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Dr. Bowen Talking to the Special Postgraduate Program, Tape VB0434, Part Six from TMBAP on Vimeo.
Dr. Bowen discusses how to move relationships back up between two other important people in the family. That is de-triangling in action. You can’t get rid of this level of intensity with one other person. De-triangling is how you get out of “smelly situations.” From June 1984.
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– They won’t let you. But you can, we can move that relationship back up between two other important people, and that’s what detriangling any relationship means. You cannot get yourself free from any intense relationship. They won’t have it. They’ll find a way around it. But you can take that relationship and put it back between two other people, and they have to be people who are responsible within that part of your relationship. You just can’t go do it to anybody. You can’t go bring in somebody from the street and do it. They don’t want it. They won’t have it. But a family member will have it. And that, you know from family theory, who are the people who have those intense relationships? And you use family members to get yourself free. That’s what you do with yourself, in detriangling your own families to be an individual in your own families. Because everybody is caught up in a certain degree of level of this. Some level. The lesser the level of it, the more success you’re gonna have with ’em. But the degree to which that family relationship triangles itself on to you, you can untriangle it by making, putting it back on, between the other two sides of that triangle. You are not going to get rid of it with one person. And that’s where I would disagree with all this thing they call working through. You can work through neurotic level stuff, but you ain’t gonna work through psychotic level stuff. And that you just walk off and leave it with the other two people. I used to get in things with people. This would be with schizophrenic level stuff. I remember one guy said, I want you to think about this while I’m gone and give me the answer when I come back again. And I said, you, you ain’t worth my good time. I ain’t gonna put it in on you. I’m gonna carefully not think about your miserable problem. I promise you one thing. I’m gonna think about your problem while you’re here and I’ll do my damndest to think about it while you’re here. But I ain’t gonna think about you in your absence. And that made sense to that schizophrenic young man, you know? You don’t go around giving me instructions about what I’m supposed to do with my own time. I ain’t gonna do it, for you especially. Somebody would say, this is something he would say, how do you stand me for an hour? I says, well, all of my life I’ve been getting into smelly situations. I mean, don’t you tell him that it’s a delight, and that’s another one of the breach of promises, that somebody would say, do you love me? I’d say, love you? You’re unlovable. That is the other side of it. And that would be in one, when parents who told that kid that they love him no matter what they do.