Differentiation and Extended Family

– Among all the concepts that I’ve developed, probably the most important has to do with extended family. And another one that I consider the most important would be the differentiation of self. And I think it is difficult for people to deal with the differentiation of self because they are too much stuck to the rest of the family. And I don’t think any of us can be aware of how much we are like our family. Because it’s impossible to separate these things out. And I think that is probably, in other words, what I’m trying to say is the differentiation of self is one that I would consider probably the second best concept that I defined. And nobody else has tried to define that. Although theirs some other efforts would be, the effort that Maslow made to feel like that would say that people are different from each other along these lines. The US army has a quotes cliche which I consider one of the best. I would consider it almost as good as the AA Creed, which is one of the best. You know to change what can be changed, to be serene about what can’t be changed to know the difference between the two, sort of. The army’s one is be all that you can be. And if there’s one thing, that a therapist has I think a command to do, is to help this person, or this family become all they can be. And I don’t believe that I, or you, or anybody else has become all your could be. I think you still get a million things to work on. And why do you keep putting them off? You can start any day now just like I can start any day now. So, this whole thing of differentiation I put in as a way, people are not the same, people are physically the same, everybody done got two eyes and two arms and one head, two ears, you know for the most part, some people are born without them, everybody got a heart, they got blood system, they got lungs, but people are different from each other. They’re different, psychologically principally. They’re different from each other in their lifestyles, the way they approach problems and what have you. So that whatever I tried to define has got to be so complex that I cut it down to defining people in quadrants. You know, these are characteristics of people in a lower quadrant, so I put that in quadrants. And I didn’t try to even break that down into a hundred different separates, yet people are willing to work on it. So, in general I cannot do any better than I did with that. And this is a very complex thing, but it is an effort, it completely bypasses normal. Normal is a good word in psychology out there. Everybody’s supposed to know what normal is. Maggie and I we used to have, what we called normal controls, you know. You’d run a study on this, sort of psychopathology now you do normal controls. There ain’t no difference, then you’d say all the normal controls are sick, they are. So anyway, that was an effort to get beyond normal. And to say when you get into normal you’re trying to define a societal average. Which has to do with taking a, Gallup Poll, you could take a Gallup Poll on the audience, and then you come out with what a majority of the people will like, and what they believe, that’s all you’ve got. You’re not defining anything except that it’s a majority. A lot of what we do is society depends on Gallup Polls, what you think about it? Anyway that’s how normal is defined. So I was trying to define the human being according to a set of characteristics which are completely different. And, in general I will go with that. I do not find anything in that that I will retract. I tried not to get down to specifics because it starts arguments when you get into specifics. And there’s no profit to argue with somebody. They can hear what I’m trying to do, but anyway those things which had to do with extended family, which had to do with triangles. Which had to do with, differentiation of self, I would consider the best and the most unique concepts I ever wrote about. And I don’t take back any of it. When I was young I could define differentiation better but I can’t do it. The well runs dry on that one. You might be interested that I’ve been into our own training courses in George Town. I been into trying to spell out differentiation of self in more detail. Because I found so many people went through the training program without having much notion about it, which is still so. Now maybe I was off my nut when I defined it, maybe it’s hard to teach, I don’t know. I think it probably has to do with differentiation of self has to do with societal regression. I think the damn thing is changing. I wish I could do better, but I can’t do it. I don’t think that one is ever going to be spelled out, I tried to spell it out in about three pages. And I don’t think it’s ever going to be spelled out in three pages, and I think when you get up to six, eight and ten pages I think you put in so damn many variables its going to be useless, I don’t know, the future will tell. I would say, and I would credit a person like Jody Kelderman with probably having done more to popularize a lot of systems concepts than anybody else. And Jody has been the director of the Charlotte council on Alcoholism in Charlotte North Carolina. And before Jody retired he was an episcopal bishop. And he has done about as good a job as anybody I know and that has to do with thinking of the family as a unit, that has to do with, Jody had a lot to do with Al-Anon, getting Al-Anon started. Had to do with seeing drinking as not the problem of the person who drinks, it is the whole family. So Jody has done more to sort of introduce the concepts, but he’s had a hard time implementing them. As if we haven’t all had our problems, but I would say the various things that Jody has implemented I don’t know a person who has done more than Jody. And that is the problem is the family, focusing on the family, focusing away from the patient. Focusing back on the marriage, the marriage is often all these darn things, almost if there is a marriage. If there’s not a marriage then it goes back to parents. But I would say we moved a long way but the people who read Jody, or any of the people that write these books still have to deal with a societal pattern, or a family pattern, which would dictate the opposite. They would say, but I don’t drink, I don’t get drunk, they don’t. You know as what I saw a long time ago. I remember this was a very prominent guy, I know they came to the office in a Rolls Royce, and the wife was telling the husband what a drunken jerk he was. And he says, my dear, you know I do it just for you. He bought that Rolls Royce for her to ride around in. And, she used to say things like, Paul dear the only car I can drive is a Rolls and that wasn’t a home. Anyway, that was one of the best statements I ever heard of a husband saying I drink to make you happy, I drink to keep down your anxiety, there’s a lot of people like that. A lot of people. In which the other spouse, I won’t get into that till a little later, but when which one spouse gets drunk when the others mouth gets to wiry. And when you try to settle down the anxious one what do you do with that, and it doesn’t just have to do with drinking, it has to do with hypochondriasis, it has to do with everything else, let me stop on that.