Attachment

In recent times I have been presenting my writing on FaceBook and working out a style by which to do that. What has evolved is a thing which I call posters which is a writing style that suits the FaceBook culture. But now the posters are mounting up and I don't know what to do with them so I decided to present them here in groups of related writings. I have done 4 on attachment.









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Collectivist couples counselling

In marital counselling the therapist needs to see a marriage as more than just two people



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Desire phase sexual dysfunction

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Third adulthood stage of development

The marital stage of developmental . The first task is to find another person who is willing to enter into marriage, second, for both parties make the decision to get married. The third task is to successfully negotiate a marriage relationship without significant psychological disengagement (or a psychological divorce to differentiate from a divorce in the legal sense).

This disengagement would usually be seen to occur after 5 to 10 years of marriage

The three main reasons in that time frame are:

1. Any significant scarring of the Free Child ego state has occurred

The Free Child is the most sensitive aspect of the personality. It is where we experience intimacy, vulnerability, closeness and the other sensitive emotions. It provides us with the ability to be truly human and allows us to obtain the most health promoting and rich positive strokes that we can receive. 

Family

However, as it is so sensitive it is also the most susceptible to ‘assault’ and it can be damaged easily. The assault can be physical when we are hit but more often it is harmed by some kind of verbal attack on the Free Child. If we are made fun of, discounted, involved in conflict, ignored or verbally abused in some kind of way it is the Free Child aspect of our personality that is most effected. One of the most basic responses the Free Child has to such offensive communication is to run away. We will automatically hide or defend that part of ourself if we perceive such assault is occurring or think that such things may happen. The Free Child is a quick learner in this way.

This is a good response in that we protect the most sensitive aspect of ourself from being hurt and future damage. On the down side, if hidden away, then we loose the ability to be sensitive in our communication with that person.

In a marriage two people are living in close quarters, day after day for years at a time. It is inevitable there will be times of conflict, feeling hurt, doing unthinking things which adversely effect the FC of the other party, abandoning the other and so on. As a result this will happen as shown in the diagram.

It is inevitable the Free Child of both parties will retreat into hiding in a marriage over time. It is not a matter of if it will happen but how much it will happen. In most instances it is not to severe so as to destroy the quality of the marriage in any significant way. To successfully negotiate this stage of human development the Free Child will not retreat significantly.

It is quite easy to ascertain if this has happened. Imagine that your husband (or wife) was not your husband, you were not married to him, you had never had any romantic love for him, you did not have children, there was no financial connection but he was just a person you knew as a friend. If this was the case would you seek him out to spend time with, would you enjoy his company and want to be with him when socializing?

The more you answer yes to this question the more the relationship still has significant Free Child to Free Child contact. Clearly there is more to a marriage then just FC to FC contact. However if the marriage has it then both parties are motivated to be together, enjoy each other and have that ‘spark’ together in the relationship. This is a very good thing to maintain in a marriage. To successfully complete this stage of development in adulthood the FC to FC contact is maintained to a significant degree. If there is going to be a significant reduction in FC to FC transactions then it will usually have happened in the first 5 to 10 years of marriage.

When the Free Child part of us has been hurt it will automatically withdraw to safety even if we consciously try to avoid doing so.

2. Any psychological agendas have now been fully developed

3. Any difficulties are now fully habituated

Successful completion of this stage of adulthood is to have not obtained a psychological divorce from the marital partner. In the psychology of the individual he and/or she remains psychologically engaged with the partner. The level of psychological disengagement has not reached a point of significance.

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The young therapist - Part 2

Life experience is an interesting thing which older therapists have more of than younger therapists. Most view it as a positive but it can also be a negative especially if one is a psychotherapist. Without a doubt life experience can be a positive thing for a therapist to have. A person who is 45 will obviously have more life experience than a person who is 25 years old. If they are a practicing therapist this can influence how they work. The older person has extra knowledge about life that the younger person does not have.

