I’ll tell a client “This doesn’t mean your heritage or destiny is determined by your family of origin – but, if/when the ‘demons start dancing’, at least I know who they are and what are their names[1]
It’s been 40 years or so I’ve been drawing out genograms or ‘family trees’ on some clients. Initially it looks like a ‘family tree’, and it does give me a ‘picture’ of family relationships and patterns.
Back in the beginning of my career, the concept of “Family Systems” was fairly new. Especially in social work, just working with the individual was only a minor part of the therapeutic exploration. Even when I worked on a psychiatric ward, the patient came from a complex system, and after discharge, returned to a complex system. So the ‘genogram’ became a mapping of the patient/client within that greater complexity.
Usually, it takes an entire hour session to begin this process. And there are often other therapy issues that take precedence. But as I developed my work with the genogram, I began to ‘read’ it with greater depth – as if reading a Rorschach test.
Some examples
Some years ago, I had a female client, who was 4th born of 6 siblings. Her youngest sister was late-born, and the parents were ineffectual, so my client became the primary ‘mother’ to her little sister. The initial work of our therapy was a very toxic relationship between my client and her own mother. At one session, as there was some progress in the client/mother relationship I happened to look at my genogram page, and saw something I’d not been paying attention to. I asked the client, “if you and your mother begin getting along better, who might be next in line for your mother’s poison?” I saw my client’s face immediately turn white, as she began to realize it would be her youngest sister. for whom she was already protector. At that moment, our therapeutic work took a radical turn.
Not only can the genogram map existing family relationships, but also shows their secret fluidities.[2] Human systems, like many examples in nature, are adept at system survival.
I recall a female client telling me straight out, “My sister is the beautiful one, I’m the smart one.” This we can call scripting by attribution – often as a family ‘order of being’ that exists even before a child is born.
Some times when a parent or relative (often a grandparent) dies, I’ll suggest my client go to that person (a gravesite, or at a specific imagination level connection) to ask for a particular desired trait or gift to be passed on to oneself.[3]
An interesting real-life therapy metaphor comes to mind. My primary trainer in the arts of counseling and psychotherapy, with whom I studied for over four years (that was back in the 1970s), lived in a newer and fancier part of Ann Arbor. At one time she discovered termites in her house. She also was told that basically you can’t get rid of a termite infestation. but one can have them moved to another location. She had a particular neighbor who had given her some years of grief – so she had the exterminator direct the termite hoard in that particular direction. The outcome was that her house became termite free, and her neighbor (you can guess the rest of this sentence).
Often when I draw out a genogram, there will be ‘empty spaces’ on my sheet of paper. Those are also important. I don’t know how they appear, but if I ‘feed’ the genogram by asking questions, the genogram somehow will ‘feed’ back to me additional information. It has somehow trained me over the years in it’s own mystical language.
I use the genogram frequently when doing pre-marital counseling. I’ll do one for each party – and then set them side by side, asking myself the question “what will happen when these two maps marry?”Because that’s what happens – “when your genogram marries my genogram, all sorts of even unconscious patterns are inevitably joined. And sometimes ”all hell breaks loose.”Twice, I’ve seen enough potential trouble, that the couple courageously decided to not marry. (And I secretly pray that my vision is sufficiently accurate.)
Now to summarize this somewhat meandering document.
Primarily it’s a call to consider that we and all things great and small are connected, as so much old wisdom has tried to teach us – and that our current culture strives to convince us all to forget. The Bible reminds us that “even the sparrow” is as much a part of the Divine’s care (though I don’t find a similar inclusion of the mosquito).
And I offer my own use of the genogram as a therapy tool to help map the larger picture, in which we each play an important part.Honor everything, despise nothing, and remember change is both a promise and a double-edge sword. So, friends,
Pay Attention
Footnotes
[1] Knowing the names of things and people is a powerful human trait. It’s important for me as a therapist to know (and explore) the power (and perhaps weakness) of personal and family names.
[2] In my training, we were visited by an elderly gentleman from Ann Arbor (I don’t recall his name) who was a primary innovator of marriage counseling and family system therapy. And he specifically recommended that we have in our library the military classic Principles of War by the Prussian Baron Carl von Clausewitz (1873, 1942). I remember him telling us this had been Hitler’s primary tactical ‘bible’.
