating the reasons for this to supporting a female single parent under very difficult circumstances to try to enable her to remain in control of her family, rather than social services assuming that role. The language used was the language of enablement. To this end the individual work with mother and children undertaken by the specialist social worker and child therapist would continue. This was in spite of the fact that the male social worker’s alternative view had taken up the largest amount of air space within the conference.

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Conference B There were eight participants in this conference, six men and two women (both of whom sat together) plus the researcher. The chairperson, senior social worker, GP, probation officer and two teachers were all male. The social worker and specialist social worker were female. This conference concerned a mother, father, son and daughter, where the father had sexually abused the daughter, been prosecuted and given a short prison sentence with a six-month probation follow-up. He was living in the area and putting pressure on the family to return home.

(1) The relationship between social worker, senior and conference group The social worker and senior clearly had some different views about the work, and the best way of carrying it out. The specialist social worker was most closely allied with the social worker (both female) about what was happening within the family and how the work should be carried out. Their plan, supported by the (male) GP, was to work with the family (without the perpetrator) about what had happened and how the mother could be supported in protecting her daughter in the future. The other members of the conference (five men) were sceptical about the mother’s ability to protect; all seemed to be in agreement that she had failed to protect in the past and by doing so had ‘colluded’ with the abuse. She had been described by a police officer as a ‘cold fish’ and as ‘reserved’ by the probation officer, who, together with the GP, described the daughter as ‘provocative’. The chairperson also referred to the mother as ‘colluding’ with the abuse by ‘failing to protect’ in his summing up, and the senior social worker agreed with this.

(2) The relationship between senior and social worker The senior contradicted and disagreed with several statements made by the social worker and the specialist social worker. He particularly disagreed over the question of the mother’s ‘collusion’ and ‘failure to protect’, which the other two workers saw as the mother having difficulty in acknowledging what she suspected might have been happening. As soon as she knew for sure, she excluded her husband from the house and supported her daughter in taking legal action, although she found this process very difficult. The senior also thought that all the work should be concentrated on helping the daughter. These differences were not resolved in the conference.

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(3) The decision making process There was some disagreement about the young person’s name being removed from the Child Protection Register. The social worker and specialist social worker thought that the mother had taken sufficient control of the situation and would feel supported by the daughter’s name being removed. She had indicated that she wanted the work to continue. The senior, probation officer, police and teachers thought that her name should remain on the register. The chairperson agreed and this was the decision taken. It was also agreed that the work should continue in its present form. The use of language was that of ‘managing’ the work. In this instance the views of the female practitioners directly involved with the female non-abusing parent were not supported by the (male) chairperson. These practitioners were hierarchically in the least powerful position in the case conference, but were most concerned with the work. Their view was not validated. Consequently the mother’s view was also not heard, although she was the person most directly concerned with protection.

DISCUSSION OF MAJOR THEMES This is a small-scale piece of research which has many limitations. However, the findings, connecting as they do with recent explorations of gender difference in the fields of psychology, social work and family therapy, have some potentially important implications for men and women, managers and practitioners working together in this field. Gendered differences vis-à-vis separation and connection were consistently present in both interview and case conference settings. For the women who were interviewed, maintaining a close connection with the work gave them a clearer sense of control over it, and over themselves in that context. The description of the connection varied according to position in the organisation but whether primarily concerned with direct practice, supervision or policy making, the need to connect with others through discussion and training was paramount. Work in psychological theory on gendered identity has dealt with the importance for women of connection with others. Chodorow (1978) argues that the female child’s experience of similarity to her mother or primary carer provides a sense of connection, important in later relationships. It has also been proposed that women’s morality is informed by a perspective of care and concern about the impact of decisions on interpersonal relationships (Gilligan 1982; Gilligan et al. 1987).

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For the men interviewed, at each level a consistent theme emerged about using the written word (policy, guidelines, research, etc.) to obtain both knowledge and control. The closer they were to the work (as the practitioners were) the less in control and the more confused they felt. Gilligan’s work on the construction of moral reasoning indicates that a male approach to decision making tends to be based on the use of rules and justice which underpinned most of the male participants’ responses. Chodorow (1978, 1989) argues that the difference in gender of a male child from his mother/carer places the main emphasis in his development on separation, which then impacts on his future relationships. Frosh (1987), in considering the construction of masculinity, suggests that this is in part based on a rejection of the feminine, which at the most destructive end of the continuum could contribute to male violence towards women, and a difficulty in maintaining intimate relationships in adult life. The way in which the dominance of the masculine and the subjugation of the feminine is embedded within the prevailing social climate affects how men and women work together. CSA engenders in workers a need to disassociate from the material. This need to feel different from, to deny any connection to, the forces involved in abusing situations, only reinforces the need to preserve difference in professional relationships also. Closeness and intimacy spell danger within an abusing family or network; closeness and intimacy may similarly be experienced as dangerous in a professional network struggling with personal feelings aroused by the nature of the work. Fleeing to the familiar gendered territories is one way of maintaining safety. If this is not overtly acknowledged however, there is a strong possibility of confusion and misunderstanding, just as there is in any other relationship where the effects of the context in which it is occurring are not understood. Placing these ideas in the context of work with child sexual abuse raises some important questions. If female workers tend to engage closely with the work, to use a framework of care and concern, there may be a propensity to ‘merge with the other’ (Chodorow 1978); to become too linked to the mother, to the female child, even to the female abuser within the framework of male domination, and therefore to miss important information. Maintaining a distance for male workers, on the other hand, may indicate an unwillingness to acknowledge any connection through gender with the male abuser. The unwillingness to engage in training or discussion might indicate a fear of involvement in a process which would require an examination of similarities in relation to gender, sexuality and attitude. Gendered differences elicited in the interviews could also be observed in action in the case conference setting. In the first conference setting, the female chairperson used the power of her position to support and validate the female worker’s views. The male

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senior and social worker wished to increase the use of statutory powers to produce change. Although there was agreement between them, the two men operated independently of each other, presenting as separate and self-reliant, even though they were organisationally closely linked and appeared to have a social relationship. This could be interpreted as presenting an identity which valued separateness rather than connection, even when a connection is structurally present, as it is in the organisationally defined relationship between worker and supervisor. This could be linked with the interview material in which the men clearly came across as valuing supervision less than the female workers. The two conferences exemplified different uses of power. In the first, the chairperson overtly recognised the importance of power, validating the female workers who were concerned with the empowerment of the woman and her children. The second conference exemplified the notion of different approaches to moral dilemmas (Gilligan 1982). The female workers were concerned with considering the impact that a course of action might have on the whole family system. The male workers saw tighter controls imposed from without as the only solution. There was no overt acknowledgement of power relations, either within the family under discussion or within the conference, although the female workers’ contributions were consistently disregarded. Hearn (1990), in talking about the social work system surrounding child abuse, quotes Hadley’s (1987) advocacy of mixed gender co-work to link client work with the structural gender divisions of the agency, as an acknowledgement of the different power structures inherent within it. His solution is to use gender balance to ensure an equal distribution of power and equal voice for both male and female workers. However, if it were possible to generalise the differences obvious in the interviews in this research, this could also make working together confusing. If one worker wishes to be more involved in the process and another less so, and these differences are not overtly understood and stated, disagreements could result. Hamer and Statham (1988) argue that an increase in women in management would alter the balance of power in social services and influence the way in which work was organised and understood within the work system. This would make it more likely that the organisation could draw on the use of autonomy and connectedness (Goldner 1988) to achieve a position of balance. Balance could only be achieved, however, through recognising the complexity of difference and its impact on the work process. Female practitioners, unlike their male counterparts, were clearly motivated to be involved and to develop their understanding of CSA. Currently there are more female workers than male at basic grade level in mainstream social work. Even if a department

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does not have a policy of allocating CSA work to female workers where possible, it is more likely to be women doing this work than men. Middle and senior managers are more likely to be male. The work is therefore generally defined by ‘male oriented rules’. There are potentially important implications here for supervisory and management relations if the manager is male and can only evaluate a woman’s contribution through male views and beliefs about decision making. There are similar implications if the roles and gender were reversed, but a female supervisor, although having more structural power than the worker, would not necessarily have her own values and ideas validated in the wider context of, for example, case conferences, if the latter reflected the rules of the prevailing patriarchal structure. The importance of language in organising contexts has been documented extensively elsewhere (see Foucault 1980 and Gergen 1985). Morgan (1986) has particularly addressed the ways in which language contributes to the development of a culture of domination within the organisational context. In this research, the use of language reflected the gendered differences already discussed, e.g. some of the female interviewees’ use of the language of care, and the males’ use of the language of ‘managerialism’. Different styles and use of language (i.e. facilitative and authoritarian) created two very different experiences of supervision and decision making, which in turn partly influenced outcome. A striking theme which continually recurred in the interviews was the lack of trust in supervisory relationships and between the different levels in the organisation. This was also clearly observed in the conference setting. The content of child sexual abuse work is centrally concerned with a betrayal of trust by, and a lack of trust in, those with most power (i.e. adults). In this study this was mirrored in the professional system. Both in the interviews and in the conferences it was not solely organisational position which contributed to the lack of trust but also unacknowledged gender difference. The impact this may have on men and women working together is profound.

CONCLUSION The need for women and men to work together in the child sexual abuse area is undoubtedly essential. The recurrence of certain themes in the interviews in this study point to important unacknowledged areas of gender difference. However, the limitations of a small-scale study must be emphasised and this chapter has not addressed the potential complexity of any specific relationship in the context of CSA, nor taken into account the variations between women, or between men in attitudes and behaviour. It has however looked at some of the possible impact of the identified themes.

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The mistrust of those in more powerful positions experienced by these workers could seriously inhibit collaborative work if it remained covert. This is particularly an issue in the context of this area of work where so many aspects of relationships are covert, secret and based on an imbalance of power. If male workers experience control and power coming from maintaining difference and separateness, and female workers from closeness and intimacy, one might expect to find tension and difficulty between male and female colleagues, either in hierarchical or peer relationships (Dutton Conn 1993). In trying to find a definition of maturity which is not based on the masculine model of autonomy (Altschuler 1993; Dale and Emerson, Chapter 10 this volume), therapists such as Goldner (1988) and Benjamin (1988) have emphasised the importance of accessing both this model and one of connection with others. Without maintaining some distance from the work, patterns of relationships and the meaning of these patterns are difficult to see. Without really engaging with the people involved, however, there can be no substantial understanding and empathy for their position. A position which included both could offer a way forward in working collaboratively in this area of work. In this research the greatest congruence of position occurred within the middle management group. This group is strategically placed in the organisation to have some distance from the work which all agreed was necessary in order to be able to support the workers. It is therefore the point in the organisation at which both closeness and distance are essential in maintaining control of the work, and both are organisationally expected. Middle managers could therefore play a key part in creating a clear thinking and supportive network for practitioners, and developing expertise upon which senior managers can draw. However, the Cleveland Inquiry (1988) concluded that ‘differences of views at middle management level. . . were not recognised by senior staff. These eventually affected those working on the ground’. Gender difference has an important effect on how the work of the organisation is understood and carried out at all levels. This effect is not however automatically considered in the thinking about the work. Confusions that arise as a consequence are potentially misunderstood, and in this area of work where confusions are rife, this can have serious results. As Reder et al. (1993) indicate, ‘The relationship aspects of [assessment and planning] are as important as the organisational structures set up to facilitate them and both must be addressed by the child protection network.’ The similarities and differences discussed in this chapter are part of these relationships. In the context of child sexual abuse I would suggest they are a crucially important part.

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REFERENCES Abbott, P. and Wallace, C. (eds) (1991) Gender, Power and Sexuality, London: Macmillan (Academic and Professional). Altschuler, J. (1993) ‘Gender and illness: implications for family therapy’, Journal of Family Therapy 15: 381–401. Baker, A.W. and Duncan, S. P. (1986) ‘Child sexual abuse, a study of prevalence in Great Britain’, Child Abuse and Neglect 9: 457–467. Beckford (1985) A Child in Trust: The Report of the Panel of Inquiry into the Death of Jasmine Beckford, London: HMSO. Benjamin, J. (1988) The Bonds of Love; Psychoanalysis, Feminism and the Problem of Domination, New York: Pantheon Books. Blom-Cooper, L. (1985) A Child in Trust, London: HMSO. Brock, E. and Davis, L. (1985) Women, The Family and Social Work, London: Tavistock. Chodorow, N. (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1989) Feminism of Psychoanalytic Theory, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Policy Press. Cleveland (1988) The Report of the Inquiry into Sexual Abuse in Cleveland, 1987, London: HMSO. Conn, J. and Turner, A. (1990) ‘Working with women in families’, in R. J. Perelberg and A. Miller (eds) Gender and Power in Families, London: Routledge. Dominelli, L. and McLeod, M. (1989) Feminist Social Work, London: Macmillan Education. Dutton Conn, J. (1991) ‘The impact of gender identity on social work managers and practitioners in relation to child sexual abuse’, unpublished M. Phil. thesis, Brunel University and Tavistock Clinic. —— (1993) ‘Delicate liaison: the impact of gender differences on the supervisory relationship within social services’, Journal of Social Work Practice 7: 41–53. Eisler, R. (1987) The Chalice and The Blade, California: Harper & Row. Elliott, M. (ed.) (1993) Female Sexual Abuse of Children: The Ultimate Taboo, London: Longman. Finkelhor, D. (1984) Child Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research, New York: Free Press. Foucault, M. (1980) The History of Ideas, New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Frosh, S. (1987) The Politics of Psychoanalysis, London: Macmillan Education. Frost, N. (1990) ‘Official intervention and child protection: the relationship between state and family in contemporary Britain’, in The Violence Against Children Study Group (eds) Taking Child Abuse Seriously, London: Unwin Hyman. Gergen, K. (1985) ‘The social constructionist movement in modern psychology’, American Psychologist 40: 266–275. Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C. and Pollak, S. (1987) ‘Images of violence in apperception test stories’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42 (1): 159–167. Goldner, V. (1988) ‘Generation and gender: normative and covert hierarchies’, Family Process 27 (1): 17–31.

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Goldner, V., Penn, P., Sheinberg, M. and Walker, G. (1990) ‘Love and violence: gender paradoxes in volatile attachments’, Family Process 29: 343–364. Gorell Barnes, G. (1990) ‘The “little woman” and the world of work’, in R. Perelberg and A. Miller (eds) Gender and Power in Families, London: Routledge. Hadley, J. (1987) ‘Mum is not the word’, Community Care 5 (11): 24–26. Hamer, J. and Statham, D. (1988) Towards a Woman Centered Social Work, London: BASW Macmillan. Hearn, J. (1990) ‘Child abuse and men’s violence’, in The Violence against Children Study Group (eds) Taking Child Abuse Seriously, London: Unwin Hyman. Hoffman, L. (1990) ‘Constructing realities: an art of lenses’, Family Process 29: 1–12. Horner, M. (1972) ‘Towards an understanding of achievement related conflicts in women’, Journal of Social Issues 28: 157–175. Hudson, A. (1989) ‘Changing perspectives: feminism, gender and social work’, in M. Langan and P. Lee (eds) Radical Social Work Today, London: Unwin Hyman. Jones, E. (1991) Working with Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, London: Karnac. Littlewood, R. (1992) ‘Towards an intercultural therapy’, in J. Kareem and R. Littlewood (eds) Intercultural Therapy, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific. MacLeod, M. and Saraga, E. (1988) ‘Challenging the orthodoxy: towards a feminist theory and practice’, Feminist Review 28 (January). Morgan, G. (1986) Images of Organisation, California: Sage. Oakley, A. (1981) Subject Women, Oxford: Martin Robertson. Parton, N. and Parton, C. (1989) ‘Child protection, the law and dangerousness’, in O. Stevenson (ed.) Child Abuse: Public Policy and Professional Practice, Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Perelberg, R. and Miller, A. (1992) Gender and Power in Families, London: Routledge. Reder, P., Duncan, S. and Gray, M. (1993) Beyond Blame: Child Abuse Tragedies Revisited, London: Routledge. Sampson, A. (1991) ‘Gender issues in interagency relationships: police, probation and social services’, in P. Abbott and C. Wallace (eds) Gender, Power and Sexuality, London: Macmillan. Showalter, E. (1987) The Female Malady, London: Virago. Stamp, G. (1986) ‘Some observations on the career paths of women’, Journal of Applied Behavioural Science 22 (4). Stephenson, O. (1989) Child Abuse: Public Policy and Professional Practice, Hertfordshire: Harverster Wheatsheaf. Von Foerster, H. (1981) Observing Systems, Seaside, CA: Intersystems Publications. Whetton, D. A. (1982) Interorganisational Coordination Theory, Research and Implications, Iowa: University Press.

7

Gender, power and relationships Ethno-cultural and religious issues Annie Lau

INTRODUCTION The role of religious beliefs and values in family life has been accorded little prominence in the development of family therapy theory and practice. I argue in this chapter that this needs to change if family therapists hope to work effectively with ethnic minority families which tend to be of a traditional patriarchal form, grounded in strongly held religious values. Therapists and professionals with western feminist values often experience tensions and dilemmas in cross-racial and cross-cultural work. The author believes that many of these tensions stem from a lack of understanding of the central importance of religious ideas in the framing and organisation of values and priorities for the ethnic communities. This creates a boundary between western theory and practice of family therapy and its applicability to non-western cultures (Bott and Hodes 1989; Kinzie et al. 1972). In such communities, traditions and rules governing family life and sources of family and communal authority often have strong religious underpinnings. Many ethnic communities are also religious communities. For example, the religious leader or Rabbi of an orthodox Jewish community often wields considerable personal and community authority. His views on a particular family issue may well carry more weight than those coming from the secular organisation that the family therapist represents, especially where those views appear to be in conflict. Families strive to preserve their group values, identity and coherence while participating in the challenges and opportunities offered by a largely secular British society. It is the women who are still to a large extent the tradition carriers and are expected to socialise children to take on these group determined norms. In Jewish families for example, home observance of religious ritual (e.g. the lighting of Shabbat candles) is largely a woman’s function, whereas men play the more dominant role in

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public worship and in the community. The 1983 report of the Research Unit Board of Deputies of British Jews on the Anglo-Jewish Community in Redbridge, Essex, found high levels of home observance by women to be correlated with the presence of children in the household and the desire to transmit Jewish values and knowledge to children. This chapter will first describe some aspects of the traditional family and then go on to explore how family therapists from a western European cultural tradition can best manage the differences between their own values and those of non-western European ethno-cultural traditions. In my view the only way to work with ethnic families is through an understanding and respect for traditional religious and cultural values (McGoldrick 1982; Weiselberg 1992). This does not mean, however, that one colludes with abusive practices such as childhood prostitution, slavery, female circumcision, and suttee – affecting the lives of women and children where women in these communities define the practice as abusive. The point in therapy is to work within the meaning systems of the client in order to empower through making informed choices available.

UNDERSTANDING THE TRADITIONAL FAMILY Life cycle issues In the non-western European family, there are important differences in the construction of ‘family’ as a concept and the role of the individual in the family. The importance given to interdependence and the need to preserve harmonious family relationships has led to the development of structures like extended family groups within the same household. Life cycle transitions and discontinuities are managed in the context of rules with regard to authority, continuity and interdependence which differ from those of western European families. In the traditional Asian or Oriental family, relationships are hierarchical between the sexes as well as between the generations. Authority is invested in the paternal grandfather or the most senior male member of the extended family. Fathers generally function as heads of households. Elder siblings are differentiated from younger siblings and expected to exercise authority over them. The presence of the aged provides continuity and a link between the generations. Where kinship systems are highly structured, kinship terms delineate not only the individual’s place in the family but also his/her duties and obligations. There are differences in the developmental tasks for the child and stage-specific family tasks between the western European nuclear family, with its contemporary and egalitarian traditions, and the non-western European traditional extended family.

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Children growing up in these traditional hierarchical families will find the importance of interdependence and, as a consequence, dependability, stressed at every stage in the life cycle. They learn the importance of reciprocal obligations and duties towards parents and other significant adults, from whom they can then expect favours. Girls, for example, learn from day to day observations of their mothers, grandmothers, aunts and female cousins about their own place in the kinship system, and what the expected role obligations are for them as young women growing up. They also learn about cultural and religious rules governing relationships between the sexes and the generations, and the limits of expected behaviour, both within and outside the family. Competent young people will show a strong identification with the reputation and honour of the family (Ballard 1979). This enables them to function well within the hierarchical intimate relationships of the extended family and ethnic community (Tamura and Lau 1992). The public behaviour of children and young people must reflect well on the family which would otherwise lose face and standing within the community. Where arranged marriages are the norm and virginity is expected as part of the marriage contract, the post-adolescent girl is not expected to have boyfriends, or to have an active social life in the evenings unless within the family circle. Within the family, the young person also learns the importance of controlling aggression and strategies for tension diffusion. These are particularly important skills in families where several generations live under the same roof. Such traditional values will be reinforced at every level of socialization – home, school, religious institution and the media, including popular films, traditional and contemporary literature. Adolescence often comes to an end in the modern western family on leaving home. For the young woman from the traditional family however, adulthood is assumed on marriage. The differences in stage-specific family tasks in traditional families compared with the modern western family are thrown into stark relief in cultures where arranged marriages are still common. In order that the young wife can survive within the context of a new family in which her mother-in-law may well be the most senior family member in the female kinship network, she must have been carefully prepared by her family of origin to respect her mother-in-law’s authority, and to negotiate skilfully her place within the female hierarchy. In other words, it is not sufficient for her to have a good relationship with her husband. She also needs to support her husband’s traditional role expectations, and it would not do, for example, to create conflict between him and his mother. Here early links with sisters-in-law are often extremely useful. In a wellknown poem from the Tang dynasty by Wang Chien, a young bride asks her sister-inlaw to taste the soup she has just prepared, to ensure it will be to her mother-in-law’s liking.

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The presence of the wider family on both sides is also important to help negotiate conflicts between the couple particularly in the first year of marriage, when teething difficulties are expected to occur, as the couple will not have had the opportunities to know each other beforehand and will not have spent much time together. The ready availability of the bride’s family of origin helps cushion the impact of the early transitional years. It would not, for instance, be deemed unseemly for the new wife to return to her own family for refuge at particular times of family stress, for example, if her husband is violent. Young wives separated from their families of origin coming to the UK for an arranged marriage are therefore more at risk in unsatisfactory marriages, unless they have the means to seek help from other family members, or to establish for themselves a degree of economic independence.

Mothering No role in traditional families is more respected than that of the mother. (For a fuller discussion of ethnicity and mothers than is possible here, see Braverman 1990). A well-known Muslim proverb refers to paradise as lying under one’s mother’s feet. Mothers have a prior claim even over fathers for their sons’ allegiance: ‘a man asked the Holy Prophet (peace be on him): Who has the prior claim on my duty? He answered: Thy mother. And after her? Thy mother. And thereafter? Thy mother. And then? Thy father and after him other kindred according to their degree of kinship’ (The Holy Quran). A man’s primary duty is to his mother, just as his wife’s primary duty is to him (Khan 1981). Guru Nanak taught Sikhs that a daughter was as good as a son – ‘Why call her inferior who gives birth to Kings and great men?’ (Sidhu et al. 1974). More often than not, however, mothers were revered for their role in supporting and encouraging sons who then went on to achieve. One of the most famous mothers in Chinese history was Yueh Fei’s mother. She is remembered for reminding her son that his duty was to repel the invading Mongolian armies in his role as a Sung Dynasty general. These instructions to her son were tattooed by her on his back in the form of four Chinese characters. He was thus ‘driven’ by the sacred vow to his mother, inscribed in blood on his back. Mothers evoked respect, veneration; in fact, they commanded power. It would be unthinkable to say no to your mother. No wonder then, that pregnancy and childbirth are hallowed states, with a wealth of prescribed ritual in the majority of traditional cultures. The post-partum period is one of the few times in a woman’s life when she can be assured that she will be waited on hand and foot, especially by her mother-inlaw; and for a brief period relieved of all household responsibilities!

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Knowing about the different ways in which different cultures manage life cycle issues and define competence is crucial to successful therapy. For example, the therapist who does not understand the importance for the extended family of a behavioural repertoire that enhances connectedness between family members (Tamura and Lau 1992) may inadvertently devalue these skills. Similarly, if the therapist chooses to highlight separation and independence at the expense of family honour and community standing, the chances are that the therapist may be seen as an alien influence the family can do without. Thus supporting a Muslim girl’s wish to be more like her English peers by being allowed to go out at night in mixed company, to pubs and discos would likely result in the family dropping out of therapy.

Family rituals A ritual is usually defined as a patterned sequence of behaviour with emotive associations (Wolin and Bennett 1984). Family rituals are family events which happen on a regular basis, with a clear structure and a defined, predictable sequence. Through regular participation in family rituals, i.e. meals, group outings, festivals, religious events, the girl child will learn a variety of cultural and religious rules, beliefs and practices. She will have observed the use of various rituals for catharsis (as in bereavement) or for contract-setting (in the context, for example, of marriage). An example of the latter will be the Chinese custom of the public serving of tea to one’s parents on marriage, often on the bended knee. In serving tea to her in-laws, the new wife is publicly acknowledging her new status; in accepting the offered tea the elders are publicly accepting her into their family. A gesture of disfavour from the elders would be to refuse to be served tea in the context of the ceremony described, with its clearly explicit contractual intent. A knowledge of what rituals are important for the family from a particular culture enables the informed therapist to use the symbolic meanings attached to the ritual. For example, I once treated a young Chinese-Vietnamese man who had been admitted to a psychiatric ward in a state of depression with numerous physical conversion symptoms and who was spending his time moping aimlessly or lying on his bed. I employed the ritual of serving tea to cement a contract between him and his elderly parents, which committed the man to taking part in a physical mobilisation programme to which he had hitherto refused to attend. On another occasion, I encouraged an Indian mother and daughter to communicate with each other through the medium of massage. I knew that traditionally, mothers in the Indian subcontinent routinely massaged their babies with oil. This particular mother and daughter had become polarised as the girl approached adolescence, with

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discussions about differences ending on most occasions with escalating conflict. Using massage enabled the mother to once again mother her daughter in a conflict-free way; it was also a familiar cultural medium and for her had good memories. For the daughter it enabled her to experience her mother more positively. In taking turns to offer massage, she developed competencies that her mother appreciated. It also affirmed ideas of interconnectedness, and their mutually supportive roles in the family.

Religious and cultural mythology The growing child in the traditional family will be exposed to religious and cultural mythology and it is the stuff of these stories which form the child’s ego ideals. The message to the child is, ‘These are the stories of our people, these stories tell us what kind of people we are’. Many of these stories within traditional cultures stress the importance of putting the group before the individual, and that altruistic self-sacrifice in the service of one’s parents is one of the noblest achievements attainable. Guru Gobind Singh (1666–1708), the Tenth Guru of the Sikhs, lived an exemplary life as a ‘saint-soldier’ and is revered by all Sikhs. He had four sons, all of whom gave their lives for the Sikh cause. The first two sons, Ajit and Jujhar, aged 14 and 12 respectively, each rode out of the fortress of Chamkaur single-handed, to die challenging the might of the Mughal army laying siege to the Sikh camp. Sometime later, the Guru’s two younger sons, Fateh, aged 9, and his brother, Zorawar, aged 7, were captured with their grandmother by Wazir Khan, Governor of Sirhind. They were offered freedom if they renounced the Sikh religion and embraced Islam, and death if they refused. That evening they were reminded by their grandmother of the importance of upholding family loyalties and the family faith. The next day the boys were bricked up alive in a wall, having refused the offer of life which would have been tinged with dishonour (Sidhu et al. 1974). Similar stories are to be found in other religious and cultural traditions. A common Muslim story is one in which a young man carries his frail, aged father on his back in order that the father could fulfil the religious duty of going to Mecca, the holy place of the Prophet Mohammed, before his death. A Chinese story describes how a little boy, tending his father’s water-buffaloes, practises his writing using a stick and the river bank, and in time passes the imperial civil examinations that are the pathway to a comfortable old age for his parents. Another Chinese story recounts how a filial daughter, Hua Mu-Lan, put on male attire so that she could take her aged father’s place when the imperial summons came with the decree that every household must produce

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an able-bodied male to fight in the Sung army against the invading Mongols. Hua MuLan eventually became the victorious general of the Sung army, having repelled the Mongolian advances. As the story goes, her male guise was not discovered while she served as a soldier. Following her triumphant return to the capital, the emperor asked her to name her reward. She then disclosed that she had family obligations and wished to be allowed to retire to her village in order to resume her role and duties as a daughter. This story illustrates an important cultural ego ideal for the Chinese woman, which is echoed in many stories from traditional cultures; whatever the woman’s achievement in the public arena, she needs to remember that she is, first and foremost, a daughter, for as long as her parents are alive and her filial duties take precedence over other things. Therapists with sufficient cultural knowledge can use such stories in their work with traditional families. Weiselberg’s (1992) paper on working with ultra-orthodox Jewish families also illustrates the greater effectiveness of therapists who are able to use cultural materials. In her paper, the therapist, who was conversant with the Halachah, was able to mobilise a counter-quotation in defence of a particular principle, a highly effective strategy with a group for whom the laws of the Halachah were the ultimate authority. The ‘insider therapist’ has the advantage over the ‘outsider therapist’ in being able to invoke the strength of religious and cultural authority through direct familiarity with cultural materials (Lau 1992). The use of cultural metaphors inherent in poetry, proverbs, folk-tales and myths by ‘insider therapists’ engages and facilitates the family’s growth potential within a framework and patterning that is culturally congruent (Levick et al. 1981; Peseschkian 1986; Scheff 1979). If therapists are ‘outsiders’, how can they find out about cultural differences in belief systems and practices? Should therapists ask the family or client directly? Is it appropriate to expect a family in crisis to explain their culture? While some exploration with the family may be helpful it is important to be aware that the client’s view of ‘objective reality’ may differ from that of other family members and from wellfunctioning members of the same cultural/ethnic group. For example, I was once involved in a court appearance on behalf of a local authority seeking a care order in a child protection case. The mother was a Chinese-Vietnamese refugee, who had been repeatedly physically and sexually abused to the point where her own sensitivities were dulled and she felt her children suffered no permanent harm from inappropriate sexual experiences with men who came to her flat. Her barrister asked me in court if this mother’s behaviour and attitude were ‘culturally normal’ because she did not feel her children were being damaged. In other words, the implication was that the majority of Vietnamese refugee mothers would have the same grossly deviant attitudes to child

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rearing that this particular mother did. My response was to say that this conclusion was inappropriate and culturally invalid. I strongly believe that therapists need to take time to learn about the cultural patterns, values, perceptions and practices of the group that derives from a different historical tradition to themselves before they undertake work with members of that group. The therapist needs to be able to locate the family on a continuum from traditional/hierarchical on the one hand, where roles are prescribed, to modern/egalitarian on the other, where roles and expectations are much more subject to flux and change (see also Ratna and Wheeler, Chapter 8 this volume). It is important that ‘helping agencies’ have access to good cultural advice, preferably from professional members of the ethnic communities. Good public relations with local religious groups often help. For example, a therapy group for young Asian Muslim women would not get very far if this did not receive approval from the local Imam. Work with young people is a particularly sensitive issue; adolescents who feel marginal and caught between the demands of different loyalties, e.g. school and home, exams or marriage, often present with seemingly intractable difficulties for support teachers in schools. Good liaison links with the ethnic community would help the therapist to take a balanced view of the case.

Gender and status In the majority of families living in patriarchal societies, sons are more valued than daughters, as the continuation of the line will be assured by the birth of a son. In Singapore today, for example, a young Chinese mother will still feel a sense of failure if she does not produce a son. ‘Bu xiau you san, wu hou wei da’, a much quoted Chinese saying, is translated as ‘Of the three unfilial acts, the greatest is the lack of posterity’. It is the expected duty of a Chinese family to bear children and ensure continuity of the family name. In times past, the lack of sons was sufficient justification for remarriage in cultures permitting polygamy, common in Chinese communities. The introduction of gender clinics (where the Y-chromosome sperm which produces male children can be identified) is seen as controversial in Great Britain and considered unethical by the British Medical Association and leading churches. The availability of the service, however, may at least reduce the number of abortions of unwanted girl babies. In the Indian subcontinent (according to The Times, 5 March 1993) 7 per cent more boys than girls are born because of the use of female infanticide and selective abortion.

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For the young wife particularly from an arranged marriage, the birth of a healthy son often provides an element of protection from adverse developments such as divorce, with its resulting shame. The mother of a son has enhanced status in the family, with a natural claim to more rights and protection. She also rises in the pecking order within the female kinship system; that is, compared to other sisters-in-law who have not yet produced sons. The young woman who consistently produces deformed children or has a series of miscarriages is therefore in a highly vulnerable position, being unable to demonstrate her ‘worth’ to the family as a bearer of healthy children. I saw such a young woman some years ago (Lau 1986), but on this occasion was reassured that the young wife was much valued by noticing that members of the joint extended family were observing the various rituals around childbirth that indicated caring for the young wife. This included the preparation of special foods and total relief from household duties. Blame for the family misfortune was in this instance ascribed to the house, or the ‘bad vibes’ thereof, and plans were discussed for moving house. I have found the use of this defence, i.e. projection of blame on to the physical environment, a common one. This particular family also accepted the need for genetic counselling.

Chastity Chastity has always been a principle determining the limits of appropriate behaviour, particularly in traditional societies. Where religious authority has been stamped on cultural tradition, the consequences of infringement have often been correspondingly severe. Islamic tradition has clear-cut guidelines for both men and women. Male believers are to guard against being overwhelmed by sensual temptations. Both men and women have a common duty to cast down their looks in public. Women have additional restrictions: they shall not make a display of their elegance and ornamentation or behave in such a way as to draw the attention of men. There is also the compulsory duty from puberty onwards of keeping certain parts of the body covered and not exposed to anyone except the wife or husband, or in the case of medical necessity. These parts, ‘Satr’, are, for men, the area of the body between the knees and the navel and, for women, the entire body, except the hands, feet and face. ‘Women who remain naked even after putting on dress and draw others into temptation, or walk and move in an alluring manner shall not enter paradise, nor get even its scent’ (The Holy Quran). Other social restrictions limit men’s freedom of action, again with the view of guarding their sexual purity. They cannot enter another person’s home without permission, or approach a woman when she is alone. Women also should stay at home

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and not wander about displaying their beauty and finery. All these injunctions emphasise that the home should form the centre of interest and activity for the woman, and there should be no unnecessary intermingling of the sexes in daily life. A more liberal interpretation suggests women can enter wider social and political fields provided they do not neglect their primary domestic functions. The social and religious restrictions regulating sexual behaviour and family life are based on an assumption that men and women have different roles, functions and responsibilities in society (see also Perelberg 1990, 1992). It is not unknown for extreme social sanctions to be applied for cases of sexual transgression of group norms. A common belief in the Kurdish refugee community in London is that adultery is the only justifiable reason for divorce. Kurdish widows who fall pregnant and become ‘unclean’ as a result have been reported to be killed by their families in Iraq as a means of protecting the dignity and honour of their families. Therapists are often confronted by similar traditional values articulated by Muslim girls, women and their families. It is important for the worker to have an appreciation of the whole corpus of beliefs, rather than taking a section of the cultural-religious system out of context. In my experience it is often more productive to engage parents in a discussion of the changing world that they expect their daughter to grow up in, and her role in that; in other words, to look at the widest possible level of agreement before one goes into the detail, which may then be easier to negotiate. Mediation as a therapeutic stance fits in with longstanding traditions found in these families of problem solving through negotiation and mediation, rather than head-on confrontation (Messent 1992). The solutions need to be consistent with the family’s life-style and value system (Berg and Jaya 1993), but can helpfully draw on different interpretations to be found within the culture in order to expand choices or reframe meanings. For example, I worked with a Muslim family in which one of the points of conflict revolved around the issue of the adolescent daughter’s dress. She had been wearing boys’ trousers to school in order not to expose her legs, but now wanted to wear a dress. In order to meet the parental requirements of Muslim dress it was decided to consult an Imam from Egypt who could offer the most liberal interpretation of the rules – which in this case was a calf-length skirt with thick opaque tights. This allowed the girl to fit in with her friends yet retain parental approval, which was important to her. In another case, a 15-year-old Muslim girl was described by the parents as out of control as she insisted on behaving ‘like a white girl’, i.e. going out at night with boys and staying out till midnight. The father punished her by hitting her. By the standards of the average English Essex family her aspirations for a social life would be regarded

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as perfectly normal and not a cause for concern. However, her family felt she was being unchaste, and her behaviour would set a bad example to her younger sisters as well as damage the family reputation. Tensions escalated around her refusal to conform to family norms to the point of extreme behaviour including suicidal attempts. We thought the father was too rigid with respect to his daughter’s behaviour and that the girl was at physical risk of abuse. We felt we could no longer support parental authority, and recommended alternative accommodation after exhaustive attempts at negotiating failed. This girl was temporarily accommodated by the local authority, as she said she was afraid to go home because her father would beat her. Muslim foster-parents were found who supported the parents’ view of correct behaviour for Muslim women, and eventually the girl was persuaded to accept the restrictions in social behaviour as a prelude to rehabilitation with her family. The difference was that the foster-mother was much more prepared to listen to the girl’s accounts of her difficulties compared to her parents, who were condemnatory of her behaviour in an excessive way. For the father, his daughter’s ‘sexually provocative behaviour’ equated to sexual promiscuity, whether she was having sexual relationships or not.

Violence Nowhere in traditional families is the gender divide more pronounced in terms of access to power than in the area of physical and sexual abuse. My experience suggests that it is often the marginal family, unconnected to supportive family networks, that presents with major difficulties in these areas. The family network that is potentially most protective of a woman in adverse circumstances is, as discussed earlier, her own. I was recently asked to assess the rehabilitative potential of a Kurdish refugee family, where the woman had on a previous occasion fled for protection from her husband’s violence to a women’s refuge. She subsequently withdrew all previous allegations against her husband, stating she had been ‘tricked into lying’ by the social worker who had promised better accommodation if she complied. When I interviewed her (with an interpreter) I asked what sources of protection she had in the community if her husband ever hit her in the future. None, she said; she had no family in England. The local Kurdish community centre was male dominated and in fact did not feel the occasional chastisement of one’s wife to be overly aberrant. What if she reported him to the police? She believed the police would in most cases seek to facilitate a reconciliation and ‘turn a blind eye’. When I spoke to the husband his view was that

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occasional chastisement of one’s wife was ‘normal’. In his own family of origin he had often seen his father beat his mother. It was clear to me that this was not a religious position, as the teaching of The Holy Quran on this subject is clearly otherwise: ‘Do not strike the handmaidens of Allah’. Also, ‘Provide for their needs as you provide for your own. Do not strike them nor speak to them uncivilly’. In this particular case my advice to the local authority was not to waste time in formal family therapy sessions that were doomed to failure, as the woman would not be able to confront her husband. Instead I recommended a strategy of empowering the woman through individual support with a female social worker and helping her gain access to English classes, as eventual competence in English would allow her a wider range of choices and more control of her own destiny. I also made it clear in my session with the husband that the law in this country takes the view that physical chastisement of women and children is not tolerated. It was interesting that the husband had been unable to work with the original social work team, consisting of two young women, and was only able to cooperate when the case was transferred to a team with a male worker. I felt his experiences from his rural background made it difficult for him to take young female workers seriously, as he was unused to the idea of young women being in positions of authority. He had however been able to relate better to a female middle-aged guardian-adlitem who had better fitted his cultural ideas of age conferring authority. This case illustrates an important point about ensuring ‘fit’ between clients and workers in ways that are culturally congruent. Using the concept of family honour may also enable the therapist to reframe a difficult situation so that the concerns of the vulnerable woman may be heard. Sometime ago I worked with a traditional Sikh family where the most junior daughter-in-law was being overwhelmed with family expectations and there was a high incidence of accidents involving injury to her young charges for whom she was the family childminder. I was able to mobilise family members in higher positions of authority to initiate changes that enabled this young woman to function more effectively in a more secure physical environment (Lau 1988).