If one has been married and divorced they have first hand knowledge of that. Some one who has never been married and divorced can not know about it in the same way which is more likely for the younger therapist. If a client presents who is currently going through a divorce then the therapist who has been divorced knows more about the process and more importantly more about the psychological process one goes through when getting divorced.

If the therapist tells the client they have been divorced then the client can have a feeling of more confidence in the therapist and can have a sense of increased connection with the therapist. The client feels that he and the therapist have a commonality in that way, which they do. In this way the life experience of the therapist can assist the therapeutic process.

However it is not always so sunny. If a couple come to counselling because of marital disharmony and learn the therapist has been divorced this may result in a lack of confidence in the therapist. They have the view that if the therapist cannot sort out his own marital problems how can he ever help others to do so. The young therapist who has never been married or divorced can not have this problem.

Similar to this is the client who seeks counselling for parenting difficulties. They are having difficulty managing their own children or adolescents. I have heard people say they would never seek assistance for their parenting with a therapist who is not a parent them self. However what if the therapist’s children are not all that well adjusted and may be causing all sorts of difficulties for the therapist. Will that be a positive or a negative for the therapist in the eyes of the client. All parents stuff up some where along the line and all children have emotional difficulties to some degree. The young therapist who has no children does not have this on their resume.

In my new book to come out next month - Working with drug and alcohol users - I discuss this very topic. If a drug counsellor has had a history of drug issues is that a positive or a negative. If a client asks a drug counselor directly if they have ever used drugs, does the therapist answer the question, and if so how. How it is dealt with by the therapist can result in the personal life experience of the therapist (whether they have used drugs or not) being a positive or a negative for the therapy.

However there are more things to consider in the life experience conundrum. When one has a major life experience like a divorce that will psychologically impact on them. Their own Child ego state will be effected by the experience and that may be a negative psychological experience. The Child ego state of the young never divorced psychotherapist has never been negatively effected in that way.

Some come out of a divorce feeling bitter and pessimistic about the opposite gender. If the therapist has been impacted like this, is their extra life experience going to be a positive in the therapeutic process especially if the client is of the opposite gender? The young therapist is never going to have this dilemma. 

Is the ex smoker (or smoker) going to be better at helping people give up?

Life experience does afford the therapist an extra knowledge or deeper level of understanding of the client who is going through the same experience. This can then allow more of a connection between the client and therapist. However the therapist’s Child ego state may be negatively effected by that experience which may negatively impact on how effectively they work as a therapist on this issue.

Related to this is the idea of the hot potatoe. It is observed sometimes in the field of psychology that some therapists gravitate to counselling in those areas that have been part of their own life experience. The woman who suffer PND herself ends up counselling other women suffering PND. The person who was sexually abused as child ends up counseling others who have been through the same. The man who had a significant drug problem ends up counseling in a drug rehab centre.

In all these areas the therapist’s personal life experience can be a good help in the ways I have described above. However the question needs to be asked - what’s in it for the therapist to work with clients who have similar issues? What is their own Child ego state getting out of it? For most there is no problem, however the phenomena of the hot potatoe is real and does exist for some.

In this instance the therapist is in some way living through the client because they have not dealt with their own difficulties about their similar life experiences. The therapist can pass their own issue (the hot potatoe) onto the client. If this happens all sorts of counter transference problems can develop. The young therapist who has never had children can never have suffered PND and thus can never have these sorts of difficulties like the hot potatoe.

Life experience it seems, is a double edged sword. As with so many things in human psychology its not a matter of having a particular trait or feature (in this case life experience) its what you do with it when you have it. The older person who has more life experience can use those experiences to impede their work as a therapist or to improve their work as a therapist. The younger person has less life experience and therefore in their work as a therapist they do not have this same dilemma.

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Jay Haley on marriage counselling - part 2

This post follows a previous one (July 2, 2012) where I recited some of Jay Haley’s thoughts  on marriage counselling, here.