[3] I learned this from the Old Testament “grant me a double portion of your spirit.”Unless that desired trait has already been granted to another. (cf Jacob & Esau). You can ask me “does this work?” The answer is ‘yes.’All the time? ‘no’. But keep in mind that when you change one part of a system, other parts will probably change as well.
Also I’ll suggest the petitioner offer a gift to ratify the exchange. I don’t encounter the word ‘exchange’ used much in psychotherapy literature, but it is popular in some theological circles.
Afternote
And just behind the curtain is Sir Isaac Newton, with his Third Law of motion writ large – ”every action has an equal and opposite reaction”
The other day, I pulled from my living room bookshelf a small volume I’d long forgotten – a small paperback with a blue cover by the American poet, William Stafford, with the title “You Must Revise Your Life.”[1]
I don’t remember when or why I purchased it, perhaps Robert Bly had mentioned it. And strange I didn’t write (always in pencil) inside the cover the date I first read it. But I know I read at least part of it, because I had checked or underlined particular parts in pencil – my way of marking a book as my own. Like an animal marking it’s territory. Like a church procession on Rogation Sunday[2], walking the boundaries of the parish. Like a priest with candle and incense (or holy water) blessing each room of a house.
Then, opening to page 3, there was a heading:
William Stafford: 1914 –
to which I added (in ink!) the date 1993 (30 years ago!).
The date year of his death was specific and final – therefore it needs be in ink (not pencil).
That’s what Stafford was teaching his readers and students – that if you are a writer, and you find that the writing takes a particular twist or turn of its own – you need to follow it. And it may necessitate you to ‘Revise Your Life.’ I remember that’s why I bought the book – the title says it all.
You must change your life
Many of the folks who enter my office door are hesitant to enter. There’s a fear that they might have to change (revise) something. It’s tempting and easier to project that necessity onto someone other, even a partner, or family member. “Here, doc, you change (this other person).” Or, at least, make it so change on my own part won’t be so difficult – or painful. My ‘job’ is at least to make it less painful. Or, sometimes, to make it more possible, or even ‘rich’. It can take a lot of courage to walk through that door – and I honor that.
Recently I’ve been refering to my work as “midwifing” necessary or desired changes in my clients’ lives. So something new and maybe wonderful can be born.
Then there’s the question, can the change be just in ‘pencil’ (fairly safe), or must it now be more in ‘ink’ (more serious, enduring, permanent)?
In my own recent case, opening Stafford’s small volume was initially to find some guidance for ‘the folks out there’ about the necessities in life of having to make life changes. But then, taking Stafford more seriously, the simple act of making a change in the book in ink caught me (almost literally) dead in my tracks. William Stafford wrote this little book and then since I bought it, he died.
That personally forced me to acknowledge that at my own advancing age, I have been dealing with the “dropping off” of more and more people who have inhabited my life. Talk about having to “revise my own life…”
I come from a small family, and to my knowledge nobody for some generations back has lived as long as I already have. I’m essentially living in ‘unknown territory’.
To wit also:
– A year and a half ago while visiting in Florida, I came close to dying myself – spending a week and a half in a cardiac hospital bed.
– Just over a week ago I visited in her home, a client for some years, to say good bye only a few hours before she passed over.
– I’ve noticed for awhile now, when I look around my house, I’m beginning to see my ‘stuff’ in terms of what my children will have to deal with then I’m gone.
– I need to update portions of my will.
– The disciplines of diet and exercise are even more important now.
– With Covid, many thousands around us have died.
– Many, too many, innocents are dying by deliberate gunshot, weekly, almost daily now.
– Maybe that’s why I write these monthly Newsletters – to leave a part of myself as a legacy. So my children can know me better. Or perhaps as the fantasy of some immortality.
An Endnote story.
When I am with my Native American friends, and we gather for a meal (potluck style), it is our ritual that after blessing the food, we dine by age, “elders first.” I used to think this was simply honoring the elders. But then I realized it was because the elders would always make sure there was enough to go around so everybody had enough. If the children went first they would probably take as much as they wanted, without concern for those who come after.
As we age, the more we change, we revise our life behaviors, toward preserving life for those who will follow us. We ‘revise’ our life to preserve and enhance the lives of those who will in due course take our place.