DISCUSSION It is important in therapeutic practice to work within religious and cultural traditions whenever possible to widen choices for both men and women. A knowledge of cultural norms and values enables one to ask the most appropriate questions; for example, why in a violent family has there been a failure to teach and to practise strategies for

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tension diffusion? What culturally determined factors make a particular family more vulnerable to stress? Does it, for example, relate to a breakdown of family links and the absence of buffering family networks? Traditional families believe that effective problem solving of family conflicts is towards integration of the family unit, rather than towards increasing differentiation and separation. This has clear implications for the credibility of therapists from a western cultural tradition working with families from traditional hierarchical cultures. Tamura (Tamura and Lau 1992) has developed this argument with case examples of work with Japanese families, where therapist interventions that are not seen as congruent with ethnic group values tend to be disqualified. Families from traditional cultures often fall back on these values to deal with the stresses inherent in discontinuity and change. In general, I believe it is most effective to work within the cultural/ religious frame, yet to also work with the family to construct other meanings, or to find the most liberal interpretation of the rules in order to promote flexibility and growth, particularly for women. I believe that women have to find solutions that resonate with their ethnic and religious identities. If the western feminist therapist is unable to empathise with, and respect, the values of an alien religious faith, then he or she should steer clear of working with these families and stay on ground that is culturally congruent. The view that women can only be empowered if they espouse the values and practices of western feminists, derived from western cultural traditions, is both insulting and racist. It is akin to the fundamentalist Christian preacher who sees heresy and damnation in any spiritual journey that does not affirm the ‘fact’ of original sin and the need for salvation through Jesus Christ. However, respecting the values of other cultures is not the same as accepting them in their entirety. I, for example, was brought up in a traditional patriarchal Chinese family where sons are of more ‘value’ than daughters because the family line continues through the son. Though I accept the principle of family continuity (and that, for example, important family treasures such as my grandfather’s famous calligraphy need to stay in the ‘Lau’ (male) bit of the family), it has not stopped me from pursuing individual self-fulfilment through a successful career in which I know my family take considerable pride. I do not accept that as a woman I am of less value, and have good memories of being made to feel privileged by my grandfather as the first grandchild. My family obligations are still very important, however, and had I not won a medical scholarship to Canada, I would have accepted that my father’s finances would only have allowed one child to go to university, and that it would be a son – one of my younger brothers. I feel a strong sense of family connectedness and take pride in the

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historical achievements of my family. This includes two generations of physicians in the Imperial Chinese court, and my paternal grandfather’s work in Singapore Chinatown as a respected headmaster in a community school. Women of different faiths have begun to find their own voices, to articulate their experiences and challenge tradition in ways that are meaningful to them. It is increasingly recognised that the interpretation of religious values has by and large been by men. The rendering of reality in its many forms has always been the prerogative of those in power (men), who have had both the authority and the means to punctuate and frame both social constructs and the boundaries of permissible experience. Women are endeavouring to find new meanings and sustenance from the rich religious and cultural sources of their varied pasts. In Judaism for instance, there is a search to rediscover the role of the Jewish woman in religious myths in a way that can meet some of the challenges of the present. Ultra-orthodox women are beginning to challenge the doctrine of separation in worship. Muslim women are also engaged in this process of exploration; rediscovering, for instance, famous holy women of Islam who have stood out for truth and justice (personal communication, Interfaith seminars, Leo Baeck College, North London). In India, a well-known women’s paper, Manushi, regularly highlights women’s issues including resistance to the infamous practice of suttee, where the wife followed her husband to the funeral pyre – a practice that stemmed from the myth of Sita emerging unscathed from the trial by fire when her sexual purity was called into question. It is crucial that therapists from within the western traditions find out about, respect and support these various attempts of women to assert their own voices from within their religious and ethnic communities. What is often disconcerting is to find the western therapist not only unsympathetic but also often intolerant of these moves, because the outward forms of these challenges to the status quo do not correspond to those characteristic of western culture that are more familiar to the therapist. For example, Muslim women may attempt to reconcile the challenges and rewards of a professional life (e.g. the female registrar in a hospital setting) with the religious requirements of Muslim dress for women, by going to work with a headscarf on. The issue of arranged marriage is also one that the majority of western therapists find totally alien and difficult to work with; not having had experience of successful and happy arranged marriages, the specific difficulties of a particular arranged marriage under stress requiring professional intervention is often seen as a prototype of all arranged marriages. The strengths for many women of the arranged marriage system when it is working well are often unacknowledged. ‘Normal’ reparative processes, for example, the involvement of the elders of the extended family on both sides, may not

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be mobilised by the western therapist, who is unaware of the potential effectiveness of these manoeuvres because within his or her own cultural context it would be inappropriate to involve extended family in conflict resolution or decision making. Finally: ‘What about the dilemmas which arise when a therapist cannot see a way to help women improve their lot within their culture or indeed where the women themselves accept their lot?’ I believe that the therapist’s task is to help individuals or families with their own agendas for change and if one cannot agree on the terms of the therapeutic contract then it is best to part company.

REFERENCES Ballard, C. (1979) ‘Culture, continuity and change – second generation South Asians’, in V. S. Khan (ed.) Migration and Social Stress, London: Macmillan. Berg, I. K. and Jaya, A. (1993) ‘Different and same: family therapy with Asian-American families’, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 19: 31–38. Bott, D. and Hodes, M. (1989) ‘Structural therapy for a West African family’, Journal of Family Therapy 11: 169–179. Braverman, L. (ed.) (1990) ‘Special issue on ethnicity and mothers’, Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 2, 2. Khan, M. Z. (1981) Wisdom of the Holy Prophet, London: Unwin Brothers Ltd. Kinzie, D., Sushaman, P. C. and Lee, M. (1972) ‘Cross-cultural family therapy – a Malaysian experience’, Family Process 11: 59–67. Lau, A. (1986) ‘Family therapy across cultures’, in J.L. Cox (ed.) Transcultural Psychiatry, London: Croom Helm. —— (1988) ‘Family therapy and ethnic minorities’, in E. Street and W. Dryden (eds) Family Therapy in Britain, London: Open University Press. —— (1990) ‘Psychological problems in adolescents from ethnic minorities’, British Journal of Hospital Medicine 44: 201–205. —— (1992) ‘Commentary on Messent and Weiselberg’, Journal of Family Therapy 14: 331–336. Levick, S.E., Jalili, B. and Strauss, J.S. (1981) ‘Onions and tears; a multidimensional analysis of a counter-ritual’, Family Process 20: 77–83. McGoldrick, M. (1982) ‘Ethnicity and family therapy: an overview’, in M. McGoldrick, J.K. Pearce and J. Giordano (eds) Ethnicity and Family Therapy, New York: Guilford Press. Messent, P. (1992) ‘Working with Bangladeshi families in the East End of London’, Journal of Family Therapy 14: 287–304. Perelberg, R. (1990) ‘Equality, asymmetry, and diversity: on conceptualizations of gender’, in R. Perelberg and A. Miller (eds) Gender and Power in Families, London: Routledge. —— (1992) ‘Familiar and unfamiliar types of family structure: towards a conceptual

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framework’, in J. Kareem and R. Littlewood (eds) Intercultural Therapy. Themes, Interpretations and Practice, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications. Pesechkian, N. (1986) Positive Family Therapy, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Scheff, T. J. (1979) Catharsis in Healing, Ritual and Drama, Berkeley: University of California Press. Sidhu, G. S., Sivia, G. S. and Singh, K. (1974) The Saint Soldier, The Sikh Missionary Society UK (regd.). Tamura, T. and Lau, A. (1992) ‘Connectedness versus separateness: applicability of family therapy to Japanese families’, Family Process 31: 319–340. Weiselberg, H. (1992) ‘Family therapy and ultra-orthodox Jewish families: a structural approach’, Journal of Family Therapy 14: 305–330. Wolin, S. and Bennett, L.A. (1984) ‘Family rituals’, Family Process 23: 401–420.

8

Race and gender issues in adult psychiatry

Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler

INTRODUCTION The impact of race and gender on the formulation of psychiatric theory and the delivery of psychiatric care have been widely discussed. Their interaction and the effect of race on gender, particularly for those who are black and female, has been less well addressed. For the sake of brevity, the term black people will be used to denote all those who are discriminated against on the basis of skin colour. Our experience is that women from the ethnic minorities are doubly oppressed by the racism of the host country and the demands of patriarchy of their native cultures. One particularly sensitive measure of discrimination against black people in psychiatric care is the analysis of the ‘pathways to care’ in emergency. How are clients from the ethnic minorities treated when they are in crisis and in need of help? Studies by Harrison et al. (1984), Ineichen et al. (1984), Rwegellera (1980) and Thomas et al. (1993) all show that patients from the ethnic minorities, presenting as psychiatric emergencies, are more likely than Europeans to be dealt with by the police rather than by general practitioners (see Jervis 1986). They are also more likely to be admitted and readmitted coercively under various sections of the Mental Health Act. The ethnic minorities in Britain make up only 5 per cent of the population, yet 49 per cent of those forcibly hospitalised by the police under section 136 came from minority groups (Bean and Rassaby 1991). Contrary to the usual racist stereotype of the threatening black male, nearly half the patients thus dealt with were women, who had behaved in a disruptive, as opposed to a dangerous, manner (Bean et al. 1991; Dean et al. 1981). There is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that the treatment of black as opposed to white people is much more coercive, diagnostically unstable and less well

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organised. The justification for this ‘rough’ handling is that these groups suffer from high rates of psychosis, and their compulsory admissions are a product of their infirmity, rather than a consequence of unequal treatment. Schizophrenia is diagnosed between three and fourteen times more frequently in patients from such groups (Cochrane 1977; Harrison et al. 1982). This excess has been attributed to ethnocentric bias (Sashidaran 1986), to misdiagnosis (Littlewood and Lipsedge 1980) and to economic factors (Thomas et al. 1993). Contrary to the belief in higher rates of insanity amongst immigrants, community studies show that black immigrants, despite all the pressures on them, have lower rates of mental illness than the white population. Cochrane and Stopes-Roe (1977, 1981) examined black residents of Birmingham and four other towns, together with their white counterparts, using the Langer scale (a screening inquiry for psychiatric disturbance). They found lower rates of psychological disturbance amongst the Asians than that in the white control group. Bebbington et al. (1981) found lower rates of mental illness in Afro-Caribbean males in Camberwell. Burke (1976) showed that attempted suicide is less common among Afro-Caribbeans and they have the lowest completed suicide rate (Cochrane 1977). Kallarakaal and Herbert (1976) found a low prevalence of maladjusted behaviour among Asian children, which they attribute to the greater cohesiveness of the Asian family. The essential inference from the second group of studies is that when the ethnic minorities are examined within the context of their social networks in the community their level of pathology is low, relative to the white population. It is only when individuals are removed from their networks and examined in isolation, in the Eurocentric setting of the psychiatric hospital, that significantly higher rates of psychotic diagnoses are observed. There is therefore a powerful argument which applies to all patients, but which is particularly pertinent in the case of those from ethnic minorities, that they should be assessed and helped within their own social context.

FAMILY STRUCTURES IN ETHNIC MINORITIES In approaching families of ethnic minorities, three key aspects need to be considered. The first is family structure. In Asian families the structure tends to be extended, as opposed to nuclear. There is hierarchy based on patriarchy, with women in subordinate roles. In Afro-Caribbean families, in contrast, the structure tends to be matriarchal, with the central axis being the relationship between mother and grandmother, with one or many male partners playing peripheral roles. The second aspect is family values. Asian families expect members to respect

138 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler authority, to be interdependent and to affirm family honour rather than individual goals, in contrast to western families in which independence and autonomy are the expected values (Lau 1984 and Chapter 7 this volume). The therapist needs to be aware of the Asian concept of Izzat or family honour and self-respect. In practice it often serves as an extension of male pride and it is the women who are expected both to take responsibility for it and to conform to its demands. As with the Jewish concept of Schidduch it affects a daughter’s marriage prospects and is the basis of Asian mothers being stricter with their daughters than their sons. Some Afro-Caribbean families, however, may expect women and girls to play an anchoring role, whilst the men and male children take less responsibility. Last, there is the impact of acculturation. The cultural values and structures of the host community have an influence on the immigrant community, generating a conflict between constancy and change. The issues of family structure and values have been discussed extensively in the sociological and family therapy literature (for example, McGoldrick 1982) but the clinical consequences of cultural adaptation are less well documented. Each immigrant family is the unique product of circumstances and responses which lead to its seeking help, but some general patterns do emerge. Differences of structure within and between ethnic groups are further complicated by the effects of contact with the dominant cultural milieu and the duration of such contact. Broadly speaking, we have recognised three types of family adaptation.

Traditional families These often come from an agrarian society into an urban culture and seem to suffer most from the transition. They gather together in ghettos and sometimes make little effort to adapt to the host culture, preferring to try to recreate their traditional lifestyles in the new country. The men go out to work and operate in the world outside, but the women, particularly the older women, are kept in purdah; contact with and adaptation to the new environment is discouraged. These families tend to present with multiple psychosocial problems of housing, health, unemployment and racial harassment. They tend to work in industrialised low wage settings with poor housing. As their white neighbours are often disadvantaged as well, in periods of economic hardship they become the objects of violent racism. When the recession bites they are the first to lose out, and as the neighbourhood decays, with cutbacks in essential services, they are often scapegoated. Bowen (1978) described what he called the ‘societal projection process’ where the benefactors define others as inferior and

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incompetent in order to relieve their own anxiety and uncertainty. He argued that these groups attract over-sympathetic workers who put the recipients in a one-down inferior position and ‘either keep them there or get angry with them’. With increasing unemployment, cutbacks in social services and growing hostility from their white neighbours, dispossessed immigrants face a bleak future. Dealing with the victims of such a complex social process is difficult and demanding. It is usually very difficult to treat cases in isolation; an active systems intervention approach is critical. The five main areas of activity are: first, the identification, development, support and empowerment of community leaders. Second, the creation of interpreter and advocacy services. Third, the development of support groups, social groups, information centres, day and social and cultural centres. The setting up of women’s groups is particularly important. The women are severely restricted in their contacts with the host culture. Unless they have contact and support from within their own community, it becomes very difficult to help resolve their problems. Fourth, the development of a liaison with police, probation, legal, immigration, housing, education, medical and social services. Last, the training and sensitisation of staff on issues of race, culture and gender. Training on racial and gender issues tends to be done separately, reflecting the tendency in society to compartmentalise these issues and individuals from the mainstream. This prevents their integration within the overall process of training, thereby recreating the lack of integration seen in society. As long as issues of race and gender are dealt with as a subject of ‘study’ and not as an experience that is ongoing and evolving, real change will be retarded.

Transitional families These families have usually been settled for some time and have developed an economic foothold. The children may have only a limited knowledge of their traditional culture and are influenced by their education, peers and the media. They tend to present with inter-generational, intercultural conflicts about behaviour and authority (see also Perelberg 1992). Role confusion, identity crises and communication problems are often seen. The conflicts of adolescence are magnified by the difference in intergenerational expectations. The parents fear losing their children to an atheistic and materialistic culture. The young look down on their parents for their work ethic, their passive acceptance of authority, particularly religious authority, and the tendency to impose restrictions on socialisation and dress, which their children see as outmoded and trivial. Young people reject the sweatshops and long hours which their elders

140 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler accepted and want to enjoy and express themselves as individuals, rather than as family members. The elders fear the children will engage in sexual promiscuity, marry outside their ethnic group, lose their religion, become addicted to drugs, or fail to utilise the educational opportunities their parents have struggled to give them. Caught between the culture of their family and that of their peers, adolescents experience confusion and conflict of loyalties. While the adolescent male is given a certain degree of latitude the adolescent female finds herself restricted, not only by her parents but also by her brothers. Education and success in studies is perhaps one of the few opportunities for self-expression, but despite their academic success, women from the ethnic minorities continue to be less affirmed by their culture and severely restricted in their socialisation and choice in marriage. While it is possible to treat members of the second generation on conventional lines, therapists need to be aware of the cultural conflicts and have access to interpreters and cultural advice in approaching the older generation. They will need to strike a balance between the demands of tradition and the pressure for change.

Transcultural families These families tend to come from urban areas within the Commonwealth. Many are bicultural, bilingual and familiar with British customs and practices even before they arrive. Bicultural families may be further subdivided into various categories such as the following. The ‘dualists’ are linguistically and culturally adapted in public, but maintain a traditional life-style in private. They tend to be entrepreneurial or professional and are often the leaders and innovators within their community, serving the function of culture brokers. The first generation finds affirmation in the ability to succeed whilst retaining their traditions. The children who fail to follow in their footsteps and do not fulfil their expectations often find themselves lost and anomic, neither fish nor fowl. The ‘black Britons’ are the people Fanon (1968) dubbed ‘Black skins, White masks’. They have abandoned their culture of origin in favour of the dominant culture. They tend to present with the same problems as white families but are subject to racism, which they frequently deal with by denial and intellectualisation. A crisis may serve to unmask their true feelings about these experiences. They are often perceived as having ‘sold out’ by their fellow immigrants, which can limit the support they get when faced with a problem. The women in this group have a high degree of overt autonomy and power. They are, however, perceived as the culture carriers and are

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subject to covert patriarchal pressures. This group of patients tends to be treated on a ‘colour blind’ basis by psychiatric professionals. The therapist needs to be particularly aware of the tendency to avoid issues of cultural difference and racism. A third group is formed by individuals often born in this country who are fiercely loyal to their ethnic heritage and do not appear to have identity issues about being black and British. They are highly politicised in relation to racism and fundamentalism and perhaps represent a hope for the future. They are rarely referred for help.

The acculturation gradient and gender Within the family, particularly the traditional family, there will exist a cultural gradient, i.e. the degree to which family members will be more or less linguistically and culturally adapted to the host country’s ways. This adaptation leads to greater flexibility in coping with the new environment and therefore to greater power. However, tension may arise if this power does not coincide with the member’s status within the family. His or her acculturation may engender challenges of power, and anxieties in other members about betrayal of family values. The therapist, in seizing on these acculturated members as allies and translators, may be unwittingly exaggerating the conflict. Patterns of adaptation to a second culture are influenced by gender, particularly the assumption that female children have a lesser status and value than male children. Thus in many Asian families, while the men may be driven by economic necessity to imitate the host culture in order to get a job, the woman, particularly the older ones, are kept in a sort of timewarp – in which they learn no English and continue their traditional life-style. Fears of racial attack and abuse maintain this almost agoraphobic existence. Female children attend school and thereby adapt, but a careful watch is kept by parents and brothers on their dress, makeup and socialisation. The sexism inherent in the patriarchal structure of the traditional Asian family, which sees the woman’s role as keeper of hearth and home, is thus reinforced from outside by racism as well as by the sexism of western culture. Within her community, the Asian woman is dominated by the authority of her father, husband, son and mother-in-law. She achieves status only when she becomes a family elder. In the case of the Afro-Caribbean family, the women are often the stable breadwinners, working in low-paid jobs as well as facing the demands of running the home. Rates of unemployment for Afro-Caribbean males are twice as high as that of Asian males. The black male, subject to high levels of unemployment and racism, has additional pressures that make it more difficult to fulfil the role of economic provider, nor within the ‘macho’ expectations of his own culture can he be seen to play the

142 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler ‘house-husband’ to a working wife. This magnifies the stresses on the Afro-Caribbean woman, who has to play the dual role of breadwinner and mother, often with little physical or emotional support from her partner. Her main source of strength is often her own mother and other female relatives. It can therefore be seen that the pressures on women from the ethnic minorities are enormous and this is reflected in their higher rates of mental illness. Young Asian married women have very high rates of suicide. This is at a time when the suicide rate for young white women is falling. The rate was 2.7 per cent for Asian women as compared to 0.6 per cent for white women. Eighty-three per cent of Asian women between the ages of 15–24 who committed suicide were married (Raleigh et al. 1992). The role of their economic and social oppression in the aetiology of their psychological disturbance is rarely explored.

THE BARNET APPROACH Our own response has been to develop a goal oriented, problem solving, symptom relieving approach in the context of the client’s family and culture which pays particular attention to the stresses on women (Ratna 1990). Race and gender issues are addressed not only in therapy but also in the formation and composition of the therapeutic team. Efforts have been made to appoint women and professionals from the ethnic minorities to positions of power so that they serve as role models to their clients. The first step is the creation of a cultural bridge that fosters a sense of respect and understanding. A studious effort is made to avoid the stigma of mental illness. Given the nature of social networks within the ethnic minorities, it is advisable to see not just the nuclear family at the initial interview but also to bring in aunts, uncles, friends; anyone whom the family feel might be helpful.

Engaging the family The therapist needs to be sensitive to the hopes and uncertainties of the immigrant family in accepting a stranger into their midst at a time of turmoil. The process of entry is complex, and a positive outcome of therapy can be delayed or damaged if it is not dealt with carefully. It is useful to conceive of engagement as a series of steps and to be aware of the pitfalls that may arise. The first step is to affirm and fit into the cultural context. This is achieved by holding the interview in the client’s home and by affirming the elders and those in

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power within the group. The reason for calling the family meeting is not to examine family pathology, but to explore how family members can contribute towards the resolution of the problem. The therapist can thus mobilise positive values of respect, responsibility, caring and interdependence that are the strengths of the community. Whatever the gender of the patient, it is the male figures in the family who will broker this, and it is important at this stage to cooperate with this arrangement. Having arrived at the home, it is important to observe social rules and rituals. The seating, for example, will be segregated by gender and reflect the authority structure. The therapist, especially if he is male, will probably be offered a prominent place which should be offered to the elder before accepting. However poor the family, tea and sweetmeats may be served. It is impolite and unwise to refuse. In order to facilitate acceptance it becomes necessary to take a flexible approach to therapy. A key step is to intervene actively in practical problems, such as medical, financial, legal, social and housing problems and to demonstrate care by taking up multiple helping roles. Working as a multidisciplinary team facilitates this process. The therapist serves as a ‘systems guide’ to welfare services, acting as an advocate by informing and empowering the family in solving practical problems (Boyd-Franklin 1989). If the situation is highly charged with a lot of fear and anxiety or if it is chaotic and out of control, it may be necessary to take charge by adopting an authoritative style. It is advisable to switch to a more democratic style and empower those present by inviting participation. Family members are invited to state what they perceive the problem to be, how it affects them and what the cultural implications and social repercussions of the problem may be. Time is spent on exploring problems of acculturation, the circumstances of migration, the process of adaptation and the hopes, fears and aspirations of the family. The exploration of the experience of racism, both personal and institutional, is a key issue. In the search for the definition and causation of the problem, all family members’ views should be explored. Their view of causation may be influenced by concepts derived from their culture. There are three main cultural hypotheses: the organic hypothesis – that physical illness or imbalance of humours is causing the upset; the psychodynamic hypothesis – that various stresses and worries are taking their toll, and lastly spirit possession.

Dealing with somatic presentations Many people from ethnic minorities assume that one goes to a doctor purely to deal with medical matters, so it is legitimate to talk only of symptoms. Family conflicts or

144 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler relationship difficulties, considered by western psychiatrists to be psychological factors mediating the expression of physical symptoms, are regarded as personal and private. They are to be dealt with, not by a medical doctor, but by a person in authority within the family network, such as a respected elder or priest. Most significant of all, however, is the fear and stigma attached to the diagnosis of mental illness, not only for the patient but also for the family. For example, the diagnosis of mental illness in the index patient will lead to the sister’s marriage prospects being compromised. All this adds up to a situation in which nothing but medical symptoms are disclosed and social and personal inquiries are avoided as being intimidatory, intrusive and irrelevant. This is the so called somatisation that many have observed in the presentation of emotional problems in the ethnic minorities. Somatisation is commoner in white women than men. In ethnic minorities this gender difference is less marked. Since it arises from the expectation of the role and function of doctors, demedicalisation is the key counter tactic. This can be done in several ways. First, by making the key therapist a non-medical person, such as a social worker or health visitor (Schofield 1981; Triselotis 1982). Second, by conducting the interviews away from the setting of a hospital or GP surgery, in the home or community centre. This also serves to reduce the sense of threat and alienation often felt in medical settings. By creating a familiar and culturally supportive environment in which to conduct the interview, one puts the patient at ease so that he or she feels more open to intervention. Since medical symptoms are borne by one person, the invitation of friends and relatives allows the diffusion of the problem into the social field. The opportunity to assess the strengths, weaknesses and limits of the patient’s network is also gained. A further benefit is that the family are enabled to meet, interact with and contract directly with the therapist, which improves communication and creates a sense of support and unity in the work needed to resolve the problems. Where the problem is heavily somatised (‘the symptom screen’) the course and duration of the symptoms are plotted in relation to psychosocial events such as deaths, departures, conflicts, etc., and coincidence in time is used as a clue to causation. Another strategy is to explore the meaning of the symptom with the family group and its consequences in the fields of communication and behavioural response, e.g. ‘When you have these burning sensations in your head, whom do you tell?’ This has the effect of shifting the emphasis from symptom statements to observation of patterns of communication within the family. Asking, ‘When she tells you she has a headache, what do you do?’ shifts the problem from the experiential field of having a headache to the behavioural field of the family’s response to it. Having established the problems confronting the family, efforts should be made to

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maximise the family’s resources in resolving them. The family’s treatment expectations should be explored, and the therapist be open to working in conjunction with a Hakim, Ayuredic practitioner or exorcist (Aslam 1979). In dealing with ethnic families, it is important not to assume that they are au fait with the theory and logistics of psychological treatments. The family should be prepared for therapy by explaining what is on offer and what part the therapist can play in helping them in the search for a solution. A psychoeducational approach, which explains the process of therapy before it is initiated, has been shown to optimise results (Lambert and Lambert 1984). Given the emotional and cultural loading of issues such as sex and the role of women, it is critical that there is caution in exploration. Because of taboos on disclosure to outsiders, the search for information must be undertaken sensitively. Questions are directed first to those in authority; through them the identified client is approached. One member, usually the husband or father, will serve this gatekeeper function and it is important to acknowledge it.

Work with different subgroups Once the network involved has been established, and given the codes of conduct regarding non-disclosure to outsiders of what are regarded as private matters, subgroups based on alliances can be separately interviewed. In our context, the family is seen by a male and a female therapist. The female therapist becomes the key worker for the female client; she sees her for therapy and also explores her social and family network for support figures. The problem and possible solutions are explored, as well as the obstacles to problem resolution. In view of the tradition of respect and honouring parents, where there are conflicts of authority children will need to be interviewed apart from the parents. Subdivisions of this kind – based on the parent–child boundary, the separation of male from female, those in authority from those who are not, interviewing those who are accultured in English separately from those who are interviewed in their mother tongue – all mediate disclosure (Messent 1992). They facilitate the discussion of problems outside the usual codes of conduct and serve to delineate boundaries in a highly structured family. For example, Izzat, discussed on page 138, does not permit an Asian wife to challenge or criticise her husband in public, nor discuss sexual matters with a male therapist. If the latter issues seem relevant, a separate interview with a female therapist should be arranged. When continuing the discussion in the presence of all members constitutes a cultural violation, then parallel therapy is introduced. In the exploration stage, the

146 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler groupings will be determined by the need to find out what has been happening. The decision to interview individuals separately might be regarded as a cultural violation by some family therapists. In practice, we have found that ethnic clients are well aware of the cultural limitations of open disclosure and are very ready to be interviewed separately. If there is a conflict we explain it in terms of shuttle diplomacy: ‘You appear unable to agree with each other; let us see what compromise each of you can reach with us’. The clients are then interviewed separately. The therapists then take a break from the family and meet together to formulate a strategy. They then meet each subgroup separately and negotiate the compromise and also discuss what can and cannot be disclosed. The family is then reconvened to discuss the outcome.

Working with gender issues Many female psychiatric patients from the Asian community are victims of patriarchy. The problem in treatment is that despite causing distress, patriarchal values are openly espoused and highly valued both by men and women. Some therapists’ values about empowerment and role redefinition, especially as regards women, thus immediately come into conflict with the family’s traditional norms and expectations. In western families, patriarchal values have become more open to negotiation. In families of the ethnic minorities, however, patriarchal values are often perceived as fundamental expressions of identity and culture and attempts to negotiate these issues on behalf of the individual are likely to be misunderstood as an attack on the culture. In our experience, we have found three key factors mediating the negotiation of change: power, tradition and identity. Patriarchy gives power to male figures and their agents (such as the mother-in-law), who are reluctant to relinquish it. Women internalise patriarchal injunctions and it is important to be aware of this. Tradition represents the values and beliefs handed down by one generation to the next. It is experienced as ‘this is the way it has always been’, and there is a fear of losing out to the host culture in making changes. Identity is the sense of wholeness derived from a specific cultural experience and acculturation and change can trigger an identity crisis. This is often seen in children born in this country to immigrant parents. These issues have a greater effect on women, because they are perceived by their community and perceive themselves as being ‘culture carriers’. In practice, we do not challenge patriarchy directly. It invariably leads to the men closing ranks and shutting off the woman’s access to treatment. We believe it is important to connect Asian women with a supportive network of other women. Social systems interventions and networking are key responses to the plight of individual

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women. One needs to find mediators from within the community who will facilitate these changes. A significant factor is the role religion plays (see also Lau, Chapter 7 this volume), not only in the conceptualisation of the problem but also in the strategies used to cope with it. Prayer and devotional rituals are common coping strategies in the face of anxiety and a source of strength and hope to many women. Hinduism and Islam offer positive images of strong female figures in their hagiography. They can be used by an informed therapist as points of identification in the evolution of an alternative role and identity within the culture.

Case study 1 Mrs Sayid, a 28-year-old Pakistani woman, became psychotically disturbed after the birth of her child. She lived with her husband and mother-in-law who did not speak a word of English. The baby was a godsend to the mother-in-law who, after years of inactivity and marginalisation following immigration, had a focus in a grandchild. She took over the childcare, but in ways that constantly undermined and sabotaged Mrs Sayid’s efforts. The son chimed in on the criticism. His wife was furious, sleepdeprived and debilitated by a difficult pregnancy. She was desperate to be admitted so that she could get away from the situation and have support and her baby with her in hospital. The mother-in-law was keen to have her admitted so that she herself could be the sole carer of the baby. A female therapist saw Mrs Sayid and explored the pros and cons of admission to a psychiatric unit. To Mrs Sayid, admission represented a way of escaping from the undermining situation at home, giving her time to herself with the baby. On the other hand, by accepting the label of madness, she would empower the mother-in-law in relation to the child, as she would be perceived as an unfit mother. Mrs Sayid was in a bind: if she went into hospital she would have freedom from her mother-in-law but be stigmatised as mentally ill. If she stayed at home she would be caught in an unequal power struggle. This may explain why many clients in this position are unable to ask for or use the help offered to them. Whichever way they turn, they are likely to lose out. Mrs Sayid was physically exhausted, desperate, emotionally confused and angry. She finally opted to stay at home, provided we supported her. Rather than tackle the mother-in-law and force the son into a conflict of loyalty, we had a discussion with the couple and explained the issue in terms of bonding: that a baby forms a bond early, needs to be with his mother and that this leads to better emotional and intellectual

148 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler development. The husband agreed to take a fortnight off work and support his wife, particularly in getting some sleep. We also got a cousin who was close to Mrs Sayid to come over to help and she later moved in to stay. We praised the mother-in-law for her efforts to help and arranged for her to go to an Asian day centre. In that meeting, she raised the spectre of madness and said that Mrs Sayid might harm the baby in a fit of insanity if she (the mother-in-law) were not there. We reassured her that with our medication that would not happen. Mrs Sayid was in fact only on vitamin and iron supplements, with a sedative to be used if she lost sleep. The first weeks were anxiety ridden, but Mrs Sayid slowly overcame her sleep deprivation and settled down very well. We cite this case because we used indirect methods and deliberately avoided confronting what we felt were key cultural issues. The young wife is an outsider and the lowest member in the pecking order of this extended family; if the dowry she brought is regarded as inadequate, then she can become an object of anger and abuse. The mother-in-law is the power behind the son’s throne. In the process of migration she often becomes marginalised, unable to exercise power because of the demands of living in a foreign country. Mrs Sayid had had power disproportionate to her family status while she was working and able to stay away from her mother-in-law at work. The birth of the baby altered these dynamics. After years of being home alone, isolated and terrified, the mother-in-law had a baby to look after and it brought her daughter-in-law into a more traditional role within her orbit in the house. If we had explored the mother-in-law’s takeover of the baby in the family session, the son would have been forced to defend and affirm his mother’s position, which would have favoured the perception and management of his wife as ‘mad’. Instead, by using the concept of bonding, we encouraged the support of the wife by the husband for the sake of the child, while finding the mother-in-law an alternative role outside the home.

Case study 2 We were called in to see an aggressive schizophrenic mother who was said to be screaming at night, disturbing the neighbours and abusing her daughter. We found a very anxious, isolated Asian family living in a dilapidated small flat. The mother, Mrs Patel, spoke limited English and there was an overweight 3-year-old daughter and a very anxious father. Mr Patel insisted on answering all the questions. His wife kept making grunting noises and was restless and agitated. They were very isolated, had no friends or family in England and mother and child never went out. The father was a lens grinder at an ophthalmic shop and worked long hours. They had moved into the

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area on the offer of a job. Mrs Patel had a previous history of hospitalisation in India, was on large doses of Chlorpromazine and Mr Patel feared that she would be admitted to hospital again and their daughter taken into care. The alternative, as he saw it, was that he would have to leave or take time out of his job to look after his family. Having just got the job, he feared losing it. The tension and fear in the room on our arrival were palpable. We decided at the outset that, provided the child was not in immediate danger, we would treat them at home and not break up the family. They were initially frightened and suspicious, but the longer we spent with them the more relaxed they became. Mrs Patel offered to make tea and we accepted. We also decided not to conduct a formal interview but to spend time befriending them. Mr Patel was of a lower caste than his wife, but because of her history of mental illness the marriage was arranged and accepted by both sides of the family. However, once married, they were shunned because of the stigma of caste and mental illness. When they moved away from the East End, Mrs Patel lost what little social contact she had with other Asian women. For all practical purposes, she was a prisoner in her home, living in fear of and conflict with her neighbours. We started treatment by altering her medication and, more importantly, arranged for home tutoring and a community psychiatric nurse to visit her at home and assist her to acquire the personal and social skills (such as shopping, talking with the other mothers at school, using the library, going swimming, etc.) necessary to cope with her predicament. We made a contract that she would no longer discipline the child by hitting her and that if she felt tense or irritable, she would walk away and take ‘time out’. The nurse introduced the Patels to a Hindu temple and encouraged the husband to try and connect with other Asian families. He proved to be as anxious as his wife in social situations which, combined with the embarrassing noises she made, caused difficulties at first. This required time and patient encouragement to overcome. Together they set goals for a two-year period, after which the child would start school when they would be mixing with other mothers and their children. Though Mrs Patel showed gross symptoms of schizophrenia such as passivity phenomena, auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions, the drugs had little effect. On the other hand, as her language, social skills and confidence grew, these symptoms faded away. We cite this case because in most services, admission to hospital would have been inevitable, with disastrous consequences for one so alienated and unskilled. The case also shows how the experience of racism exacerbates the sense of isolation and creates a sense of fear for oneself and one’s family, particularly the children (Jervis 1986; Wilson 1978). Women presenting in this way tend to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act,

150 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler admitted to Eurocentric hospitals where they feel terrified and alone and given large doses of drugs (Penfold and Walker 1984). They are also more likely to be seen by junior doctors and given ECT (Littlewood and Cross 1980). The social issues are rarely addressed, when in fact their resolution optimises therapy. By reframing diagnosed mental illness as a problem of isolation in a family oppressed by race, caste and gender issues, we were able to work with the Patel family rather than magnify their isolation through conventional treatment.

CONCLUSION Constructing an integrated society which accepts multiplicity and values differences in a non-discriminatory way is a continuing process to be lived in our everyday lives. In this chapter, we have highlighted some of the issues that have influenced our practice in working in a gender sensitive way with clients from minority groups. We have sought to demonstrate, by descriptions of practice and case analysis, the lines of thought emerging not only from observing our clients, but also our own responses to our interaction with them. We feel there is a tendency to view ethnic problems through colonial eyes and to reconstruct in therapy the racial and gender hierarchies of that view. Through this work we have become aware that it is not enough to focus on the inherent splits that exist between the values and the discriminatory practices of the white host culture versus the ethnic minorities, or the power discrepancy between white majority and black minority groups. These are constantly reified in stereotypical gender/race bias roles that are ascribed by both white and black cultures. Instead, we have sought to identify patterns of connection between individuals, their families and their social context. These patterns do not reflect the existent splits between black and white, male and female, powerful and powerless – in short ‘either/or’ dichotomies. Rather, we try to build up patterns that will encompass ‘both/and’ positions. The challenge for us is to conduct ourselves in a manner that promotes respect and empowerment, by valuing clients’ ideas and contributions. At the same time, we need to be challenging enough to introduce new information to the family system to help individuals develop a different understanding of their position within the host culture. Through this process we hope to avoid stigmatising and stereotyping ethnic minority groups and help them within the multiple contexts in which they live.

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152 Lawrence Ratna and Maria Wheeler Littlewood, R. and Lipsedge, M. (1982) Aliens and Alienists, London: Penguin. Littlewood, R. and Cross, S. (1980) ‘Ethnic minorities and the psychiatric services’, Sociology of Health and Illness 2: 194–201. McGoldrick, M. (1982) ‘Ethnicity and family therapy: an overview’, in M. McGoldrick, J. Pierce and J. Giordana (eds) Ethnicity and Family Therapy, New York: Guilford Press. Messent, P. (1992) ‘Working with Bangladeshi families in the East End of London’, Journal of Family Therapy 14: 287–304. Penfold, P. S. and Walker, G. A. (1984) Women and the Psychiatric Paradox, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Perelberg, R. (1992) ‘Familiar and unfamiliar types of family structures’, in J. Kareem and R. Littlewood (eds) Intercultural Therapy, Oxford: Blackwell. Raleigh, V.S., Bulusu, L. and Balrajan, R. (1992) ‘Suicide and self-burning among Indians and West Indians in England and Wales’, British Journal of Psychiatry 161: 365–368. Ratna, L. (1990) ‘Crisis intervention where it is contraindicated’, in R.Punukollu (ed.) Recent Advances in Crisis Intervention, Huddersfield: International Institute of Crisis Intervention. Rogers, A. and Faulkner, A. (1987) A Place of Safety, MIND Publications. Rwegellera, G.G.C. (1980) ‘Differential use of psychiatric services by West Indians, West Africans and English in London’, British Journal of Psychiatry 137: 428–432. Sashidaran. S. P. (1986) ‘Ideology and politics in transcultural psychiatry’, in J. Cox (ed.) Transcultural Psychiatry, London: Croom Helm. Schofield, J. (1981) ‘Behind the veil: the mental health of Asian women in Britain – the role of the heath visitor’, Health Visitor 54: 248–251. Shaikh, A. (1985) ‘Cross cultural comparison: psychiatric admission of Asian and indigenous patients in Leicestershire’, International Journal of Social Psychiatry 31: 3–11. Thomas, S. T., Stone, K., Osborn, M., Thomas, P.F. and Fischer, M. (1993) ‘Psychiatric morbidity and compulsory admissions among United Kingdom born Europeans, AfroCaribbeans and Asians in central Manchester’, British Journal of Psychiatry 163: 91– 99. Triselotis, J. (1982) ‘Transcultural social work’, in J. Cox (ed.) Transcultural Psychiatry, London: Croom Helm. Wilson, A. (1978) Finding a Voice, London: Virago.

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Dangerous liaisons Issues of gender and power relationships in HIV prevention and care Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer

INTRODUCTION More than ten years have elapsed since AIDS was first reported. On 5 June 1981 the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported five cases of a rare pneumonia among young homosexual men living in Los Angeles. A month later, CDC reported a further ten cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and twenty-six cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. By the end of 1981 the number had reached 257. Ten years on, that figure has increased more than a thousand-fold, and cases of AIDS have been reported in almost every country. There are over a million cases of AIDS world-wide, and by the middle of the next century this number will have risen to 18.3 million (Chin et al. 1990). Alongside the rapid advances over the decade in the fields of epidemiology, virology, immunology, clinical management, nursing care, clinical therapy and prophylaxis, there has been a supreme effort to understand more about the psychosocial sequelae of HIV disease and to translate that comprehension into counselling and psychological support for those affected. Physical illness affects both individuals and those around them. The psychological consequences of HIV disease are directly linked to the social context of AIDS-related illness and the meaning this holds, the nature of the disease and the clinical manifestations associated with it (Miller and Bor 1988). The relationship between HIV disease and psychological problems has been studied by many researchers (Faulstich 1987; Green and McCreaner 1989). The devastating effects of HIV on relationships are, in part, determined by two factors: the fact that HIV is a transmissible virus which can spread through intimate sexual contact; and the forces in society which create, shape and determine patterns of relationships, including gender, power and sexuality. Socially disadvantaged groups which are traditionally viewed as having

154 Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer less power are directly and disproportionately affected by HIV disease. Specifically these include gay men, drug users, women, children and ethnic minority groups. The needs of these groups with regard to HIV prevention resources are often overlooked in favour of the needs of more powerful (and more acceptable) groupings in society such as heterosexual men and nuclear families. The British government’s recent ‘Back to Basics’ campaign epitomises the moral undertones to policy development and favoured social behaviour. The effect that lack of perceived power has on minority and oppressed groups is that they may experience role ambiguity. On the one hand they have serious and pressing medical, emotional and social needs. On the other hand, they do not have the influence or leverage in society to have these needs adequately met. Sometimes this may lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy such that in calling attention to themselves, they may engage in stereotypical patterns of behaviour and reinforce the prejudice of others. du Guerny and Sjoberg (1993) focus on the interrelationship between gender relations and the HIV/AIDS epidemic from a sociopolitical perspective. This provides a useful context for considering the clinical, social, psychological and familial sequelae of HIV infection. They outline strategies which should, in their view, be incorporated into HIV/AIDS programmes in order to raise the status of women and to rebalance gender relations. They suggest that lack of education, information and bargaining power, together with the economic dependency and domestic responsibilities of many women place them in a disadvantaged position (compared to men) in demanding safer sex. The following section examines current research into the psychological and social effects of HIV disease and the association between HIV and the prevailing social context. Particular attention is given to the interpersonal dynamics in relationships affected by HIV disease, gender issues and power. It is important to note that, to date, little research has been published on this topic and for this reason, ideas have been extrapolated from studies in related areas.

