Clinical Material: The X Family

The reason for the referral by the general practitioner of the X family were that father had sought help for the ‘highly disturbed psychodynamics’ within his family - most notably the difficult relationship which existed between his 17-year-old son, Martin, and the mother. The family had had minimal previous Health Service contact. The X family consisted of father, an academic, who was probably in his early 50s from a middle-class English family, and mother of a similar age from a middle-class Argentinian family. There were two sons, Martin aged 17 and Miguel aged 14.

Our first encounter was with the whole family and a precis of this first session is given for it seems to encapsulate some of the themes that we were to experience more directly in the course of the work with the family.

Father started almost immediately we were seated in the therapy room, prior to any introductions having been made, telling us about Martin's behavioural problems which seem to have gone on over the years and were causing a lot of unhappiness in the family, but mostly between Martin and mother. He added, ‘this might be only my view, everyone will have different perceptions’, and then went on to say how he and his wife had different views as to how to address the problem of Martin and that this was a specific point of conflict between them. The problem seemed to have been one for ever and was something that had never been sorted out. The young man whom we take to be Martin was nodding at his father's account although still no introductions had been made. Mother then seemed to spill out, and spoke passionately about her husband never backing her up and that she could not stand this sort of thing, i.e. bad behaviour, particularly when it was displayed on the streets. She told us that she would fight to stop this sort of thing. Eventually one of the therapists managed to say that it was not clear who was who, the other noting the foreverness of feeling expressed in connection with the problem