Let’s imagine we’re in a classroom somewhere, perhaps in an institution of “higher learning” – and a teacher (say, a professor) was lecturing on a particular topic. Then, at one point, he or she would pause, then say to the class
If this hadn’t happened before, I’m sure there would be a very awkward silence. Isn’t it true that for most all of us, being ‘taught’ something should mean that we are to learn it, and having learned it, be able to be accept the presented truth of the matter – and perhaps even to be able to give it back in an exam question. Those are the standard rules of learning.
And isn’t the world, at its best ordered by principles of what’s right and what’s wrong?
Or perhaps we become aware we weren’t listening for the purpose of being able to critique the teacher or teaching. Maybe ‘lazy listening.’
Now let’s say the teacher has told us ahead of time he or she will do this, and randomly. We would be listening in quite a different way, more critically. And probably learning at deeper (or “higher”) levels. Each time a teacher would challenge us to present a counter argument, could be a wonderful ‘teaching moment.’
Wouldn’t that be wonderful, exciting, a lively way to learn.
I can imagine it now – a teacher will announce at the beginning of a class, that he or she will present the subject and ideas as best as she or he can. But the class homework is that each return, in writing, a counter argument. The student doesn’t have to personally believe the argument, it only has to be well and honestly presented.
Parenting
What if, in a home setting, a parent is in conversation with a child or a youth, concerning a responsibility, or a rule, or discipline, or a behavior. And then the parent would say
Wouldn’t that be wonderful, exciting, a great way for parent-child interaction.
And what if parents themselves have been practicing the discipline of knowing how to listen to each other and be willing to ‘be wrong’.
Debate
I remember where I first encountered this pattern. In my small Iowa town and small High School (there were 54 in my graduating class) – we didn’t have a debate team. But I learned that in larger schools, this was an interscholastic discipline involving formal teams. Debate involved structured discourse on any given subject put forward for common opposing viewpoints. What impressed me was that each debater must be fully prepared at a moment’s notice to present either side of a given topic.
What excellent training for my future as a marriage counselor.
This is, of course, akin to the Socratic Method of teaching – a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presuppositions. (Wikipedia)
My son Michael recently wrote online “I like questions that are invitations, rather than demands for an answer.” He’s not yet 50, and he knows this stuff.
We can pray “Thy will be done.” On the surface it comes across as an invitation to passivity. But deeper spiritual experience can teach us that it emerges as a wrestling with the “thy” toward the emergence of something new (a ‘third thing’).[2]
A Freedom to Listen
There’s a freedom in this – that emerges from the freedom to be wrong. In a previous Newsletter, I’ve agued that whenever we find ourselves wanting to justify, explain or defend ourselves, just Stop. Nothing of value will follow.[3] Self-justification frequently means one just isn’t listening.
It allows us not to be afraid to listen, to hear, to be a part of a dialogue or conversation that can promisee to open a deeper understanding among each other. And that can take courage – the very kind of courage that grows relationships. It’s the secret ingredient of a mature marriage.
In our legislative and legal structures, it can mean a greater wisdom in our laws. In our Educational structures, it can mean to obtain wisdom, not just knowledge.[4] In our Social structures it can lead to a greater inclusivity or fellowship or community, less exclusiveness or parochialism. Fewer wars.[5] And perhaps less need for “gated communities” or ghettos.
[4] I was once taught that knowledge is the learning of and about facts and the logic of things. It’s what you learn by going to school. Wisdom comes later – it’s what you do with what you have learned. It’s more the territory of our elders. This is more where “being wrong” can have great value and advantage.
[5] In the Summer of 1958 I was an exchange student under the American Field Service – who’s motto has long been “Walk together, talk together, all you people of the earth, and then you shall have peace.” Peace in the human world is ‘a third thing.’
The American Field Service was born from the volunteer ambulance corps serving in the battlefields of France in WW1. They obviously had learned a thing or two.
And another quote I picked up somewhere along the road:
“We think we have come here to fulfill our chosen mission and be successful. But as time goes by, it is not like that at all. In fact, we are here to fail, but not to take it personally.”
It’s Sunday morning, February 26, 2023. Like clockwork, I feed my cat, make coffee – then next I’ll retrieve the Sunday Flint Journal from my front porch. I remove it from its plastic wrapper (protecting it from Michigan weather), and disengage the Comics section. Then I’ll sit down to read my three favorites, Doonesbury, Dilbert, and Prince Valiant.