GENDER PATTERNS IN HIV CARE The medical, psychological and social care and management of HIV infected people in the 1990s is both complex and challenging (Bor et al. 1992a). In the 1980s it was predominantly gay men (in the West) who were most affected and consequently medical and social support services developed to meet their needs. As the natural history of the disease unfolds, new demands and challenges are placed on existing services. In the 1990s, this will entail a shift in emphasis in care from the acutely to the

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chronically ill. An important new emphasis will be on developing appropriate services for the increasing number of women infected with HIV, the majority of whom will be young and of childbearing age. In the United Kingdom, women account for an increasing number of new cases reported; in 1985 the ratio of female to male infections was 1:48 (CDR 1992). This ratio had decreased to 1:7 in 1993 (CDR 1993). Outpatient HIV care services in the UK are mainly centred in sexually transmitted diseases (STD) clinics. These clinics have been at the forefront of HIV testing initiatives, offering a confidential service to those who use them. While it is possible to provide follow-up care for most patients in these clinics, they operate on an outpatient basis and patients have to be transferred to hospital-based physicians when symptoms occur. HIV infected women, particularly those with children, may feel that they do not fit with an STD-based service, particularly because of the absence of childcare facilities. Issues pertaining to fertility, reproduction, childbearing and child rearing may need to be discussed in a more appropriate context. For example, HIV infected women who have connected with established services have expressed a need for special care and support services to enable them to attend regularly at hospitals (Bor et al. 1993). Providing HIV testing, including same-day testing and results, and counselling in community settings and antenatal clinics have partially addressed the need for alternative services in different settings to promote access to services for all groups. Other factors may also inadvertently discriminate against women with HIV disease. Not only is an infected man at slightly higher risk of infecting a woman during intercourse than the other way around (Johnson 1990), but women with AIDS have been found to have a shorter survival time than men (Rothenberg et al. 1987). There are important social reasons for the observed increase in vulnerability of woman to AIDS. Women may delay seeking medical attention due to poverty or pressure by their partners or families to provide care in the home (Bury et al. 1992). The clinical system of classification for people with HIV disease may also exclude some women who may be infected and suffer with gynaecological conditions closely associated with advanced HIV disease. Without an AIDS diagnosis, these women may be denied social, medical and practical benefits and support. They may also be excluded from entry into controlled experimental trials of drugs not only because of this anomaly in the case definition of AIDS, but also because of pregnancy. In the 1990s, there is likely to be a shift in emphasis in HIV care to include improved services for women, children and families (Bor et al. 1993). In spite of advances in the treatment of people with HIV disease, there is neither a cure nor preventive vaccine. The impotence of the medical profession in curing patients with HIV disease is in stark contrast to the demands of patients to be kept

156 Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer fully informed and involved in their care. Young gay men, many of whom are educated, articulate and well-informed about HIV disease, have pushed back a boundary that previously maintained patients in a subservient and passive role in their care and treatment. Patients have formed pressure groups (for example, ACT UP) which have sometimes successfully challenged the policies and practices of pharmaceutical companies, health ministries and the medical profession. They have campaigned to make experimental treatments available at an earlier stage than might usually be the case. On their own initiative, some patients on experimental treatments have sought to ‘break the code’ of the trials by having their blood or urine analysed to determine whether they are having the treatment or a placebo. In desperation, illicit supplies of new or experimental drugs have also been obtained by patients. A wide range of healthcare professionals have had to learn to talk openly with some of their patients about sexual activities, recreational drug use and profound uncertainties about illness, its course and outcome. In the 1990s there has been renewed debate in medical journals about informed consent, accountablility and quality of life. Patients, many of them men, have succeeded in redressing some of the imbalance in the doctor–patient relationship by becoming active in designing and delivering healthcare, and in assessing the effectiveness of services. In contrast, many women continue to assume a passive role in their treatment programmes and this is often pronounced for women from ethnic minority groups and/or low socioeconomic status.

NEGOTIATING SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS AND HIV PREVENTION In the absence of a vaccine, the prevention of the spread of HIV will, for many people, require changes in risk-taking behaviour. This entails the use of condoms during penetrative sexual intercourse. Health promotion efforts in many countries have been modelled on a conventional theoretical understanding of behaviour change. The idea is that behaviour can be changed by providing people with information about risk, and by challenging prevailing beliefs or attitudes about risky sexual activities. This gave rise to a spate of ‘Knowledge–Attitude–Behaviour’ (KAB) studies in the 1980s. A common assumption made by researchers is that ‘HIV/AIDS health education messages usually imply that sexual behaviour is the outcome of mutual, rational decision making’ (Wright 1992:11). While KAB studies continue to be reported in the literature, there is increasing recognition that behaviour modification strategies depend on a thorough

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understanding of the complexities of social context, risk and relationships, as well as some impediments to discussing sex and negotiating safer sex practices. Negotiating risk as it pertains to sex presupposes that both (or however many) partners are equally empowered to consent to sex and to make decisions pertaining to risk. While this may be to some extent valid in same-sex relationships (see e.g. Hickson et al. 1992), there may be gender determined patterns of relationships and role expectations between heterosexual partners (Wight 1992). Many women report that their first sexual experience (and indeed, subsequent ones) involved their male partner coercing them to have intercourse (Holland et al. 1992). There is often an expectation that men will take the initiative in sexual behaviour. Women, on the other hand, are often expected to make decisions about contraception, particularly since the advent of the contraceptive pill. Although the female partner may therefore be ‘invested’ with the prime responsibility for ensuring proper contraception, she may not be empowered to insist that her male partner use a condom for barrier protection. Paradoxically women may feel less able to refuse sex because, with the advent of reliable forms of contraceptive such as the pill, they have lost the ‘excuse’ of the risk of pregnancy in order to avoid unprotected intercourse. Unless they are prepared to discuss the risk of HIV, which may give rise to a multitude of issues for the couple, women are thus at risk of HIV if they feel powerless to insist on a condom being used. An extreme example of the difficulties associated with negotiating safer sex is a recent news item on CNN television news (Sunday 16 May 1993). It was reported that a woman threatened with rape by a man pleaded with him to use a condom in order to avoid transmitting any sexual diseases. The rapist was later apprehended and, when tried, stated in his defence that the woman had conveyed her consent to having sexual intercourse by virtue of her having requested him to use a condom. In a study investigating psychosocial determinants of condom use it was found that females were significantly less likely than males to be prepared for safer sex by carrying a condom with them (Salt 1989), and thus it could be construed that they are willing to have unprotected intercourse rather than not to have intercourse at all. Certainly they may end up in situations where the lack of availability of a condom directly results in unprotected intercourse taking place. Another more recent issue, that of ‘date rape’, has implications for risk of HIV occurring, especially if the woman is under the influence of alcohol and less able to say no to unprotected sex. Several studies have shown a link between consumption of alcohol and/or drugs and increased risk behaviour for HIV infection. In a study by Salt (1989) it was found that male and female college students were less likely to use condoms after consuming alcohol and drugs, which render them ‘intoxicated’ and seemingly ‘powerless’. As Wight (1992) notes there is little incentive for a woman to carry around

158 Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer condoms for her protection because she may be regarded as promiscuous, apart from the possible embarrassment associated with obtaining them in the first place. Furthermore, female sex workers have reported that it is difficult to persuade some clients to use condoms because they are drunk and potentially violent (Wilson et al. 1989), while there is sometimes an incentive not to use condoms as clients will pay more for unprotected sex. There is increasing recognition of the importance of negotiating safer sex prior to the commencement of sexual activity. The rationale for this is that risk-related concerns can be addressed in advance, thereby establishing the limits of sexual activity and hence of HIV risk. This, however, may place sexual partners in double jeopardy. Not only is there a premium in sex attached to a level of ambiguity and mystery surrounding the sexual intentions of each partner (Wight 1992), but there is no clearly defined language or terminology which can best serve this purpose. Indeed, there is a social taboo about talking seriously about sex. Recent health education initiatives have identified these impediments to talking about sex and attempted to portray ‘safer sex’ and negotiating sexual activity as sexy. Hopefully this will introduce to young people a language for discussing sex, in the same way as healthcare professionals have had to come to terms with being more open with their patients about intimate matters in the era of HIV (Silverman et al. 1992). At one level, ‘advice to keep to safer sex’ (Silverman et al. 1992) in the era of HIV addresses ‘risky behaviour’ which in some circumstances may need to change in order to reduce the number of new HIV transmissions. At another level, there are ‘risky situations’ (Obbo 1993; Zwi and Cabral 1991) which need to be identified if the factors which give rise to risk-taking behaviour are to be properly addressed. Economic deprivation, migrancy, gender determined relationships and cultural rules about marriage and procreation may, in part, determine the nature and extent of impediments to negotiating or adhering to safer sex guidelines. In some African countries, for example, death of a husband places the woman in financial difficulty to the extent that many widows turn to prostitution as a means to support their offspring, risking their own health and lives in the process. In addition, the safer sex message is about harm minimisation rather than a punitive directive saying ‘don’t do it’. Much debate surrounds giving condoms to adolescents and prison inmates, for example, for fear of promoting sexual activity. Advocates of harm minimisation programmes realise the difficulties and sometimes impossibility of radical behaviour change and the need to stand down from an authoritative position to promote the development of self-respecting and competent individuals, capable of making decisions to protect themselves and others.

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THE DYNAMICS OF RELATIONSHIPS AFFECTED BY HIV In considering the impact of HIV infection on relationships it must be recognised that HIV is a unique and specific condition. Unlike other diseases or illnesses that can have a fatal outcome, HIV infection comes with a social context of its own that can dramatically affect relationships and their dynamics. The complexity of a relationship in which one person is negative and the other positive can alter remarkably according to gender and sexuality. It should be noted that outside pressures in turn can exert an influence on the structure of the relationship after infection occurs. Consider the four ways of transmission: sex, intravenous drug use, from mother to baby, and through medical treatment. Each route of transmission has social considerations – most recognisable are the ‘unfortunate victims of circumstance’: positive babies, and haemophiliacs. This can be contrasted with infection through drug use and penetrative sex, in which the infected are understood to have ‘brought the infection upon themselves’ through activities considered undesirable or corrupt. Although these concerns are purely moral and indeed prejudiced, the pressure brought about by them has a bearing on relationships with the person who is positive, the emotional well-being of the person who is positive (guilt, fear) and access to treatment and care facilities. The impact of HIV on gay men may be mediated by support systems within the gay community: gay men can often have an ‘extended family’ of friends and partners to give support who may already have faced the implications of HIV and AIDS. This may result from their need to seek support within their own community when faced with social rejection. With the migration of gay men to major cities in order to have access to a larger gay and lesbian community, gay men, on becoming positive, also have easier access to large treatment centres and facilities which are based in these cities. The converse may be true for heterosexuals facing the reality of HIV infection. Here the traditional family network cannot yet provide the same level of support. Heterosexual infection, being at present relatively uncommon, can mean a sense of isolation for the positive person and greater social stigma. For heterosexuals in a relationship, the moment of revealing infection to the partner will de-stabilise the relationship resulting in a number of altered power dynamics. For instance, in considering a relationship in which the man is positive and the woman is negative, the gender stereotyping of a ‘caring’ woman having to nurse her partner can come into play. Convention would have the woman providing skilled care during her partner’s illness, and the possibility of withholding care or indeed removing herself from the relationship appearing callous and disloyal. The couple will most likely be young and of childbearing age. In considering risk of infection, the woman would

160 Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer perhaps protect herself in order to remove the possibility of bearing a positive child or look to other methods of pregnancy such as Artificial Insemination by Donor (AID). However, the belief that a woman would do everything to remain free of infection is not necessarily true; there may be a strong drive for her to take risks that might lead to both partners becoming infected in order to redress the dynamics of power in operation within the relationship. Despite counselling and full information, some women will have unprotected sex to become pregnant irrespective of the risks they are taking, and the risks to the child – of becoming orphaned, or indeed death. These risks may also be a way of binding the couple together and demonstrating a strong sense of loyalty to the partner. Taking a risk that could lead to infection is a clear communication of wanting to die rather than live with the power imbalance within the relationship, or indeed be alive and alone after the partner has died. The risk-taking behaviour may be at a conscious or subconscious level where the individual appears to ‘deny’ her own risk of infection. In a heterosexual relationship in which the woman is positive and the man negative the need for the man to care for his partner and children is an issue particularly if the couple have a traditional view of him as the breadwinner. He may also question his partner’s route of infection, particularly in regard to infection through sex, which can lead to fantasies or the exposure of infidelity, secrets and disloyalty. However, contrary to popular belief, most couples do survive perturbations in the relationship (Bor et al. 1992a). If a relationship discontinues, it is more likely to stem from problems that have affected the couple prior to infection, and HIV becomes either a catalyst for change or an additional factor in the relationship ending. Gay couples face similar problems with partners taking risks to maintain the balance of their relationship, or changing sexual practice in order to allow one partner to remain healthy and look after the other. Gender related power issues do not come into play here however, and gay and lesbian couples need to find their own individual formula for their relationship as no hard and fast rules and moralities exist for them to adhere to. The impact of HIV disease on the family has been, until recently, an underdeveloped dimension of clinical research. This is perhaps surprising because for every person with HIV, there is at least one family touched by it (Maloney 1988). When someone is diagnosed as HIV positive, it inevitably means that many other people and relationships are affected. Even if he or she chooses not to tell anyone of the diagnosis at first, the pressure of bearing a secret may affect the relationship. HIV can place considerable stress on family members as they suffer from the same effects of isolation stemming from social stigma as the infected member. The preservation of secrets

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within and between the family and others with whom they may come into contact increases their risk for psychological problems, both while the member is alive and also after their death (Bor et al. 1989). Some couples are drawn closer to one another and this may be enhanced if the other partner also tests HIV positive; alternatively, distancing and blaming may occur. Where one partner is HIV positive and the other negative, the HIV negative partner may feel enormous guilt for ‘surviving’, or feel a need to ‘look after’ the HIV positive partner. The HIV positive partner may feel enormous guilt and concern that his or her partner may have been infected or become infected in the future and this can lead to changed relationship dynamics in general, and specifically to difficulties in their sexual relationship for fear of risking infection. Some HIV positive partners withdraw from the relationship or sabotage its viability in order to protect the other partner from risk, or from having to witness the deteriorating health, illness and death of the partner. Shifts in the balance of power in the relationship will depend on numerous factors but may be influenced by gender issues (see Altschuler 1993 for a more general discussion of gender and illness). Women, for example, are socialised to be carers of the sick, and they may be financially dependent on their spouse. In either case they may feel unable to leave the relationship, regardless of their emotional or other needs.

Case example: HIV negative woman with HIV positive partner A young woman discovered that she was pregnant two weeks before her boyfriend was diagnosed HIV positive. The pregnancy was unplanned and she was going to have a termination until she learned of her boyfriend’s HIV positive diagnosis. This news led to her deciding to have his child and stay with him in case he developed AIDS and needed to be cared for. This decision was very much at odds with her parents’ wishes that she leave the relationship and have an abortion. She risked losing their support if she continued this relationship and pregnancy at a time when she most needed their help. On the other hand, she wanted to show her parents that, as a woman, she was able to take care of others and was no longer a child needing to be cared for. A systemic counselling approach (Bor et al. 1992) involving the use of hypothetical and future-oriented questions was taken to assist the client’s problem solving and decision making. The use of these questions uncovered for her the implications for herself, her relationship with her boyfriend, her relationship with her parents and her future child if she tested HIV positive or HIV negative. The issue of having an HIV positive child or a child who might lose one or both of its parents early on in life needed to be addressed which also involved discussing abortion and medical treatment

162 Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer issues. The young woman developed her own ‘plan’ in the process of counselling, which was to be tested for HIV infection at six, ten and eighteen weeks of pregnancy and to continue with the pregnancy if she remained HIV negative at eighteen weeks, otherwise she would opt for a termination of the pregnancy. She decided that eighteen weeks of pregnancy was the cut-off point for testing and termination but that she would be tested again after the birth of the baby to ensure she had remained HIV negative. She was given advice about safer-sex practices and a counselling/ medical consultation was offered to her with her partner. He attended once for a medical consultation but did not attend for follow-up. The client gave birth to a healthy baby and remained HIV negative. She sought counselling support at regular intervals and returned with her boyfriend eighteen months later for counselling about conceiving another baby. This counselling interview was punctuated by a conflict of ideas between her and her partner. The woman wanted another baby, but her partner did not want her to risk becoming infected and leaving their daughter orphaned. It transpired that she had already been at risk of pregnancy and HIV infection during intercourse as a condom had split. It was agreed she would have an HIV test before deciding what to do, but she did not return. The gender and power dynamics in this situation are complex and most prominent at the interface of the client–boyfriend relationship and the client–parent relationship, but were also present in the client’s mother– father relationship with each other, and with her boyfriend. The client–boyfriend relationship was affected by the introduction of HIV in two main ways. First, it bonded the client to her boyfriend (although he withdrew and refused to discuss HIV, the pregnancy or their relationship). Second, she was the one who became ‘the patient’ seeing the doctor and counsellors on a regular basis, and to feed back information to her boyfriend while he continued to deny his problem. Counselling was aimed at providing her with information and support, particularly while her boyfriend and her parents felt unable to do this. Her ‘need to be needed’ and to take on a mothering role with her boyfriend emerged as a prime influence in her decision to become his carer and to become a mother. The implications for her own personal and professional development became apparent in the sessions and this enabled her to achieve a balance and pursue her career in addition to caring for her family. She remained financially independent which helped her to maintain independence from her parents as well as her boyfriend. Over time and after the birth of her daughter, the client directed her desire to care towards her child rather than her boyfriend. Her relationship with her boyfriend

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became more of an adult–adult relationship, punctuated by her increased assertiveness and conflict in the relationship. Her boyfriend’s outlook with regard to his girlfriend and HIV remained little changed over time, but he did respond to becoming a father and wished to protect his ‘little girl’. His own health status became important to him, in order for him to stay alive and look after his daughter as long as possible. Similarly, it became important for him to protect his girlfriend from becoming HIV positive as the mother of his daughter (rather than as his partner). The client–parents power relationship was a signficant influence in creating tension for the client about whether to have the baby or an abortion. The client was herself still perceived as ‘a child’ needing guidance about her future career and relationship choice. Her mother was opposed to her daughter’s boyfriend which was compounded further by his acquiring HIV. She viewed him as unsuitable to care for her daughter financially, emotionally or practically – a gender stereotyped role of the male–female relationship which she accepted as the norm. At the same time she also strongly promoted her daughter’s career initiatives and saw motherhood and pairing with this boyfriend as detrimental to her daughter’s career prospects. These issues had been pertinent to the mother’s own development and current unease with her relationship with her husband. She had an invested interest in keeping her daughter to herself as a companion and buffer against her own upset and marital difficulties as well as protecting her from making the same mistakes as she had. (As the father also did not attend counselling, the women carried the responsibility.) Counselling uncovered this relationship dynamic and the confusion of mother and daughter issues in relation to power, gender and stereotyped heterosexual relationships. This provided clarification of what the problem was and for whom, which in turn helped both the mother and the daughter to address their own problems more appropriately.

HIV DISEASE AND THE SHIFTING BALANCE OF POWER IN RELATIONSHIPS In all relationships, sex becomes a difficult area for negotiation following HIV infection, not only the issue of safer sex, but also discussing the fear of infecting and therefore the reality of damaging the partner: ‘Do I tell my partner?’ ‘What do I tell my partner?’ The antithesis has also been described where one person may wish to harm others in order to achieve parity. Purposely infecting a partner may be an act of personal retribution. Although an unlikely and unusual possibility, issues of deception can and do arise when the positive partner withholds the information of their positivity from

164 Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer their partner and wishes to practice unsafe sex, as part of a denial process and disbelief in their ability to effect transmission to another. In a positive/negative relationship, expectation would be that the positive partner may use infection and illness as a way to achieve recognition and caring from the other, and to allow illness to be a weapon in the previous relationship dynamic. Yet it must also be considered that the negative partner has similar abilities to withhold love, care, affection and sex, or even abuse issues of confidentiality by telling others of their partner’s status. In all these possibilities, the crisis of HIV infection will force confrontation and redefinition of a relationship. Preliminary research has identified the problems for surviving partners when the HIV infected partner dies. In positive/positive relationships, the surviving partner may become more depressed than if negative, and experience higher anxiety and grief most likely linked to fantasies relating to their own mortality and a feeling of an inability to have a new relationship (Bor et al. 1992a). Most common will be the fear of loneliness, having to face their own illness and dying alone with no partner to care for them. The surviving partner may express anger at their partner’s betrayal by dying first. In a positive/negative relationship, after initial grieving a sense of relief can also surface. It may become possible for the negative partner to begin to build a new life and find a new partner. However, fears of being ‘tarnished’ by having had a positive partner may make exploring new relationships extremely difficult.

CONCLUSION The rapid advances in knowledge about AIDS and HIV infection have been paralleled by a growing body of literature describing the psychosocial impact of HIV disease on individuals, families, communities and healthcare services. In the West, and in many developing countries, these descriptions emanate from a social context in which HIV/ AIDS is synonymous with fear, ostracism and marginalisation of those infected or affected. It is not surprising that some people with HIV disease, or with associated fears, may develop psychological problems ranging from neurotic symptoms to psychosis. What direction will psychosocial research take in the 1990s? Current trends reveal an established imbalance in medical research. Less than 5 per cent of research is concerned with African populations, even though Africa accounts for a quarter of AIDS cases, and many of the women infected with HIV, world-wide. Furthermore, there is a decline in the amount of research into HIV prevention and control, in spite of the growing number of cases globally and reports of relapse among those who have

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previously adopted safer sex practices (Elford et al. 1991). Many questions remain unanswered, and more detailed information is needed about problems that have already received some research interest. The changing emphasis in medical care for people with HIV disease in the 1990s from crisis management to monitoring and early intervention will be replicated in psychosocial care. Offering long-term psychological support to patients will be emotionally challenging for therapists, and more specialised care for different sub-populations affected, including women, will need to be developed. More rigorous research and clinical intervention is needed into issues relating to gender and power in relationships, be they in the personal lives of those affected by HIV disease, or between patients and their carers. Questions about the impact of the changing social context on psychological morbidity of patients, their contacts and family, also merit further study. The implications of HIV infection in relation to gender and power issues most importantly affect behavioural risk for HIV infection (e.g. women being socialised into putting themselves at risk from unprotected intercourse) and HIV care arrangements (e.g. women primarily being carers and looking after HIV positive others, irrespective of their own HIV status or health risk). Interventions designed to take power and gender dynamics into account involve a three-tier process of (1) HIV awareness training; (2) communication skills training; and (3) maintenance of changed behaviour. Addressing social and cultural traditions and values, using political, religious, media and other social mechanisms to effect change in ideology and challenge stereotyping and prejudicial views is also necessary to complement and motivate individual change.

REFERENCES Altschuler, J. (1993) ‘Gender and illness: implications for family therapy’, Journal of Family Therapy 15: 381–401. Bor, R., Miller, R. and Salt, H. (1989) ‘Secrecy-related problems in AIDS management’, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians 23: 264–266. Bor, R., Miller, R. and Goldman, E. (1992a) Theory and Practice of HIV Counselling, London: Cassell. Bor, R., Elford, J., Richey, L., Murray, D., Salt, H., Tilling, J., Miller, R. and Johnson, M. (1992b) ‘Patient satisfaction with HIV social care services at a London teaching hospital’, Genito-urinary Medicine 68: 382–385. Bor, R., Miller, R. and Goldman, E. (1993) ‘The impact of HIV/AIDS on the family: a review of research in the first decade’, Journal of Family Therapy 15: 187–204. Bury, J., Morrison, V. and McLaughlan, S. (1992) Working with Women and AIDS, London: Routledge.

166 Heather Salt, Robert Bor and Robert Palmer Centers for Disease Control (CDC) (1981) ‘Pneumocystis pneumonia – Los Angeles’, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 30: 250–252. Chin, J., Sato, P. and Mann, J. (1990) ‘Projections of HIV infection and AIDS cases to the year 2000’, Bulletin of the World Health Organisation 68: 1–11. CDR (1992) ‘AIDS and HIV infection in the United Kingdom’, Communicable Diseases Report 3: 55–56. —— (1993) ‘Heterosexuality acquired HIV-1 infection: cases reported in England, Wales and Northern Ireland 1985 to 1991’, Communicable Disease Report 2: 49–55. du Guerny, J. and Sjorberg, E. (1993) ‘Inter-relationships between gender relations and the HIV/AIDS epidemic: some possible considerations for policies and programmes’, AIDS 7 (8): 1027–1034. Elford, J., Bor, R. and Summers, P. (1991) ‘Research into HIV and AIDS between 1981 and 1990: the epidemic curve’, AIDS 5 (12): 1515–1519. Faulstich, M. (1987) ‘Psychiatric aspects of AIDS’, American Journal of Psychiatry 144: 551–556. Gold, R. and Skinner, M. (1992) ‘Situational factors and thought processes associated with unprotected intercourse in young gay men’, AIDS 6 (12): 1021–1030. Green, J. and McCreaner, A. (1989) Counselling for HIV Infection and AIDS, Oxford: Blackwell. Hickson, F., Davies, P., Hunt, A., Weatherburn, P., McManus, T. and Coxon, A. (1992) ‘Maintenance of open gay relationships: some strategies for protection against HIV’, AIDS Care 4 (4): 409–419. Holland, J., Ramazanoglu, C., Scott, S., Sharpe, S. and Thomson, R. (1992) ‘Pressure, resistance, empowerment: young women and the negotiation of safer sex’, in P. Aggleton, P. Davies and G. Hart (eds) AIDS: Rights, Risk and Reason, London: Falmer Press. Johnson, A. (1990) ‘The epidemiology of HIV in the UK: sexual transmission’, in UK Health Departments and Health Education Authority, HIV and AIDS: An Assessment of Current and Future Spread in the UK, London: HMSO. Maloney, B. (1988) ‘The legacy of AIDS: challenge for the next century’, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 14: 143–150. Merill, J., Laux, L. and Thornby, J. (1990) ‘Why doctors have difficulties with sex histories’, Southern Medical Journal 83: 613–617. Miller, R. and Bor, R. (1988) AIDS: A Guide to Clinical Counselling, London: Science Press. Obbo, C. (1993) ‘HIV transmission through social and geographical networks in Uganda’, Social Science and Medicine 36: 949–955. Rothenberg, R., Woelfel, M., Stoneburner, R., Milberg, J., Parker, R. and Truman, B. (1987) ‘Survival with AIDS’, New England Journal of Medicine 317: 1297–1302. Salt, H. (1989) ‘Condom use in college students at risk for HIV infection’, M. Sc. thesis, University of East London. Silverman, D., Perakyla, A. and Bor, R. (1992) ‘Discussing safe sex in HIV Counselling: assessing three communication formats’, AIDS Care 4: 69–82. Wight, D. (1992) ‘Impediments to safer heterosexual sex: a review of research with young people’, AIDS Care 4: 11–21.

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Wilson, D., Chiroro, P., Lavelle, S. and Mutero, C. (1989) ‘Sex worker, client sex behaviour and condom use in Harare, Zimbabwe’, AIDS Care 3: 269–280. Zwi, A. and Cabral, A. (1991) ‘Identifying “high risk situations” for preventing AIDS’, British Medical Journal 303: 1527–1529.

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The importance of being connected Implications for work with women addicted to drugs Barbara Dale and Peter Emerson1

A woman’s voice often will not be heard, even when it is quite clear, if the woman’s reality is not congruent with dominant societal values. (Jordan 1987:2)

INTRODUCTION In challenging the ways that the current patriarchal organisation of western society has subordinated and frequently pathologised women, feminists have examined the implicit male bias of developmental assumptions that govern gender socialisation. These assumptions are becoming clearer as models and schools of psychotherapy are sifted for gender bias in their theory, practice and research. While the earliest feminist thinking tended to emphasise the importance for women of resisting and overcoming the constraints of male-biased socialisation, attention was later given to the articulation of a psychology specifically researched on and about women (Miller 1976). These theoretical developments were not expressed in terms of woman’s place in man’s life cycle or defined in opposition to prevailing male norms. They were rooted in women’s own experience by paying attention to their ‘different voice’ (Gilligan 1982). This thinking has informed our ways of listening to and working with women who have been involved in serious drug taking. In this chapter we will discuss a research project involving women in a drug rehabilitation unit and a series of clinical cases of outpatient work with mothers who had been seriously addicted to drugs. We have found the prevailing family therapy approach to drug abuse and addiction (Stanton and Todd 1982) incompatible with our work and argue that its developmental and therapeutic assumptions may actually silence the voices of women and ignore issues that are central to their recovery from drug addiction.

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For the purposes of this chapter, we have restricted our discussion to ways in which gender awareness, as represented by the theories we will outline, has helped in our work. We realise that in keeping to this focus we have chosen to ignore dimensions of culture, class and ethnicity which would reorganise our information further. We have also not considered the impact of our thinking about women’s development on work with men.

A ‘GENERIC’APPROACH By the mid-1970s, family dynamics were considered instrumental in the origins and maintenance of drug abuse. The classic family of origin pattern for male ‘addicts’ was said to involve an overprotective/enmeshed overindulgent mother and an emotionally distant/disengaged father, with one parent frequently absent during childhood. By the late 1970s in the USA, family therapy was offered in up to 75 per cent of drug rehabilitation agencies and considered essential for relapse prevention (Coleman and Davis 1978). The dominant view held by theorists, therapists and researchers was that drug abuse should be understood as functional in the family system and symptomatic of wider family problems. Coleman and Stanton (1978) specifically linked the development and maintenance of drug abuse to unsuccessful attempts by adolescents to separate from a functionally enmeshed or emotionally over-involved family system. These ideas owe much to Haley’s formulations of structural/strategic family therapy (Haley 1973, 1980). They take for granted an adolescent phase of leaving home that is characterised by normative processes of separation/individuation. Any relationships at this stage which retard the young adult’s development towards successful autonomy are considered regressive and enmeshed. From the therapist’s powerful position as expert, treatment methods are focused on the interruption of such dysfuntional relationships. Stanton and Todd’s landmark work, The Family Therapy of Drug Abuse and Addiction (1982), drawing heavily on Haley, supplied and elaborated a research base for their structural/strategic approach. They recommended treatment focused specifically on breaking family patterns of enmeshment, failure-behaviour and pseudoindividuation preventing normative adolescent individuation and autonomy. In the face of this highly ‘manipulative’ client group, maintaining an expert therapist position of power and control was considered critical. Based on work with male opiate addicts, Stanton and Todd proposed that their approach was in fact ‘generic’ so that ‘most of the principles set forth also apply to female addicts’ (ibid.: 27f.). This suggestion was presumably made in ignorance of the feminist thinking of, for example, Gilligan’s In a

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Different Voice, also published in 1982. But even over ten years later Stanton and Todd’s approach has nevertheless remained virtually synonymous with the field of family therapy in drug rehabilitation (Menicucci and Wermuth 1989; Reichelt and Christensen 1990; Zimmer-Höfler and Dobler-Mikola 1992).

THE USE OF FAMILY OF ORIGIN WORK IN A FEMALE DRUG REHABILITATION UNIT In my supervisory and therapeutic work in an ‘extended family’ rehabilitation unit for women recovering from drug addiction, I (Peter Emerson) was aware that family therapy was considered useful for preventing dropout as well as relapse in drug rehabilitation work, but also that integrating it into a residential setting could be difficult. To begin the move to thinking ‘family’, I proposed experimentally introducing the use of family trees as part of the programme. Each resident was offered one to three family tree sessions to explore the emergence of their addictive drug use (typically during adolescence) in the context of family of origin relationships. Drawing on Stanton and Todd, my assumption was that these sessions would reveal a ‘stuck’ developmental pattern of family enmeshment. It was further assumed that understanding this might help staff members to link family matters with goal-setting for the phases of rehabilitation. The experiment fitted at the time with the ‘reparenting’ approach of the ‘extended family’ community: it was thought that staff could function more effectively as ‘experts’ in loco parentis if they were aware of the risks of enmeshment on the part of the residents, who were seen as skilled at remaining incompetent through resistance to responsibility and through manipulative patterns of pseudo-individuation and denial.

‘I think about this every day’ The introduction of family tree work resulted in three broad observations. First, these sessions tapped into a powerful preoccupation that most of the residents had with feelings of emotional isolation from their families of origin, feelings which had been predictably hidden by addictive drug-taking but re-emerged in the drug-free environment of the community. It became a refrain to hear residents say, ‘I think about this every day’, even though most had left home as young as possible. This could support Haley’s view that an adolescent may have left home physically yet still be emotionally over-involved or enmeshed; but the material also suggested something different.

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Second, residents’ own descriptions of their family relationships did not seem to fit the enmeshment view. Most of them expressed persistent themes of anger and hopelessness about experiencing both too much and the ‘wrong’ kinds of separation. Nearly all residents reported having been sexually abused; yet this traumatic violation of personal boundaries was not presented in the context of enmeshed relationships, but of very rigid and emotionally isolating family arrangements (see Coleman and Colgan 1986). Residents described feeling depersonalised and being treated like objects; any sense of self was systematically disconfirmed by a combination of extreme parental neglect and/or violations of boundaries, via physical, emotional and especially sexual abuse. They reported feeling invalidated, unheard, unprotected. Relationships were organised by very rigid roles, rules and hierarchies, and expectations of mutuality were considered inappropriate. The result was a very negative sense of self, deserving only of abuse and rejection. Turning to parental resources was discouraged; instead, secrecy and a world of friends isolated from family increased their vulnerability to the easy availability of drugs. This observation fits with research by Belenky et al. (1986) which explored connections between women’s perceived experience of their family of origin and their different ways of knowing which had long-term developmental effects on their patterns of relating and on their experience of themselves. It was noticed that the greater the experience of disconnection from family relationships the more diminished was the women’s sense of self. Without an experience of family relationships that confirmed a sense of themselves (particularly during adolescence), these women developed patterns of relating that precluded caring or speaking for themselves. The more their stories included experiences of extreme imbalances of power, e.g. physical violence, emotional neglect, sexual abuse and persistent disconfirmation combined with social isolation, the more silent they became in terms of voicing or even knowing any experience of themselves other than how they were being treated. At the most extreme, they saw themselves as the cause of the violations committed against them; and as able to know only what they were told by others. Belenky et al. suggested a continuum of patterns of family relationships ranging from those that confirm to those that radically disconfirm women’s own experiences and sense of themselves. Out of the family tree work arose a third observation: residents repeatedly expressed surprise – ‘I never thought of it like that before’ – at locating the origin of their own early drug addiction in the context of family relationships. They seemed to have perceived their drug careers primarily in terms of themselves individually linked to the drug culture through using, dealing, violence, prostitution, crime and experiences of detoxing and rehabilitation. Providing an opportunity to link their addiction to family

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relationships provided a different context in which these women felt that important but neglected preoccupations of their own were being validated. Although the information from the family tree experiment did not fit with the enmeshment hypothesis, attention to family context seemed more important than ever. It clearly intrigued residents and reflected major areas of their own preoccupations. At the same time, while staff were left with less of a family theory of drug addiction, they were gaining more sensitivity to the importance of family relationships for residents.

RESEARCHING FAMILIES OF ORIGIN A wish to find a more consistent way of measuring the residents’ experience of their family relationships led me to develop a small-scale exploratory research study (see Emerson 1991 for a full description) using the Olson Circumplex Model (OCM) (Olson and McCubbin 1983) and a range of self-report scales which measure family functioning (Olson et al. 1985). These are coordinated along three central dimensions: (1) cohesion measuring the emotional bonding within the family along a continuum from enmeshed to disengaged; (2) adaptability measuring the family’s ability to change in response to various stresses along a continuum from rigid to chaotic; and (3) communication (Barnes and Olson 1985), measuring to what extent family communication patterns facilitate movement along the other two dimensions. The model offers no ‘optimal’ family type, although family types located at the extreme ends of the cohesion and adaptability dimensions are seen as statistically more likely to involve serious problematic/symptomatic behaviours. The sixteen white female residents (average age 28.7 years) were briefed to focus retrospectively on their adolescent relationship with family of origin or carers, first in terms of their lived or perceived family experience and then in terms of an ideal or preferred family experience. The women described their families as follows: 75 per cent (12:16) recalled their families of origin as extreme and 56 per cent (9:16) as specifically both rigid and disengaged. All three central dimensions – cohesion, adaptability and communication – suggested experiences of extreme emotional disconnection, very rigid and impersonal role, rule and power arrangements and patterns likely to discourage open communication and to increase mixed messages and misunderstandings. Family strengths were minimal. Inferred and direct measures of family satisfaction both suggested extreme and chronic dissatisfaction. These findings were consistent with two much larger research samples using the OCM with drug abusing and addicted adolescents (Friedman et al. 1987; Volk et al.

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1989), in which severe drug using adolescents perceived their families of origin as very emotionally disengaged and significantly rigid. However, when it came to therapeutic implications, deference to accepted ideas about enmeshment nevertheless prevailed in both these studies. The OCM family descriptions seemed to confirm that the enmeshment view did not fit with the residents’ experiences. It also elicited the women’s preferences for more connectedness, which challenged traditional developmental assumptions about leaving home. If processes of individuation and separation are considered normal during adolescence, then a wish for greater connectedness at this stage would be considered dysfunctional, regressive and pathological, preventing healthy maturation into self-sufficient, autonomous adulthood. Yet residents’ extreme dissatisfaction with their experience of rigidly disengaged family arrangements contrasted strongly with their virtually unanimous preferences for more emotional connectedness along with more personal independence. The women indicated a preference for family relationship patterns that enhanced a sense of self and did not include continued drug use. For example, thinking about her very emotionally distant and abusive mother, one woman, a mother herself, said, ‘What I want most in the world is to be close to my mother and still be myself’. This ideal contains not only goals for the relationship, but a different sense of self and a new script for parenting. For this woman, the emergence of her addiction was directly linked to abusive experiences concentrated in her total distrust of her most wanted relationship. All the women expressed a central longing for more connectedness which was inseparable from achieving a drug-free sense of self.

Gender, self and relationship While these women’s experiences appeared anomalous in the context of the enmeshment thesis, their examination in the light of Gilligan et al.’s (1988, 1990, 1991) work produced a different understanding. Gilligan et al.’s research mapped a process of female adolescent socialisation which, in the interests of remaining connected through caring for others, women learn strategies for excluding aspects of themselves from relationships so that they can maintain their relationships in ways acceptable to patriarchal society. She argued however that these strategies are destined to fail. Because of the importance of their relationships to them, female adolescents first distort and then silence their own experiences in order to maintain these connections. This has long-term effects on women’s patterns of relationship and on their experience of themselves. This silence, Gilligan suggests, hides girls’ knowledge about themselves,

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relationships and others that is unacceptable because it challenges the norms and forms of patriarchal society. In her integration of feminist and systemic thinking, Goldner (1985) has argued that taking feminism seriously must include developing a theory of the individual. Amongst others, she (Goldner 1989; Goldner et al. 1990) has drawn on the work of self-in-relation theorists at the Stone Centre (Jordan 1984, 1987; Jordan et al. 1991; Kaplan and Klein 1985; Miller 1986, 1988; Stiver 1990; Surrey 1985; Surrey et al. 1990). This work meets a specific need in the field of psychotherapy for a genderaware conceptual language that is both clinically viable and informed by feminist research like that of Gilligan et al. and Belenky et al. Self-in-relation theory elaborates a paradigm of developmental maturity characterised by a deepening capacity for increasingly complex relationships that includes the recognition and acceptance of difference. Agency, initiative and self-reliance, goals traditionally identified with adult/ male maturity, are reconceptualised as aspects of self-in-relationship. Being in a relationship is considered a dynamic, responsive awareness of others which includes an expectation of mutuality (see Miller 1986). Miller (1988) has suggested that a sense of disconnection may develop in a female when she experiences her primary relationships as abusive, violent and unresponsive to the expression of her experience. When serious disconnection persists, a woman may try to alter her internal images of herself and others in a desperate effort to maintain her relationship, at the price of internally disconnecting from large parts of her experience and sense of self which are considered forbidden. Typically her feelings of fear, anger and anxiety cease to be voiced in these non-mutual relationships that forbid care for herself. Over time, the only kinds of relationships that seem possible may come to be those perpetuating the familiar experiences of disconnection and violation that silence her voice. Miller (1976) suggested that for women, the loss or absence of empathic relationship can be tantamount to a total loss of self. These serious disconnections can lead to profound psychological difficulties experienced by women, ranging from eating disorders and suicide to depression and drug addiction (Kilbourne and Surrey 1991; Stiver 1990). For the women residents, their rigidly disengaged families, particularly during the crisis of female adolescence (Gilligan et al. 1990), offered virtually no context of mutuality within which a relational self might develop. Instead they had disastrous long-term effects, imposing emotional (pseudo) autonomy through patterns of disconnection and violation and eroding any sense of self-worth, competence or agency through shame, guilt and fear. The ‘dilemma of inclusion’ confronting young women – how to include both

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oneself and the other (Gilligan et al. 1990) – can be considered as a focal developmental issue here: in the context of internalised relational patterns of disconnection that are underwritten by developmental norms of separation/individuation, a woman’s developing subjectivity may become disconnected from her experience; her sense of self splits. This split is between, on the one hand, connections with others which exclude or redefine her own experiences, and on the other, terrifying and destructive feelings of isolation (Miller 1988). One desperate way out of this dilemma that may become attractive is to form a relationship with drugs, typically introduced to the female by a male, often leading to violent and power-over relationships (Goldner et al. 1990) in which prostitution and crime become part and parcel of maintaining both the relationships and her addiction. While drugs may shut her off from authentic painful feelings (Stiver 1990), an illusion of connection may be achieved that is intense and irresistible at the level of her own subjectivity because it links the predictable experience of a relationship with the drug(s) to a consistent sense of herself. Concerns of parents and agencies about the young woman’s relationship with the drug culture may reinforce this by effectively ignoring central issues of serious disconnections and violations in her primary relationships and the effects of these on both her patterns of relating and her developing sense of self. They are more likely to be concerned about her relationship with drugs than their own relationship with her. The residents’ ideal family patterns showed a preference for much more emotional connectedness during adolescence and greater responsiveness to their emerging sense of self. These women did not want the independence associated with autonomy but did want a differentiation associated with connection. It could be argued that the ideal is just that, merely an ideal. However, whereas residents’ experiences of their family patterns were very similar and fell within a narrow range, their desired family patterns showed an enormous diversity, suggesting not one stereotype but many variations in the wish for change. To ignore such contrasts can only risk silencing female clients and fail to challenge the gender assumptions of our therapeutic approaches. Through these contrasts the different voices of these women can be heard persistently declaring their subjectivity and longing for relationship, validating their experience of the centrality of relationships in their developing sense of self. These women voice a view of maturity in terms of preferred directions for their own adolescent change, achieved through interdependent relationships involving mutuality and empathy. In working with women addicted to drugs, it may be particularly important to consider rehabilitation in terms not only of recovery from drugs, but also of recovering their own voice.

