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Mark twain once observed that the weather is something everyone talks about, but nobody ever does anything about. Similarly, we all talk about family climate—but perhaps we could do more by utilizing this concept in our therapy.
Each patient is a member of at least one family unit, but family climate is especially important if he is a young child, or a parent. Sometimes the parent's lack of awareness of the child's biology creates problems; sometimes our lack of awareness of a particularly deadly family relationship blocks the progress of therapy. And sometimes we can help our patients who are parents through a knowledge of their children.
The parent-child relationship is, of course, the core of the family as a biological entity. Integral to it are the roles which the various members perform, and these roles have never been more important than they are in today's chaotic and changing world.
Lastly, we must view the concept of climate as a modus operandi in therapy— as the means by which we effect a cure.
The innate characteristics of a child can disrupt the family constellation if they are not properly understood by parents and relatives. One of my earliest patients was a four-year-old schizophrenic who was hearing voices. The only times she was rational were the isolated occasions when, for no reason we could discover, she would run temperatures of 106 degrees at night. Clearly, the child's illness was organic in nature—yet her mother was constantly bedeviled by misguided relatives who insisted that the illness stemmed from the mother's mistreatment.
A sharp divergence between the temperaments of mother and child may also cause problems. A placid, easygoing mother with an active, high-strung child may tend to interpret the child's psyche in terms of her own. She might, for instance, complain that the child is constantly overstimulated or unusually active. Sometimes she may be so lacking in understanding that she thinks the child is abnormal.
The sudden shift in family cl