Covid Quarantine - Week 12: A Letter To My Patients
Hi all,
I had to laugh at the following meme:
2020, written by Stephen King, directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Pretty much.
I feel incredibly grateful in these times to have been trained in Family Systems Theory because it posits that we human beings exist and behave not so much as unattached human beings in a vacuum, but within a network of relationships. The first practitioners of family therapy discovered again and again that the "problem" (the depressed adolescent, the defiant child, the eating disordered mother, the alcoholic father, etc...) was not so much native to the individual as an expression or communication about the pathology of the family system as a whole.
In other words, it's not a "he" or a "she" problem, it's a "we" problem: a family problem. Which provides much relief for the so-called "problem", otherwise known as "the identified patient." But you can well imagine the resistance on the part of the larger family to own both the complexity of the problem, and the role each one plays to contribute to it. We don't like the idea of a "we" problem. That takes effort, and self-reflection.
The scapegoat. Indeed, it's as old as civilization itself to use the scapegoat to project our shame, guilt and undifferentiated sense of badness onto it-- and drive it out into the wilderness. Scapegoats relieve us from our having to own our part-- whether big or small-- in the communal problem. And they make things really simple. No need to look at how all these forces-- often seemingly contradicting-- contribute to our family's suffering.
Or communal suffering. Or national suffering. Scapegoats relieve us from the ethical demand of listening to the other, especially the one who makes our skin crawl; and more intimately, they relieve us of thinking, feeling, and doing a deep dive into our own conscience-- to realize where we personally have gone wrong. That's hard. That's sobering. In fact, when we do this kind of deep work, we go silent. At least, we should, if we mean it. Blaming is so much easier.
Of course, that doesn't mean we don't protest-- if that's where our conscience leads us. But if the deeper transformation of ourselves and of the life of this nation does not follow, we are as St. Paul says, "... but a clanging symbol."
We have a family problem: racism. What is your role in it? What is my role in it? How am I going to address it in my life? How are we not going to take the easy way out but rather do the deeper work?
Oh, one more thing. One of the most precious insights of Family Systems Theory in my view is that the youngest in the family usually holds the key. I take this to mean on a communal level that it is the most vulnerable who know exactly what the problem is. They see. They listen. They know. Let's listen to them. I am sure that they know and will lead us towards health.
If we dare be that humble.
--
I look forward to seeing you all this week. Let's do the deeper work. Week 13 in Quarantine: what the what!?!
Deborah