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MUTUALITY – A CONTEXT FOR CHANGE: CLINICAL WORK WITH FAMILIES The work in this section is drawn from nine families seen between 1985–1991 in the course of my work in a clinic setting (Barbara Dale). The group had in common past or present extensive abuse of drugs by the parents. Of the nine families all but two consisted of single parent mothers and children. For the purposes of this discussion a decision was made not to examine the experiences of the two fathers involved but to focus on the mothers. Gilligan and Belenkey’s research and the clinical work undertaken at the Stone Centre have been particularly helpful in developing the thinking about clinical processes. Like the women in the rehabilitation unit, the mothers in this clinical sample came from emotionally bleak families of origin. A background of estrangement, isolation, sexual and physical abuse, violent parental relationships and abusive divorces were commonplace. One mother, with an addiction problem for eighteen years, described how from the age of 9 she looked after her family after her own mother’s death, only to be abused sexually by her father. ‘Feelings were not allowed’ even at her mother’s death. Another woman described her isolation while her parents were absorbed in their own violent relationship. She believed that she had to be ‘good’ regardless of her own feelings; it was the only thing she could do to help. She never felt understood, or that anyone really knew her. Her parents divorced violently and she felt estranged in both homes. She was sexually abused outside the home at 11 and by 13 she was taking drugs. She went on to experience prostitution, near starvation and prison. Like the women in the drug rehabilitation unit, these mothers had in common a sense of disconnectedness from their families, of not being heard or recognised. Some did not even seem to see themselves as people in their own right. Their lives from childhood had been arranged to put others first; like their own children, they had all in various ways been carers and watchers of their own parents – a strategy destined to fail (Gilligan et al. 1990). Their experience had been that despite caring for their parents, they still felt unconnected and unnoticed as people. One woman had no words to describe herself, no picture of herself. She could only identify herself by what she did for others. Another woman with a partner always waited for him to tell her how she felt. If she was unwell, she believed he would always be the first to notice. Work at the Stone Centre (e.g. Miller 1988) suggested that a woman who experiences serious disconnection often develops a terrifying sense of isolation, exclusion and powerlessness as, over time, she comes to blame herself. Once this pattern is established, in desperate efforts to become acceptable in otherwise disconnected relationships, she

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may change her internal images both of herself and of her relationships. She learns to stay outwardly connected by disconnecting from internal aspects of herself which denies her the right to her own experience and with that her sense of self. Typically, as Gilligan (1982) suggests, this process grooms her to care for others at the expense of caring for herself, thus silencing her voice. All the families referred themselves because of concerns about their adequacies as parents, not directly because of problems with their children or drug abuse. The selfimage of the mothers as parents was rock-bottom. They had a strong belief that the therapist was the expert who had all the answers if she could only be induced to reveal them. They were closed to any positive comment about their parenting; such comments could produce an immediate detachment which could all too easily be read as resistance and a refusal to engage. If the therapist persisted in countering the woman’s view of herself as ‘worthless’, a symmetrical pattern could result in which the client presented with a more and more flattened affect. It seems that this process was associated with the mother’s belief that if she could show herself as truly blank as she believed herself to be, the therapist/‘expert’ would finally provide the solution. At the time of their referral, these mothers seemed to fit closely with the group of women described by Belenky et al. (1986) as ‘receiver knowers’. Their adolescent efforts to become self-directed were characteristically suppressed within their family relationships. Receiver knowers look to ‘experts’ for knowledge. They do not expect to make judgements for themselves but seek information about ‘what is right’ from others. It was not uncommon for such families to be involved with numbers of experts; one family was in touch with fourteen different sources of help. In order not to get caught in confirming the parents’ view of themselves as totally incompetent, it was important to adopt a ‘non-expert’ position unlike the structural and hierarchically organised approach advocated by Stanton and Todd (1982). Reichelt and Christensen (1990) describe coming to a similar conclusion in the development of their work in the field of drug addiction. My own approach developed in response to a decision not to attempt to be an expert on drug addiction, although I did own my experience of working with families about parenting issues. This decision was in line with my general approach to therapy and was reinforced by the state of the children who showed a degree of well-being greater than their appalling life histories might predict. (All of the children seen had been born while their mothers were heavily involved in drug taking.) In thinking about the relationship between client and therapist it has been useful to look at the ideas about mutuality used by the Stone Centre. Mutuality is seen as a relationship within which difference is accepted without bringing disconnection. While

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mutuality may be basic to many therapies, there was an added dimension in the work described here. With these families, the therapist herself was engaged on a quest, a search for an explanation of the unexpected well-being of the children; there was a respect for the mothers who, against a background of really dreadful life events, had achieved some good parenting. A mutuality arose as the therapist and mother searched alongside each other: the mother for the therapist’s knowledge and understanding, the therapist for both an explanation and a way for the mother to acknowledge all of her parenting, both good and bad. These mothers took their parenting very seriously; the well-being of their children was very important to them. The fact that by taking drugs they had put at risk both their own lives and also their parenting, was not seen by them as a contradiction. At the outset, their addiction, as will be described, was seen as a separate part of themselves. The dilemma highlighted in the therapy was that if you take drugs at a serious level you risk separation from your children and possibly your death. If you intend to parent your children you need to be with them and remain alive. This contradiction only became a constructive way of talking with these mothers after they had been able to see themselves as good as well as bad parents; otherwise it was a confirmation of their original view of themselves as bad. In order for them to recognise this, a relationship of mutual respect had to be created in which they could experience connection with the therapist; otherwise they could only relate as people in need. Kaplan (Jordan et al. 1991), discussing the clinical implications of self-in-relation theory, suggested that a critical point for a woman is to feel that she is truly heard and to be able to feel validated through the mutuality with the therapist. Difficulty in achieving this should not be confused with resistance and is not an indication, as Stanton and Todd (1982) would suggest, that ‘addicts’ are ‘notoriously’ hard to engage. For these mothers, the path to connection between the responsible (parental) and irresponsible (addicted) parts of themselves, and between their recognition of good and bad parenting, seemed to lie clinically in reaching the point where their child felt able to tell his/her story of both good and bad experiences of being parented, including an account of the parental drug taking. It was not possible to arrive at this point until the relationship between the therapist and the mother had achieved a level of trust which could include the children, giving them the right to speak from their own experience without fear in the presence of mother and therapist. In one case I acted prematurely in asking the child about her knowledge of her mother’s drug taking and provoked an intensely angry response from the mother: it was dreadful to ask the child, she had always been protected from it, it would only give her ideas that would upset her, the therapist was being unprofessional and would

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damage the child. This mother was right to be angry. The timing had been wrong. Her outburst showed how, at one level, this mother was powerfully protective of her child. But, on another level, her relationship with drugs had permitted a dreadful lifestyle for the child which included police raids, flits from squat to squat and even country to country and several enforced separations from the mother, one for nearly a year without any face-to-face contact. This daughter was a warm, responsive but watchful 6-year-old who made constant eye checks with her mother. At school, she was reported to be learning, had made friends and was enjoying school life. Eventually the case progressed to the point where the child was able to relate her detailed knowledge, not only of her mother’s drug abuse, but her drug dealing as well. Her mother had believed, as do other parents, that the child knew little or nothing. The children understood almost instinctively that they would put their parents at risk with the law if they were to speak, but, more fundamentally, they had learned the rule from their mothers that to speak from their own experience was very risky. Although the children in these families did have problems, they almost all seemed able to survive at school in a way that did not draw attention to themselves or at least did not result in any enquiry into their home situation. One example illustrates the difficulty on the social level. This was the sad and isolating experience of a girl whose lifetime with her drug-abusing mother had included witnessing numerous overdoses, armed raids from both drug pushers and police and endless losses by death within the drug community. This girl had once confided in a school friend that her mother took drugs. When the friend withdrew from the relationship, she was confirmed in her belief that she must not speak at all and subsequently kept silent until seen with her mother at the age of 18. Such inhibitions are a measure of the degree of mutual trust which must be reached before the children are able to speak. The children did have problems; the secrecy of their home life meant that peer relationships could only exist at school. They were parent carers and watchers and, as such, were parentified and inappropriately independent. They had absorbed terrifying and traumatic experiences into a void of silence. To the mothers, who believed that their children were aware only dimly, or not at all, of their drug taking, it was acutely painful to hear the children recounting their detailed knowledge. However, it was clear to me that the mother/child relationships were close enough to remain central to the children, and to give them a measure of health and energy for their school activity.

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Case example Some way into therapy a mother sat weeping as her 11-year-old daughter told her story. She had a detailed knowledge of her mother’s drug taking and a long memory going back to when she was small. She remembered crowded train journeys in Thailand and her intense fear when she was left in charge of all the family money and passports and they were stolen. She remembered being used to beg for food in Bangkok and waking in a basement to find it flooded, with rats swimming around them as they nearly drowned. She remembered her mother being dragged off by the police and not being there because she was in prison. However, this child also remembered warm days when they played and slept on the beach and her father made wooden toys for her and her mother baked her a birthday cake in a biscuit tin over the open fire. This child had not seen her father since she was 7, and wept in the session as she spoke of him. She still had the toys he had made. The children, as their mothers did before them, had to develop an edited sense of reality for their mothers’ sakes as well as for the eyes of the world. The world must not know about drugs and the mother must not know how much the child was aware of her addiction. Typically, the mothers described a wish for an ideal family life which would be impossible to achieve. It would appear from the clinical work that paradoxically there may be a strength in this contradiction. If family life is framed as an impossible ideal, their efforts to achieve it will never succeed. Even their successes cannot interfere with their view of themselves as ‘useless’, and they are free to try even harder, putting parenting at a higher level of importance than would be expected. During therapy these mothers made a critical developmental move out of disconfirmation and silence, out of the stance of ‘receiver knowers’, relying on others for knowledge, to become ‘subjectivists’, experts about themselves. The profound importance of this transition is described by Belenky as ‘the hallmark of women’s emergent sense of self and sense of agency and control’ (Belenky et al. 1986: 68). What seemed critical for the clinical group was that in therapy they were accepted and began to accept themselves as the experts about drugs as well as their parenting. Like the women in the drug rehabilitation unit, the women discussed here could not turn to their families of origin. The process of therapy enabled them to see and hear their own mix of failure and competence for themselves. Their view of themselves as failures was not challenged by the therapist but validated, thus confirming their own sense of their experience, and then a further view was added by hearing the responses of their children. Through the mutuality of respect for individual difference created within the therapy they were able to listen to the experiences of their children.

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The story that included both pain and praise told by the child seemed to be the crucial process. The child’s voice, unlike all the adult experts, could be heard about good things as well as bad. The therapist helped the child to speak the unspeakable and helped the connections to be seen. Thus the child in Thailand who awoke among rats was also the child who remembered the birthday cake and the beach party. The therapist was there to bridge the gaps so that what had been islands of good and bad became linked, to insist that if the parents denied the good times, if the only story was the bad one, they denied their children their sense of reality just as their own had been denied to them. A capacity for empathy emerged in this context of relationships which, as Jordan (1984) described, involved experiencing emotional identification and connection with the other while at the same time having a cognitive awareness of both one’s own and the other’s separateness. These women developed a sense of themselves in relation to both success and failure through their relationship with their children, gaining access to previously hidden parts of themselves with which they were able to find new solutions. For example, Anna, the mother in a family, had always been designated the patient. At 48, she had been in treatment all her adult life for depression, anorexia, alcohol and drugs. Anna was the woman who needed her partner to tell her whether she was ill. During therapy, Anna went through the process of owning her own mind and her own competence. When her son had been born, she had given up her nursery work, overwhelmed by her sense of incompetence: how could she care for other people’s children when (as she saw it) she was unfit to care for her own? Anna’s first memory is of her mother’s bulging eyes while her father tried to strangle her; later she was raped. She suffered terrible pain while her son gave his account of her overdoses and her drunken unconsciousness. She would repeat: ‘I didn’t think he would remember that, I’d never have thought he would remember that.’ In this as in the other cases, the therapist makes the basis for therapy one in which both the mother and the therapist have knowledge that is important. The therapy has four main stages: first, linking back to the mother’s own history of being parented – why and how things were hard; second, drawing in the children where their memories were similar, e.g. had they also been sad, lonely, etc.; third, getting the children to describe their own experiences about their lives; fourth, drawing together all the experiences of the child and the mother. It is a process of making clear the connections which include loss, pain and fear as well as closeness, love and continuity.

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CONCLUSION We have described how, through working in two different settings with women addicted to drugs, our developmental assumptions and therapeutic practice began to be affected by a different model of human growth and development. The patriarchal supposition that normal development involves processes of separation/individuation, has gone hand in glove with views of the therapist/expert as objective, powerful and in control. Feminist attention to the central importance of relationship in women’s development contributes fundamentally to an ‘ethical’ shift towards a more egalitarian and mutual relationship in therapy validating the voice of women’s experience. Our research and clinical work with women addicted to drugs suggested anomalies in their patterns of family relationship and their parenting which did not fit with existing theories, particularly in the family therapy field. There is an increasing literature indicating that the effects of seriously disconnected relationships on women include the development of strategies for maintaining relationships by excluding aspects of themselves from a relationship, by silencing their voice. In our work we have found indications of these processes. We have also found that framing these women’s difficulties in terms of their efforts to connect, rather than failure to disconnect/ separate, has helped to develop mutuality. In this kind of relationship they seem able to validate their experience and to voice expectations for change that include drug-free patterns of relating and sense of self. At this early stage, many of the ideas put forward have to be considered tentative. We have yet to give them the critical test of further practice.

NOTE 1 We gratefully acknowledge substantial editorial assistance from Mary Emerson. Barbara Dale would also like to thank colleagues who have contributed to the clinical work.

REFERENCES Barnes, H.L. and Olson, D.H. (1985) ‘Parent–adolescent communication and the circumplex model’, Child Development 65: 438–447. Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R. and Tarule, J.M. (1986) Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self Voice, and Mind, New York: Basic Books. Coleman, E. and Colgan, P. (1986) ‘Boundary inadequacy in drug dependent families’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 18(1):21–30. Coleman, S.B. and Davis, D.I. (1978) ‘Family therapy and drug abuse: a national survey’, Family Process 17:21–30.

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Coleman, S.B. and Stanton, M.D. (1978) ‘The role of death in the addict family’, Journal of Marital and Family Counselling January: 79–91. Emerson, P.D. (1991) ‘The experienced failure of connectedness: female drug addiction and family of origin’, unpublished M. Sc. dissertation, Tavistock Clinic and Brunel University, London. Friedman, A.S., Utada, A. and Morrissey, M.R. (1987) ‘Families of adolescent drug abusers are “rigid”: are these families either “disengaged” or “enmeshed”, or both?’, Family Process 26:131–148. Gilligan, C. (1982) In A Different Voice – Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C., Lyons, N.P. and Hanmer, T.J. (eds) (1990) Making Connections, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Gilligan, C., Rogers, A.G. and Tolman, D.L. (eds) (1991) Women, Girls and Psychology: Reframing Resistance, New York: Harrington Park Press. Gilligan, C., Ward, J.V., Taylor, J.M. and Bardige, B. (eds) (1988) Mapping the Moral Domain, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Goldner, V. (1985) ‘Warning: family therapy may be hazardous to your health’, Family Therapy Networker November–December: 19–23. —— (1989) ‘Generation and gender: normative and covert hierarchies’, in M. McGoldrick, C.M. Anderson and F. Walsh (eds) Women in Families: A Framework for Family Therapy, New York: Norton. Goldner, V., Penn, P., Scheinberg, M. and Walker, G. (1990) ‘Love and violence: gender paradoxes in volatile attachments’, Family Process 29:343–364. Haley, J. (1973) Uncommon Therapy, New York: Norton. —— (1980) Leaving Home: The Therapy of Disturbed Young People, New York: McGraw Hill. Jordon, J.V. (1984) Empathy and Self Boundaries, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. —— (1987) Clarity in Connection: Empathic Knowing, Desire and Sexuality, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. Jordan, J.V., Kaplan, A.G., Miller, J.B., Stiver, I.P. and Surrey, J.L. (1991) Women’s Growth in Connection – Writings from the Stone Centre, New York: The Guilford Press. Kaplan, A. and Klein, R. (1985) The Relational Self in Late Adolescent Women, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. Kilbourne, J. and Surrey J.L. (1991) Women, Addiction and Codependency, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre (tape). Menicucci, L.D. and Wermuth, L. (1989) ‘Expanding the family systems approach: culture, class, developmental and gender influences in drug abuse’, The American Journal of Family Therapy 17(2):129-142. Miller, J.B. (1976) Toward a New Psychology of Women, Boston: Beacon Press. —— (1986) What Do We Mean By Relationships?, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. —— (1988) Connections, Disconnections and Violations, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. Olson, D.H. and McCubbin, H.I. (1983) Families: What Makes Them Work, Beverly Hills: Sage. Olson, D.H., Russell, C.S. and Sprenkle, D.H. (1989) Circumplex Model: Systemic Assessment and Treatment of Families, New York: Haworth Press.

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Olson, D.H., McCubbin, H.I., Barnes, H., Larsen, A., Muxen, M. and Wilson, M. (1985) Family Inventories (revised edn), Minnesota: University of Minnesota, Family Social Science. Reichelt, S. and Christensen, B. (1990) ‘Reflections during a study in family therapy with drug addicts’, Family Process 29:273–287. Stanton, M.D., Todd, T.C. and Associates (1982) The Family Therapy of Drug Abuse and Addiction, New York: Guilford. Stiver, I.P. (1990) Dysfunctional Families and Wounded Relationships, Vols I and II, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. Surrey, J. L. (1985) Self-in-Relation: A Theory of Women’s Development, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. Surrey, J.L., Kaplan, A.G. and Jordon, J.V. (1990) Empathy Revisited, Massachusetts: The Stone Centre. Volk, R.J., Edwards, D.M., Lewis, R.A. and Sprenkle, D.H. (1989) ‘Family systems of adolescent substance abusers’, Family Relations 38:266–272. Zimmer-Höfler, D. and Dobler-Mikola, A. (1992) ‘Swiss heroin-addicted females: career and social adjustment’, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment 9: 159–170.

11

Moving on Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamily . process Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel

INTRODUCTION Alongside an apparent acceptance of the inevitability of divorce, single parenthood and remarriage, the nuclear family is still considered healthier and more normal for its members by many sections of our society. Rather than supporting the many different ways people live and are intimate together, there appears to be an increasing marginalisation of family forms which depart from this norm. This view seems to be integral to governmental and social policy, where beliefs about the detrimental effects of the breakdown of the nuclear family are prevalent. Much clinical literature and research (e.g. Wallerstein and Blakeslee 1989) also focuses on the pain, failure and damage associated with divorce. In this chapter, we examine separation, divorce and stepfamily1 formation from a gender perspective, taking into account this wider social context. We argue that these transitions both highlight gender constraints and contain opportunities to transcend them and thus develop broader and richer identities and relationships. In developing an awareness of the effect of societal discourses of ‘family’ on both therapists and families, we can help elicit alternative stories. These new stories can challenge some of the problematics of gender construction and provide new ways to think about ‘family’ and gendered relationships in general.

POST-SEPARATION, STEPFAMILIES AND THE WIDER SOCIAL CONTEXT Many families go through the transitions of separation and divorce without professional intervention, other than that of the legal system. In this sense, most separations/ divorces now fall under the category of ‘normal life events’. Although there is a danger of pathologising divorce, some professional contact at a time when parents may

186 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel become frozen in patterns of chronic complaint and recriminations may make an enormous difference. Much of our clinical work focuses on de-pathologising divorce and in thinking with families about what promotes resilience in children, mothers and fathers. An awareness of the wider context helps us in this task. A political culture of blaming and villifying single mothers as a unitary group of feckless scroungers raising deviant children, enables us to understand the ways single parents come to think about themselves and how that may influence decisions in the forming of new relationships. Although moving into a stepfamily may be seen as moving towards the ‘norm’ of a two-adult household, stepfamilies are also often portrayed as ‘abnormal’, as a threat to the social fabric – weakening the ‘orderly progression’ through generations (Atlantic 1993) and thus undermining the authority structure intrinsic to a patriarchal society. There is thus a strong wish in many stepfamilies to be seen as a ‘normal’ family. Burgoyne and Clarke’s (1984) typology of stepfamilies, for example, based on the images and goals of the stepfamilies in their study, included only one out of five with a pluralistic vision of family life, involving a relationship with the absent parent. All the others attempted to pursue an ‘ordinary’ family life, either excluding or devaluing the other parent (with consequent loyalty conflicts for the children) or with a message to the children of the first marriage that ‘normal’ family life (with much younger children from the new union) would commence once they had left home. These internal/external pressures to replicate the nuclear family may crucially contribute to the higher divorce rates for second marriages, and to higher rates of children from stepfamilies (Kiernan 1992) leaving home at an early age. Research findings about the effects of divorce and stepfamily life are both descriptive and constitutive, i.e. they both describe and influence such transitions. This can vary from how people accord value to different experiences, to how they make decisions to separate, or indeed whether they defer such decisions altogether. For example, women, who are so often given and give themselves the main responsibility for their children’s welfare, may validate a decision to separate by learning, through the media, of research (e.g. Jenkins et al. 1989) that children fare badly in conflict-ridden two-parent families. Literature which propogates the idea of a ‘good’ divorce and emphasises personal happiness as the highest goal for adults may stifle understanding of its effect on children. Research such as Wallerstein’s (1990), which focused on the long-term damage to children following divorce, leaves many parents, especially women, agonising over whether to leave unsatisfactory marriages if they believe it will be destructive to their children. They may then interpret all their children’s stresses in the light of this experience.

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 187 Case example One mother and son came to therapy because of her concern about his difficulty in expressing himself other than via tantrums at home and school. She believed he was still very angry and upset about his parents’ separation which had happened some years previously. As a result, she dealt with any incidents by trying to get him to talk about his ‘underlying’ feelings which he resisted vigorously. When asked how she would deal with him if it turned out that he was no longer affected by the divorce, she described how she would be matter of fact and firm. This idea freed the boy to say how difficult it had been for him to persuade his mother that he thought he was all right. This enabled her to start to see him as an ordinary boy; he then began to demonstrate more self-confidence and she, in turn, experienced herself as a more able single parent.

SEPARATION: HIS AND HERS Just as Bernard (1976) proposed that men’s and women’s experiences in marriage were so different that we should think of two marriages, his and hers, Hetherington and Tryon (1989) argued the same of divorce. We think this is also the case for stepfamilies. Researchers, asked to blindly pair divorcing wives’ and husbands’ stories, only did so correctly one third of the time (Hetherington and Hagan 1986). Many differences between divorced women and men relate to economic circumstances and decisions about children. In about 90 per cent of separated families, the children live with their mother. Single-parent mothers experience a severe drop in their standard of living (estimates vary from 30 per cent to 73 per cent), the result of poor employment opportunities and low maintenance payments. It is estimated that one quarter of divorced fathers do not pay child support at all, and many pay less than court-ordered to do so ( Phillips 1991; Faludi 1992). When they try to establish new parenting patterns, either post-divorce or in stepfamilies, women and men are influenced and constrained by predominant societal ideas about ‘mothering’ and ‘fathering’. Mothering is generally much more clearly defined as a social role and thus generates clearer expectations about how it should be carried out. Defining fathering is more problematic (see also Kraemer, Chapter 12 this volume) and as often refers to the act of procreation as to an ongoing relationship. Attempts at precise definitions of fathering often lead to stereotypes, such as providing materially, exerting authority or engaging in masculine activities, e.g. football. When mothers and fathers are required to manage their relationships with their

188 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel children in the absence of the other parent, many hidden dimensions of parenting emerge and have to be incorporated. These will challenge traditional notions of mothering and fathering tasks and provide an opportunity for both parents to take on aspects they previously left to the other. Fathers may be particularly challenged by having both to redefine their fathering role and to manage this task at a distance; this may well contribute to the finding that 50 per cent of fathers have lost contact with their children at two years following separation. An added level of complexity is found in stepfamilies, as parents move from parenting mainly on their own to once again parenting in the presence of a partner (usually) of the opposite gender.2 Here, gendered expectations of role come powerfully into play and can frequently cut across the biological relationship to create profoundly different experiences of stepmothering and stepfathering. We find it important to remember that there are many variations in divorce and stepfamily experience, due to differences in the circumstances of the separation, prior family relationships, different social and cultural contexts and life cycle stages. We want to guard against developing a unified account of divorce or stepfamily formation, believing that we learn most from dissimilarities and unique adaptations.

GENDER AND EMOTIONAL DILEMMAS As we have explored dilemmas with families going through these transitions, we have noticed certain themes which recur in our clinical work: (1) ambiguity; (2) power and powerlessness; (3) issues of authority; (4) emotional responsibility; and (5) selfdevelopment and relationships. We have chosen to highlight themes because women, men and children seem to experience many of the same feelings in relation to these issues, but the ways these are expressed will be mediated through their gender. While in our clinical work we regard eliciting and hearing children’s stories as vital, in this chapter we emphasise the differences between men and women as they tackle the processes of single parenting, parenting at a distance and step-parenting. Although the themes that follow are presented separately, it will be clear to the reader that they are interconnected and most of the case examples illustrate more than one.

Ambiguity The move to living in a separated family involves coping with ambiguity at a number of levels. Ambiguity is always involved in managing relationships which contradict

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 189 usual configurations. Parent–child relationships may become primary when marital ones dissolve. The task of parenting together is emotionally laden and therefore intimate, but has to take place in a context where there is no longer an expectation of personal intimacy (Walker 1993). When gendered boundaries are challenged by ambiguities, this may be welcomed as an opportunity to rewrite gendered stories within the family, or conversely, men and women may cling to old patterns and beliefs about gendered identity. Conventional western values, frequently implicit in therapy, tend to assume that the most important intimacy takes place within marriage (Clark 1991). Yet the failure of marriages may leave relationships between parents (usually mothers) and children as the more abiding and reliable ones. In stepfamilies, these contradictory experiences can, especially if there has been a long single-parent phase, confront family members with a central question: ‘Which is the primary relationship?’ Frequently problems arise if either the step-parent or the children push for this question to be answered in their favour, rather than living with ambiguity. Following separation, the changes in relationships that women and men undergo frequently include a period of increased contact with their family of origin, which can lead to a new kind of closeness or a renegotiation of ‘leaving home’ issues. Friendships, too, may be experienced in new ways. Since marital intimacy is portrayed as the most valued relationship for adults, separated men and women may experience themselves as abnormal in connecting with different relationship structures and not allow themselves either to value their connection to extended family members or the power of friendships. The liberating, even subversive aspect of friendship (Burck et al. 1992) is precisely that it involves relationships that have no legal social definition and which can therefore provide a different position from which to observe and critique other aspects of living. Stepfamily relationships are replete with ambiguity for children, not least because they carry with them the notion of a ‘real’ parent who is biologically related but may be dead, unknown or absent and a step-parent who is ‘not real’ but who may be experienced in a psychologically more ‘real’ relationship. Papernow (1984) developed the term ‘intimate outsider’ to describe the step-parental role and this phrase encapsulates some of its paradoxes. The desire to define relationships in stepfamilies as if they were biological may mean that traditional gender roles are emphasised. In stepfamilies, gender role and ‘necessity’ sometimes become inextricably connected, as in this description by a man interviewed in the Growing Up In Stepfamilies Project3 ( Gorell Barnes et al., forthcoming). He said of his stepmother; ‘she was with us all the while because obviously she had to look after us. When my father got married again, there was only

190 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel him working so obviously she was looking after us. She had to pack up work, she didn’t work at all, only on a part-time basis, and that was it.’ It may be difficult for the incoming step-parent to avoid taking on a prescribed role as if they can replace the absent parent and this can set up impossible loyalty binds for children. Children may struggle with the ambiguous experience of both wanting a replacement parent and yet resenting a stepparent daring to take on this role. The more ‘unsatisfactory’ the absent parent has been, the more acute this bind can be. The extent to which a step-parent can tolerate and experiment with a number of different roles – in other words, stay with the ambiguity – is affected by the stance of biological parents and how much they are able to develop or hold on to a broader parenting role of their own. In one stepfamily, Susan, whose partner, Mike, took full responsibility for his children and for helping her to develop a relationship with them, answered a question about her role: ‘I don’t think it’s straightforward at all. I feel sometimes like their stepmum, I feel sometimes like Mike’s girlfriend and I sometimes feel like a mother. Mike has been so forthright as a father and has really defended his children when he needed to, but in a way that didn’t make me feel dreadful’. In the Growing up in Stepfamilies research, one finding related to how differently boys and girls appear to manage the experience of ambiguity. The women in the study were generally able to reflect on their childhood experiences of ambiguous relationships, such as needing to parent one’s own parent or becoming emotionally closer to someone who was not your ‘real’ parent than to someone who was. The men in the sample found this much more difficult and could often only describe relationships more concretely or talk about what they had done rather than what they had felt. It seemed to be more difficult for men to present a coherent story about the emotional experiences of ambiguity, uncertainty and impotence that accompany the feeling of intense worry about people one does not have the resources to protect.

Power and powerlessness A major theme in working with separating or separated families concerns the decision to separate, which is often experienced as having been taken unilaterally by one partner. The effect of this faces both men and women with acute feelings of powerlessness. The ways in which men and women deal with these feelings will, however, be mediated by gender. Women, when their husbands decide to leave, are not only faced with all the emotional turmoil this causes, but generally the necessity of coping with the children and having to do so on a very much reduced income. If women feel they have made

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 191 sacrifices by taking time out of work to look after young children or by juggling both work and childcare, believing that they were contributing to a jointly valued future, being powerless in the face of the loss of that future can be as bitter as the loss of the partner himself. Women’s sense of powerlessness can shape their entire image of themselves as single parents and this in turn affects their relationships with their children and their ex-partner as well as their view of themselves as individuals. In a group for separated women, most of the women initially saw themselves as at the mercy of their exhusbands and often the legal system. Through questioning their belief that there was nothing they could do, the women revealed that they were more able to influence and affect important areas of their lives and their relationships than they had first thought. Men, unable to influence their wives’ decision to separate, may be confronted with an experience which conflicts with their idea about themselves as men and husbands. Feelings of powerlessness may fundamentally challenge ideas about masculinity, especially if this has been constructed around feelings of potency and invulnerability (see Burck and Daniel 1994 for a fuller discussion). Separation may force men to face feelings of dependency which they had not allowed to surface before. Some men will have always thought they were in control of themselves in the relationship or implicitly entrusted their vulnerability to their wives (Benjamin 1990). During separation, they need to manage feelings of helplessness and vulnerability without being able to influence the relationship as they did previously. This may account for the increased numbers of men coming for therapy when there is a threat of separation.

Case example Alan, who came for help with his wife following their separation, put it this way: ‘I was completely devastated. Everything which was valuable to me in my life was under threat. I was at a complete loss. And I’m someone who has always felt as if I could manage, flash even. No one really knows what it was like for me’. For Alan, his wife leaving challenged his whole view of himself and his effectiveness, particularly because they had both seen him as the experienced one who had supported and taught his much younger wife about life. Therapy included exploring with him how he could develop other ways to manage this new view of himself, to find support through other relationships and to keep close contact with his children. Feelings of powerlessness in the wake of divorce, especially if it was initiated by the other partner, can lead both men and women to cling to those elements of their

192 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel lives over which they feel they can exert some control. Very often these turn out to be financial resources for men and the children for women. Most people who work in this field are familiar with the depressing spectacle of access to children and payment of maintenance being bartered against each other as warring ex-partners struggle for position. The Children Act (1989) has attempted to intervene, not always successfully, in these traditional battles. What is also striking is the degree to which perceptions of powerlessness lead to behaviours which are then experienced by the other as powerful. For men in particular, tolerating feelings of powerlessness without rushing into action can be a very difficult stance to take, especially if women seem to have all the power through their relationship with the children. In this context, men, in particular, often become organised by ideas about their rights and entitlement which may become confused with feelings of emotional attachment. As one man on a television programme put it, ‘Six hours per month, that is not access. That is humiliating for any man’. In this context, litigation may seem to be the only solution.

Case example David sought help when his attempt to have increased access to his 3-year-old son was being blocked by his mother with whom he lived in Canada. Although he visited his son a few times each year, David particularly wanted to bring him back to England with him for a holiday so they could be together in his own home. His ex-wife produced reports from experts saying the child was too young to leave her. Relations between the two parents were extremely hostile, with David describing his ex-wife as neurotic and over-possessive towards their son, whom he felt was being damaged. David also believed that he had given way to his ex-wife over everything else and he was not going to give in again, even if it meant going back to court. His agenda for therapy was to obtain confirmation that his wife was being unreasonable and that his plan for his son was appropriate. David was a successful company executive who was not only prepared to put considerable resources into this battle but also seemed to feel confident and competent only when he was engaged in action. The two-session consultation took the form of engaging David to talk about his son in more detail, which included his showing photographs, talking about his attatchment to his son and crying. When asked how he imagined his son would experience his parents fighting over him, he began to empathise with his son’s feelings as well as his own rights. However, he then talked about how he could not bear to be inactive because he worried that if he did not fight over this, his son would never know

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 193 how much he cared about him. A further intervention involved suggesting that he wrote some letters to his son which he would want him to read when he was old enough and which would convey how much he had thought and cared about him at this time. David found this suggestion helpful; it seemed to offer him both a means of tolerating inactivity and a sense of powerlessness without feeling impotent, and a way of holding on to some hope about the relationship in the future. It can be useful to engage men and women in thinking about their own and their expartners’ perceptions of power, to give them a different view of their perceived powerlessness. For example, the question: ‘If I were to ask your ex-partner where s/ he thought you had most power, what do you think s/he would say?’ Many issues of power resurface when a stepfamily is formed because a new partner may seem to threaten the existing balance of power. If new ways to relate are not developed, battles may erupt over traditional gender roles. If a fathering relationship has been tenuous or intermittent, the advent of a stepfather can leave biological fathers feeling confused and disempowered. A father interviewed on a television programme about divorce said of his decision to stop seeing his son: ‘I couldn’t see that, with my wife remarrying, and another, a real father, as it were, coming on to the scene, that I was actually going to be of any use. I was likely to be more of a pain. I just couldn’t see that I could contribute anything, in fact I was going to be quite the opposite’. This man’s sense of powerlessness seemed to stem partly from his conceptualisation of fathering as a rigidly defined role rather than an emotional connection. When their expartners form a new relationship, women may fear the loss of their own relationship with their children, as they often believe that their children, like the rest of society, will prefer an ‘ordinary’ family with two ‘parents’ at home. It is also possible that men are more likely to make a bid to have their children when they are in a new relationship, for the same reasons. Issues of power and powerlessness are also central to the experience of stepparents entering a family. In the Growing Up in Stepfamilies research, the flexibility with which the step-parent negotiated a relationship with the children seemed to be closely linked to a sense of power and effectiveness in the new family. Many of the women in the sample entered the family as ‘replacement mothers’ with few employment or financial resources and thus seemed to have little room for manoeuvre in how they carried out their role. Women who became stepmothers but who were also financially independent could negotiate how much responsibility they took on. For mothers who remarried, the degree to which they and their children adapted to the rules set by the stepfather often seemed to relate directly to the degree to which he became the main

194 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel breadwinner. The relationship between having the power to negotiate flexible relationships with stepchildren and the long-term mutual satisfaction of those relationships also proved to be an important one.

Issues of authority Divorce and stepfamily formation are both processes which contribute to confusion and insecurity for children. They throw up uncertainties about who is in charge of what and children can be highly adept at creating an urgent need for adults to clarify questions of authority. Exploring some of these issues in the light of gendered beliefs can offer new understandings that avoid blame. Following separation, many women refer themselves because of their difficulties in controlling their children, especially sons. In this work, issues about authority are central – what authority means for women, and how it is conferred. Some women will have left disciplining to fathers or used him as a back-up for their own authority with the children. One important question will be, how can women start to believe in their own authority, so that their children will too?

Case example Morag came to therapy with her two adolescent sons as she was worried about how disrespectful they were and was concerned that they might become physically aggressive to her. She sometimes rang her ex-husband when they became particularly difficult as she felt that he would be able to control them better than she could. She saw herself as ineffective with them and they demanded a great deal from her. In the session it emerged that her sons always came home on time. When the therapist became interested in this she said lateness was the one thing she would not tolerate because she became too worried. She had told her sons that if they ever came home late she would ring the police. Through exploring this, Morag developed quite a different view of herself as able after all to command respect; in turn, she was able to use this to achieve more authority in other areas. Sometimes however, therapists, in the name of empowering single mothers, may subtly convey expectations of women being able to perform superwoman feats such as managing full-time work and children as well as competently dealing with professionals and ex-partners. Some women come for help saying that others see them as very strong and this in itself has become another pressure for them. It is important

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 195 both that the therapist’s validation does not add to this and that the other parent’s potential resources are not overlooked.

Case example Carol came to therapy with her sons Colin, 14 and Ralph, 12 because she was finding Colin’s behaviour increasingly difficult. He was hitting Ralph, refusing to go to school and wreaking havoc in the home with his friends while she was out at work. Colin had had a difficult relationship with his father, partly because he stood up for his mother when his father hit her. Now Carol began to think that he was being abusive, like his father. Therapy concentrated initially on strengthening Carol’s position and she negotiated some different rules with the boys. Colin continued to be difficult and she complained that she was so exhausted with the demands of work and the pandemonium at home that she simply could not cope any more. Carol felt she could not ask the boys’ father for help because she had no confidence that he would respond. As she and the therapist explored her beliefs about this, she began to wonder if she had been protecting her ex-husband from taking any responsibility for his sons. In the following session, both boys declared, ‘Mum’s in charge now’. This ironically followed her telling her ex-husband that she could not manage the boys without his support and making clear and assertive requests for his help. In stepfamilies, the question of authority and how it is conferred is especially pertinent, and step-parents are often unclear about what their remit is. Exploring gender differences can be helpful in illuminating the dilemmas involved. From our clinical observations we notice gender differences in the way the step-parent takes authority. It seems that men expect to delegate authority to stepmothers, but women are less likely to think they have authority to delegate to stepfathers and more likely to be seen as undermining his authority. In one family, the stepmother, who mainly looked after the children, felt herself to be in a complete bind because the only authority she had over the children was ‘delegated’ by the father, yet the more this was so, the less respect she had from her stepsons. The opposite bind occurred in a family where the stepfather and stepson frequently clashed; the mother felt that, when she did not back up her husband she was undermining him, but she also knew, from experience, how best to handle her son. It seemed difficult for her to believe that she could teach her husband how to manage her son. The idea that discipline is the main context for men to become involved with children, especially boys, is thus a constraining one. In another family where the couple had

196 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel more flexible ideas about men’s roles, the stepfather took a helpful and supportive rather than a disciplinarian stance when the mother and daughter clashed.

Emotional responsibility Holding responsibility for others’ emotional well-being and for relationships, either explicitly or implicitly, is a fundamental part of socialisation for most girls (Chodorow 1978; Gilligan 1982) and is usually vested in women during marriage. It is not surprising that such patterns persist after separation. If they have felt primarily responsible for family relationships, women are more likely to see themselves as responsible for the ‘failure’ or breakdown. After separation, women are usually left with most if not all of the responsibilities, practical and emotional, for the children. Therapy with separated women often involves acknowledging these responsibilities whilst enabling beliefs about their inevitability to be challenged. Many separated women struggle with dilemmas about their children’s relationships with their fathers. It has sometimes been helpful to make explicit the belief that women are responsible for relationships between fathers and children. This view may be held by the woman, her ex-partner and their children, as well as implicitly by professionals. Making a decision to give up trying to get a child’s father more involved is a painful and difficult one for mothers when they see their children’s distress, even though their attempts to intervene often make things more difficult. A pattern of continued involvement by women with their separated partners is frequently viewed by therapists as ‘an unresolved separation issue’, but can often be more usefully understood in the context of these gendered patterns. For men, the experience of separation often includes developing a relationship with their children which, for the first time, will not be mediated by the mother. They may not have noticed how much they relied on their partners to carry emotional responsibility while they ‘helped out’ with specific tasks. At the same time, this changed relationship may now have to be handled at a distance. If these potential attachments have no space to develop they can become the ‘product of fantasy – lived out in the mind of father and child without any of the tribulations and satisfactions of everyday reality’ (Gorell Barnes 1992). For men, to reveal and develop their more nurturing selves may challenge more traditional notions they or others hold about them. A research study (Hart 1993) of single-parent fathers with custody of their children showed a much wider range of behaviour than those of traditional men. Many separated fathers who take sole

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 197 responsibility for their children, if only at weekends, move to quite a different mode of parenting, whereby they both ‘mother’ and ‘father’ in ways which collapse these categories into one. These are critical transitions and may determine whether fathers stay committed to their relationship with their children or gradually withdraw from contact. Changes in responsibility also challenge women to give up some of their centrality during the times children are with their fathers. This is a particular challenge when children, possibly trying to get their parents back together again, inform their mothers that their fathers are forgetting to feed them, letting them watch unsuitable films, drinking too much, etc. Women in this situation have to decide whether this is dangerous neglect on which they should act, or whether their children are now being parented in ways with which they may disagree, but which they cannot control. In stepfamilies, the whole question of who takes emotional responsibility can become fraught when gender socialisation takes precedence over biological relationship. A common example of this is when stepmothers are expected or expect themselves to take care of the relationship with children and, when they meet with resistance or hostility, redouble their efforts. Some of the demonisation of stepmothers probably relates to this bind, which reflects high and often impossible demands (Smith 1990). In the research project (Gorell Barnes et al., forthcoming), several respondents described how, when a stepmother entered the family, their father tended to ‘emotionally disappear’. Some men recalled their own violent or disruptive behaviour as children, which could perhaps be seen as an attempt to provoke their father into a closer relationship. For some families, particularly when a mother had left or was seen as very vulnerable, older children, generally girls, took on a great deal of responsibility for running the household and taking care of younger siblings. However, overall in the research, it was women – whether mothers, stepmothers, older sisters, aunts or, most significantly, grandmothers – who provided emotional support and continuity at these times of crisis and transition.

