Toward a Psychoanalytic View of Family Systems

In the literature on family crises caused by the disability, discomfort, or loss of one member, the emphasis has been placed on the emotional, social, or practical disturbances experienced by the individual members of the families and special attention paid to the plight of the disabled person. Occasionally, mention is made of changes in the interpersonal relationships within the family.6, 9, 10, 16, 18

The literature on family theory and therapy views the family as a unit, a system, that is functional or dysfunctional. The judgment regarding the degree of dysfunction or maladaptation is based on various criteria such as: whether the family is viable as a system; whether individuals within the system can grow, fulfill, or actualize themselves; whether disabling or discomforting symptoms beset family members or the system as a whole. Generally, the focus of these writings is on the structure of the family system, verbal and nonverbal communication among the family members, and the nature of the interactive processes. Rarely does the family therapy literature convey a serious recognition of the possibility that for reasons external to the family system, one member may become dysfunctional and thereby significantly affect the system.7, 14

The view that one member can affect the system is essentially the reverse of the assumption generally held by family therapists, which is that the system affects the individual member, the subsystem. For example, the traditional psychoanalytic perspective on delinquency would include the family from the point of view of introjects, object representations and object relations, identifications, and superego. Treatment would aim at effecting intrapsychic changes. In contrast, family therapists view a delinquent as the “identified patient” (i.e., the symptom of the dysfunctional system), the family “delegate”19 or