From that ritual alone, you can pretty well discern my personality. Doonesbury because my personal politics tend toward progressive, and I enjoy good satire. Dilbert because I’m a businessman and again I enjoy the business world being lampooned, and Prince Valiant…
I’ve long enjoyed this comic strip, in part because it so richly examples a storytelling art. Each panel so effectively moves the storyline forward.[2]
Then too I’m an old Celt myself, (maybe you can tell by my name), and the Arthurian legends have long been interwoven within my own DNA.
But this Sunday morning, something unusual captured my imagination in Prince Valiant. What was it?
Prince Arn
I hadn’t really noticed him before. He is a regent of Camelot – a high office. And he travels long now to a lonely monastery, where his old friend, the aged King Arthur, lives in secluded retirement.
Arn is troubled – and he has sought out his old friend and mentor – as the cartoon speaks:
So Arn is given leave by the man he admires most to pour out his fears that he has lost his way as a ruler – he no longer trusts his advisers, or his own decisions – he has made terrible mistakes.
Arthur responds, and in this segment, he ends with these words:
“I remember you as an adventurous wanderer – maybe it is time to revisit that youthful version of yourself.”
Response #1 – for me
I felt right away that this was meant for me as well. It pierced my aging heart, in a way I have yet to understand.
Response #2 –
‘Prince Valiant’ was introducing a new chapter in one of my favorite comic strips – and I looked forward to a good ride.
Response #3 – the mass shooting at Michigan State University !
Later as I read farther in this same Sunday Flint Journal – the Opinion section – there was a powerful Letter From the Editor – John Hiner, titled
Why do we lack the will to address mass murder head on?
He begins with his daughter, a student at Michigan State University, physically safe, but “struggling to process the trauma and reorder what she knew of the sense of security and logic in her world.”
That’s it!
WE ARE ALL PRINCE ARN
Yes, it’s Sunday morning, February 26, 2023. Thirteen days after the Michigan State savage event. And after twenty four years of other mass shootings, murder, especially in schools, where our children are. We all need to look at ourselves, repent and find a way to somehow change course – and now take action.
Pay attention
Footnotes
[1] … An American comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretch of that story now totals more than 4000 Sunday strips. – Wikipedia
[2] So clearly the opposite of that miserable Internet storytelling technique, where one is caught up in a story hook, and then led ad nauseam through a thousand “next”s elongating each mini-ounce of the story, often to such a banal conclusion that I know too soon my waning interest is being used just as a framework for dozens of ads.
Listen – the faint echo of a man’s voice years ago
“When will we ever learn?” (Pete Seeger 1955)
It was my first visit in many years to a podiatrist. My PCP (Primary Care Physician) had informed me that Medicare would cover toenail trimming, so I availed myself of that benefit. I’d reached the age when bending down to trim my own nails wasn’t as easy for this non-limber body. And pedicures were somewhat pricy, though wonderfully refreshing.
As the podiatrist was working my feet, a long forgotten memory emerged. As a youngster, when a toenail would become ingrown, my father would take out his pocketknife and carefully scrape away at the center of the nail – which would get the nail to shrink laterally, so after some days it was no longer ingrown. As an adult I probably could have asked him where he learned to do that, but as a kid it was just what my Father did, and of course it would work.
The one other thing he’d take his pocked knife out for would be go remove wood splinters from my fingers or hands. He probably used it for sharpening pencils, but I have no specific memory there,[1] it was so very long ago.
Nor do I recall when I began to carry a pocket knife of my own. I do recall that at I’ve had a succession of them – usually the thin two-bladed kind – the longer blade pointed for removing splinters. And I enjoyed having one in my right pants pocket. I know their primary utility was for opening letters and packages, and still for removing the occasional splinter. And sometimes for carving. Always “just in case I needed one.”
I have no memory of when I stopped carrying a pocket knife. I had no need to sharpen my own pencils. Every elementary school classroom had a wall mounted one, and as an adult every office desk had an electric one. To this day I delight in that rasping sound they make.
I do know that in my lifetime at some level we’ve gone through a major shift in the meaning of men carrying knives. Let me walk backwards along this spectrum.
This is the epitome of the knife as a traveling multifunction tool kit. A close friend of mine has a permanent bulge in the right rear pocket of each pair of jeans, the shape of his favorite Macgyver knife.
The outdoorsman knife – for hunting, carving and eating. I don’t know if there’s a Boy Scout knife, but if there were, this would be its class.