Self-development and relationships The process of divorce involves a profound shaking up of the sense both of self and the predictability of the world. Many divorced parents (see Hetherington et al. 1981) report feeling failures as parents and partners and often feel depressed, anxious and emotional in the first year after separation. However, some adults may also experience relief at having finally taken charge of a situation which they believed was unhelpful or destructive to them or their children.

198 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel Separation usually involves reclaiming aspects of self which were lost in the relationship, although these processes may be so subtle that they go unnoticed in the midst of loss and upheaval. Women in particular may have given up aspects of themselves in a relationship (Bernard 1972; Brown and Gilligan 1992) which they can rediscover and reclaim following separation. In therapy we often ask questions about what women have learnt about themselves from different relationship contexts. These questions may enable women to notice changes which challenge their view of themselves in the marriage. Ironically, as women expand their stories of self, they also face the constraints and dilemmas associated with the pragmatics of single parenting, e.g. childcare responsibilities and financial problems. Poverty is hardly the most facilitating context in which to develop new thinking and expand horizons. Exploring some of the dilemmas of single parenthood can introduce different views of its advantages and disadvantages as well as the advantages and disadvantages of being in a couple relationship. The changing sense of self is affected by public debate and media images of single parents and stepfamilies and the effects of divorce on children. It is also useful to think about the impact of feminist discourses. In the process of challenging traditional assumptions about women’s duty to sacrifice themselves for the family, an opposing orthodoxy may develop that polarises women’s rights and children’s needs. Acknowledging the negative effects on children of divorce can thus come to be seen as supporting a traditional conservative position and restricting women’s development. Because men are less closely concerned with children’s emotional needs, they frequently escape this dilemma. Woman who go through a major struggle to leave a relationship may experience children’s demands as pulling them back into old patterns of giving up their self-development.

Case example Jacky referred herself and her 18-year-old daughter, Brenda, for therapy because of conflict in their relationship. Throughout Brenda’s childhood, Jacky had been living with a violent man who had hit her and the children. Brenda had been the only one to stand up to him. Eventually Jacky left her husband, trained as a teacher and formed a stable relationship with another woman. Brenda complained in therapy that her mother was never available for her, that she had lost her childhood because of the violence and now wanted a ‘proper’ mother/daughter relationship. Jacky was angry that, just as she was getting her life together, Brenda had made things more difficult because of her extreme behaviour, including suicide attempts and

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 199 disappearing without notice for weeks on end. She thought that Brenda’s problem was ‘low self-esteem’ and tried to persuade her that she was really a capable and strong person. However, the more she did this, Brenda felt her mother was trying to push her out and she redoubled her efforts to engage her mother by having problems. When the therapist framed Jacky as wanting her daughter to be strong and independent and Brenda as wishing to develop this strength through her connection to her mother, they were able to explore their dilemmas in a less confrontational way. Separation may present a different developmental crisis for men, in that they may for the first time have to face the emotional side of life without relying on a woman. Many men come for help saying, perhaps for the first time, that they want to learn about managing relationships differently. One frequent trigger for leaving marriages is the ‘voyage of self-discovery’, sometimes started through counselling or through another relationship. This can be a particularly powerful experience for men who have felt themselves in thrall to conventional marriages and to jobs which have left them no room for self-expression. It is, however, sometimes experienced as the need to find an authentic, true self that requires detaching from former relationships and finding a (frequently younger) partner who seems to more closely reflect and support the ‘new’ self. As men are less likely than women to be constrained by poverty or childcare responsibilities, they may have more freedom to try out new life-styles or experiment with new relationships. Entering a new relationship may validate and support self-development but it may also offer a profound challenge to the sense of self that has emerged after divorce. Sometimes, for example, the competence that women develop as single parents is considered too powerful or too controlling in the context of a new relationship. Women may then either give up some of their competence with their children and hand over their authority to the in-coming man, or through fear of losing all they have gained, they may rigidly cling to their ways of doing things, and allow their partner no role. For men, it may be that the nurturing relationship they developed with their children will be lost when they form a new relationship with an emotionally more ‘expert’ woman partner.

CONCLUSION By exploring gender differences, we hope to have emerged with a richer view of the complexities involved in post-divorce and stepfamily processes. While holding the social, economic and political field as an overarching context, we believe that feminist approaches can illuminate the more subtle differences in the ways men and women

200 Charlotte Burck and Gwyn Daniel deal with the loss, powerlessness, ambiguity and opportunities for growth that coexist in these crucial times. In our experience, feminist approaches, rather than leading to judgemental therapy, can, by ‘unpacking’ gendered constraints in a non-blaming way, create openings for new behaviour which can lead men and women out of many of the impasses they experience in relationships.

NOTES 1 Our discussion in this chapter refers to non-legalised as well as legalised relationships. 2 This chapter is primarily concerned with heterosexual relationships. The issues for same-sex parents and their children during separation or repartnering merit further exploration and discussion. 3 The Growing up in Stepfamilies project (Gorell Barnes et al., forthcoming) consists of fifty life story interviews with women and men who grew up in stepfamilies. The sample was selected from the National Child Development Survey cohort (i.e. all were born in one week in 1958) and was balanced to take into account those who came from stepfather or stepmother families, the age of entry into a stepfamily and whether the parent divorced or died. The in-depth interviews were designed to elicit memories of different transitions, the impact of family relationships, the ways in which individuals, as children, coped with loss and change and the meaning they subsequently attributed to these experiences.

REFERENCES Atlantic (1993) ‘Dan Quayle was right’, April. Benjamin, J. (1990) The Bonds of Love, London: Virago, Bernard, J. (1976) The Future of Marriage, Harmondsworth: Penguin (first published 1972 New York: Bantam). Brown, L. and Gilligan, C. (1992) Meeting at the Crossroads, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Burck, C. and Daniel, G. (1990) ‘Femininism and strategic therapy: contradiction or complementarity’, in R.J. Perelberg and A.C. Miller (eds) Gender and Power in Families, London: Routledge. —— (1994) Gender and Family Therapy, London: Karnac. Burck, C., Daniel, G. and Mason, B. (1992) ‘Male and female patterns of friendship’, Paper presented at Families at Risk Conference, London. Burgoyne, J. and Clarke, D. (1984) Making-A-Go-Of-It:a Study of Stepfamilies in Sheffield, London: Routledge. Chodorow, N. (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering, Berkeley: University of California Press. Clark, D. (ed.) (1991) Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change, London: Routledge. Faludi, S. (1992) Backlash. The Undeclared War Against Women, London: Chatto & Windus.

Gender beliefs in divorce and stepfamilies 201 Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Goldner, V. (1991) ‘Toward a critical relational theory of gender’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 1(3): 249–272. Gorell Barnes, G. (1992) ‘Getting it right the second time around’, Plenary address, Sixth International Congress on Divorce and Remarriage, Jerusalem, Israel. Gorell Barnes, G., Thompson, P., Daniel, G. and Burkhardt, N. (forthcoming) Growing up in Stepfamilies. Hart, B. (1993) ‘Gender self perceptions and attitudes of single fathers: implications for the feminist dialogues in systemic theory’, unpublished M.Sc. dissertation, Tavistock Clinic, London. Hetherington, M., Cox, M. and Cox, R. (1981) ‘Effects of divorce on parents and children’, in M. Lamb (ed.) Nontraditional Families, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hetherington, M. and Hagan, M.S. (1986) ‘Divorced fathers: stress, coping and adjustment’, in M. Lamb (ed.) The Father’s Role, New York: Wiley. Hetherington, M. and Tryon, A.S. (1989) ‘His and her divorces’, Family Therapy Networker November/December: 58–61. Jenkins, J., Smith, M.A. and Graham, P. J. (1989) ‘Coping with parental quarrels’, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 28 (2): 182–189. Jones, S. (1987) ‘Working with stepfamilies’, unpublished dissertation, Tavistock Clinic, London. Kiernan, K. (1992) ‘The impact of family disruption in childhood on transitions made in young adult life’, Population Studies 46: 213–234. Kraemar, S. (1991) ‘The origins of fatherhood; an ancient family process’, Family Process 30: 377–392. Papernow, P. (1984) ‘The stepfamily cycle: an experiential model of stepfamily development’, Family Relations 33: 355–363. Phillips, R. (1991) Untying the Knot. A Short History of Divorce, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robinson, M. (1991) Family Transformation Through Divorce and Remarriage, London and New York: Routledge. Robinson, M. and Smith, D. (1993) Step by Step; Focus on Stepfamilies, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Smith, D. (1990) Stepmothering, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Walker, J. (1993) ‘Co-operative parenting post divorce: possibility or pipedream?’ Journal of Family Therapy 15(3): 273–293. Wallerstein, J.S. and Blakeslee, S. (1989) Second Chances: Men, Women and Children a Decade After Divorce, London: Bantam Press. Walters, M., Carter, B., Papp, P. and Silverstein, O. (1988) The Invisible Web, New York: Guilford Press.

12

What are fathers for?

Sebastian Kraemer

INTRODUCTION When our first child was due to be born, we hoped to have a home delivery. I went to antenatal classes and learned to help with the breathing and read a book on home deliveries that told me that I should be ready to boil some water for the midwife and the doctor, water which could also be used to make tea. In the event my wife was delivered in hospital and the breathing didn’t help much, so far as I could tell. I didn’t need to make any hot water and didn’t have much to do. I remember thinking while my wife was shouting in pain how unfair it was that I could not somehow share it with her, to halve the burden. Over ten years earlier I had taken part in many deliveries, both as a medical student and as a junior paediatrician, but I was still not prepared for the sheer brutality of the process when you are more personally involved and stay with it from beginning to end. The womb is a massive muscle that can push a baby with tremendous force through a narrow tube into the outside world. It is much more powerful than any ordinary muscle, even than the biceps that adorn the arms of strong men. Once the baby was born I felt relatively useful, as I was in better condition to go to a phone box and spread the news to family and friends. I was of course very pleased, but I did not immediately feel changed by this event. Many men who attend the birth of their children report a great feeling of elation, but I didn’t have it. Something I had always sensed seemed after this experience now to be obvious. Men are peripheral to the business of making babies. Their task is over some forty weeks before the baby appears. From the purely biological point of view the father is redundant within seconds. Mothers are needed for months at least, both before and after the birth. This led me to speculate about the origins of fatherhood (Kraemer 1991), and what fathers in modern times are for. This is the subject of this chapter, which is in three parts. The first outlines the possible origins of paternal prestige; the

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second reviews the opportunities for men as parents in the modern world; while the third summarises the obstacles to participant fatherhood.

THE CONTEXT: HISTORIC AND PREHISTORIC How did human fathers become the more prestigious parent, regardless of their actual interest in, or attachment to, their children? Without a provisional story of the cultural and psychological origins of patriarchy, any discussion of male and female human attributes is overwhelmed by unconscious assumptions. According to Cucchiari, ‘biological facts do not speak for themselves’ (1981:52). It is the acquisition of the meaning attached to one’s sex, i.e. gender, that must be understood. In what he calls a ‘thought experiment’ Cucchiari supposes that there could have been a pre-gender society of humans in which the individual’s identity and value was not dependent upon being either male or female. In such a society there were no sexual taboos, and society was collective (‘fiercely democratic’), without concepts of hierarchy, ownership or kinship. Erotic experience was not confined or related in either sex to the genitals, or even to the body. There was no consciousness of the link between heterosexual intercourse and reproduction. These people, he says, ‘have no reason for wanting to know; such knowledge has no relevance to any aspect of social life’ (1981:45). The fact that women have babies and suckle them was not celebrated. Many authors have addressed the riddle of the origins of patriarchy (e.g. Eisler 1987; Engels 1884/1974; Fisher 1979; Kraemer 1991; Lerner 1986; O’Brien 1981; Sanday 1981; Tanner 1981) and Cucchiari’s attempt (drastically summarised here) is graced by his acknowledgement that it is a ‘just so story’ which is, furthermore, not complete because it specifies only the necessary conditions for the emergence of gender. (The full story would include an account of ecological changes, such as variations in population and climate.) At some point in prehistory, Cucchiari suggests, people would begin to attach meaning to women’s sexual roles and functions, because of their perceived ability to have and to suckle children. At first this leads to the elevation of women to a higher, sacred status. ‘At the same time, this process calls into being, through contrast and opposition, the category of persons lacking special power . . . the masculine gender is formed negatively at first – by what it is not’ (Cucchiari 1981:51). This leads to competitiveness, both between and within genders: ‘The world now appears divided into a whole series of dualities – all of which have a gender component or association’ (1981:58). Although women could hunt and men could care for children, the tendency for gender specialisation came to be seen as ‘natural’, which paradoxically implies that

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the tasks are defined by their cultural meanings, not by nature. The final step in the process, effectively a ‘male backlash’, is the association of female sacredness with the notion of pollution, which justifies sexual segregation and an ensuing competition for the ownership of children, particularly girls, who later become brides, the currency of the patriarchs. Cucchiari’s predicted rise in female status is supported by the archaeological record and there is abundant evidence to show that the gender of the prevailing deities moved from female to male at the beginning of the neolithic (agricultural) revolution more than ten thousand years ago (Baring and Cashford 1991; Ehrenberg 1989). This mirrored a shift in the social status of mortal men. The new male gods acquired the capacities of females, even if they were not equipped with the right organs. Father gods in religions all over the world were credited with the power to produce offspring, from their heads, armpits, mouths, bellies, even from the penis (Walker 1983). Females did not seem to be needed for this at all. Later, of course, men put their seal on their children by passing on their own names to them. The fact that male deities replaced female ones and took over their reproductive powers strongly suggests, as I have argued elsewhere, an envious attack on women (Kraemer 1991). Relative equality gave way to the inequality of the sexes of the historic world. Men’s status, or prestige, was increased, but at great cost to their modesty, their capacity to love, and to women. As feminist scholars have shown, the political, intellectual and artistic achievements of women throughout history have been largely ignored. What the father loses in this process is his tenderness: It is as if the symbol of authority is a hard father who is not yet assured of loving and being loved, a narcissistically wounded or deprived person who, despairing of being loved, resorts to force and legalistic principles and reinforces this way of feeling secure by accentuating masculine–feminine polarities and subjugating females and female deities. (Redfearn 1992:188) The gods who took over from the goddesses were not loving parents, they just produced people. Kings and emperors imitated these gods and became model fathers (patriarchs) for whom power was more important than love.

FATHERS IN MODERN BRITAIN The idea of fatherhood has been refined and altered over thousands of years, but it has not strayed far from the patriarchal model. Only since the industrial revolution have

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voices been raised loudly enough to begin to alter it. The contemporary concept of the ‘new man’, although rather worn out by media attention, is none the less readily understood as a change in identity for modern males. Instead of being dominant, the new man is thoughtful and helpful. He is affectionate and not afraid of his feelings. Because men usually see these qualities as effeminate, he is also rather scarce. In the prehistoric creation of gender, male and female were torn apart, making it difficult for them to have qualities in common. Like the prejudices of racism, or madness, differences are amplified to create what amounts to two different species, with no overlap. The development of a boy’s identity, as understood by psychoanalysts, follows a similar path (Greenson 1968; Wisdom 1976). At first, even though adults respond very differently to the gender of the child, the baby itself has no sense of it, nor of kinship (this is the ‘pre-gender’ age, where the difference exists but it has no meaning). As attachment develops, both boys and girls form an intimate relationship, and identification, with the mother (the female deity). As she gets older the girl will modify her relationship to mother, but she need never abandon the basic similarity that they share. This brings its own difficulties in the formation of a separate sexual identity (Olivier 1989), but becoming female is, according to this view, less of a problem than becoming male. The boy, on the other hand, has little choice but to change. Sometime during the first few years, in order to feel male, he has first to relinquish his identification with mother (Chodorow 1978; Dinnerstein 1987; Hudson and Jacot 1991): ‘I am not like her’. So he becomes different, but in doing so he has to jettison what he perceives as maternal qualities (‘the ascendance of the father gods’). It is not the baby, but the mother, who up to now stood for almost everything, that is thrown out with the bathwater. As Jalmert (1990:3) says, ‘the positive outcome of this development is that the boy will see himself as separate with marked boundaries. The negative outcome is that boys will have difficulties in getting close to other persons. We might even call it a fear of intimacy.’ This is a poor preparation for either partnership or parenthood. If fathers participated fully in the care of infants, both boys’ and girls’ experience of gender identity would be less polarised than at present.

The post-natal development of fathers A shock for the first-time father is the discovery that he is no longer ‘number one’. Whatever the partner’s relationship before, there has to be a change in the woman’s primary preoccupation after the arrival of the baby. The new father suddenly feels the cold, probably not for the first time in his life. The fact is that two parents and one child makes three, which is a recipe for new tensions in family life. If there is little

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social or personal encouragement to take part, new fathers will withdraw to activities where they feel more necessary, such as making money or spending it. I remember a powerful wish to take an active part in looking after the baby. I was always a keen volunteer if anything was needed from Mothercare, just to get out of the house. I recall a prevailing sense of being trapped by the baby’s incessant needs. No doubt some of the same emotions are felt even more strongly by mothers. There can be no real knowledge in advance of what it takes to look after a new baby. But, while girls may be implicitly expected to harbour thoughts of motherhood, few boys are prepared in any way for this. The majority of men will have children, yet there has been little obligation, in modern societies, to take an active part in their upbringing. None the less, I was determined to participate equally. On reflection I was not so much driven by any kind of instinct as by what I would now refer to as a wish to perform. I understand this to be derived from my rivalry with the mother. I do not mean to deny my own loving parental feelings, but to emphasise in addition the competitive element in the male parent, that can take so many forms that it is easy to miss. When we started as parents, my wife and I were both working part time and when he was four months old, we took it in turns to look after the baby. Apart from the simple fact that my share was a smaller one I soon discovered that I was not in any case an equal parent. Even though I was perfectly capable of doing all the necessary physical tasks, short of breast-feeding, I often did not have the baby in mind at all. I could forget him and carry on with my working life as I had before he was born. Much of the literature on the transition to fatherhood shows just how diffident men feel and how easily they defer to the mother in dealings with children (Lamb and Oppenheim 1989; Lewis 1986). They tend not to spend time alone with them, preferring to be the extra parent whose job is at best to be helpful to the mother rather than assume a primary role themselves. This common pattern of behaviour conceals the anxiety that arises when men have to deal with the very primitive wish to be mothers, or indeed babies, themselves. Even before they start primary school, boys have usually learned to avoid explicit play with dolls, although some will happily look after creatures such as pets. By the time they are grown up these impulses are deeply buried, but they are brought to the surface by the partner’s pregnancy and by the birth of the baby (Raphael-Leff 1991: chapters 10 and 11). After years of independence it was a totally unexpected shock that I was needed most of the time when not at work, and like many men who become fathers I became depressed. Following the birth the incidence of maternal depression is around 10 per cent or more (Cooper et al.. 1988), but if looked for, depression in new fathers may be

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even higher. In one study (Lovestone, personal communication), well over half the fathers showed significant distress in their new roles. Lack of emotional preparation must be a factor in parents of either sex (Raphael-Leff 1991: chapter 11). An unplanned birth hits the father particularly hard (Berman and Pedersen 1987:32 and 227); he does not have the experience of nine months’ pregnancy to concentrate his mind. But in general, preparation for parenthood takes place in childhood, and is provided by our own parents. The more that fathers participate in the care of their children, the more the next generation can learn from them about parenting. As it is, in most societies, children learn about being looked after from their mothers, or from other women who take their place, such as grandmothers, older sisters, childminders or nannies. In situations where fathers have chosen to take a primary caretaking role, it is clear that they can do just as well as mothers. These men often report that they have discovered for themselves a nurturing role that does not feel like second-class mothering (Pruett 1988) but it is one that has little social recognition: ‘men tend not to talk about their children’s caretaking needs in social groups; rather they “own” their experiences privately, as if they had discovered a wonderful secret that can be preserved only by not calling attention to it’ (Pruett 1993:50).

Fathers and infants The traditional story is of an infant–mother pair whose affair with each other is interrupted by father. He comes to rescue the child from this bond and show him, or her, new things. When fathers do have care of the child, they tend to be more exciting and stimulating (Roopnarine and Mounts 1985), and sometimes insensitive to the baby’s actual state of mind. The remarkable picture by Henri Cartier-Bresson (reproduced on the dustcover of French 1992) of an Armenian father holding his tiny child standing on the palm of his hand is a beautiful illustration of a paternal performance. ‘Look at us!’ it says. In the background of the same photograph are two women; one is smiling (the other is concealed behind the father) but it looks as if they are nevertheless rushing forward to catch the little one if he falls. The father who only wants to play, though he may be a good deal better than no father at all, is likely to encourage sexual stereotypes in his children (Power 1981). It is only when there is more time, and obligation, to take care of the child that fathers can resist the need to excite and become more at ease (Russell and Radojevic 1992). The pressure to perform as a male, well documented in numerous societies besides our own (Gilmore 1990), does not help a young man learn to look after, nor even to think about, small dependent creatures like children. If the father is more

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involved, and takes more responsibility, this will change. What cannot change is that the child has never been inside the father, who in that sense must always represent something outside. If he plays an active part, this outside person is more present than absent. The debate about fathering tends to polarise very easily. On the one hand, ‘men are no good so let’s get on without them’, and on the other, that ‘without fathers as active and equal partners the family is a lost cause’. Somewhere in the middle is a more tentative view, that many men are, and have always been, quite capable of tenderness and concern towards their infant children, but that there are strong emotional and social forces that inhibit them from expressing their feelings. Most commonly, a new father is a helpful parent who takes second place to the mother. From time to time he has the first place, and many fathers seem to be rewarded by these moments of intimacy with their children. If there were widespread social encouragement for men to be active parents, they would not need to be so secretive. Because they are often brought up to take charge and be strong and powerful it is quite hard for men to adopt this new role, which seems more modest but is potentially more important than their social performance outside the home.

Fathers and older children If the father is not there from the beginning, he will not have the loving relationship with his children that they want from him throughout their growing lives. Whatever men themselves may think there is little doubt that young people look for similar qualities in fathers as they do in mothers. ‘Someone who knows me and cares about me’, as one teenage girl put it to me. If he has had a good start with his children, the father can come into his own as the other parent with a distinctly different view of the world from the mother’s. He does not have to try to be different, he already is; and that difference, if it is not forced, probably depends more on his personality than on his gender (Lamb 1987). Father’s care offers the young person another dimension which, like binocular vision, gives greater depth than one alone. In the family triangle there are three relationships, but more perceptions. If the link between the parents perceived in love and hate can be tolerated in the child’s mind it provides him with a prototype for an object relationship of a third kind in which he is a witness and not a participant. A third position then comes into existence from which object relationships can be observed. Given this, we can also envisage being observed. This provides us with a capacity for seeing ourselves in

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interaction with others and for entertaining another point of view whilst retaining our own, for reflecting on ourselves whilst being ourselves. (Britton 1989:87) There is impressive evidence (reviewed by Lamb and Oppenheim 1989:21; and Russell and Radojevic 1992) showing that participant fathers are good for children’s development. A number of studies consistently show that children whose fathers share more than 40 per cent of their care demon- strate more cognitive competence, increased empathy, fewer sex-stereotyped beliefs and a more internal locus of control. Even when the fathers were themselves convicted criminals, paternal participation in leisure activities with boys at age 11 was significantly related to later onset and lower rates of criminality in these sons when they grew up (Farrington and Hawkins 1991). It is clear that children with two active parents experience a greater richness of caretaking. They see how couples work, sometimes loving, sometimes just getting on with it and sometimes hating each other. They also get less stereotyped ideas about the differences between men and women, because they can see what really happens with their own eyes rather than getting it only from television and computer games. Furthermore, each parent can make up for some of the defects of the other. This is particularly important if one parent is temporarily ill or depressed, or when the baby is born prematurely (Yogman 1987), but even in ordinary times the couple are likely to have different strengths and weaknesses as parents, partly because they had different parents themselves (Steele et al., forthcoming). It is interesting, but not surprising, to note that women who recollect a good experience with their own fathers are more likely to encourage their partners to participate (Radin 1982). The hope is that boys with good experiences of fathering will become participant fathers themselves.

Absent fathers A great deal of the discussion about the usefulness or otherwise of fathers misses the point that whether he is living with the mother or not gives few clues as to his attachment to his children. A father living at home may see very little of them if he is out at work, or elsewhere, during weekdays and weekends. Even if he is generally engaged in the task, the temptations for men to opt out of fathering are continuous and seductive. It is only too easy for fathers to retreat; for example, into another room to write articles on fatherhood. When I was working at this piece on holiday my wife, sitting on the floor showing the children how to make a tractor with ‘lego’, said ‘You write about fatherhood, while I do it’. Sometimes fathers do not get to know their

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children until the marriage has ended. Those that do not disappear from the family altogether often discover the novelty of direct contact with the children, without mother as intermediary, during access visits (see also Burck and Daniel, Chapter 11 this volume). Although at present almost four-fifths of the children in Britain live in two-parent families, it is estimated that only about half of the total can expect to spend their entire childhood living with both natural parents (Clarke 1992). Of the remainder, a few will live with father as sole parent, but a greater proportion will lose contact with him. Relative poverty is a common result, especially for women without new partners. Even if they sometimes discover that single parenthood is for them far preferable, the majority of lone mothers did not set out to do it this way. Over 65 per cent of loneparent families, mainly mothers with young children, depend entirely upon income support (Edwards 1991), which is an enormous economic handicap. At the best of times bringing up children demands the management skills, and resources, required to run a small business. In my clinical work (which is obviously skewed) I have never met a child who did not wish that he or she could have had an ordinary two-parent family. It is as if a child’s mind is programmed to make sense of his or her existence by having a mother and father built in to it. This is not the same as wishing to have one’s own parents reunited. Most children of separated or divorced parents are quite realistic about that. Yet an absent father is often an extra obstacle in life for a child, even though many will successfully overcome it. If he can be contacted and visited so much the better. We know that children do better if their parents can still collaborate after separation than if they go on fighting (Camara and Resnick 1989; Kelly 1991) and we can predict that a good attachment to the father (Ainsworth 1991) makes it easier to manage his departure, and maintain contact with him. It is better that some fathers should be absent, especially those who have abused their power over their children, sexually, physically or emotionally. Whatever the reason for his departure, it is a loss for the child. Even if he has been brutal or negligent, a father can still be missed (see Gorell Barnes and Henessy, Chapter 4 this volume).

OBSTACLES TO PARTICIPANT FATHERHOOD Simply recognising the usefulness of participant fathers will not make it happen. There is too much pull the other way. There are no national policies of paternity leave, let alone for taking leave at other times in the child’s life, such as when he or she is ill; when a Private Members Bill proposing paternity leave of seven days was brought

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before parliament in 1979 it failed at its first reading, having been described on the floor of the House as ‘grotesque’ and ‘an incitement to a population explosion’ (Lewis 1986). Most countries in Western Europe have some system of parental leave (unpaid in Greece, Spain, Netherlands and Portugal) although the uptake by fathers is low except in Sweden. The United Kingdom and Ireland, which also have the highest rates of overtime worked by men, are the only countries without any provision (EC 1993). A time of high unemployment provides a good opportunity for more part-time work and jobsharing (Hewitt 1993) but most employers (and employees, who need the money) prefer full-time work, because it is simpler to manage. This is a very shortsighted view. Only politically-led social change will encourage such developments. In his last work, Capital III, Karl Marx (1894/1959) called for a shortening of the working day as a prerequisite for a creative life in society. Economists are beginning to realise that a return to full employment is a fantasy, in which case it is important to plan, both politically and psychologically, for different definitions of ‘work’ and ‘home’ (Robertson 1985). The full working week has gradually been reduced over the past half-century and in Europe there are signs of further shortening in the basic average to a four-day week (EPI 1993). At present, almost all employment practices discriminate in favour of men against women. When men are being parents, insofar as the role is recognised at all, the reverse is the case. You work for the firm, not for the family. Economics also conspires against participant fathering. Families are expensive to run, and fathers, especially in the early years, are likely to spend more time away from home than they did before the children were born (Lamb et al.. 1987). Education, at least in Britain, is no help either. There is no serious commitment to preparation for parenthood in schools for either boys or girls, where it is marginalised as a ‘cross-curricular theme’, and buried in a mass of grand tasks under the heading ‘Education for Citizenship’ (NCC 1990). The conditions for political change here are not ideal. In Sweden, the provision of paid leave for both parents depended on a long-standing national commitment, enshrined in law, to equality of the sexes, both within couple relationships and in public life, reflected in far higher proportions of women in parliament. Because the birth rate there has been low, children are regarded as more precious than in some other countries (Sandqvist 1987). It also costs money, paid for out of high rates of tax that would be resisted almost anywhere else. Resistance to participant fathers also comes from women, many of whom will say that they prefer not to have too much ‘help’ from their men, which can seem more like interference than anything else. Emotional support from a male partner will do well enough (Brannen and Moss 1987). The woman’s role in the home may be the only one

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where she has any power, however limited (Segal, Chapter 15 this volume). The timehonoured (but not timeless) segregations of family life have their rewards, for both women and men (Bott 1957). Active parental partnership is more complicated; having two people to make decisions is an effort and increases the possibilities for disagreement between the partners, though it also increases variety and flexibility in the children’s upbringing. Feminist anxiety at the move towards more active fatherhood may also be justified (Segal 1990). The ‘new man’ is something of a fraud. He says he is an equal partner but his behaviour falls far short of his aspirations. It is often noted that fathers’ claims to sharing parental tasks are challenged as overestimates by the mothers (Jackson 1987). This looks like just another performance, designed to redefine patriarchal authority rather than to remove it. Politically, furthermore, there is a serious risk of misappropriation of a good idea. ‘The pro-father, pro-family rhetoric has begun to merge with a new moral backlash against feminism and gay politics in recent times’ (Segal, Chapter 15 this volume, p. 258). Indeed, the case against absent fathers is now being taken up by the philosophical and political right. Dennis and Erdos (1992) point out, with selective supporting evidence, that activities such as rioting and crime are linked less to poverty than to lack of personal and parental responsibility. An honest response to this from the left will have to acknowledge that disaffected male youths suffer not only from economic deprivation. Boys and young men are at a loose end because there is a crisis of manhood in our society (Phillips 1993), which is related to their attachment, or the lack of it, to their parents as well as to the decaying and depressed communities in which they live. Halsey (confusingly a former Labour party adviser) writes in the foreword of the emergence of a new type of young male, namely one who is both weakly socialized and weakly socially controlled so far as the responsibilities of spousehood and fatherhood are concerned . . . . The conclusion must be drawn that committed and stable parenting must be a priority of social policy. (Dennis and Erdos 1992:xiv) I cannot disagree with this, however much I resist the (flawed) arguments and rhetoric that lead to it. Left and right are not useful positions from which to argue for better social attitudes to parenting. The male who is remote from his children has fantasies about them, including sexual ones. All parents probably have sexual feelings for their children but these are, paradoxically, better contained if experienced in a close relationship. In a carefully

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controlled study, Parker and Parker (1986) showed that incestuous fathers were significantly less involved than non-abusing fathers in caring for their daughters in the early years. Intimate contact with his own infants reduces the risk of sexual abuse, and it also gives the children opportunities that they might otherwise not have. I have in mind a recent moment, in which my 7-year-old son carefully examined my unshaven face to see how and where the hair was growing. He cannot do this with his mother, nor probably with any other man. This is learning about differences, but there are limits. One of the problems for men as parents, rarely spoken about, is what to do with the organ that made it possible, the penis. Unlike the mother’s breast, which children can relate to as the source of milk when they were babies, the father’s penis has no function in childcare. It might even get in the way, when for instance it becomes erect when the child is on his lap, or wants to cuddle in bed with him in the morning. This unmentionable occurrence may be one of the reasons why fathers so often keep their distance from their children. The silent majority of men may be assumed to have reservations about what might well seem both a restriction on their liberty and a challenge to their gender identity. All men probably share some sense of maleness that defines itself by the exclusion of femaleness. To become a participant father means yielding some ground to another model of manhood, sometimes described as an androgynous one. This is an enormous cultural shift to make, yet for all the justified scepticism about it, there are signs of change in many places. Of course such a transformation in men does not mean that they will never be needed for their strength and power, only that they must recognise that women are just as often required to use their strength and power. When this is understood, it necessarily redefines what human power is. It is not the exclusive possession of one sex.

CONCLUSION The primary purpose of this chapter is to emphasise the importance of participant fatherhood. Traditionally, fathers’ roles have been defined in terms of responsibility, control and duty towards mother and children. The father was a provider of food, money, sexual identity, a family name, education, moral standards, punishment (Lamb 1987). The fact that mothers have, in recent times, provided some or all of these leaves the father apparently without a distinct role after conception. Perhaps for the first time in history men have to face the limitations of their gender. Although individual men have been recognised as creators of great works of art and ingenuity, much of the continuing destructiveness of the human race is carried out by men. Biological differences

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between human males and females are small (Miller 1993) and are no justification for violence and aggression. A political commitment to universal participant fatherhood could be the beginning of a change in male behaviour. Even if their claims are exaggerated, the numbers of men wanting to share in parenthood is increasing. As long as this is seen by them as something private, or even shameful, there is little chance of political progress. It is still too easy for men in public life to ‘confess’ to their incompetence as fathers. A critical mass of fathers who are proud of their commitment is necessary. Fathering is not the same as mothering, but it owes a lot to it. We can respect the difference, while pushing politically for equality of opportunity. We can then find out what the real differences are instead of being driven apart by the crude polarisations of male and female that have prevailed in most cultures up to the present. It is now clear that many of the qualities that were traditionally regarded as belonging exclusively to one sex or the other can be shared, but in a way that varies from couple to couple, and from time to time even in the same pair. The father’s participation not only liberates the mother, important though that is. It also has a direct effect on his perception of himself as a real man, not a mere performer, and on the infant’s experience of being looked after, wanted, and loved by both parents.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Liam Hudson and to Wilhelmina Kraemer-Zurné for their help.

REFERENCES Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1991) ‘Attachments and other affectional bonds across the life cycle’, in C. Murray Parkes, J. Stevenson-Hinde and P. Marris (eds) Attachment Across the Life Cycle, London: Routledge. Baring, A. and Cashford, J. (1991) The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image, London: Viking. Berman, P. W. and Pedersen, F. A. (eds) (1987) Men’s Transitions to Parenthood, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates. Bott, E. (1957) Family and Social Network, London: Tavistock. Brannen, J. and Moss, P. (1987) ‘Fathers in dual-earner households – through mothers’ eyes’, in C. Lewis and M. O’Brien (eds) Reassessing Fatherhood: New Observations on Fathers and the Modern Family, London: Sage. Britton, R. (1989) ‘The missing link; parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex’, in J. Steiner (ed.) The Oedipus Complex Today: Clinical Implications, London: Karnac. Camara, K. and Resnick, G. (1989) ‘Styles of conflict resolution and co-operation between

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divorced parents: effects on child behavior’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 59: 560–575. Chodorow, N. J. (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Clarke, L. (1992) ‘Children’s family circumstances: recent trends in Great Britain, European Journal of Population 8: 309–340. Cooper, P., Campbell, E. and Day, A. (1988) ‘Non-psychotic psychiatric disorder after childbirth: a prospective study of prevalence, incidence, course and nature’, British Journal of Psychiatry 152: 799–806. Cucchiari, S. (1981) ‘The gender revolution and the transition from bisexual horde to patrilocal band: the origins of gender hierarchy’, in S. Ortner and H. Whitehead (eds) Sexual Meanings: The Cultural Construction of Gender and Sexuality, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Dennis, N. and Erdos, G. (1992) Families without Fatherhood, Choice in Welfare No. 12, London: The Institute of Economic Affairs Health and Welfare Unit. Dinnerstein, D. (1987) The Rocking of the Cradle and the Ruling of the World, London: Women’s Press. Edwards, R. (1991) ‘Lone parent families, poverty and unemployment’, Highlight 102, London: National Children’s Bureau. Ehrenberg, M. (1989) Women in Prehistory, London: British Museum Publications. Eisler, R. (1987) The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, our Future, San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Engels, F. (1884/1974) The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, New York: Pathfinder Press. EC (1993) Leave Arrangements for Workers with Children, Brussels: European Commission Network on Childcare and Other Measures to Reconcile Employment and Family Responsibilities (available from the European Commission (DGV/B/4), Rue de la Loi, B-1049, Brussels). EPI (1993) Towards a Four Day Week?, London: European Policy Institute (available from 19 Acfold Road, London SW6). Farrington, D.P. and Hawkins, J.D. (1991) ‘Predicting participation, early onset and later persistence in officially recorded offending’, Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health 1: 1–33. Fisher, E. (1979) Woman’s Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society, Garden City, New York: Anchor Press. French, S. (ed.) (1992) Fatherhood: Men Write About Fathering, London: Virago. Gilmore, D.D. (1990) Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity, New Haven: Yale University Press. Greenson, R.R. (1968) ‘Dis-identifying from mother: its special importance for the boy’, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 49: 370. Hewitt, P. (1993) About Time: The Revolution in Work and Family Life, London: River Oram Press. Hudson, L. and Jacot, B. (1991) The Way Men Think: Intellect, Intimacy and the Erotic Imagination, New Haven: Yale University Press. Jackson, S. (1987) ‘Great Britain’, in M. Lamb (ed.) The Father’s Role: Cross Cultural Perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Jalmert, L. (1990) ‘Increasing men’s involvement as fathers in the care of children’, in Men as Carers for Children, Brussels: European Commission Childcare Network (available from the European Commission (DGV/B/4), Rue de la Loi, B-1049, Brussels). Kelly, J. (1991) ‘Children’s post-divorce adjustment: effects of conflict, parent adjustment and custody arrangement’, Family Law 21: 52–56. Kraemer, S. (1991) ‘The origins of fatherhood: an ancient family process’, Family Process 30: 377–392. Lamb, M. (1987) ‘Introduction: the emergent American father’, in M. Lamb (ed.) The Father’s Role; Cross Cultural Perspectives, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lamb, M. and Oppenheim, D. (1989) ‘Fatherhood and father–child relationships: five years of research’, in S. Cath, A. Gurwitt and L.Gunsberg (eds) Fathers and their Families, Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press. Lamb, M., Pleck, J. and Levine, J. (1987) ‘Effects of increased paternal involvement of fathers and mothers’, in C. Lewis and M. O’Brien (eds) Reassessing Fatherhood; New Observations on Fathers and the Modern Family, London: Sage. Lerner, G. (1986) The Creation of Patriarchy, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lewis, C. (1986) Becoming A Father, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Lewis, C. and O’Brien, M. (eds) (1987) Reassessing Fatherhood; New Observations on Fathers and the Modern Family, London: Sage. Marx, K. (1894/1959) Capital III, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Miller, B. (ed.) (1993) Sex and Gender Hierarchies, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. NCC (1990) Curriculum Guidance 5; Health Education and Curriculum Guidance 8; Citizenship, York, England: National Curriculum Council (available from 15–17 New Street, York Y01 2RA). O’Brien, M. (1981) The Politics of Reproduction, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Olivier, C. (1989) Jocasta’s Children, London and New York: Routledge. Parker, H. and Parker, S. (1986) ‘Father–daughter sexual abuse: an emerging perspective’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 56: 531–549. Phillips, A. (1993) The Trouble with Boys, London: Pandora. Power, T.G. (1981) ‘Sex typing in infancy: the role of the father’, Infant Mental Health Journal 2: 226–248. Pruett, K. (1988) ‘Father’s influence in the development of infant’s relationships’, Acta Paediatrica Scandinavica, supplement 344: 43–53. —— (1993) ‘The paternal presence’, Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Human Services 74 (1): 46–50. Radin, N. (1982) ‘Primary caregiving and role-sharing fathers’, in M. Lamb (ed.) Nontraditional Families, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Raphael-Leff, J. (1991) Psychological Processes of Childrearing, London: Chapman and Hall. Redfearn, J. (1992) The Exploding Self: The Creative and Destructive Nucleus of the Personality, Wilmette, Ill: Chiron Publications. Robertson, J. (1985) Future Work: Jobs, Self-employment and Leisure after the Industrial Age, Aldershot, Hants: Gower/Maurice Temple Smith. Roopnarine, J. L. and Mounts, N.S. (1985) ‘Mother–child and father–child play’, Early Child Development and Care 20: 157–169.

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Russell, G. and Radejovic, M. (1992) ‘The changing role of fathers? Current understandings and future directions for research and practice’, Infant Mental Health Journal 13: 296–311. Sanday, P. (1981) Female Power and Male Dominance: On the Origins of Sexual Inequality, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Sandqvist, K. (1987) ‘Swedish family policy and the attempt to change paternal roles’, in C. Lewis and M. O’Brien (eds) Reassessing Fatherhood; New Observations on Fathers and the Modern Family, London: Sage. Segal, L. (1990) Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, London: Virago. Steele, M., Steele, H. and Fonagy, P. (forthcoming) ‘Associations among attachment classifications of mothers, fathers, and their infants: evidence for a relationshipspecific perspective’, Child Development. Tanner, N. (1981) On Becoming Human, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Walker, B. (1983) The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row. Wisdom, J. O. (1976) ‘The role of the father in the mind of parents, in psychoanalytic theory and in the life of the infant’, International Review of Psycho-Analysis 3: 231– 239. Yogman, M. (1987) ‘Father–infant play with pre-term and full-term infants’, in P. W. Berman and F. A. Pedersen (eds) Men’s Transitions to Parenthood, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates.

