XIV. Family Patterns and Cultural Educability

When in 1977 Beresford Hayward, of the Organisation for Economic and Cultural Development (OECD) asked us to prepare a psycho-analytical model of the relation of the family to the community, he had in mind an instrument for use in an international study of educational processes, a model which could be used to integrate findings of a multidisciplinary approach. This request was timely for us as we had embarked on a plan to produce a revised diagnostic system for child guidance clinics which would bring together knowledge and methods of study directed variously towards the individual, the family and the community. The result was called ‘A Model of the Child-in-the-Family-in-the-Community’.

This chapter aims first to display the classification of family patterns we described in the ‘Model’, and then to explore the relation of these patterns to learning processes and corresponding educational conflicts. The theoretical model employed was the Kleinian-Bionic model as described in The Kleinian Development. Family life was envisioned as a more or less stable organisation of three general types: 1) the family proper (couple family), 2) the narcissistic gang, 3) the Basic Assumption Group (BA). Within these three types of organisation we made the distinction between individuals occupying special roles and fulfilling particular functions. The roles are assumed to comprise culturally defined prerogatives, responsibilities and privileges, and therefore variable from culture to culture. The functions, however, we named as follows:

1. generating love

2. promulgating hate

3. promoting hope

4. sowing despair

5. containing depressive pain

6. emanating persecutory anxiety

7. thinking