As a Weapon
But knives are also weapons. They can injure and kill people. You can’t carry a knife on an airplane, or into a County CourtHouse. I think this is when I stopped carrying a pocket knife. A man carrying any kind of knife had become a man who was considered dangerous – he couldn’t be trusted. I sometimes consider looking in any bushes just outside a Courthouse entrance to search of any pocket knives that had to be rapidly discarded before the owner could be granted entrance.
A man’s Sword – The Great Uncle of the knife
I’ve often wondered about men wearing swords “in olden days.” It was, of course, an instrument of battle. But instead of just ‘hacking and hewing’ there’s a higher symbolism. There is the dress sword – often used as a symbol of honor or authority. Somewhere along the line, I was given that the sword, as a high masculine image, was a symbol of a man’s ability or gift to ‘cut through’ a particularly difficult issue.[3]
A man earned, or was otherwise granted this honor or authority.[4] A man who takes his authority upon himself is considered a usurper, a danger to social order.[5] I would like to assert that any ownership and/or use of a weapon, can only be granted by an external authority.
The Sheath
I also learned along the way, that every knife or sword must be paired with a sheath. Mythically it represents the balance of the masculine and the feminine. An unsheathed knife or sword (or anything with a sharp cutting edge) must be protected (mythically as well as actually). Even my kitchen knives are stored in a handsome wooden block.
And so, of course, my pocket knife itself must fold into its sheath, or handle.
Guns – the obvious parallel
We are living in a seemingly unique culture where it is assumed every person has the right to a gun, a right that wants to transcend any external limitation or control of that right. And in the nightly news see the outcome of that usurpation. The people want gun control. But many of those in power do not. (You can see my particular politics here.)
There are responsible gun owners. They like their guns, but they know to keep them and ammunition locked (in “gun safes”).
Alec Baldwin
Question: When is a gun not a gun? Answer: When it’s not loaded? Wrong!
At a mythic level, any weapon at a mythic level is a weapon, and must be respected as such. That’s a lesson my pacifist parents taught me. Most of us have been taught that you never aim a gun at anybody, whether the gun is ‘loaded’ or not. Weapons deserve respect, period.
A knife, or gun or any weapon under circumstances, can overwhelm its owner/master. Pocketed or sheathed or locked, it’s important that there be rigorous ‘training’. We’re becoming more aware of “rogue cops” whose ‘weapons’ take over and they abuse and kill people they’re sworn to protect.
The knife can overpower the wielder. The gun can overpower the wielder. (In ‘olden days’ it was called “battle frenzy.”)
It’s also been said “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword.” (Jesus said it – Matthew 26:52)
In my own pocket
As you can tell, I no longer carry a pocket knife. Even though I will sometimes pause in my local hardware store at a display of pocket knives. They deserve some respect if only for their particularly masculine beauty. And if I’m spending time out in the Michigan woods, I have a quality ‘outdoors’ or ‘hunting’ knife sheathed on my belt.
Some years ago I underwent open heart surgery (fortunately without a heart attack). And ever since I carry a few nitroglycerine pills in a little pill box – always in my right hand pants pocket. They are my ‘pocket knife’ – always there ‘just in case I need them’. And every time I go out my front door, I pat that pocket just to check if it’s there. (And if not, I have to go back and find where I left that little pill box.[6][7]
The inner and outer worlds bid us pay attention to these things.
Footnotes
[1] I’m sure that’s where the other name, ‘pen knife’, came from – a knife used to sharpen quill ink pens.
[2] from Angus MacGyver, the lead character in the television series MacGyver (1985–1992), who often made or repaired objects in an improvised way.
[3] Such as the 4th century tale of Alexander the Great cutting (mastering) the Gordian Knot. Often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem solved easily by finding an approach to the problem that renders the perceived constraints of the problem moot.
– Wikipedia.
[4] I recall some years ago, in our local 4th of July parade, the Sheriff of our Genesee County walked in the parade wearing his holstered service revolver. It startled me, and I had to ask myself why he would have to be armed for a parade. But now I understand it was a symbol of his honor and authority. That was his dress sword.
[5] I read recently of a practice somewhere in West Africa, that when a young man returns from his duty time in the military, the elders will take away from him any or all of his weapons, before he is allowed to court and marry a young woman from the village.
[6] It’s like some people I know who have suffered a severe anxiety attack will always carry “a Xanax” with them ‘just in case they need it’.
[7] They’re in a little coffin shaped plastic pill box with the name of a local funeral home on it.I love the irony LOL.