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Unpacking masculinity From rationality to fragmentation1 Stephen Frosh

INTRODUCTION In much recent psychological literature on gender there has been an understandable concern with the sources of sexual difference and in particular with the origins of men’s coercive and often abusive behaviour towards others – notably children and women. Some of this work derives from a specifically systemic theoretical and therapeutic framework (e.g. Goldner et al. 1990), but much of it has been either atheoretical or eclectic in psychological terms (e.g. Segal 1990) or has had strong psychoanalytic underpinnings (e.g. Benjamin 1988; Jukes 1993). Indeed, even within some of the systemic literature, as in the Goldner et al. paper referenced above, there is recourse to psychoanalytic thinking to fill in the details of the internal ‘mental state’ or heritage of the individual protagonists in the gender-rigid or violence-saturated system. To some degree, this is a consequence of some recognisable lacunae in systemic theory, particularly its rather abstract account of subjectivity (see Frosh 1991a), but it also represents a coming together of the more interpersonally-oriented psychoanalytic approaches with systemic concerns. For example, Goldner (1991) adopts a basically object relational psychoanalytic approach to offer a critique of classical psychoanalytic ideas on gender, but augments this with material from systemic theory as a way of demonstrating the complexity of the interpersonal situation – and the processes of intergenerational transmission of gender codes – as internalised by each individual human subject. There is also a significant and informative convergence between the systemic and psychoanalytic traditions occurring on a meta-level, where theorists and therapists attempt to develop culturally coherent concepts to make sense of the ways in which people experience their social world. Some systemic approaches have recently been

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overwhelmed by a specific version of postmodernist cultural theory, making texts out of the productions of individuals in therapy and interpreting them in what has come to be known as a ‘constructivist’ way. In its most sophisticated and creative form (Hoffman 1990; Lax 1992; White and Epston 1990), this approach leads to a formidable focus on linguistic strategies (‘discourses’) and on the way that what appears to be a fixed interpretive apparatus (‘lens’ in Hoffman’s analogy) for construing the world – such as the apparatus of gender difference – can be reformulated as an historically and socially specific construction. One goal of theory and therapy then becomes that of exploring the conditions under which these apparatuses emerge, thus revealing their constructed nature and the existence of alternatives (see Foucault 1979 for the most concise and influential gender-relevant theoretical version of this procedure). Psychoanalysis has always been concerned with the interpretation of personal, linguistic ‘texts’ of the kind systemic workers are now considering, but it has suffered from a relative inability to hold in mind the social context from which these texts emerge. In recent years, however, there has been a burgeoning interest amongst psychoanalysts in the way the interpersonal field (particularly the dyadic field of mother–infant or analyst–patient) constructs individual subjectivity, making the theory more ‘social’ than was previously the case. The enormous creative energy of feminist psychoanalytic studies in the object relational, Mahlerian and Kleinian traditions (Benjamin 1988; Chodorow 1978, 1994) attests to the productivity of this approach, and it has been this work which has been most amenable to systemic thinkers. In addition, at the meta-level referred to earlier, psychoanalysis’ engagement with postmodernism offers a compelling link with systems theory, as both approaches seek to articulate the especially poignant mixture of anxiety and exhilaration characteristic of contemporary experience (see Frosh 1991b for a review of the way psychoanalytic and postmodernist perceptions intermingle). Here, the main theoretical contribution has come from a set of theories usually overlooked by systemic thinkers – that of Lacan and post-Lacanian feminist psychoanalysts such as Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray. Put briefly, systems theory’s recent interest in the construction of gender in language is also an interest shared by Lacanians and post-Lacanians, and their work, even if it is abstract and sometimes inscrutable, offers a fertile and unavoidable place for theoretical interrogation. In this chapter, I want to explore an especially momentous gender-relevant excrescence produced by the dizzying uncertainty of the postmodern condition, namely the deconstruction of traditional western notions of masculinity. To do this, I will sample in an uncontrolled way across a range of perspectives, but particularly those in the psychoanalytic traditions mentioned above. Towards the end of the chapter, I will try to pull out some implications from this work for systemic approaches.

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DISSOLVING MEN An assumption made in much social theory and feminist work is that masculinity defines the way in which the world is organised materially and perceived psychologically, and hence dominant representations of events and experiences are forged from a masculine perspective. Seidler (1989), for example, proposes that rationality has long been the main western mode available for construing experience, and rationality and masculinity have been conflated so that each connotes the other. Given the way rationality is conventionally employed to demarcate the boundaries of mental health (Banton et al. 1985), this is an important claim with implications for the marginalisation of femininity and the valorisation of a normative framework for action. It also relates to the way gender insinuates itself into the central polarities around which society is organised: it is reason which is taken as marking out what is true and what is false, and reason is seen as something embedded in masculinity but not in femininity. Where reason breaks down, madness ensues; femininity and madness are consequently aligned. What the contemporary feminist reconstruction of femininity as a positive category of experience does to this set of associations is too complex to do full justice to here. But first and foremost it makes masculine identity itself, especially in relation to its identification with reason, more uncertain and unstable. ‘Masculinity’ may be a constructed category, but it is one which has been taken to have content, a content premised on the superiority of reason and marked out by comparison with the ‘contentless other’ category of the feminine. As that latter category is expanded and regenerated, making claims for the presence of a positive feminine consciousness and also contesting the claims of reason to be taken as the ‘master system’ for comprehending and coding experience, so the assumptions on which conventional modes of masculinity are based become less tenable. Looking inwards, consciously or not, male experience becomes decentred; that is, the adoption of a core masculine identity becomes something that has to be struggled for (much like feminine identity) and cannot just be assumed. When this perspective is adopted, it becomes apparent that the category ‘masculine’ is not as obvious and as full of content as might have been thought; indeed, it begins to seem that the motivation for men’s historical and current interest in femininity and its problems might be, in part, to divert attention away from the difficulties of masculinity itself. Freud, for instance, wrote explicitly on femininity and female sexuality, but not on male sexuality as a separate entity; perhaps, as a consequence, his work is infused both with gender assumptions made from the perspective of the man and with an ambiguity which the Freudian term ‘bisexuality’ only partially captures (see Goldner

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1991). It is not just, therefore, that femininity is a category full of masculine projections (so that exploration of ‘femininity’ tells us as much about men as about women, as it obviously does); it is also that the activity of men in marking out, describing and exploring the feminine ‘dark continent’ can be understood as an attempt to deal with the anxiety produced by the unstable state of masculine identity. The fact that all this uncertainty is a fairly accurate reflection of the actual standing of gender categories as social constructs does not necessarily make it easier to live with. The argument here is that the received western tradition identifying masculinity with rationality is giving way in the face of feminist and other cultural critiques, as well as of the disappearance of traditional work-based spheres of masculine expressive activity, to make the entity ‘masculinity’ problematic just as it makes problematic the experience of each individual man. As this process continues and escalates, there is an increasing uncertainty about masculine identity, which can be seen both in the direct attempts of some men to be different and in the aggressive reactions of others. As an example of the former process, Seidler (1991) and Segal (1990) are amongst many men and women who stress the necessity of recognising the heterogeneity of masculinity. This claim hits at a core feature of masculine ideology: the assumption of universality, of sameness, of the reality of phallic authority. ‘[It] is crucial’ writes Seidler, ‘to explore the emergence and experiences of different masculinities’ (1991:142). Recognition of ‘different masculinities’ means, for instance, acknowledgement of the specificity of experiences of men who are black or white, homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual, Jewish or Gentile – powerless or powerful. Already, this is a deconstruction in the sense that the apparently monolithic nature of masculinity begins to fragment as soon as one investigates it: multiplicity enters in, differences abound; just like women, men are not all the same. The aggressive strain within masculinity, however, has a longer and more robust history. Segal (1990:102) links it with the deconstruction of masculine identity in the following passage. Masculinity is never the undivided, seamless construction it becomes in its symbolic manifestation. The promise of phallic power is precisely this guarantee of total inner coherence, of an unbroken and unbreakable, unquestioned and unquestionable masculinity. Deprived of it, how can men be assured of ‘natural’ dominance? The antagonisms of gender coalesce with the strains of affirming and maintaining sexual polarities. As traditional modes of masculinity become harder to sustain, so, in the absence of other, fuller sources of identity, it is clung to more desperately. The repudiation of

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homosexuality by heterosexual men is part of this process, as Segal points out: homosexuality is troublingly fantasised as a disruption and ‘feminisation’ of masculinity and hence must be staved off as part of the defence of the male order itself. Rutherford (1988: 66) notes, The collective logic of white heterosexual masculine identities is to project our sexual contradictions and repression onto others. Women, gay men and black men are constructed as a threat to the stability of our subjectivity, the potential subverters of our masculine order. Holding on to the ideology of an integrated and rational masculinity in the face of the deconstruction of masculinity as a whole can lead to a repudiation of alternatives and hence to a yet more desperate search for identity, experienced as something that has less and less hold on anything stable and secure. And right at the heart of this, as the reference to homosexuality suggests, lie questions about the nature of masculine sexuality.

SEXUALITY AND SUBJECTIVITY Here we have in a nutshell a constituting element of male sexual ideology. A man is only a man in so far as he is capable of using his penis as an instrument of power. It is a weapon by means of which he can subdue a woman. But . . . this belief in the overwhelming drive of male sexuality is undermined by the reality of sexual experience. (Brittan 1989: 47) The most profound myth of masculinity is that power is destined by anatomy, and that this power takes its form from the ‘oneness’ of male sexual display – the upswelling, integrated, wholeness of being. Ranged with this is the emphasis on rationality identified by Seidler (1989) and many others; thinking is made into an aspect of domination, with the centrality of the distinction between subject and object (connoting masculine and feminine) being used as a further boost to masculine defence against loss of control. But behind all this, lurking somewhere in the relatively unarticulated regions of men’s sexual and emotional experience, is a hidden recognition of the incoherence of the masculine state, of the way its ideological claims to effectiveness and power are built on a continuing denial of weakness and dependence. It is in this sense that Seidler can claim, ‘Masculinity is an essentially negative identity learnt through defining itself against emotionality and connectedness’ (1989:7). An ‘essentially negative identity’:

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this does not suggests something filled with phallic power, but something built around a flight from something else. The conventional view of masculine sexuality is that it is active and driven, and that the core of male sexual fantasy is the expression of his (subject) desire through use of the (object) other. As Segal (1990:151) points out, however, this view is challenged by homosexuality (‘gay sexuality offers further confirmation of the ambiguity, even ultimately, the unintelligibility, of the mapping of active/passive onto masculine/ feminine’), which is probably one of the many sources of homophobia amongst heterosexual men. In addition, there is a more general pattern of evidence concerning men’s sexuality that reveals the problematic status of this ‘phallic’ model. Whatever the meanings attached to ‘the act’ of sexual intercourse, for many men it confirms a sense of ineptness and failure: the failure to satisfy women . . . for many men it is precisely through sex that they experience their greatest uncertainties, dependence and deference in relation to women . . . . And certainly for many men it is precisely through experiencing themselves as powerless and submissive that they experience the greatest sexual pleasure. (Segal 1990: 212) There are a number of elements in this claim which are of importance when considering the organisation of masculine sexuality. The phallic model suggests that men achieve satisfaction through expression of their sexual drive in the context of power and domination of the other. But what the literature suggests is that this male-centred model is at variance with the actual experience of many men, whose sexual encounters are organised around a pole of insufficiency and disappointment, and a search for reassurance which does not always meet with success. Grosz (1990: 131–132) asserts, in Lacanian terms, that ‘the man can be affirmed as phallic only through the other who desires (and therefore lacks) what he has’, but this affirmation is never complete and is often withheld in heterosexual relationships, due to the man’s ‘failure to satisfy’ the woman. Segal’s claim that for many men, ‘it is precisely through sex that they experience their greatest uncertainties, dependence and deference in relation to women’, suggests that women are being perceived as more powerful and complete than men can ever hope to be. Men thus objectify but also idealise women as possessing something they themselves do not have. This directly contradicts the traditional Freudian notion of the woman as the one constituted by lack (penis envy), but is in line with the Lacanian idea that the woman is fantasised as the ‘other’ through whom completion might be achieved. This fantasy of the woman’s greater power and the potential inability of the man

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to satisfy her desire can also be seen in the limited theoretical articulation of what masculine sexuality might consist in (phallic penetration and a search for reassurance that castration has not occurred), compared to the fuller and more evocative – not to say, romantic and unrealistic – attributes claimed to be associated with female sexual pleasure. Heath (1987:13) puts it like this: In the overall system of sexuality that is tightened to perfection in the nineteenth century and that still today determines so powerfully in so many ways the facts of our lives, male sexuality is repetition, female sexuality is query. In this quotation, the tendency to romanticise feminine sexuality can be seen at work. The ‘repetition’ supposedly characterising masculine sexuality takes the form of a search for reassurance through sameness: that everything is in working order, that the man is still a man, able to do his thing. The feminine ‘query’, however, suggests something more exciting and unpredictable, something always new, asking different questions – something effervescent and unstable, ready to challenge and take risks. In this vision, feminine sexuality escapes the limits of phallic penetrative functionality to achieve a broader, more intense and more fluid appropriation of pleasure. This achievement is termed ‘jouissance’ in the fashionable Lacan-influenced literature on the subject, meaning something like an ineffable and overwhelmingly ecstatic climactic experience. Crucially, as implied in the Heath quotation above, jouissance has come to be seen as an attribute of feminine rather than masculine sexuality – leading to an extraordinary and intimidating image of women as sexually inexhaustible, ‘perpetual motion machines programmed to produce their own rapture’ (Bowie 1991:149). It is thus feminine sexuality, despite or because of its apparent mystery to male theory, that is taken to be the model for full pleasure. As a consequence, sexual intercourse comes to represent to the man not so much the threat of castration, but the demonstration of his insufficiency – men’s pleasure is so limited compared with that available to women. The irony of this idealisation of women in the context of a theoretical approach which is generally misogynistic should not be lost on anyone: Bowie (1991:149), for instance, suggests that through his use of this imagery of feminine sexuality, Lacan comes close ‘to claiming that women, freed from the servitude of the phallus, have already got what men will always crave. Whatever it is that men want to be, women are already there’. Theories which emphasise phallic dominance but also idealise feminine sexuality might in some respects be incoherent, but they also reflect the subjective experience being referred to in this material on masculine sexuality – the sense that something

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impossible is being aspired to, and that the failure to achieve it makes the man less powerful than the woman, perhaps dependent upon her. The final element in the quotation from Segal given above, that men often achieve their greatest sexual pleasure through ‘experiencing themselves as powerless and submissive’, is relevant to this. It implies that the man’s desire is directed towards being acted upon by someone fantasised as actually having power. In Lacanian terms, this involves a fantasy of the woman as possessing the phallus; yet in psychoanalytic theory she is by definition lacking – already castrated or, more generally, cut off from the sources of power. Both male and female subjects are thus from their own perspective ‘lacking’ in relation to the phallus and seek it through their other; but for the man this is given an added poignancy in that it plays with the traditions of power and puts him daringly close to the dependent position which masculinity is organised to avoid. Feminine sexuality is disparaged but also idealised as something immensely pleasurable and overwhelming; in fantasy, the man gives himself up to it in order to become part of it; but he is also terrified, as it puts him in contact with his own insufficiency. All this makes the issue of domination ever more complex and problematic. Benjamin (1988:52) claims that ‘Domination begins with the attempt to deny dependency’, so it is not a positive in its own right – like masculinity itself, it is defined negatively, against that which it is not. Perhaps the two processes, domination and dependency, are linked in part like this: to dominate, dependency must be kept at bay; but domination also demands recognition by the other, and the woman can always deny this to the man. In sex, for instance, there is a dual dependency: to have pleasure oneself, to pleasure the other – to be the object of the other’s desire. Not being desired, not being ‘successful’ in generating the woman’s jouissance, is a failure of masculine domination. ‘The failure to satisfy women’ is thus perhaps one of the most forceful indictments of masculine power. Moreover, if Segal is right that men often want to be passive in the sexual encounter, that they want to be done to more than be doers, then something else is being undermined in the sphere of domination. Men dominate, for sure, but in fantasy they are dependent on the other – and awareness of this dependency makes their domination both more determined and more insecure.

Dependence What has been emphasised so far is the way in which sex confronts men with the distance between the fantasy of possession of the phallus and the experience of insufficiency and inability to ‘stand as the cause of desire’ for the sexual partner. This

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calls into question the basis upon which the autonomy of masculine identity is built: the assumption that it is self-sufficient and powerful, able to control and dominate the other. Switching to a somewhat different (object relational) set of theoretical terms, this relates to a broader sense in which sex is a threat to masculine autonomy. Sexuality generates and is built around relationships characterised by dependence. For many men, however, such dependence is a problem, because it contradicts the ideological basis on which masculine socialisation takes place. This emphasises the importance of independence and self-sufficiency, and promotes the life of the mind – or, often, the power of the will – as something that can overcome all obstacles to fulfilment. As Benjamin (1988) attests, it is the failure to recognise the existence of an other on whom one is dependent – the denial of inter-subjectivity – that produces some of the most rigid and vicious forms of hostility and domination. Needing another person, when that need threatens the fabric of one’s identity as self-sufficient and autonomous, can be experienced as a kind of violence against the self, a threat to one’s fragile existence as a separate psychological subject. One response to this is to hit back, to assault the other on whom one is dependent as a way of protecting the self. While women may also experience this dynamic (see Segal 1990), under conditions in which masculine identity is routinely constructed as a fantasy of completeness, and thus is always vulnerable when the reality of interpersonal neediness is confronted head-on, male sexual violence is one predictable outcome. There is another general issue here, which links closely with the rigid mind–body polarity to be found in masculinist ideology described above. [Our] sexuality connects to our sense of masculinity and remains at some deep structure in the culture identified with the animal or the ‘beastly’. Our sense of our lives can be so fragmented that sexual feelings can easily be identified as ‘weakness’, as giving in to temptation. (Seidler 1989:47) It is commonly sexual desire for the other which is experienced as overwhelming and hence unsettling to the masculine fantasy of control, and this sexual desire is identified with the troublesome realm of the body. In the terms dictated by the gender polarity, the ‘body’ is feminine, its uncontrollable ‘query’ a constant source of friction and a spur to repression, as it threatens to overwhelm the rational control of experience that mental rigidity (phallic mastery) allows. But the ‘body’ here also, through its materiality and specificity, demands that the abstractions of ‘pure thought’ are abandoned and

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that something muddled, messy and uncontrollable is allowed into the symbolisation of experience. It thus represents a continual incitement against masculinist ideology, a constant potential for change. One central attribute of masculinist ideology is to oppose ‘the body’ in this sense, and the emotion associated with it, in order to perpetuate domination – to maintain the obsessional structures of control. Through avoidance of emotion, through passionless enterprise, men can always make the best, the most rational, the most ‘objective’ decisions, least influenced by the unnecessary contaminations of personal desire and inconsistent subjectivity. This renunciation of the body and of emotion, however, carries with it a very high cost. ‘We lose any sense of grounding ourselves in our own embodied experience as we identify our sense of masculinity with being objective and impartial’ writes Seidler (1989:129). Separate from the body, the body is repressed: men act as if we do not know it, as if it has no part in our experience. Moreover, with an ideology based on an objectifying trajectory, manifested psychologically in the splitting of intellect from feeling and the repression of the latter, it ceases to be possible adequately to construe the self – to make sense of one’s own experience of uncertainty and emotional confusion. This is an important aspect of the seeming impossibility of creating a truly reflexive theory of masculinity: men’s own experience is left uninterpretable because masculinity is based on its repression – a particularly significant issue in relation to therapy. Self-control, mastery of nature and of our ‘nature’, is a defining marker of the masculine state. Consequently, when the repressed returns, when for example the body makes its mark through sex, it is experienced as a failure, as a dangerous act of giving in to the bestial elements in our makeup. All this means that sex is both dangerously ‘basic’ and also somehow external – not part of what defines the man as ‘man’, as that advanced creature of rational mastery. Sex is always there, an obsession, but it is not part of us; being repudiated and repressed, it paradoxically threatens to take control. Seidler (1991: 86) comments from a man’s perspective that ‘We have been brought up to be ashamed of our sexual feelings, though often at the same time obsessed with them’. This experience reflects a massive shaft of metaphorical connections, linking the body, sex, nature, women and the fear of femininity. Constantly threatening to break up the tangled yet fragile structures of masculine identity, sex is fascinating and frightening, something that makes it possible for men to be dependent yet also raises all the anxieties of failure, dissolution and loss of control described above. It represents a channel of personal ‘truth’, because it seems to contain the possibility of having intention, premeditation and self-consciousness overwhelmed by passion, yet it is disturbing for precisely that same reason – that the self, with its obsessionally embraced masculine armour, may be

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lost. Sexuality thus becomes relegated to the category of the bestial in man – rather like madness, perhaps – producing its characteristic response of fascination and fear.

INTO THE SYSTEM Tracking back over the argument of this chapter, I have suggested that the fragmentation of received notions of masculinity – and particularly of its western association with rationality – has led to a disturbance in experience in which men are tempted to cling more desperately to the boundaries of our identity, producing rigidity and repudiation of otherness. While there is, in theory, more prospect that alternative modes of masculine identity will be developed, there is also a too-obvious acting out of masculine insecurity in violence towards others, particularly women, and in assertions of monolithic purity and sameness of the kind observable in fascism and racism as well as in misogyny (see Frosh 1989). Much of this can be understood symbolically as men clinging on to the illusory authority of the phallus while the supports for that particular structure crumble. In practice, it links with the concurrent idealisation and rejection of women (particularly of feminine sexuality), fear of dependence and neediness, and disavowal of the body as a locus for emotionally intense experience. Many systemic workers have focused their concerns on the ways in which received beliefs about gender narrow the range of experiences and opportunities available to people. Sometimes this work has seemed to suggest that gender structures can be challenged through a procedure of simply introducing new ideas to clients (e.g. Sheinberg and Penn 1991). This ‘cognitive’ element is clearly implicit in the account given above, in that the narrow focus of gender roles and beliefs about gender attributes serves as a rationalisation of the denial of experience characteristic of masculinist ideology. However, what is being stressed in this chapter is the idea that the core component of the masculine ‘identity crisis’ is the deeply felt terror of dissolution which men experience in the face of social and personal circumstances that tend to deconstruct the traditional versions of masculinity on which we have relied. Moreover, it is not simply a matter of suggesting alternatives which can be slipped on in place of the old phallic structures, a new coat of many colours replacing the old white and grey (witness the limited penetration of the ‘new man’ into British and American culture, documented for example by Segal 1990). Masculine identity has been built up on the denial of precisely these alternatives – the alternatives of dependence, intimacy, multiplicity and playfulness – so coming face to face with them as the terms for survival is likely to produce an intra- and interpersonal struggle of considerable intensity.

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One possible consequence of this struggle, too commonly found in the relationships men construct with women, is violence. Systemic perspectives currently offer two particularly powerful contributions to the restructuring of masculinity in therapy, into which the theoretical material of this chapter can feed. The first is the familiar emphasis on context; that is, on the way all the relationships we see around us can themselves be attached to other relationships and envisioned as part of a field in which every element is connected in one way or another to every other. While psychoanalysis has produced a number of relational theories, these tend to be two- or at most three-person in structure, lacking systems theory’s complex and aesthetically attractive awareness of how different relational lines interweave. In addition, psychoanalysis’ mode of therapeutic operation, focusing, as of necessity it does, on the unfolding of the therapist–client (transference-based) interpersonal space, faces great difficulty in moving outwards to wider connections in the world. Systemic theory always articulates these connections, and some of these articulations find their way into practice. Hence, although it is through psychoanalytic theory that the catastrophic inner space of contemporary masculinity can be most cogently conceptualised, systemic work allows the connections between this and the relational structures of the contemporary environment to be seen. The second contribution of systemic perspectives lies in their current interest in narrative and story telling – more formally, in the way people construct themselves in language, mostly through dialogues with others. In general, this idea needs to be approached with caution, as at times it seems to drift into an uncritically relativistic acceptance of anything someone says about themselves as the ‘truth’ of their being – whilst at the same time the concept of truth is denied. But the approach has also enabled systemic therapists to develop a more conversational approach to their work, encouraging articulation of relationship stories in such a way as to emphasise their provisionality, the possibilities available for their alteration (see Hoffman 1992 for a striking account of this phenomenon). Given the terror produced in many men by the fragmentation of received images of masculinity, this therapeutic stance can become one that creates a supportive and ‘holding’ environment, while the painful task of reconstruction from the fragments takes place. That is, the reframing of self-andidentity as a way of narrating one’s experience, rather than as something fixed which must be held on to at all costs if madness is to be kept at bay, makes it more possible to tolerate thoughts about a new personal narrative – to feel that the loss of one’s old self is not the same as total annihilation. The therapeutic task being outlined here is to make it possible for the rigid dictates of masculinist ideology (the destructiveness explicit in phallocentrism) to be

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deconstructed without producing the explosion of rage and violence so frequently to be found in men’s behaviour in the world at large. In the longer term this does require men’s more thorough immersion in mutually dependent relationships, with experiences of intimacy which do not become defined as threatening to masculine autonomy and selfhood. This in turn depends both on macrosocial changes in the ideology of gender, and on very specific alterations in patterns of socialisation and personal encounter, perhaps particularly in the context of fatherhood (see Benjamin 1994; Chodorow 1978; Kraemer, Chapter 12 this volume). In immediate therapeutic work, however, it involves a procedure in which there is both forceful challenge to the violence characteristic of men’s activity and an acknowledgement that this violence can be understood as a response to the fragmentation of the masculine fantasy of mastery and power. Exploring the sources and effects of this ‘choice’ of response may reveal, in the life of any individual man as he relates to others, what alternative ways forward there may be. The vulnerability of men is an issue which feminists, including feminist psychotherapists and family therapists, have understandably not placed high on their agenda for analysis or concern. Nevertheless, it deserves such a place because it is from this vulnerability – the sense that masculinity is built on emptiness, including disavowal of the capacity to link with others in a mode of reciprocal neediness and intimacy – that much of men’s violence has its origins. Under contemporary conditions, the traditional masculine defence of flight into rationality and repudiation of the feminine can no longer bolster the fragility of masculine identity. This is both welcome and problematic. Men’s domination has always been supported by violence; this violence is no less present as domination is called into question. It is observable all the time, particularly as sexual violence but also in other paranoid exchanges within family life. It arises from a mixture of rage at the dissolution of the fantasy of masculine rationality and power, and of employment as a strategy to hold on to this power. All this is a problem for women as well as for men. But for men who in some way want to change, who find the phallic structures too constraining and too empty, a major problem is that the breakdown of rationality and unquestioned control does not automatically release a new energy of intimacy and emotion; it usually simply reveals just how much of a distance we have to go in order to find them. Which, all things considered, is just about what one might expect.

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NOTE 1 Some of the material in this chapter is adapted from Stephen Frosh, Sexual Difference: Masculinity and Psychoanalysis, London: Routledge, 1994.

REFERENCES Banton, R., Clifford, P., Frosh, S., Lousada, J. and Rosenthall, J. (1985) The Politics of Mental Health, London: Macmillan. Benjamin, J. (1988) The Bonds of Love, London: Virago. —— (1994) ‘Sameness and difference: toward an “over-inclusive” model of gender development’, in A. Elliott and S. Frosh (eds) Psychoanalysis in Contexts, London: Routledge. Bowie, M. (1991) Lacan, London: Fontana. Brittan, A. (1989) Masculinity and Power, Oxford: Blackwell. Chodorow, N. (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering, Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (1994) ‘Oedipal asymmetries’, in A. Elliott and S. Frosh (eds) Psychoanalysis in Context, London: Routledge. Elliott, A. (1982) Social Theory and Psychoanalysis in Transition, Oxford: Blackwell. Foucault, M. (1979) The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Frosh, S. (1989) ‘Psychoanalysis and racism’, in B. Richards (ed.) Crises of the Self, London: Free Association Books. —— (1991a) ‘The semantics of therapeutic change’, Journal of Family Therapy 13: 171–186. —— (1991b) Identity Crisis: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and the Self, London: Macmillan. Goldner, V. (1991) ‘Toward a critical relational theory of gender’, Psychoanalytic Dialogues 1: 249–272. (1990) ‘Love and violence: gender paradoxes in volatile attachments’, Family Process 29: 343–364. Grosz, E. (1990) Jacques Lacan: A Feminist Introduction, London: Routledge. Heath, S. (1987) ‘Male feminism’, in A. Jardine and P. Smith (eds) Men in Feminism, London: Methuen. Hoffman, L. (1990) ‘Constructing realities: an art of lenses’, Family Process 29: 1–12. —— (1992) ‘A reflexive stance for family therapy’, in S. McNamee and K. Gergen (eds) Therapy as Social Construction, London: Sage. Jukes, A. (1993) Why Men Hate Women, London: Free Association Books. Lax, W. (1992) ‘Postmodern thinking in a clinical practice’, in S. McNamee and K. Gergen (eds) Therapy as Social Construction, London: Sage. Rutherford, J. (1988) ‘Who’s that man?’, in R. Chapman and J. Rutherford (eds) Male Order, London: Lawrence & Wishart. Segal, L. (1990) Slow Motion: Changing Men, Changing Masculinities, London: Virago. Seidler, V. (1989) Rediscovering Masculinity, London: Routledge. —— (1991) Recreating Sexual Politics, London: Routledge. Sheinberg, M. and Penn, P. (1991) ‘Gender dilemmas, gender questions, and the gender mantra’, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy 17: 33–44. White, M. and Epston, D. (1990) Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, New York: Norton.

14

The social construction of a caring career1

Julie Wilkes

INTRODUCTION How useful is social constructionism to feminist practice?2 This chapter attempts to examine this question by looking at the ways in which groups of women3 produced accounts about their careers in ‘the caring professions’. Social constructionists argue that the world is constituted in language, as opposed to the common-sense notion that our language represents things and events in the world (Gergen 1985; Shotter and Gergen 1987). Presenting this discussion of women’s ‘caring careers’ as a paradigm case, I have taken our conversations as social texts in their own right, which can be deconstructed, rather than as more or less ‘accurate’ representations of what women and their lives are really like. We have informed our explorations with perspectives congruent with our practice theories, using ‘linguistic-systems’ (Anderson and Goolishian 1988:371) and social constructionist ideas, which emphasise the joint, performative,4 contingent, here-and-now effort of maintaining a gendered social identity, and challenge the idea of the speaking ‘self’ as a source of inner or historical truth, focusing instead on how we co-create ourselves in discourse. This chapter provides practitioners with an illustration of the ways in which realities may be being created in their working conversations, with each other and with the consumers of their services. The final section will draw out the application of this analysis to feminist practice. Therapists place differing values on the significance of their conversations during training about how or why they entered their professions, which is often contingent upon the customs of their particular therapeutic ‘school’. In the systemic and family therapy field, there is growing interest in how the ‘subjective’ assumptions and values of professionals affect their work. Many of the current assumptions which underpin methods of selection and supervision of students and trainees who wish to work with

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people are based on traditional images of the ‘self’ in terms of ‘personality traits’, ‘attitudes’ and concepts from psychoanalytic theory.5 Our exploration of ‘caring careers’ raises important questions for those wishing to pursue this interest in a way that diverges from these traditional frameworks. We would argue that these orthodoxies, particularly those that prize close scrutiny of motives, looking for signs of ‘insight’ into the ‘unmet well’6 of an individual’s need to disguise or repair damage in their own life by caring for others, are not adequate to the demands of gender politics, in that they advocate the discovery of ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ motivations inside the individual ‘personality’, while social systems and discourses of gender in interview situations and supervisory conversations are not taken adequately into account. Anglo-American approaches to gender in feminism’s early ‘second wave’ (1960– 1980) have tended to base themselves in social constructionism in its broadest sense: gender is a socially created phenomenon; women are made, not born; men are victims (though sole beneficiaries) of the same process, and so on. The socialist-feminist project during this period was to decrease or de-emphasise the ‘essential’ differences between the sexes while demanding reforms in social conditions for women. For example, feminists demanded that childcare and other important jobs should be undertaken equally by men and women, and that children should be brought up in nongendered ways. This elementary reading of how the processes of social construction work, mistaking them for the acts of autonomous agents, has led to a limited set of ‘equal opportunities’ recruitment and childcare practices that try to equalise difference and which, though well-intentioned, have predictably had minimal effect. Doing away with difference has been discarded as a goal by many feminist writers in the Thatcher/Reagan years in favour of a range of new essentialisms (see Segal’s account of this U-turn back to essentialisms in Chapter 15 this volume). This switch has been achieved in part by the over-simplistic reading of the process of gender ‘construction’ described above. Women writers wanted to reassert their true selves, to appeal to women’s ahistorical ‘essence’ (via images of earth mothers, goddesses, mythical heroines, and so on) and to valorise ‘real difference’, which has thrown the social constructionist stance into disrepute. Some feminists took great exception to the primary role assigned by social constructionism to ‘discourse’: ‘it isn’t just words – what about our “lived experience!”’ This chapter attempts to address this concern which is itself an arena of political contest. I consider both individualism and essentialism to be current dominant oppressive constructions, and identify the way these discourses feature in our own explorations of gender and careers. A social constructionist practitioner adopts the stance that ‘gender’, ‘careers’ and other social artefacts are constructed through language; that is, we should ‘treat social

234 Julie Wilkes facts as accomplishments’ (Garfinkel 1967), and focus on processes rather than things; for example, ‘speaking like a woman’ rather than ‘being a woman’, ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’ caring. Gender itself is held together by feats of discursive practice. An important strategy for feminist social construction is to keep pulling these constructs apart, to keep turning gender back from essence into an area of action. This stance brings particular advantages for emancipatory practice. It involves an examination of how the relations of power sustaining women’s oppression are bound up in the processes of signification in language, such as new discoveries about who women ‘really are’ and what they ‘really want’. This critique exposes the conflicts and tensions that are subsumed under the dominant ideology and makes clear that a single meaning is never sufficient, and that we should become deeply suspicious whenever one is asserted. This brings particular benefits for women, replacing patriarchal doctrines of essence and individualism which we would argue place limits on women by supporting the dominant order. It is important to emphasise that this particular project relates to the contemporary preoccupations of the groups involved. Its subject matter is therefore locally (Londonbased women in ‘caring’ professions – social work, nursing, medicine) and culturally (white, British and aspirant/ middle class) specific. We do, however, feel that our reflections may have something more general to say about feminism and the process of reality construction.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY A ‘CAREER’? Is there such a thing as a ‘caring career’? Are we producing a ‘straw person’ with this category? Edwards and Potter (1992) argue that people construct versions of the world to fit with what they are trying to achieve – that all categories are straw targets which can be challenged. There is no essential nature to this or any construct; rather, a ‘caring career’, along with any other speech term, is constructed out of accounts. In taking this view of signification, however, a social constructionist perspective does not involve having to doubt the existence of historically-situated social practices, norms and phenomena; we are not setting out to provoke what Edwards et al. (1993) term ‘the Death and Furniture’ debate; ‘are you saying that the Holocaust never happened/this table doesn’t exist?’ These realities are questions of ethical and practical choice, based on what counts. In order to remain intelligible, our process of meaning construction involves a wider reference group than our small meeting; a ‘career’ is not just what we ourselves are pleased to call our jobs or occupations. In the world of paid work, the sort of story told about modern working life that

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merits the title of ‘career’ must adhere to certain social practices or criteria, such as continuity, increasing status and financial reward. Meaning is achieved out of the ordinary accounts people use, which is the same process on a larger scale (in academia, law, etc.) as it is in small local groups. Marshall (1984) has identified the following characteristics of a ‘career’ in the mid-1980s: continuous, or nearly continuous employment; an interest in promotion; a desire for increased earning power as a symbol of identity and the singular pursuit of these things above other goals in life. She also notes that these conventions mean that the majority of work contributed to society by women does not go under the rubric of a ‘career’, as it often lacks these features. It is clear that many studies about women and work have created categories which defined ‘work’ as approximating to this pattern of the ‘career’ ideal. The 1984 Women and Employment Survey (DoE 1984) carried out by the Department of Employment and the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys provided the first attempt at an inclusive account of women’s employment in Great Britain. Earlier studies had not included questions on women’s experience of employment or made any reference to the unpaid work they undertook in the home. Classifications more appropriate to male patterns of labour had been used and had created particular effects in the research findings. Beechey (1986) shows how earlier research had under-accounted women’s economic activity. Women’s work either fell outside the net of definitions of ‘work’ (i.e. homeworking), or there were no categories in the official forms to represent the skills women used, or the work was being under-reported because of the conditions in which it is performed (part-time, sporadic, off-the-books, etc). Social constructionists are not alone in challenging the ‘objectivity’ of much ‘scientific’ research; the survey quoted above shows how categories are created and used which co-construct research findings. Neither are we alone in highlighting the fit of the accounts people give with situational social achievements. For example, one researcher into women’s work says: [W]omen in the 1930s who stayed at home to raise children may have been content to say that this was because it was woman’s natural state, or because their husband wanted them to. In contrast, women in similar circumstances in the 1990’s may be more likely to mention individual choice. (Kremer 1993:192) The implication here is that the choice of description, and the reasons or motives given are in part also responding to broader arguments belonging to social debate and customs of present and previous times.

236 Julie Wilkes Surveys and official statistics may have under-represented women’s contributions to work, but so do women themselves, and their managers. For example, one of our workshop participants said: ‘I remember my Area Manager had been on a course about gender, and he came back and said: “Well, one of the things that made me think harder is that never for a moment have I thought about your career development . . . . I realise that I don’t think about you in the same way I think about . . . Steve, for example . . . ”. And I realised that I didn’t either.’ Neither did our ‘careers’ conform particularly well to the accepted conventions in our discussions. Some began with jobs and wound up (often during the 1980s) in ‘careers’: ‘The word “career” is only something I’ve recently been able to connect to in any way at all . . . . Well education was all right for girls up to a certain point, but it was a case of “what would be acceptable”. It was a job that you got you see, and you stayed in that job, and that was it.’ ‘My idea was that you had a job, and you did it, and you stayed in it. I knew that these were words that were coming in and that younger people, women as well as men, were talking about “my manager’s responsibility for my development . . .” and I used to just sort of ignore that and just have the idea inside my head that there was a job and I “just did it” and the idea of career came to me relatively late.’