I have mentioned before how I like some of what he says. He is a family system therapist. My personal view is sometimes the family system is of central importance to a client presenting with some kind of symptom. On other occasions it is of little or no importance. On those occasions when it is, I tend to use the Haley model of systems theory. Or at least I keep it in the back of my mind when working with the couple or family members.

In my early training in couples therapy which was some time ago it was highlighted how the counsellor must be an impartial party and not to be seen as favoring one party over the other. I have tended to follow this over the years but have always felt a bit uncomfortable with it as it seems a bit limiting in what the therapist can do.

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Jay Haley

A good therapist will avoid consistently being in a coalition. At times the therapist will side with the wife and at times with the husband. The art is to avoid consistent coalitions. One should join a spouse against another in a calculated way for a specific purpose. In certain situations the therapist may want to destabilize a marriage to produce change. Sometimes a marriage may be stable but miserable. An effective way to destabilize a marriage is to join one spouse against another and simply hold that position. It will tend to bring out emotions and action in the stable couple.

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I like this idea as it allows for much more flexibility by the couples therapist. It is different than my original training in marital therapy that I mentioned above. Also it rests on another basic premise of Haley. He posits the following

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Jay Haley

In couples therapy it is best for the therapist to consider whatever the partners do in relation to each other they also are doing in relation to the therapist. The therapist views the couples therapy as a triad where the therapist is an active party in the dynamics of what goes on between the couple.

A comment by the therapist is not merely a comment but also a coalition with one spouse in relation to the other or with the unit against a larger group.

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This makes more sense to me. The therapist automatically enters the dynamics of the marital relationship. They cannot be uninvolved, instead it is inevitable and couples therapy is always a triad not a dyad. This clarifies for me what I kind of knew but have never articulated clearly. When doing couples counselling one sees this obviously happening. One is an involved party in the couples relationship.

This however raises another interesting proposal as it provides the beginning of a relational therapy approach to couples counselling. The therapist becomes actively involved in the relationship with the couple and the relationship is used as the agent of change. The therapist is using his relationship with the husband and wife (and their marriage) as the means to facilitate change. 

In this relational approach to psychotherapy, it is the relationship to the client that is seen as the agent of change. This implies that as the client changes the relationship to the therapist, this forces the therapist to react to the changed relationship and this makes the therapist also have personal change.

Jay Haley states, “He usually finds his own marriage undergoes changes in response to his experience with couples.” Here we have Haley stating in 1976 a basic premise of the current ‘new’ relational approach that is currently very in vogue in world psychotherapeutic circles.

Individual and couples therapy

Some therapists have a rule that if you see a person in individual therapy you must not at a latter time see that person and their spouse in couples therapy. This situation not uncommonly arises in counselling, where the partner wants to get involved. Some of the logic behind this rule is that you cannot be unbiased as the couples therapist, because you have a pre existing relationship with one party and not the other.

I have never had that problem or followed that rule. I am quite willing to see a couple where I have had a pre existing therapeutic relationship with one party and not the other. After thirty years of counselling I have come to learn that in marital disharmony there is always two sides to the story. 

What is being proposed here by Haley now makes more sense. In the situation described there is already a coalition formed between the therapist and the client previously seen in individual therapy. It is quite likely the spouse who appears later in counselling will experience such a coalition existing as does the pre existing client. Even before the first couples session has started the dynamics of the husband-wife-therapist triad is occurring. One simply uses the perceived coalitions for the couples gain.

This changes the therapeutic landscape quite considerably. Haley states that counselling one party in individual therapy and not the other will tend to build a coalition between the two with the other spouse being out side that coalition. Thus one can use this method to build coalitions with one spouse as well as reducing existing coalitions by seeing the other spouse in individual therapy.

In this way the distinction between individual therapy and couples therapy becomes meaningless. Individual therapy becomes one technique or one subset of the overall couples therapy.