WOMEN AND ‘CARING’ Arguments have been repeatedly advanced from many different interest groups that women, by virtue of their childbearing capacity, are ‘naturally’ suited to caring – clearly the baseline of the essentialist position. Oakley (1975) traces the history of theories about women’s ‘natural’ condition from anthropology, biology and sociology, and identifies the production of theories of women’s ‘nature’ and opposition to women’s rights at points when there was a need to keep society as it was. Gilligan (1982) uses a social learning version of attachment theory to argue that women develop a more ‘other-centred’ moral outlook. Grimwood and Popplestone (1993) suggest that women learn to care by performing (or seeing other women perform) physical and emotional supporting roles as part of their daily lives, which develops by extension to nurturing, supporting and bolstering others in contexts

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outside the family. They conclude that acquisition of these caring skills often leads women into paid employment in the ‘caring professions’ (domiciliary and residential care, counselling, advice work, social work, nursing, medicine, and so on). Social learning, though not based in theories of women’s essential nature in quite the same way as trait theory, does not however escape the problems of essentialism. Gilligan’s learned gender differences come across as ‘given’ and therefore become essentialist, as do the accounts provided by Grimwood and Popplestone. Biological sex and gender are not differentiated; therefore the part played by discourse in promoting gender positions is not specifically identified. These are examples of the way a powerful discourse such as gender works to hide its constructedness behind custom and ‘common sense’ and re-creates the effect of ‘naturalness’. When asked how they came to be in their ‘caring careers’, the women shied away from the attribution of this image. Judging by women’s responses, a ‘caring career’ is an unfortunate term, a misnomer. The epithet sat uncomfortably; women appeared to be wary of its connection with their gender. This would seem to make sense of the stress placed in individuals’ accounts on the career aspects of caring, rather than the caring aspects of career: ‘I value the things that are “male”. . . . Thinking, earning, status, power . . . . Not a lot about caring, actually . . . ’. ‘I had absolutely no intention of considering myself a good, nurturing, angelic kind of person . . . ’. ‘Well you could kind of fit sessional work in Child Guidance in with family . . . nothing caring about this!’ This is an example of a ‘tension account’ (Marshall and Wetherell 1989: 115), in this instance between notions of an unproblematic individualised self, women’s gender and ‘caring’ occupation. Marshall and Wetherell show how group members articulated a tension between ideas of self and group identity by presenting a contrast between ‘a strongly individualistic repertoire . . . and framing their occupational identity as a set of trait-like characteristics’ (here is essentialism in another form). In our workshop, this process creates ‘a shortfall or space’ between being a subject, being a woman and being caring. Individualism, that is, the idea of the sovereignty of the autonomous individual over its own personal domain (thoughts, feelings, views) is involved to do battle with stereotypical occupational and ‘caring’ identities. In common with all oppressive discourses, the individualist repertoire conceals its own constructedness in the process of discrediting its opponent, in this case, the caring stereotype. A

238 Julie Wilkes distance opens up between various accounts of ‘women’s nature’ in our discussion. In these gaps, the argumentative nature of each construct becomes evident: we are using discourses of gender and of caring (essentialism), and of self (subjectivity) to fit what we want to achieve in this discussion. When we want status and power, we talk like ‘not-women’. When we want autonomy, we speak as not caring. The dream of emancipation lies in the space created, in the distance between stereotypic representation and the autonomous speaker. The tension account maintains a speaker’s freedom firmly within the constraints of dominant discourses. Of ‘caring’, one woman remarked: ‘The word itself is devalued, but it still has a very powerful resonance with us’. This remark seems to be extremely significant in the various negotiations that took place in the group’s conversation over the meaning of ‘care’ and ‘caring’. Some related their own wishes to remain within the sphere of ‘caring’, rather than getting jobs with no clear ‘caring’ aspect, and this coincided with work opportunities that were seen as ‘all right for a girl’. It was clear that by combining paid work with a ‘caring’ job, women had skilfully negotiated and transformed its significance in their working lives, where relations are based on rational and financial exchange rather than on love or domestic duty, while not stepping outside the domain of ‘doing caring’ altogether. This way, they could adopt a ‘both/and’ position. Women could retain the idea, or the attribution, of caring, while not being in a relationship based on direct care. ‘I can kind of legitimise all my nurturing, my caring stuff, by having a career . . . . It’s only because I express my caring in an occupation that I can say to my mother: “I won’t look after my sister’s kids!” At the same time as women were perfecting this manoeuvre, we identified a parallel push from government in the National Health Service and Community Care Act in redefining the ‘care’ word, but in this instance travelling in the other direction, transforming the meaning of ‘care’ back into unpaid caring. Women described what they saw as the ‘colonisation’ of language in this area: ‘It’s the hijacking of language, isn’t it, because “care in the community” really means dumping people in the street . . . ’. These shifts in practices and meanings indicate important dilemmas for women in the ‘caring professions’: will the political climate lead to the need for women to emphasise the ‘caring’ aspect of their careers in order to maintain a socially esteemed professional identity as women? Conversely, what might the effects of an increased emphasis on the ‘caring’ aspects of such a career have on its ‘professional’ standing in the government’s discourse? Might ‘caring’ become something that, as the Health

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Minister, Virginia Bottomley, suggested, ‘streetwise grannies’ might do better in their spare time than professionally trained staff? As the ideology of ‘care in the community’ continues to unfold in practice, what might be the implications for women in the ‘caring professions’ in constructing arguments to defend their right to work? ‘Caring careers’ were reported by some women to be a feature of dialogue with male partners back in the home when staking out claims. Several women talked about their ‘caring careers’ as if they were a line of defence, ‘some kind of reasonable excuse or justification’, offering absence with leave from unpaid caring responsibilities in the home: ‘Men have always had their work to keep them away from the children and the drudgery that’s involved in a lot of the tasks at home, and now we’ve adopted the same sort of currency. . . . We can’t justify not doing the drudgery, unless there’s an equally valid activity that we can use as an excuse for our absenteeism.’ An intrinsic aspect of the bargain is that the work outside the home has to be seen as justifiable, therefore one aim for these women’s negotiations is how to produce an argument which attends to their needs without being seen as self-interested (see Edwards and Potter 1992:158 for a fuller discussion). Rather than offering the justification ‘I want to go out to work to get some money of my own’ or ‘I like going out and meeting people’ or even ‘I want to improve myself and get on in the world’, women can say they are out ‘doing good’. Insofar as a ‘caring’ job fits within the rubric of a vocation, it also accrues certain social entitlements, and is therefore seen as warranting certain sacrifices which may even extend to family and friends’ needs. If they didn’t want to ‘care’ at work, women identified their truly caring selves with political awareness or activism: ‘I said I would never have anything to do with how people worked inside, I was only interested in their social conditions . . . ’. ‘I’m torn between therapy, and the status of it, and politically campaigning to make changes. . . . Because if there’s a caring side to me, it’s that!’ Here women used a sense of political injustice to justify their choices. The manoeuvre performed here was to slide their commitments along the scale of virtues from the gender stereotype of ‘caring’ altruism (putting others first, religion, vocation, doing good) to the more glamorous (and powerful) ethics of political activism. The tension here is between the ‘politics’ and the ‘caring’ stereotype, as these are often placed in opposition in the ‘altruism’ discourse. These declarations all served to make incursions into the way speakers felt that their early ambitions, like the ‘care’ word, had been ‘misappropriated’.

240 Julie Wilkes ‘I do care . . . I care passionately about the people I work for, work with, I know that I care so much. . . . But I also perceive that care, that quality, that emotion is something that’s very useful for people to use and abuse.’ This aspect of the conversation accomplished the transformation of our career choices to political ones, bringing the attributes of powerfulness and radicalism, without the necessity of being directly involved in political action. The argument served to create further tension over the significance of ‘caring’, portraying women in a more active and potent light. We managed the dilemma of the dominant gender equation of ourselves as ‘women’ with ‘caring values’, and our wanting to make a political impact, by an appeal to the essence: ‘what I really am’, rather than to action: ‘what I actually do’. We did not depart from values per se as our basis for justification, to appeal for example to opportunity, accident, economic necessity, and so on. Again, we managed to create a ‘both/and’ position, within which we could exercise some limited freedom.

STORIES LIVED AND STORIES TOLD?7 Early feminist methods, such as consciousness-raising groups, proposed that women benefit from therapeutic work based on the fundamental primacy of their emotional or bodily experience. Emotions were seen as the touchstone of the ‘real’ in women’s lives, an ‘inner’ truth which women were encouraged to ‘express’, and by doing so to identify their oppression. Social constructionism challenges the idea that women can talk directly about experience in this way. This idea, based in a ‘naive sensuous empiricism’ runs the risk of ignoring the effects of sexism as ideological discourse, that is, as Eagleton says, ‘there is no “real life” process without interpretation’ (1991:75). It also takes no account of the processes identified above, the discursive elements of the accounts advanced. The conversation would need to move to a different level to challenge these constraints. Discourse isn’t ‘just words’, as some feminists fear, but it does give language the major role. Let us deconstruct the idea that experience is primary. If, hypothetically, you were able simply to experience living, without a moment’s reflection or comment, there would only be one story about your working life: the story you live. This would be like living in a kind of constant present, which of course is the standard metaphor for time, in that we commonly have the experiential sensation of events flowing forward, and us with them, in a singular course that we think of as reality. We commonly think of self-consciousness, the modern reflexive view, the symbolic kick-start towards language, as secondary process, arising from and dependent in the last instance upon bodily sensation. In the case of a career, if you only had this lived story, this story

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would be outside language. There would be no reflection, no self-presence, no pattern, no significance to the events in your life; your living would have no social qualities. Therefore, it follows that to have a history, or indeed a self, you need at least two stories: the one you live, and the one you or others tell about it. The foregoing raises a number of questions: to what purpose and for whom is the story told? How do you know what kind of story to tell? To have a career, rather than having a particular lived experience, one might begin to think of having a special kind of case to make from among the materials at your disposal; or indeed, having access to a particular kind of story-making material. Social constructionism focuses on discursive interaction, on our engagement in discourses creating systems of meaning and value, rather than on the outcomes or products of that process (Pearce 1993:149). The story lived does not determine what is told; it acquires meaning via social argument. As Laird (1989:432) says, ‘events are not the raw materials out of which stories are constructed, but rather the reverse, that events are abstractions from narrative’. The recounting of a woman’s personal history does not reveal ‘the true person’. What is told is contingent, local to time and place, and is two-sided, in that it sets forth a position created in part from weighing up its opposition. Our statements do not reveal ‘how women’s lives are’. At most, they show the ways in which the question of ‘being a woman’ is temporarily settled. A social constructionist approach is interested in how we as women manage the dilemmas of our social selves in our talking, descriptions and attributions. This stance assumes the historical and cultural relativity of stories in the social world.

ROMANTICISM The aspects of work earlier identified as meriting the title of ‘career’ seem to belong to a group of characteristics of a particular social period, including features such as humanism, rationality and progress. The notion of a career fits with humanistic and romantic8 ideas of agency, that is, of humans as the authors of their own lives. Broadly speaking, until very recently, the romantic notion of individual self-ascendancy through spontaneous personal struggle (the bootstrap philosophy) has been a fashionable narrative form. A ‘career’ as we know it is a good example of such a form. However, in career terms, ‘getting rich quick’ or ‘rising through the ranks’ has never applied to women or minorities to any great degree, and even for many white middle-class men it has lost its appeal now that a particular phase of industrial capitalism is over. Feminists have identified the dangers of romance for women,9 notably in its role in preparing women for and its legitimation of their domestic and sexual slavery, and its channelling of energies that might otherwise be expended on more subversive or

242 Julie Wilkes empowering activities (Kitzinger 1987: 108–109; 117–118). Its classic ‘rose-tinted spectacles’ change perception of both present and past events, widen the perspective between the story lived and told, and in many cases ennoble women’s suffering and deprivation at the hands of men. Romanticism is bound up with individualistic constructions of the self, promoting belief in the inner life and the essential dynamics of the ‘personality’, such that our rewards, and responsibilities, lie ‘within’. There were strong romantic elements in the images we presented of our early careers. Many of the stories featured a family member, a father, mother, brother or child, who had taken a special position through physical or mental illness, and whose cause was symbolised and championed, directly or indirectly, through the ‘caring career’ of the speaker. Women in our groups spoke of their earliest ideas about a ‘career’: ‘My aunt had been a nurse at Gallipoli . . . .’ ‘I carried beliefs about the image of being strong and nurturing, and also the value of guilt, penance and sacrifice . . . .’ ‘I always knew I wasn’t going to be like the rest of these kids . . . .’ ‘I always had this tremendous sense of deprivation and anger . . . and wanting redress . . . wanting redress.’ A traditional romantic narrative (Murray 1989) often begins with solitary dreams or ambitions in early life, which are sometimes lost during some breach in events and then re-found. The honoured past or proper scheme of things is at first lost, and then restored through some struggle. Aspirations came early from narratives that involved the breach of something that needed repair, the downgrading of something precious that should be restored. However, this romantic form in the stories told was manifestly not fixed or universal, it was contingent upon the context and sequence in which the story was created. When first called upon to produce an account, speakers were for the most part virtuous and heroic, rising above family origins; doing battle with intransigent authorities or structures; rescuing the sick or poor and championing their causes. The closeness of personal tragedy in our families was palpable, the tragic figure invariably being someone other than ourselves, defeated by political oppression, unfulfilled promise, mental illness, or the effects of war. The world was a place in which wrongs could be righted, tears mended, and the proper order restored. These were the points in the narratives when speakers’ accounts became quite vivid, and women spoke with forthright passion and conviction. But when we invited women to reflect upon the experience of telling, and asked:

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‘how might you tell your story differently another time or in a different context?’, our subsequent stories took on another shape in relation to the stories we had heard ourselves tell. Our tone changed and became ironic, we had left important things and people out of our stories, we were no longer heroic, our motivations were not selfless, the world was neither good nor safe, and its moral order was ambivalent. From the vantage-point of irony, our romantic tales seemed silly, embarrassing, products of youth and self-importance. The changes wrought by this process of reflection involved a moral shift, which changed the nature of the assumed context into which the speaker spoke, and thus the position of the speaker in the world, the story told, and, in doing so, the nature of the world itself. This method provides an example of the inadequacy of simply ‘inviting women to speak’, which produced only the romantic voice. Inviting women to ‘take another position’, or to become self-reflexive, has the effect of closing certain individualised ‘romantic’ options in favour of a different, more multivocal, world-view. We therefore invited women to comment on the process of telling, to pick up any themes they noticed, to speculate on how their listening had affected their own telling, and how the stories were constrained or different in this context: ‘The stories that were imposed on one . . . of not having the choice about the story, indeed having to live someone else’s story, feeling you had to go along with that other story. . . .’ ‘It began to raise questions about the adequacy of these explanations . . . at certain points, certain explanations were adequate, and then became less adequate, and in the telling my story became less adequate to me . . . . When I tell it, it opens up holes, it’s peppered with holes . . . little vacancies.’

WHAT IS THE POTENTIAL OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM FOR EMANCIPATORY PRACTICE? A social constructionist approach offers a way of staying with the social and contingent components of gender, rather than its hard-programmed, ‘internalised’ effects. Rather than looking for the content of ‘insights’ or causal explanations based in women’s gender role, inner ‘traits’ or ‘formative experiences’, as an essentialist approach would, a social constructionist might look for how these explanations fit what the speaker is trying to achieve in that context. The process of jointly selecting and shaping accounts about the ‘caring’ and ‘career’ story one has lived achieves certain local social goals, rather than representing with varying degrees of accuracy either a series of events in

244 Julie Wilkes the ‘objective’ world, or a series of impressions in the ‘subjective’ inner life of an individual. This analysis of shared themes shows how the individual’s distancing from common gender stereotypes creates an impression of freedom and individuality in the conversation which, rather than just expressing personal, inwardly-held views, is a way to manage present and recurring dilemmas of power and control in the group. This examination of the relationships between ‘caring’ and gender, and values and politics, shows some of the ways we deal as women with conflicts in ideology over women’s nature and our own place in the caring and political spheres, and with conflicting discourses, in our struggle to present a valid case. There is of course no contradiction in a story lived: moves are simply made. Wittgenstein (1953) suggested that contradictions occur only in language, and therefore in stories told, when, in trying to use language as a guide to action, we become ‘bewitched’ and confused in attempting to adhere to language’s various rules of consistency across different discourses. Such consistency is not possible, different rules apply, different interests are served, which, when we attempt to reconcile them, lead us to employ a range of devices, such as ‘both/and’ positions, to try to manage our dilemmas. It is the rules of grammar, said Wittgenstein, which seduce us towards desiring a consistency which is unattainable in ordinary living. This may be so, but the need to produce a consensual account, or one ‘real self’, is not driven purely by the ‘neutral’ structures of our language. As this analysis has shown, this is an everyday way of deflecting conflicts at the very heart of meaning, which are closely tied to more living and breathing political interests. This discussion has highlighted the importance of deconstructing romance in women’s lives, and the relevance of irony for emancipatory practice which undercuts the validity of spontaneous, direct representation and the stereotypes with which it compares itself. It is emancipatory to cast doubt on the validity of this voice speaking in this ‘self-evident’ kind of way and to introduce a new legitimacy based in a multiplicity of realities in the place of the monologue of the ‘I’ voice. It is an important shift for feminist practice, as it points to the likelihood that there are unreflected unformulated aspects present in our interactions, and to the idea that ‘one truth’ is a problem. When the dominance of one story is challenged by the adoption of levels of reflexivity, thus moving to an ironic stance, many other versions become possible. It is no longer important to unify our explanations so that our ‘real’ motivation or character can be ‘uncovered’; instead, to ask what discourses are at work here? To what purposes are these stories told? What does the dominance of certain stories enable to happen? What part is played by stories about ‘real women’ and what ‘real women want’? Our exploration has highlighted the autobiographical ‘forms’ or ‘genres’ available

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for the kinds of stories to be told about ‘career’ and ‘caring’; and in particular, the myth of romance and the special consequences of this for women. How stories about women are discursively created, what elements are at work in their creation, and how they correspond, if at all, with the stories women are constrained to live, are questions of the utmost importance. Essentialisms are constructions with the social purpose of keeping things the same, and this is the main effect of stories about women’s ‘essential natures’ and their ‘caring dispositions’, and the persistence of romance. We can examine their use in our practice by opening up the other discourses they attempt to keep silent. As shown in our own conversations, reflexivity can begin to reveal the constructedness of the arguments advanced and denaturalise the ‘common sense’ of gender constructs, allowing other more enriching discourses to emerge.

NOTES 1 This chapter is a distillation of evaluative conversations between Pauline Hudson, Sylvia Roberts and Julie Wilkes and of valuable comments on the text from Celia Kitzinger, Stewart McCafferty, and the editors of this book. This was also the title of a workshop, co-facilitated with Pauline Hudson and Sylvia Roberts, at the Third Feminism and Family Therapy Conference, London, May 1992. 2 A number of academics in different disciplines have staked claims to definitions of social constructionism, including, in the sociology of knowledge, Berger and Luckmann (1966); in psychology, Gergen (1985); in communication studies, Pearce and Cronen (1980). Contemporary work is represented in the series Inquiries in Social Construction (1987–) edited by Gergen and Shotter. Though they have differences of view on the processes and products of construction, social constructionists’ central claim is that reality is constructed by humans through social interaction, rather than found or discovered by experience, scientific process, empirical testing or deductive reasoning. 3 The Women’s Constructionist Group are all graduates or tutors of the systemic therapy and management training programmes at Kensington Consultation Centre, London SW8. In 1992 its members were: Catherine Andrews, Jude Egan, Sue Fyvel, Ann Heavey, Pauline Hudson, Lin Phillips, Sylvia Roberts and Julie Wilkes. The material used as a basis for the explorations in this chapter was generated by selfreflexive autobiographical story-telling and commentary, first in our group, then with women who attended our workshop, taking as our subject ourselves and the development of our careers, and in particular the ‘caring’ dimension of those careers. 4 The idea that all language is also ‘performative’ (utterances do things) rather than simply ‘constative’ (stating or asserting things) was introduced by John Austin (1962) in his theory of speech acts. 5 For a fuller critique of this inner ‘motivation’ for entering social work as a caring profession, see Pearson (1975:18–19) and in particular, Prins (1974: 42). 6 For a presentation of the ‘women’s psychology’ view of these ideas, see Eichenbaum and Orbach (1982: Chapter 2).

246 Julie Wilkes 7 For a fuller discussion of these terms, see Pearce (1989: Chapter 3). 8 Romanticism, which took shape in western culture at the turn of the eighteenth century, is the cult of the aspiring individual as spontaneous producer of her own fortunes. It is characterised by works of imagination, transcending the ordinary limits of everyday life; by passion, particularly involving rising by marriage out of one’s social class; and in literature by the focus of critical attention on the author as producer of art, rather than on the work of art itself or on its relationship with the reader. Eagleton suggests that our present historical period is post-romantic, in the sense that we are ‘products of that epoch rather than confidently posterior to it’ and that ‘it is hard for us to grasp just what a curious, historically particular idea this is’ (1983:18). 9 On women’s oppression and romantic love, see Firestone (1971) and Atkinson (1974).

REFERENCES Anderson, H. and Goolishian, H. (1988) ‘Human systems as linguistic systems’, Family Process 27: 371–393. Atkinson, T.G. (1974) Amazon Odyssey, New York: Link Books. Austin, J. (1962) How To Do Things With Words, London: OUP. Beechey, V. (1986) ‘Women’s employment in contemporary Britain’, in V. Beechey and E. Whitelegg (eds) Women in Britain Today, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Berger, P. and Luckmann. T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality, New York: Doubleday. Department of Employment/Office of Population and Census Surveys (DoE) (1984) Women and Employment Survey, London: HMSO. Eagleton, T. (1983) Literary Theory, Oxford: Blackwell. —— (1991) Ideology, London: Verso. Edwards, D. and Potter, J. (1992) Discursive Psychology, London: Sage. Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. and Potter, J. (1993) ‘On death and furniture’, Unpublished paper, Loughborough University. Eichenbaum, L. and Orbach, S. (1982) Outside In, Inside Out – Women’s Psychology: A Feminist Psychoanalytic approach, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Firestone, S. (1971) The Dialectic of Sex (reprinted 1979), London: The Women’s Press. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gergen, K. (1985) ‘The social constructionist movement in modern psychology’, American Psychologist 40: 266–275. Gergen, K. and Shotter, J. (series eds) (1987–) Inquiries in Social Construction, London: Sage. Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grimwood, C. and Popplestone, R. (1993) Women, Management and Care, London: Macmillan. Kitzinger, C. (1987) The Social Construction of Lesbianism, London: Sage. Kremer, J. (1993) ‘Attitudes and motivations’, in J. Kremer and P. Montgomery (eds) Women’s Working Lives, Belfast: HMSO. Laird, J. (1989) ‘Women and stories: restorying women’s self-constructions’, in M. McGoldrick, C. M. Anderson and F. Walsh (eds) Women and Families, New York: Norton.

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Marshall, H. and Wetherell, M. (1989) ‘Talking about career and gender identities’, in S. Skevington and D. Baker (eds) The Social Identity of Women, London: Sage. Marshall, J. (1984) Women Managers: Travellers in a Male World, Chichester: Wiley. Murray, K. (1989) ‘The construction of identity in the narratives of romance and comedy’, in J. Shotter and K. Gergen (eds) Texts of Identity, London: Sage. Oakley, A. (1975) Sex, Gender and Society, London: Temple Smith. Pearce, W.B. and Cronen, V. (1980) Communication, Action and Meaning: the Creation of Social Realities, New York: Praeger. Pearce, W. B. (1989) Communication and the Human Condition, Carbondale and Edwardsville USA: Southern Illinois University Press. —— (1993) ‘A camper’s guide to constructionisms’, Human Systems 3: 3–4. Pearson, G. (1975) ‘Making social workers’, in R. Bailey and M. Brake (eds) Radical Social Work, London: Edward Arnold. Prins, H. (1974) ‘Motivation in Social Work’, Social Work Today 5: 2. Shotter, J. and Gergen, K. (eds) (1987) Inquiries in Social Construction, London: Sage. Wittgenstein, L. (1953) Philosophical Investigations (reprinted 1988), Oxford: Blackwell.

15

Feminism and the family1

Lynne Segal

Feminists have always connected individual lives and experiences with social and cultural (hence political) issues. Following in the footsteps of earlier failures to connect the psychic with the social (Reich in the 1920s and Laing in the 1960s providing perhaps the best-known examples), we should not, however, be surprised to learn that it has never proved easy to draw the links between the two. Both sides of the equation shift, and the connections fall apart, with the pressures of changing times, leaving the study of personal life and politics once again in their separate spheres. We can see this in the shifts which have occurred in feminist thinking about family life, and the differing critiques they have offered of familial ideology and relationships. At first glance, the feminist perception of the family over the last two decades seems to have moved full circle – from fierce criticism of the family to a celebration of women’s role within it. The strident and joyful rebirth of feminism in the western women’s liberation movements at the close of the 1960s took off from a fundamental critique of ‘the family’, and women’s dependent, undervalued, frequently isolated and miserable existence within it – especially when engaged in full-time motherhood. A decade later, feminist perception had shifted decisively towards observing, indeed applauding, the importance and significance of motherhood, and women’s maternal role. Historical shifts, however, are never quite so linear or so simple. Disruption came from many sources. One of these was the flowering of black feminism in the early 1980s. It brought its own perspectives on the family, most of them critical of those of white feminists. Another was deconstructive feminism, with its accusations of a western cultural framework and projection in feminist accounts of women’s lives and experience. This form of academic feminist thinking, becoming fashionable in the 1980s, was increasingly sceptical of any generalisations about ‘women’ or women’s ‘distinctive perspectives’. Some feminist theoreticians were now questioning all types of fixed categories, identities

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and relationships, stressing what they saw as the complex, shifting and plural nature of the social meanings which construct, and allow us to speak of, our own experiences of gender, sexuality, parenting or any other aspect of our existence. Outside feminist debate, however, the popularity and appeal of ‘the family’ remains pervasive. The disparagement, often condemnation, of those who live outside its traditional ideal – married couple, with male breadwinner and female care-giver – also persists. Meanwhile, feminists continue to debate and dispute, if more wearily, those early passionate debates around women and family life.

CRITIQUE AND DECONSTRUCTION OF THE FAMILY To begin at the beginning of the re-emergence of feminism is to hear a fierce critique of the institution and ideology of the family as the major site of women’s subordination. It would quickly make its mark across the social sciences generally. The 1950s is rightly seen as a time when, following the disruptions of war, the western world saw unprecedented attempts to reconstruct the family – and women’s place at its centre. Ideologically and materially, the idea of the happy, healthy family was promoted by whatever means possible. Social scientists wrote of the universality of the institution of the family, blaming any type of social or individual discontent on the ‘problem’ family, while Hollywood also focused in on family life. When youth rebelled ‘without a cause’, that cause was soon tracked down to the weak, permissive father, the selfcentred, harsh and domineering mother. It was against such monolithic concern with domesticity, described so well in the writings of Elizabeth Wilson (1980) or Denise Riley (1983a), that the first stirrings of the feminist critique of family life appeared. The 1960s, with its upsurge of youthful protest movements and ‘counter-culture’, had spawned its own fierce rejection of the stifling, acquisitive, post-war suburban family. Those social scientists and psychiatrists who responded with attempts to understand the causes of the ‘youth revolt’ tended to blame status-seeking, overdemanding parents, but especially that 1950s housebound mother – attempting to live her life through her children. There was certainly nothing new about ‘mother-blaming’ (so prominent in the history of clinical and welfare work), but radical writers of the 1960s, like David Cooper, were to achieve new levels of maternal denunciation: ‘A young man has only to look a little cross with his manipulative, incestuously demanding mother to end up on a detention order as “dangerous to others”’ (1964:71). There would soon, however, be something quite new to hear about that very old domestic tyrant, once women themselves began, at last, to speak.

250 Feminism and the family The ground was prepared in the United States in 1963 by Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963), where she described that ‘underlying feeling of emptiness’ many housewives experienced without any stake in the world outside their homes. Three years later in Britain Juliet Mitchell would be declaring that the ‘true’ woman and the ‘true’ family ‘may both be sites of violence and despair’ (1966:19), while the sociologist Hannah Gavron documented the isolation and frustration of many fulltime housewives (1966). But it was the early articles and books accompanying the appearance of women’s liberation as a social movement at the close of the 1960s which first broadcast the analysis of women as an oppressed sex, with that oppression attributed, primarily, to their economic dependence within the family. One of the very first and always the most controversial of these books, coming from the United States, was Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970). It would later serve to exemplify what has been described as the ‘demon texts’ of women’s liberation, for which feminists came to apologise as they faced endless accusations that feminism was indifferent to the problems of mothers and children, and the importance of family life. What Firestone had stressed was the enormous pressure on women to fulfil themselves through, and only through, motherhood, and the dangers of mothering in familial contexts which made them financially dependent on a man, placing them, in her view, at the tyranny of their reproductive biology. In fact, Firestone’s particular type of ‘radical feminism’ was from the beginning rejected by many (and in Britain by most) other feminists in the 1970s, who often called themselves ‘socialist feminists’. Moreover, Firestone’s own uniquely fanciful, utopian suggestion that feminism must ‘free women from their biology’ through technologies of artificial reproduction was, even more decisively, dismissed early on by most feminists as ‘illogical’ and ‘inadequate’ (Wandor 1973). Yet, no matter how many times it would be countered, and no matter how persistent the feminist campaigns and activities of the early 1970s around the needs and welfare of mothers and children (whether setting up and staffing community nurseries, campaigning for increased child benefit, more responsive pregnancy care, or childbirth conditions under women’s control), the accusation that feminists ignored or rejected motherhood would persist. It was one of the most fundamental and successful ways in which men (and women) have attempted to divide women against each other. Even feminists themselves have at times used this accusation to dismiss women’s early liberation critiques of the family (Hart 1991). What was happening in these years was indeed the exposure of many women’s silent sorrow, at home, alone. But feminists were not inventing the complaints they recorded. As Sheila Rowbotham documents, in their news-sheets and publications, women in Britain and elsewhere began to provide their own experiential accounts of

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their dissatisfaction with housework and its effects on consciousness: ‘Waves of boredom, apathy and aimlessness descended, together with overwhelming guilt about the feelings’ (1990:7). Quickly influencing the type of research feminists undertook inside academic institutions, Ann Oakley (herself a victim of motherhood blues or ‘post-natal depression’), for example, interviewed forty London housewives in 1971, reporting that 70 per cent of her sample were dissatisfied with housework as work, and complaining of loneliness and low self-esteem (1974). Soon other sociological studies, like that of Brown and Harris (1978), would duplicate her findings, uncovering high levels of depression in full-time housewives, particularly amongst urban workingclass populations. Similar studies suggesting the psychological costs for wives in marriage were being reported by Jessie Bernard (1973), Pauline Bart (1971), and other feminist researchers in the US. The discipline of psychology itself (with its emphasis on the abstract ‘individual’) has proved rather unreceptive to feminism (with its emphasis on the social hierarchy of gender, and the specificities of women’s lives). Nevertheless, at the first British Women’s Liberation Conference in Oxford in 1970, the North American child psychologist, Rochelle Wortis, strongly criticised the influence of John Bowlby’s ‘maternal deprivation’ thesis in clinical and applied psychology. She rejected his overriding emphasis on the mother–child attachment to the exclusion of all other social relations and environmental factors, stressed that what a child needs is a stable, sensitive, stimulating environment and summed up the early feminist critique of the family: If the undervaluation of women in society is to end, we must begin at the beginning, by a more equitable distribution of labour around the child-rearing function and the home. . . . Men can and should take a more active part than they have done until now. (In Nava 1983:70) This pioneering feminist research on family life set the stage for future methodological and conceptual battles within the academy, as feminists struggled to expose the androcentrism of existing social scientific thinking. Like many in her wake, Oakley (1974) emphasised the male-oriented nature of sociological concepts, which had never, for instance, registered the existence of housework as work; and of a malebiased ‘objectivity’ which was never sufficiently woman-focused to perceive women’s discontent in the home. Feminist methodology was therefore seen as one which would begin with the centring of women’s experience, necessary to overcome her former invisibility.

252 Feminism and the family What a feminist social scientist saw when she looked at the family in the early 1970s, therefore, was a radical questioning of a woman’s place within it. Further disclosures of men’s domestic violence against women, of their sexual coercion and abuse of children in the home, and general control over resources and decision making, all continued both to feed feminist calls for a women-centred orientation in the social sciences and to fan feminist fears of the potential dangers of family life for women (and children) throughout the 1970s, so firmly hidden in the all-pervasive familial ideology of the satisfactions of hearth and home. What this meant within feminist theory was that the family could no longer be analysed as a homogeneous unit. Its internal structures and functions, and its wider economic, political and ideological significance, all needed to be untangled to reveal the power relations of men over women, and the patterns of individual costs or benefits operating along gender and generational lines. Feminist solutions to the inequalities they exposed between men and women in the family in the early 1970s, whether coming from the grass roots or from theoretical debates, always involved extensive social as well as personal struggle and transformation. The always diverse strands of feminist thought and action shared in common a critique of the existing sexual division of labour, arguing for men’s involvement in childcare and housework, while promoting ideas of women’s economic independence, reproductive control and cultural and political activity through involvement in the world beyond, as well as within, the family (Coote and Campbell 1982). As Pauline Bart argued optimistically in those days: ‘The women’s liberation movement, by pointing out alternative life styles, [and] by providing the emotional support necessary for deviating from the ascribed sex roles . . . can help in the development of personhood for both men and women’ (1971:186). In the second half of the 1970s, however, the goal of seeking ways of creating gender equality was gradually superseded by the goal of exploring and giving value to women’s distinctive lives and experience for their own sake – above all describing and celebrating women’s distinctive biological, maternal and sexual existence. Once again, however, this trend seemed to occur first, and most distinctively, in the USA (Segal 1987).

RECONSTRUCTION AND THE CELEBRATION OF MOTHERHOOD Half a decade before Betty Friedan would make her public recantation in The Second Stage (1981) – accusing feminism, and her own early work, of having been anti-family and mistaken in stressing women’s need for autonomy while highlighting their

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dissatisfactions with full-time motherhood – several important feminist texts on mothering were published which emphasised the overriding importance of women’s maternalism. The turning point was Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Born (1976), in which she clearly differentiated mothering, and women’s maternal bodies, from motherhood, as a repressive, patriarchal institution. Rich wrote of the revolutionary and transformative potential of women’s bodies and the mothering experience, concluding: ‘The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers’ (1976:285). Two years later Nancy Chodorow in the Reproduction of Mothering (1978), examined the psychic and social effects of the fact that it is women who mother in creating polarised and unequal gender identities: boys who are fearful of intimacy and girls who define themselves only in relation to others. Two years later again Sara Ruddick (1980) brought together these new mothering themes of Rich and Chodorow with her notions of ‘maternal thinking’ and ‘maternal practices’: describing women’s deep commitment to the mothering experience, often despite constraining and oppressive conditions. Some features of the mothering experience, she argued, are invariant and nearly unchangeable, like maternal concern with preservation, growth and the acceptability of the child. In the interests of preserving fragile life, fostering growth and welcoming change, maternal practices tend towards humility, humour, realism, respect for persons and responsiveness to growth (Ruddick 1980:83). Jane Flax, also from the US, would argue in criticism of this work that the mother’s sexuality, aggression and need and desire for an autonomous life are all ignored by Ruddick: ‘Important things like rage, frustration, aggression, sexuality, irrational intense love and hate, reexperiencing one’s own childhood, blurring of body boundaries, conflicts of demands of a child, one’s mate, other children and other work are missing’ (1984:13). Nevertheless, what Ruddick’s writing presented, as Ann Snitow would aptly summarise over a decade later, was a ‘song to motherhood’ (1992:39). By the close of the 1980s this affirmation of women’s maternalistic subjectivity had led to the psychological research of Carol Gilligan (1982), widely acclaimed for its emphasis on women’s separate styles of moral reasoning, and other work stressing the basic cognitive differences between women and men, alongside emphasis on women’s separate ‘ways of knowing’ (Belenky et al. 1989). This trend had gone about as far as it could go with Phyllis Chesler’s Sacred Bond (1990), in which she stressed the ‘sacred’ nature of the biological bond between mother and baby – a notion which would have filled feminists with dread just over a decade earlier. Chesler’s goal, in this book, had been to defend the rights of the ‘surrogate’ mother in the famous ‘Baby M’ case. But whatever the real dangers of exploitation of working-class and poor women involved in ‘surrogate’ motherhood, Chesler uses this particular case to assert a general

254 Feminism and the family return to naturalism. She thereby implicitly rejects the significance of the former feminist argument that ‘motherhood’ should be seen as a social construction, to present it as a ‘natural’ or biological category. Meanwhile, in counterpoint to this new pronatalist trend within feminism, books have appeared from women calling themselves ‘feminist’, overtly hostile to every aspect of that earlier feminist search for women’s social and political equality with men and scornful of all the former activities of the women’s liberation movement, including their campaign in the US for the Equal Rights Amendment, derailed by Reagan (Hewlett 1986). The feminist mothering literature was always more popular in the USA than in Britain, but greater attention was also paid to the details of maternal experience and behaviour in Britain from the late 1970s. (Feminist psychotherapists Luise Eichenbaum and Susie Orbach (1982), for example, also used Chodorow’s object relation perspectives in their popular writing on mother–daughter themes.) There is no doubt, either, that the feminist focus on the significance – rather than simply the burdens – of mothering did serve to inspire and strengthen many women. Those active in political struggles in the 1980s, especially in the women’s peace movement, often invoked motherhood to combine and celebrate women’s pacific and nurturing goals, as in the group ‘Families and Babies Against the Bomb’. At the same time, however, continuing economic recession was to lead to a political downturn for any reformist policies of welfare expansion in the interests of dependent people or those caring for others in the home. The victories of the monetarist rightwing governments of Thatcher and Reagan would make feminist struggles for nursery provision or adequate child support not only increasingly hard to win, but seemingly impossibly utopian even to conceive. Some feminists like Denise Riley in Britain, who felt it necessary to reassert in the early 1980s that for most women ‘the truth is that to both work and have children is, as well as a pleasure, a bitterly exhausting fight’ (1983b:155) now worried about the declining stress on the importance of social provision for parenting. Certainly, surveys of women with pre-school children continue to find that most mothers, although welcoming motherhood, find childcare a predominantly frustrating experience, the majority still feeling isolated, guilty, overburdened and anxious (Boulton 1983). More difficult again, often desperately so, are the lives of those people, mostly women, caring for elderly, disabled or handicapped people at home, and so often unassisted by any state provision. The one in six women currently caring for the elderly, for example, have been found to suffer from both physical and mental stress, a stress which is often shared, of course, by those being cared for (see Finch and Groves 1983). The problems women may face in mothering are thus compounded in caring for the elderly, a type of caring often far removed from the joys of participating in the life of the growing child.

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However, if the popularity of feminist texts celebrating the joys and passions of women’s mothering experience was beginning to overshadow the significance of earlier work on women’s ambivalent and conflictual attitudes towards mothering, it tended to remove from view altogether the former feminist critique that women’s lives should not be defined primarily in terms of motherhood. For women who may choose to forgo the pleasures and pains of motherhood, or for women unable to conceive or adopt children, feminism seemed to offer increasingly little support in their choice or circumstance of non-motherhood (see Snitow 1992).

THE NEW EMPHASIS ON FATHERHOOD The implications of feminist celebration of motherhood for analyses of family life within and outside scholarly work was diverse, and at times ambiguous. Stressing as she did the radical potential of the female body, Adrienne Rich said little about the nurturing father, suggesting that the ‘tokenly’ involved father offers not even an individual solution to the problems of a patriarchal world (1976:211). Other feminists have written of the possibilities of a world without fathers, a world which, as in the feminist utopia, Herland, women alone will rule, and all of life will therefore be imbued with the ‘feminine principle’ of caring and spirituality (Gilman 1979). Ruddick, however, stressed that maternal ways arise from actual childcare practices: men may ‘mother’. Indeed, like Chodorow, she stressed the social, psychological and political importance of assimilating men into childcare, and, most importantly, argued that transformed maternal thought must be brought into, and hence change, the public realm (Ruddick 1980:90). Other writers, and in particular some men, began to use such feminist thinking to stress the importance of men’s active engagement in fathering (see also Kraemer, Chapter 12 this volume). So, in a sense, not only was mothering reclaimed in new ways by feminists in the second half of the 1970s, but so too was ‘fathering’ being reclaimed and celebrated by men influenced by feminism. Before the 1970s there was very little attention paid to fatherhood by anyone, although some social scientists had worried about the effects of complete ‘fatherabsence’ on boys’ sex-role socialization. From the late 1970s, however, fathers’ participation in infant care became a popular research topic. Ross Parke (1981), for example, wrote of the ‘unique role of the father in fostering the infant’s cognitive development’, while many other studies stressed the benefits for children of active fathering. Moreover, despite assumptions that men and women interact differently with babies and infants, psychological and sociological studies conducted within the last ten years or so have suggested that when both parents participate in active

256 Feminism and the family parenting, there are more similarities than differences in how they do it. As Graeme Russell’s study of fathering suggests, fathers who are full-time care-givers display the same type of enhanced sensitivity to their infants as full-time mothers, while a mother’s more typically greater sensitivity to her baby’s needs does not generalise to a greater responsiveness to other people’s children. Indeed, Russell concludes from his overview of a wide range of research on reverse-role parenting that it is remarkable how little difference it seems to make to children, female or male, which parent parents (1983:167). The families where men are more likely to share the caring of children and housework, however, are those atypical families where both parents already have highly paid professional careers of equal importance to them, and where there is the additional assistance of (paid) nursery and childcare (see Ehrensaft 1987). Most research, however, has suggested that men’s actual sharing of housework and childcare falls far short of equal engagement, even when their partners have full-time jobs. Moreover, men have tended to increase their participation in the pleasanter side of family life, like playing with the children, rather than its more mundane and physical side. Some researchers on fatherhood, like Charlie Lewis (1986), and certainly many feminists, have therefore concluded that the changes which have occurred in paternal behaviour are slight. A more rounded picture would seem to be that fathers today are more likely to have more intimate engagements with their children than they did, for example, a generation earlier, and that, as Lorna McKee (1987) suggests, there is a more ‘open-endedness’ to fathering nowadays, with many men still doing little in the home and some men taking an equal share. Those men who are sharing more equally are most likely to be the men for whom a combination of individual and social factors work together to make sharing a more acceptable, attractive and rewarding choice. Many men, for example, could not participate significantly in domestic work and childcare, even if their workmates, peer group and partners encouraged it (a situation which is far more likely to occur in relation to professional workers than blue collar workers), because of the high levels of overtime they feel obliged to work – especially with young children in the family. One study in Britain, for example, found that married men under 30 work four times the amount of overtime as childless men of the same age (see Segal 1990:33–37). In terms of its effects upon women in the family, some studies show that married women with jobs and mothers of very young children are happier when their husbands perform more housework and childcare. Other psychological surveys, however, report that only a minority of women, whether employed or not, seem to desire greater paternal participation in childcare. Women, it seems, fear losing their traditional authority in the home and their exclusive importance to children. This, perhaps, is not

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so surprising. For even if men’s sharing of domestic work, where it does occur, seems beneficial to both women and children, it does little on its own to undermine men’s overall social and cultural dominance. Many women may well feel they do not wish to relinquish what authority they do have, in the one place they are more likely to have it. Looked at from a broader political perspective, it is also clear that the reassertion of fatherhood can serve to threaten some groups of women. Not coincidentally, it would seem, a growing stress on the importance of fathers in families has occurred at a time when men’s actual power and control over women and children is declining. The father of the 1950s was necessary to his family (as Joyce saw it, ‘a necessary evil’), but he was needed, it was thought then, for his financial support and the status and legitimacy he conferred on wife and offspring. Today’s interest in the importance of fathering occurs at a time when women may feel more able to question any automatic assumption by men of paternal rights. Until the mid-1970s, social stigma and discrimination against divorce, and against unmarried mothers and their children, meant that few women could choose to mother outside marriage. And men characteristically denied the paternity of their illegitimate children. However, as feminists of the 1970s began to reject and criticise the consolidation of men’s rights in marriage over women’s sexuality and fertility, some feminists began to see advantages to single parenthood, free from men’s control. Economically, whether through jobs or welfare, more women were in a position where they could attempt to raise children on their own (though, for most, not without serious financial penalties). Since the late 1960s, it has also become easier for women to seek to terminate a pregnancy. With more women able to obtain an abortion, more mothers choosing divorce or perhaps even to embark on motherhood alone, more women and men raising children together outside marriage and some women, particularly lesbians, choosing to conceive through artificial donor insemination (AID), men in recent decades have begun to worry about their loss of paternal rights. Just as some women began questioning whether families need fathers, significant men’s pressure groups (like Families Need Fathers, formed in 1974) have arisen to assure them that they do. In response to men’s anxieties, by the close of the 1970s, and for the first time ever, the Law Commission on illegitimacy was recommending the need to strengthen the rights of unmarried fathers (Smart 1987). Illustrating the new anxiety over women’s capacity to choose to mother independently from men, it proposed giving all biological fathers automatic parental rights (a proposal which was abandoned only because it would confer such rights on any successfully impregnating rapist!). The legal bias against lesbian mothers was also being endorsed and sensationalised in media coverage

258 Feminism and the family at the close of the 1970s, with the London Evening News, for example, attacking lesbians seeking motherhood through AID. At a time when men’s hold on their traditional familial and paternal authority is becoming less secure than ever before, the new stress on fatherhood can thus serve very old familial rhetoric: the rhetoric which importantly negates feminist insistence upon the actual contemporary diversity of households with children, whether cohabiting single people, lesbian couples, gay men, women on their own, or women living with friends or other relatives. The force of choice or circumstance – perhaps stemming from sexual orientation, perhaps a response to domestic violence, or from a myriad of other possibilities – which may have led people to live outside nuclear families, can thereby once again be pushed aside in favour of unthinking allegiance to the traditional familial ideal. Before embracing the importance of fathers, therefore, we need to pay careful attention to just how easily the abuse of paternal power has been condoned or denied within traditional family life. The pro-father, pro-family rhetoric has begun to merge with a new moral backlash against feminism and gay politics in recent times. It can be used to manipulate people’s sexual fears and paranoia and stigmatise all over again non-familial sex and relationships – always a favourite routine in harsh economic times, as scapegoats are sought for people’s feeling of vulnerability. Feminists were right, nevertheless, to suggest the importance of men’s participation in childcare and domestic nurturing as one – although definitely only one – aspect of forging new, less polarised and oppressive meanings for ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. However, in a world where men in general still tend to have more financial and social power than women, we need to tread warily, embracing the importance of fatherhood in ways which do not threaten women and undermine recognition of non-traditional household arrangements.

DIFFERENCE AND DIVERSITY If feminist writing has veered between critique and celebration of women’s domestic and maternal roles within families, while at times touching upon the complexities of women’s more ambivalent attitudes, it has nevertheless mostly attempted to stress the diversity of family forms. But we may still need to question whether this approach has been diverse enough. Black feminists have criticised the ethnocentrism of white feminism for privileging sexism as the major source of women’s oppression in families, down-playing the significance of racism and ethnic diversity in determining how women are oppressed. Following critiques like those of bell hooks (1984), the blindness of classic texts like

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Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) to the fact that her bored and unhappy housewives were white women is now well known. Black women at the time, almost all working long hours in very poorly paid jobs, may well have longed for more time in the home. More generally, what feminists wrote about the isolation and discontent of women in the home throughout the 1970s was based on the lives of white women, bearing perhaps little connection with other ethnic household groupings. As many, like Parita Trivedi (1984), have since pointed out, Asian women are more likely to have other female relatives inside the household. Moreover, white feminists have often failed to emphasise the crucial role of black and Asian family groupings in providing protection against the surrounding racism of white-dominated societies. For these families, the immigration policies of the state have more often opposed rather than supported their attempts to unite or keep families together by bringing in dependents from outside Britain. In campaigning for welfare benefits or attacking the ‘family wage’, many white feminists have ignored the situation of black or immigrant women in Britain who, while paying taxes, receive no benefit at all for the children they support abroad. The argument here is that black feminists believe, correctly, that white feminists have often developed perspectives on ‘women’s’ situation in the family which distort the situation of black women. In agreement with this criticism, Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh were to criticise their earlier work, The Anti-social Family (1983), suggesting that it ‘has spoken from an unacknowledged but ethnically specific position . . . its apparently universal applicability has been specious’ (1985:25). Today, feminists are more aware that if we are to describe the possible strengths and weaknesses of different family forms, then ethnic diversity must be tackled. It is true that in most societies today feminism will involve a struggle against some aspects of family life, whether it is against the material and social deprivation of single mothers in England, the ostracism of unmarried mothers in Ireland, dowry murders in India, or the struggle of Asian feminists in Britain against domestic violence. But the precise forms of critique and struggle will vary from one society, or specific social group, to another. There has been further conflict as well within contemporary white feminist thinking on family life, with a minority calling for a return to a more conservative approach which rejects any emphasis on alternative family forms. In the US, feminist philosopher and political theorist, Jean Bethke Elsthain, for example, has reaffirmed the traditional definition of family as the term ‘having its basis in marriage and kinship’. She rejects the insistence on the diversity of families today as ‘insulting to family men and women’, individualistic and irresponsible (1982:447). Assessing her work, Judith Stacey (1987), also from the US, suggests that there has in fact been a gradual

260 Feminism and the family disappearance of the former feminist critique of the family in the attempt to preserve and celebrate women’s motherhood. She attributes this to the pains and difficulties of women – particularly of ageing feminists, in the right-wing climate of the 1980s – constructing the types of intimate relationships they might desire in a world where the possibilities for making choices around parenting and relationships remain more open for men, even as they begin to close down for women. Stacey sees three sorts of personal trauma as particularly widespread among those women who shunned traditional marriage and child-rearing arrangements, strengthening the appeal of a more conservative retreat from any sexual politics critical of the traditional family – lack of sexual relationships, involuntary childlessness and single parenthood. Yet while feminists themselves may have become less vocal in their criticism of the traditional family, more people today do continue to choose to live outside them, and have faced ever-increasing stigmatisation because of it, orchestrated most recently by our incumbent Conservative government. For example, households of single parents with children increased by 75 per cent between 1971 and 1991, and recent surveys suggest that many of these single parents, mostly women, now prefer to remain single (Bradshaw and Miller 1990). Moreover, with the ageing of the population, the singleperson household is the largest and fastest growing household unit in Britain. Those who live outside traditional family units, whether because they are lone parents, widowed, gay, lesbian, migrant workers, or simply choose alternative life-styles, are still likely, however, to find themselves isolated or socially impoverished because of the continuing privileging of the heterosexual nuclear family form in welfare spending and ideological affirmation. The support for the idea of the ‘natural’ family is all the more paradoxical today when the surge in reproductive technology and continuing high rates of divorce ineluctably undermine the logical foundation of any such notion. Many of the debates now occurring around in vitro fertilisation (IVF), surrogate motherhood and artificial insemination by doner (AID) arouse such passion precisely because of the ways in which they undermine any naturalist conceptions of the family. They separate out biological parenthood from social parenthood, and reproduction from either marriage or sexuality. Of course, this is no new phenomenon, when the high levels of remarriage following divorce has often meant that parenting is undertaken as a social rather than a biological responsibility in ‘reconstituted families’. But there are many who are still busily trying to demarcate from all these increasingly possible permutations of parenting and family life what is ‘natural’ or ‘normal’, and what is not. Another paradox exists in the fact that accompanying the increasing insistence on the importance of ‘the family’ during and after the Thatcher years, it was women

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caring for children and other dependents in the home who were consistently discriminated against during this period. Over the Thatcher decade all the legislation affecting women, whether around family policy or workplace issues, proved retrogressive for families with dependent persons. Although the number of women entering jobs continued to increase dramatically in the 1980s, Britain has now the lowest nursery care provision in the EEC (excluding Portugal) and the worst maternity leave provision (with two out of three women, because they work ‘part time’, excluded from maternity leave altogether), while the real value of family allowance or child benefit fell by 18 per cent during this decade (Armstrong 1991). Meanwhile, the burdens of caring for dependent adults in the home (undertaken by one in four middleaged women without any financial reward) has vastly increased as an effect of the government’s devolution of geriatric and mental care on to the ‘community’, without back-up provision (Institute for Public Policy Research 1990). While affecting all people engaged in caring work in the home, these policies have hit some households far harder than others, with changes in benefits making it difficult for lone parents to avoid poverty. Over the last decade, therefore, the family has become more than ever a site where dramatic social inequalities have deepened and reproduce themselves. Traditional voices continue (more strongly, the more irrelevant it becomes) to insist upon the importance of the traditional, male-headed nuclear family, and to blame the victims of deepening social inequalities (like single mothers) for causing their own ‘immiseration’, and ‘social decay’ generally. Other voices, however, mostly those still inspired by the more materialist feminism of the early women’s movement, continue to insist that ‘the family’ is not a natural but a social construct, and that it is the material circumstances, quality, and commitment of relationships with children which matters, not their form.

CONCLUSION So many theoretical conflicts have thus emerged in feminist scholarship in the 1980s that it becomes impossible to write of the feminist perspective. But whatever shifts and manoeuvres we have seen in feminist positions on the family over the years, I want to conclude by affirming the necessity of holding on to the broadest possible political framework for thinking about family life. For feminists today this means keeping in mind all the earlier criticisms of the oppressive, hypocritical insistence that there is only one type of healthy family grouping, alongside the rethinking which has occurred over the last twenty-five years.

262 Feminism and the family Sadly, however, it is the ability to grasp a complex and conflictual political terrain which is often clouded over once we enter the therapeutic domain and attempt to understand, intervene and pronounce upon, family lives and relations. Within clinical settings, the intricacies of studying or working with personal complexities and interpersonal dynamics so easily expands to take up more and more of the space that might once have been given to political analysis and engagement. This is all the more true in harsh political times like these, so at odds with what were, perhaps, our youthful political struggles for a more caring and egalitarian world. But it is precisely in such times that we need to hold on to politics, as we see general social anxieties displaced into moralising rhetorics of family breakdown and sexual panics. Old scapegoats are sought out, and those people already most vulnerable as they struggle to care for others outside the normative family unit are further stigmatised. So it is more important than ever now to convey the message that we do not all live in families that are good for us, and we certainly were not all born into families that were good for us. And it may well be the nature of ‘the family’ itself which is to blame. Instead of endorsing hypocritical pronouncements from the Right, which present the mythical ‘good’ family as the solution to our ills, we need to see that it is sometimes a source of many of our woes. Few things are more certain or, in this current political climate, more repudiated, than the knowledge that families reflect nothing so much as the world around them. Welfare cuts, shrinking benefits, mounting consumer taxation, and continuing unemployment, all mean that it is families with dependents which are suffering most today. The resources, possibilities, hopes and aspirations which a truly ‘welfare’ orientated state could, and at times has, nurtured (and I do mean state, not empty gestures at ‘community’), in contrast with the contemporary shrinkage of such benefits, help determine the type of parenting, and wider caring, children receive. Refusing this truth is as dangerous and damaging as ideologies which tell us that there is only one way of living as a ‘family’, with mum, dad and the kids, even when domination and resentment, conflict and depression, dwell within. The therapeutic world, however, has often provided powerful ideological support for normative family moralising, by working with developmental narratives of progress towards a sexually polarised, heterosexual maturity. Accounts of the success or failure of such narratives of development are located firmly within the gender stereotyped familial framework of paternal authority and female servicing, helping to foreclose rather than open up alternative domestic and sexual options. In general clinicians have supported acceptance of existing conventions which they felt could – or should – not be changed. The challenge of imaginative therapy, however, as some voices are now beginning to proclaim – especially with feminist input into family therapy – is its

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potential to move beyond normative frameworks and enable us to make changes, both personal and political. What other narratives can tell us – and all clinicians need to pay careful attention to them – is that, as Angela Carter described so well, so movingly, in her tragically last novel, Wise Children, ‘families’ can be put together from whatever comes to hand, and absent fathers, just for example, may be good, bad or irrelevant, for the love and security that dwell within (Carter 1991). Indeed, as Andrew Samuels illustrates in his new thinking on ‘fathering’, they may be irrelevant even for carrying and implanting creative ways of taking in the significance of all those metaphors and messages about that supposed, but always permeable, binary: ‘femininity/ masculinity’ (Samuels 1993). Boys living with biological fathers may sometimes make the very worst of identifications with what is supposed to symbolise an authoritative source of strength – with ‘masculinity’; girls may be in urgent need of other narratives of ‘femininity’ besides those implanted by their mothers. Notwithstanding feminist anxieties (or, sometimes now, the lack of them) about the way appeals to the ‘family’ have often served to deny legitimacy and support to those living outside its traditional frontiers, all feminists have always wanted to combine love and commitment, caring and freedom, in ways which might prove less oppressive to women than they have in the past. Most feminists, as well, have recognised the extent of social, economic and political change which would be needed for there to be any profound change in the existing problems which the majority of women face juggling family lives and employment. The real immorality of the moneypinching pro-family ‘morality’ of those currently so quick to condemn non-traditional parental life-styles is that they are responsible for most of their problems. State priorities cannot dictate the language of love. But they could try to ensure that all parenting and caring is done by those who wish to undertake it. They could help to establish that those who do the caring work for society have enough money and enough access to flexible social provision to lessen its burdens. They could remove all economic compulsion to remain in violent or dangerous circumstances. This would cost more money, but have incalculable benefits for society as a whole (while creating more jobs for women, and for anti-sexist men with different models of masculinity to offer boys and girls). What state priorities cannot tell us, and about which governments should remain silent, is the specific type of living arrangements which best suit our needs. These will be the types of ‘families’ or ‘communities’ which enable us to try to create, even in adulthood, the ‘happy childhoods’ we may never have had – for ourselves, for children, for other loved ones.

264 Feminism and the family NOTE 1 This chapter is a reworking of an essay which first appeared in Interactions and Identities (1993), eds M. Wetherell, R. Dallos and D. Miell, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

REFERENCES Armstrong, I. (1991) ‘Women and children last? Women under Thatcherism’, in Women: A Cultural Review 2 (1), Spring. Barrett, M. and McIntosh, M. (1983) The Anti-social Family, London: Verso. —— (1985) ‘Ethnocentrism and socialist-feminist theory’, Feminist Review 20: 23–47. Bart, P. (1971) ‘Depression in middle-aged women’, in V. Gornick and B. Moran (eds) Woman in Sexist Society, New York: Basic Books. Belenky, M., Blythe, M., Goldberger, N. and Tarule, J. (1986) Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice and Mind, New York: Basic Books. Bernard, J. (1973) The Future of Marriage, New York: Souvenir Press. Boulton, M. (1983) On Being a Mother, London: Tavistock. Bradshaw, J. and Miller, J. (1990) Lone Parent Families in the UK, DHSS Report, May. Brown, G. and Harris, T. (1978) Social Origins of Depression, London: Tavistock. Carter, A. (1991) Wise Children, London: Chatto & Windus. Chesler, P. (1990) Sacred Bond, London: Virago. Chodorow, N. (1978) The Reproduction of Mothering, London: University of California Press. Cooper, D. (1964) ‘Sartre on Genet’, New Left Review 25. Coote, A and Campbell, B. (1982) Sweet Freedom, London: Pan. Ehrensaft, D. (1987) Parenting Together: Men and Women Sharing the Care of Their Children, New York: Free Press. Eichenbaum, L. and Orbach, S. (1982) Outside In, Inside Out, Harmondworth: Penguin. Elstlain, J. B. (1982) ‘Feminism, family and community’, Dissent Fall: 447. Finch, J. and Groves, D. (1983) A Labour of Love: Women, Work and Caring, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Firestone, S. (1970) The Dialectic of Sex: The Case For Feminist Revolution, New York: William Morrow. Flax, J. (1984) ‘Theorizing motherhood’, Women’s Reveiw of Books 1 (9). Friedan, B. (1963) The Feminine Mystique, Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— (1981) The Second Stage, London: Michael Joseph. Gavron, H. (1966) The Captive Wife, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, London: Harvard University Press. Gilman, C. P. (1979) Herland, New York: Pantheon (first published 1915). Hart, N. (1991) ’Procreation: The substance of female oppression in modern society. Part 1: The true proletariat’, Contentions: Debates in Society, Culture and Science 1(1). Hewlett, S. A. (1986) A Lesser Life: The Myth of Women’s Liberation in America, New York: William Morrow. hooks, b. (1984) Feminist Theory from Margin to Center, Boston: South End Press. Institute for Public Policy Research (1990) The Family Way, Social Policy Paper 1. Lewis, C. (1986) Becoming a Father, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

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McKee, L. (1987) ‘Fathers’, Guardian, 19 January. Mitchell, J. (1966) ‘The longest revolution’, reprinted in The Longest Revolution: On Feminism, Literature and Psychoanalysis, London: Virago. Nava, M. (1983) ‘From utopian to scientific feminism? Early feminist critiques of the family’, in L. Segal (ed.) What Is To Be Done About The Family? Harmondsworth: Penguin. Oakley, A. (1974) The Sociology of Housework, London: Martin Robertson. Parke, R. (1981) Fathering, London: Fontana. Rich, A. (1976) Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, London: Virago. Riley, D. (1983a) War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and the Mother, London: Virago. —— (1983b) ‘The serious burdens of love? Some questions on child-care, feminism and socialism’, in L. Segal (ed.) What is to be done about the Family? Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rowbotham, S. (1990) The Past Is Before Us: Feminism in Action since the 1960s, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ruddick, S. (1980) ‘Maternal thinking’, Feminist Studies 6(2), Summer: 342–367. Russell, G. (1983) The Changing Role of Fathers, London: University of Queensland Press. Samuels, A. (1993) The Political Psyche, London: Routledge. Segal, L. (ed.) (1983) What is to be done about the Family? Harmondsworth: Penguin. —— (1987) Is the Future Female: Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism, London: Virago. —— (1990) Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, London: Virago. Smart, C. (1987) ‘There is of course the distinction dictated by nature: law and the problem of paternity’, in M. Stanworth (ed.) Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, Cambridge: Polity. Snitow, A. (1992) ‘Feminism and motherhood: An American reading’, Feminist Review 40, Spring: 32–51. Stacey, J. (1987) ‘Are feminists afraid to leave home? The challenge of conservative profamily feminism’, in J. Mitchell and A. Oakley (eds) What is Feminism? Oxford: Blackwell. Trivedi, P. (1984) ‘To deny our fullness: Asian women in the making of history’, Feminist Review 17. Wandor, M. (1973) ‘Review of S. Firestone The Dialectic of Sex’, in Red Rag 3. Wilson, E. (1980) Only Halfway to Paradise, London: Tavistock.

Index

Abbott, P. and Wallace, C. 101 abortion 127 abuse 47, 52, 55, 58; multi-generational 28; see also child sexual abuse (CSA) research study; sexual abuse acculturation gradient, and gender 141–2 Aghassy, G. and Noot, M. 20 AIDS 6, 153–4, 164–5; dynamics of relationships affected by HIV 159–61; and ethnic minority 156; gender patterns in HIV care 154–6; HIV negative/positive partners 161–3; HIV and shifting balance of power in relationships 163–4; sexual relations and HIV prevention 156–8; transmission 159 Ainsworth, M.D.S. 210 Alexander, P. 87 Altschuler, J. 117, 161, 165 ambiguity 188–90 Andersen, T. 10, 11, 20, 48 Anderson, H. and Goolishian, H. 48, 232 androcracy 8, 12, 21 Armstrong, I. 261 Artificial Insemination by donor (AID) 160, 257–8, 260 Aslam, M. 145 Atkinson, T.G. 246 Atlantic 186 Austin, J. 245 authority 194–6; maternal 195 autobiography 244–5 Ballard, C. 122

Banton, R. et al. 220 Baring, A. and Cashford, J. 204 Barnes, H.L. and Olson, D.H. 172 Barnet Approach, case studies 147–50; dealing with somatic presentations 143–5; defined 142; engaging the family 142–3; work with different subgroups 145–6; working with gender issues 146–7 Barrett, M. and McIntosh, M. 259 Bart, P. 251, 252 Barthes, R. 51 Bateson, G. 13 Bean, P. and Rassaby, E. 136 Beechey, V. 235 Belenky, M.F. et al. 171, 174, 176, 177, 180, 253 Benjamin, J. 117, 191, 219, 225, 226, 230 Bentovim, A. et al. 87, 88, 92 Berg, I.K. and Jaya, A. 129 Berger, J. 14 Berman, P.W. and Pedersen, F.A. 207 Bernard, J. 187, 198, 251 bisexuality 221 bonding 148 Bor, R. et al. 154, 155, 160, 161 Bott, D. and Hodes, M. 120 Bott, E. 213 Boulton, M. 254 Bowie, M. 224 Bowlby, John 251 Boyd-Franklin, N. 143 Bradshaw, J. and Miller, J. 260 Brannen, J. and Moss, P. 212 Braverman, L. 123

Index British Association of Family Therapy, guidelines 10 British Medical Association 127 Brittan, A. 222 Britton, R. 209 Brock, E. and Davis, L. 103 Brown, G. and Harris, T. 251 Brown, L. and Gilligan, C. 198 Burck, C. and Daniel, D. 4; et al. 189 Burgoyne, J. and Clarke, D. 186 Burke, A.W. 137 Bury, J. et al. 155 Camara, K. and Resnick, G. 210 care in the community 238, 261 caring careers 232–4; defined 234–6; experience lived and told 240–1; and romanticism 241–3; social constructionist approach 243–5; and women 236–40 Carter, A. 263 Carter, E. et al. 7 Cecchin, G. 10 Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 153 Chesler, P. 97, 253–4 child sexual abuse (CSA) research study 102; case conference analysis 109–13; concluding remarks 116–18; findings 104–7; interviewees 103–4; male/female orientation 104–18; methodology 102–3; practitioners 108–9; themes 109, 113–16; understanding 105–6, 107, 108–9, see also sexual abuse children, abuse of 9; and parental drug abuse 178–81; and separated/separating families 189–90, 194–6 Children Act (1989) 192 Chin, J. et al. 153 Chodorow, N. 100, 101, 113, 114, 196, 205, 219, 230, 253, 255 Cixous, H. 72, 219 Clark, D. 189 Clarke, L. 210 Cleveland Inquiry 101 client/therapist relationship 8–9, 48, 229; changes in 10–11; cultural ‘fit’ 131; how viewed 15–16; influence of gender on 19–20; internal worlds

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12; potential for difference 82–4; power differentials 11, 18, 19, 20, 50–1; process 70–1, 77; reciprocity in 51, see also family therapists Cochrane, R. 137; and Stopes-Roe, M. 137 coercive dependency 30, 32–3, 41 Coleman, E. and Colgan, P. 171 Coleman, S.B. 10; and Davis, D.I. 169; et al. 21; and Stanton, M.D. 169 Colgan, F.I. 52 condoms, use of 157–8 Conn, J. and Turner, A. 101 constructivism 102–3, 171, 172–3, 176, 178 Cooper, D. 249 Cooper, P. et al. 206 Coote, A. and Campbell, B. 252 CSA see child sexual abuse Cucchiari, S. 203–4 Dale, B. 176 Dean, G. et al. 136 ‘Death and Furniture’ debate 234 Dennis, N. and Erdos, G. 213 dependence theory 225–8 Dinnerstein, D. 205 dis-position 46 discourse 21, 219, 233; ‘altruism’ 239; defined 67, 240–1; dominant 14, 16–18; gender 13, 13–14, 21; professional 46–7, 48–9, 52; victim/perpetrator 48, 53 divorce see separated/separating families Doherty, W. 9 domestic crimes 48–9 dominator cultures 100; and their dominant discourses 16–18 Dominelli, L. and MacLeod, M. 100 drug abuse 4, 6; case study 179–81; clinical work with families 175–9; and gender awareness 168–9, 181–2; generic approach 169–70; use of family of origin work 169–75 du Guerny, J. and Sjorberg, E. 154 Dutton Conn, J. 100, 102 Eagleton, T. 240, 246 ‘Education for Citizenship’ 211

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Index

Edwards, D., et al. 234; and Potter, J. 239 Edwards, R. 210 Ehrenberg, M. 204 Ehrensaft, D. 256 Eichenbaum, L. and Orbach, S. 245, 254 Eisler, R. 17, 18, 100, 203 Elias, N. 4 Elsthain, J.B. 260 Emerson, P.D. 171 Engels, F. 203 enmeshment 170, 172, 173 Equal Rights Amendment 254 Ernst, S. and Maguire, M. 1 essentialism 237, 245 ethnic minorities, diversity 259; engaging with the family 142–3; family structures 137–8; gender issues 146–7; patterns of adaptation 141–2; somatic presentations 143–5; subgroups 145–6; traditional families 138–9; transcultural families 140–1; transitional families 139–40; treatment of 136–7 ethnicity 169 exclusion 56–7, 59, 63, 66, 89 executive dyad 87 Faludi, S. 187 Families and Babies Against the Bomb 254 Families Need Fathers 257 the family, critique and deconstruction of 249–52; difference and diversity 258–61; fatherhood 255–8; feminism and 248–64; and HIV 159–63; importance of 261; motherhood 250–5; public/private spheres 47–8; and the state 101, 263–4, see also Barnet Approach; drug abuse; ethnic minorities the family (traditional) 138–9, 260; and chastity 128–30; gender and status in 127–8, 133–4; life cycle issues 121–3; mothering 123–4; religious/cultural mythology 125–7, 131–4; rituals 124–5; and violence 130–1 family of origin, and drug abuse 169–70; genogram of 29–30;

relationships 40; researching 172–5; use of, in female rehabilitation unit 170–2 family therapists, difficulties of change 12–13; and flexibility 13; and gender 19–20; influences on 12–14; need to consider religious/cultural beliefs 120, 126–7, 133–4; as ‘outsiders’ 126–7; paradoxes and contradictions 15–16; power imbalance 19; and recursive process of questioning 19–20; and sexual inequalities 16–18; as subjective participant-observers 10; taboo on doing ‘world therapy’ 15; use/abuse of power 8, 12, see also client/therapist relationship family therapy, background 7–8; changes in 20; developments in 10–12; difficulties of change 12–18; and feminism 1–6, 8–10, 18–20; flexible approach 143; and gendered role difference 17–18; training programmes 21 Fanon, F. 140 Farrington, D.P. and Hawkins, J.D. 209 father/daughter relationship, abuse 25, 71, 73–4, 80, 83, 92 father/son relationship 30–2, 33–4, 39, 42–4, 61–3, 64 fathers/fathering 187, 202–3, 255–8; absent 209–10; and childcare 255–8; in dominant position 92; historic/prehistoric context 203–4; identification with 32; importance of 213–14, 257–8; and infants 207–8; in modern Britain 204–10; obstacles to participant 210–13; and older children 208–9; post-natal development of 205–7, see also mothers/mothering; parents/ parenting Faulstich, M. 153 female minds see minds (female) feminisms 49; black 248, 259; deconstructive 248; and family therapy 1–6, 8–10, 18–20; radical 250; re–emergence 249; resurgent 7–8 Fifth Province Associates (FPA) 51, 53, 55

Index Fifth Province Model 46, 49–50; figurative aspect of 51, 54; and justice 51, 54; language 52, 56; and power 50–1, 53–4 Finch, J. and Groves, D. 255 Finkelhor, D. 86 Firestone, S. 246, 250 Fisher, E. 203 Flax, J. 253 Foucault, M. 14, 102, 116 French feminists 72, 219 Freud, Sigmund 220–1, 223 Friedan, B. 250, 252, 259 Friedman, A.S. et al. 172 Frosh, S. 114, 218, 228 Frost, N. 101 Fruggeri, L. et al. 48 Furniss, T. 87, 88, 92, 97 Garfinkel, H. 234 Gavron, H. 250 gender 5; and child sexual abuse survey 101–18; clinics 127; construction of 8, 233–4; difference 72, 237; discourse 13–14, 18, 21; and emotional dilemmas 188–200; and ethnic minorities 141–2; and family status 127–8; and hierarchy/ies 96–7; impact of 100; and patterns of violence 27–8; self and relationship 173–5; as woman’s issue 9, see also AIDS; psychiatry/psychiatric care ‘Gender, Power and Relationships’ Conference (1992) 9 gender premises 6; and patterns of violence 27–8; use of 30; vulnerable male and nurse/mother 28–45; women’s 3 gender relations, images of 24–7 Gender and Violence Project (Ackerman Institute) 101–2 genogram, use of 29–30, 45 Gergen, K. 116, 232, 245; and Shotter, J. 245 Gilbert, L.A. 11 Gilligan, C. 101, 114, 168, 169, 177, 196, 236, 237, 253; et al. 114, 173, 174, 176 Gilman, C.P. 255

269

Gilmore, D.D. 207 Goldner, V. 1, 7, 10, 11, 47, 87, 88, 97, 115, 117, 173–4, 218, 221; et al. 3, 11, 16, 102, 175, 218 Gorell Barnes, G. 101; et al. 189, 196, 197, 200 Green, J. and McCreaner, A. 153 Greenson, R.R. 205 Grimwood, C. and Popplestone, R. 236, 237 Grosz, E. 223 Growing up in Stepfamilies project 189–90, 197, 200 Gutheil, T. and Avery, M. 87 Haley, J. 87, 169, 170 Hare-Mustin, R. 7, 48 Harrison, G. et al. 136 Hart, B. 196 Hart, N. 250 Hearn, J. 101, 115 Heath, S. 224 Hederman, M.P. and Kearney, R. 49 Heilbrun, C.G. 51 Hetherington, M., et al. 197; and Hagan, M.S. 187; and Tryon, A.S. 187 Hewitt, P. 212 Hickson, F. et al. 157 hierarchy/ies 86; confusion in 94, 97–8; domination and actualisation 18; and executive dyad 87; gender implications 96–7; generational implications 97; not static 97; perverted 98; systemic formulations of sexual abuse 88–96; understanding 98 HIV see AIDS Hoffman, L. 10, 48, 219, 229 Holland, J. et al. 157 Holland, S. 11 homosexuality 222, 223 hooks, bell 259 Hudson, A. 100 Hudson, L. and Jacot, B. 205 Hudson, P. 245 identity (female) 71–2; acknowledging context for child’s mind 73–4; constructing a different base for

270

Index

thinking about 72–3; private/public truths 75 in vitro fertilization (IVF) 260 individual functioning, theories of 3 individual/s, understanding of difficulties of 11–12; work with 2–3 Ineichen, B. et al. 136 Irigary, L. 72, 219 irony 243, 244 Izzat 138, 145 Jackson, S. 213 Jalmert, L. 205 James, K. and MacKinnon, L. 88 Jasmine Beckford Inquiry 101 Jay, J. 75 Jenkins, J. et al. 186 Jervis, M. 136, 149 Johnson, A. 155 Jones, E. 10, 11, 13, 17, 48, 71 Jordan, J.V. 174; et al. 178 jouissance 224, 225 justice 51 Kallarakaal, A. and Herbert, M. 137 Kaplan, A. 178; and Klein, R. 174 Kearney, P.A. 49; et al. 12 Kelly, J. 210 Khan, M.Z. 123 Kiernan, K. 186 Kilbourne, J. and Surrey, J.L. 174 Kinzie, D. et al. 120 Kitzinger, C. 241; and Perkins, R. 5 Knowledge–Attitude–Behaviour (KAB) studies 156 Kraemer, S. 9, 202, 203, 204 Kremer, J. 235 Kristeva, J. 72–3, 76, 219 Krull, M. 12 Kundera, M. 50 Lacan, Jacques 219, 223, 224–5 Laird, J. 241 Lamb, M. 208, 214; et al. 212; and Oppenheim, D. 206 Lambert, R.G. and Lambert, M.J. 145 Lang, P. et al. 48 Langan, R. and Day, L. 1 language, importance of 116 Lannamann, J.W. 50

Lau, A. 126, 128, 131, 138 Lerner, G. 203 Levick, S.A. et al. 126 Lewis, C. 206, 211, 256 Littlewood, R., and Cross, S. 150; and Lipsedge, M. 137 Lovestone 207 McCarthy, I.C. and Byrne, N.O’R. 46 McGoldrick, M. 121, 138; et al. 47 McKee, L. 256 Macleod, M. and Saraga, E. 88, 101 Main, M. 72 Maloney, B. 160 Manushi 133 marital role/s 88 Marshall, H. and Wetherell, M. 237 Marshall, J. 235 Marx, Karl 212 masculinity 218–20, 263; construction of 114, 220; and dependence 225–8; different 221; dissolving men 220–2; fantasy of woman 223–6; identity crisis 228; incoherence of 222; mind–body polarity 226–7; myth of 222; as negative 222–3; sexuality and subjectivity 222–8; systemic perspectives of 228–30; traditional 222 Mason, B. and Mason, E. 9 Maturana, H.R. 83 men, dependence 225–8; and domination 225, 230; privilege/entitlement 31, 38; role of 4; and sexuality 223–8; view of women 27–8; vulnerability of 4, 31, 38, 230 Menicucci, L.D. and Wermuth, L. 170 mental health 137; and abuse of children 9; women’s 254–5 Messent, P. 145 Miller, B. 214 Miller, J.B. 168, 174–5, 176 Miller, R. and Bor, R. 153 minds (female), co-evolving new constructions 80–2; confronting voices of others in therapy 76–80; developing a voice 75–6; facing father’s intellectual discipline 80; perspective on identity 71–5;

Index potential for difference in therapeutic encounter 82–4; reclaiming 69–71; taking charge of one’s own mind 75–84 Mitchell, J. 7, 250 Moi, T. 72 Morgan, G. 101, 116 mother/daughter relationship, experience of 38, 76–9, 80, 198, 254 motherhood, feminist approach 250–2; reconstruction and celebration of 252–5 mothers/mothering 187, 252–5, 253–5; and blame 3; collusion of 88–91, 112; as drug abusers 176–82; one-up position of 89–90; and responsibility 3; role of 123–4, see also fathers/fathering; parents/ parenting Murray, K. 242 mutuality, in clinical work 175–9 myths/mythologies, Greek 26; of origin 25, 26–7; religious and cultural 125–7, 131–4; of war 24–5 new man 205, 212, 228 nuclear family 185, 186, 260 Oakley, A. 102, 236, 251 O’Brien, M. 203 O’Donovan, K. 49 Olivier, C. 205 Olson Circumplex Model (OCM) 172–3 Olson, D.H. et al. 172 Palazzoli, M.S. et al. 48 Papernow, P. 189 Papp, Peggy 7 parents/parenting 54, 61, 189; constructions 37, 43; deficiencies 46–7; and drug abuse 178–81; as helpless 66; non-abusing partners 88–96; as a partnership 211–12; responsibilities 87, 97; role/s 88; as submerged 55, 60, see also fathers/fathering; mothers/mothering Parke, R. 255 Parker, H. and Parker, S. 213 partnership models 17, 20

271

Parton, N. and Parton, C. 100 patriarchy 4, 146–7; origins 203; power system of 25; privilege 31 Pearce, W.B. 241; and Cronen, V. 245 Pearson, G. 245 Penfold, P.S. and Walker, G.A. 150 Perelberg, R.J. 129, 139; and Miller, A.C. 1, 7, 47 Peseschikian, N. 126 phallic model 71, 204, 213, 222, 223–5, 236 Phillips, A. 213 Phillips, R. 187 Pinsof, W. 3 postmodern 218, 219 power 50–1; articulation of 53–4; and HIV 163–4; imbalance of 19; male 222–5; phallocentric 71; and powerlessness 190–4; use of 115; use/abuse of 8, 12 power relationships 4; case study 28–45 Power, T.G. 207 Prins, H. 245 protection, as paternalistic concern 48–9 Pruett, K. 207 psychiatry/psychiatric care, Barnet approach 142–50; case studies 147–50; dealing with somatic presentations 143–5; engaging the family 142–3; and family structures in ethnic minorities 137–42; and race/gender 136–7; work with different subgroups 145–6; working with gender issues 146–7 psychoanalysis 218–19, 229 psychology 251 public/private, life 101; truths 75 race 5, 9, 14; and psychiatric care 137–42; see also ethnic minorities racism 14, 136, 205, 259 Radin, N. 209 Raleigh, V.S. et al. 142 Raphael-Leff, J. 206–7 Ratna, L. 142 reality, rendering of 133; status of 4, 5 receiver-knowers 177, 180 Reder, P. et al. 117

272

Index

Redfearn, J. 204 Reichelt, S. and Christiansen, B. 170, 177 Reimers, S. and Dimmock, B. 9 religion 147; role of in family life 120–1, 125–7, 131–4 responsibility/ies, emotional 196–7; in the family 71–2; parental 87, 97 Rich, A. 24, 84, 253, 255 Riley, D. 249, 254 risk 46–7, 52; and HIV 156–8, 160 Roberts, S. 245 Robertson, J. 212 romanticism 241–3, 246 Roopnarine, J.L. and Mounts, N.S. 207 Rothenberg, R. et al. 155 Rowbotham, S. 250–1 Ruddick, S. 253, 255 Russell, B. 14 Russell, G. 256; and Radojevic, M. 207 Rwegellera, G.G.C. 136 safety nets, creation of 53, 64 Salamon, E. et al. 48 Salt, H. 157 Samuels, A. 263 Sanday, P. 203 Sandqvist, K. 212 Saradjian, J. 87 Sashidaran, S.P. 137 Scheff, T.J. 126 schizophrenia 137 Schofield, J. 144 second order cybernetics 11 Segal, L. 218, 221, 222, 223, 225, 228, 252, 256 Seidler, V. 220, 221, 222, 226, 227 self 232–3, 244; and relationships 197–99; true/false 82–3 self-and-identity 229 self-in-relation theory 29, 173–5 separated/separating families 261; ambiguity in 188–9; and children 189–90, 194–6, 210; effect of divorce 185–6; emotional dilemmas 188–200; and emotional responsibility 196–7; his and hers 187–8; internal/external pressures 186; power and powerlessness 190–3; responsibilities 196–7;

self-development and relationships 197–9, see also stepfamilies sexual abuse 3, 6, 69, 100, 171; collusion in 121; female offenders 87; hierarchical case studies 88–96; intra-familial 86; and social work system 101–2; systemic formulations 88; understanding of 105–6, 107, 108–9, see also abuse; child sexual abuse (CSA) research study sexuality 106, 153, 218–19; and dependence 225–8; effect of HIV and AIDS on 3; feminine ‘query’ 224, 226; and subjectivity 221, 222–8, see also masculinity Sheinberg, M. and Penn, P. 228 Shotter, J. 51; and Gergen, K. 232 Sidhu, G.S. et al. 123, 125 Silverman, D. et al. 158 Silverstein, Olga 7 Simon, G.M. 12 slavery 14 Smart, C. 257 Smith, D. 197 Smith, G. 87, 98 Snitow, A. 253, 255 social constructionism 50, 232, 241; approach 243–5; central claim 245 social workers, gender differences in CSA survey 102–18 somatisation 143–5 Speed, B. 4 Stacey, J. 260 Stamp, G. 104 Stanton, M.D. and Todd, T.C. 168, 169, 170, 177, 178 Steele, M. et al. 209 stepfamilies, ambiguity in 189–90; and emotional responsibility 197; and issues of authority 194–6; power and powerlessness 193–4; wish to be seen as normal 186, see also separated/separating families Stephenson, O. 101 Stiver, I.P. 174, 175 Stone Centre 176 suicide 137, 142 Surrey, J.L. et al. 174 symptom screen 144

Index systems theory/practice 2, 4, 11–14, 48; ‘both/and’ position 11–12, 150, 240, 244; change in style 3; current assumptions 232–3; defined 2–3; difficulties of change 12–18; feminist 18–20; and gender 218–19, 228–30, 232; and language 219; neutrality of 48; reconstruction/rehabilitation of 10; and sexual abuse 18–20, 88–98 Tamura, T. and Lau, A. 122, 124, 132 Tanner, N. 203 tension account 237, 239–40 Thomas, S.T. et al. 136 traditional family see the family (traditional) Triselotis, J. 144 Trivedi, P. 259 trust 116, 117 Ussher, J. and Nicholson, P. 1 violence 3, 6, 230; cycles of 30, 36; family 130–1; male 229, 230, 252; patterns of 27–8; sexual 5, 92–3, see also sexual abuse Volk, R.J. et al. 172 Von Foerster, H. 21, 103 Waldegrave, C. and Tapping, C. 11, 16, 51 Walker, B. 204 Walker, J. 189 Wallerstein, J.S. and Blakeslee, S. 185, 186 Walters, M. et al. 7 Wandor, M. 250 Weiselberg, H. 121, 126 Whetton, D.A. 101 White, M. 29; and Epston, D. 48, 219 Wight, D. 156, 157–8

273

Wilkes, J. 245 Will, D. 88 Wilson, A. 149 Wilson, D. 158 Wilson, E. 249 Winnicott, D.W. 82 Wisdom, J.O. 205 Wittgenstein, L. 244 Wolfe, N. 4 Wolin, S. and Bennett, L.A. 124 women, as carers 233–4, 236–40, 254–5, 261; changing roles 26; and cultural practice 4; and drug abuse 168, 173–82; and emotional responsibility 196; experiences of 4, 173, 175, 182, 251; finding their own voices 133; and HIV 154–8, 160, 165; in the home 211; myths and images of 14, 24–7; as object of fantasy 27–8, 223–6; as oppressed 250; personal traumas 260; and power 4; as receiver knowers 177; as replacement mothers 193–4; and responsibility 3; and romance 241–3, 246; and self 171, 198; and sense of disconnection 174, 176, 182; sense of powerlessness 190–1; and silence 173, 174; transgressive 25, 27; violence against 252; and work 235–6, see also gender Women and Employment Survey (1984) 235 Women’s Constructionist Group 245 world therapy 15 Wortis, Rochelle 251 Yogman, M. 209 Zimmer-Höfler, D. and Dobler-Mikola, A. 170 Zuelzer, N. and Reposa, R. 87 Zwi, A. and Cabral, A. 158