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Jay Haley on marriage counselling

The marital couple is not a dyad but actually a triad because it is defined in terms of the inclusion or exclusion of someone else. This view allows us to see different stages of marriages. In the early part of the marriage the husband and wife are differentiating from their parents. Then they produce children who become part of the marriage. At no point do the husband and wife form a distinct dyad.

Marriages in distress are unstable entities that require an external person to intervene in the dyad to stabilize it, thus making it a triad. A child with a problem can have a stabilizing effect on the marital dyad thus making it a triad. Indeed the marriage counsellor can replace the child and be the stabilizing effect on the dyad of husband and wife. If this happens then the problem of the child ceases. The problem for the therapist is how to exit without the couple destabilizing again and therefore bringing the child in again and the problem returns. In this approach, in any couples counselling there are always at least three people involved in the cause of the marital disharmony.

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Marriage counselling and the rise of individualism.

In Australia at the moment the number of people living single in a dwelling by them self is at a record high. There has never been a time when so many have lived single and not in a family unit or a group of some kind.

I have talked before about society, psychology and the rise of individualism.

I made mention that psychological theory over the past 150 years has promoted individualism as the psychologically healthy state. Since the contemplations of Freud, psychology has been very influential in directing governments to structure societies such that individualism thrives. To my mind this has gone too far and the individualism which psychological theory promotes has indeed become a neurotic condition itself.



This is no where better demonstrated than in marriage. The divorce rate in Australia hovers around the 50% mark and of those who don’t get divorced probably half of them would if they were not under pressure from religion, family and friends, financial pressure and so forth.

Anthropological studies show that as societies evolved originally you had to live in groups. People found that if you lived in a group your chances of survival were much better. This is no better demonstrated than in the basic family unit. When a male and a female produce a child, that child had a much better chance of survival if the mother and father stayed together.

Thus the psychology of these people one could postulate, was about the survival of the group rather than a focus on the ‘psychological survival’ of the individual. In addition to just survival people would have also discovered that if you lived in groups you could achieve things and create a much better lifestyle than if one simply existed on their own.



As societies mature and become more affluent then the basic survival needs become more predictable and guaranteed. People feel more secure about their basic survival. When this happens instead of feeling relief along comes Freud and the navel gazing starts. People start focussing on their own individual psychology and happiness. This now has progressed over generations of psychologists to the point where individualism is seen as the zenith to be achieved.

This change of focus from survival of the group to the pursuit of individual happiness is reflected of course in how therapists ply their trade, especially in marriage counselling. This quote comes from a psychology text book on marriage counselling that is used in universities and training institutes for psychologists.


If there was ever a need for a collectivist mindset for survival it is between comrades in a theatre of war.




“The client who, out of his own feeling of need, seeks marriage counselling obviously has some dissatisfactions with that relationship. Some of his needs are not being met, or for some reason his life pattern is not providing adequate satisfaction.”

Yikes!!!

out of his own feeling of need
some dissatisfactions with that relationship
some of his needs are not being met


Sometimes in couples counselling clients say to me, “This relationship is not meeting my needs.”

When I hear this I get a sort of flummoxed look on my face, and think:

Hello! Marriage is not a happy pill. Marriage is not this thing that is to meant make you feel better about yourself.

No wonder the divorce rate is what it is.

Individualism riding roughshod over the collective. And we are training our psychologists and marriage counsellors to espouse that very view to the public by putting such ideas in the very text books we use to train them.

My counselling of married couples has changed somewhat over the years. I was trained on those textbooks as well. My approach besides exposing the underlying dynamics of the relationship would promote behavioural negotiation between the couple such that both parties can get their needs met more comprehensively.



Now I do more along the lines of the acceptance of the other person for who they are. Not so much about getting my needs directly met by the other, more about accepting the other for who he/she is.

However I feel this is a superficial response to the shift away from individualism to a more collective approach in marriage counselling. I feel a more basic change is needed but I am not too sure what that is at the moment. It needs to involve more of a change in the philosophical outlook on marriage that can be woven into the therapeutic process.

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