Neutrality, Not Feeling Sorry

– [Murray Bowen] And what I was trying to do was to work out a way in which I could avoid becoming attached to these people and they could attach themselves to the multi generational past. Now being able to do that to become attached to these people is a difficult little task. And there’s a lot of things that go into that including the way one thinks about the human phenomenon. And I would say in general, you can’t take any one thing and say this is the truth and this is it. But a characteristic of relationships is feeling sorry for the other. And when anybody feels sorry for the other then they are immediately attached to them. And you can feel sorry for the other or angry with the other its the same thing. You’re attached to them. And how can you get to the place that you can see your fellow human being as another person without all those needs hanging out? And I would say that is the task that therapist have would be, how can you be neutral about the other? You can be more helpful to the other by being neutral about him then you can feeling sorry for him. And what do you do when you feel sorry for them? The problem is in you, it ain’t in them. And when you get mad at him, the problem is in you, it’s not in them. And what do you do about that? So, there’s an awful lot that goes into trying to be helpful to a family. Families want to do this with family members. If you do not get in their road but you get in their road with your own immaturity. I believe, I’ve never been able to control my own immaturity to the place that I know I’d get called more times then I’d liked to know about. But when I get called I like to know it. And I like to do what I can to get out of it. But anyway, this goes into your effort to help the family. Now the family, if the helping person can stay out of it and do a heck of a lot better. What time we gonna quit Jerry I’m talking to much? I’mof talking. I’ll go on and I’ll let you think up your questions for tomorrow. I wanted to get on this subject of bringing multiple people in. And that’s one of the things that concerned me back in NIH days. Because round the world you can not believe the number of families that have a number of different therapist attached to the family. I believe, that having a number of different therapist unless the family member detaches itself from the family and has nothing to do with them and most people can’t do that. Is that when you attach multiple people to the same family you have relieved the symptom process but precluded them growing up. Did you hear that? And I think mental health does it all the time. And I think the number of clinics that attach multiple therapist to the same family can’t relieve the symptom, if that’s what the family wants. But I don’t think that family can really grow up beyond that. You’re putting a lot of bang into relieving the symptom you can relieve the symptom that way. And I would say, if that is a family unit then, put one person in contact with that. One helping person. And it does not have to be a mental health professional. It can be any warm body. Any human being. It can be a minister, a boarder, it can be anybody that is separate from, of course you don’t get ministers and borders that are willing to do it. And they can do it, they’re not motivative for it their lives are going another direction. But any person, any human body that can say neutral can do that. Any one person. I would say you can get a family in trouble. And if they could get a border that would relieve the anxiety and didn’t get caught up in the family problem the family would get better. I would say that if it’s a family in trouble and they could find a minister who did not get too caught up in it that family is better off. Probably better off with that minister then with a well intentioned mental health professional. It doesn’t make any difference who this is. And when you put a lot of people in on it that was being what I describe earlier today is you gotta get a lot of people involved and then you got a supervisor of the involved people and then you got to get a supervisor of the supervisor you just keep going on and on with this and it keeps extending itself out. So by far enlarge, and I have come out rather well on this. And I’ve used this even with let me put in one of the best examples it came from the family, of a family therapist in which the wife had had an early relationship with one of her college roommates who had a family and the son committed suicide. The wife call me, they live close by, wanted the name of a family therapist. About this family that had lost a son suicide would be, helpful. That would be a referral. You want to, tomorrow I’ll discuss referrals. That is one of the trickiest thing in all of mental health. And I would say the referrer is trying to do a favor to the referee and often that is no favor. I have never done well with a person referred under such circumstances, and people that I’ve referred have never done well. When you refer somebody to somebody you’re saying implicitly that this is a good person. And that is an image. And then they don’t turn out to be good. And then you get into a triangle which is critical of you. Well with this one I’d say well if you referred this other the family of this person who committed suicide his problem is his family got problems. Because one member committed suicide, that is a big problem. My guess would be that if you referred that to a therapist the family would go one time. The one has already committed suicide they are dead and gone. Now the only problem is the grief that follows the death. They don’t have to live with that problem no more. He’s dead. All they got to live with is their grief. Easier to live with their grief then it is the problem created by this one. Now I was suggesting that they would do that family more good if the wife of the family therapist would spend time with her old college roommate would do more good then if they referred him to the best therapist in the world. Well they referred to a good therapist and they didn’t even go once. Following that, she spent time with these people and the recovery was rather good. So any time there is problem in the family of a family therapist, I do not lend a hand by giving a name of another therapist. When a problem occurs in the family of a family therapist I would say that family therapist has a problem to get off it and go do something about it. And they can do more for it then referring to somebody else. Which is completely different from individual therapy. Individual therapy would say you cannot work with anybody you’ve known personally or socially. That is pretty much an unwritten rule in individual therapy. Back in the old days I went along with that. And I tried to get away from it I tried with people who were personal friends, friends and family. And I tried to well I’ve tried first to work with them personally then I would get clobbered enough times I gave that one up. And then I tried referring them to friends or people I’d known. So-so results. The turning point came with problems in my own work system. I went to a medical school reunion with an old college roommate who was a dead drunk. I’d known him, I knew the woman he married. She was a personality kid. And I went there and when he was sober I couldn’t get to him his personality wife would keep cutting in. I couldn’t talk to him. And then he would get so damn drunk I couldn’t make contact with him. And I go “what in the hell is psychiatry about?”. If can’t be worth something to your own people who are important to you. And if you follow the rule of conventional individual therapy that’s where you would be. So I thought about this time I’d already worked on it a number of years. And you better work on it a few years before you get into that one because it will do to you like a boomerang, it will knock you out from the rear. But I’d already worked on it a long time and I thought I’m gonna have to do with it in my own system. So I’d already learned ways to relate to people without getting attached to their problems. But I have spent enough time working on ideas and principales that I can not relate to my friends unless I can get it to the place that I don’t care what they do with their lives. As soon as I care I’m stuck. And you see signs out there which says, we care. You can care so much you kill it. If you care a little bit you make it sick. If you care a lot you can kill it off. How can you relate to your fellow human being as a member of the human race without feeling sorry? What feeling sorry for em is part of being a part of the emotional system. And what can you do about you to stay out of that? But if you can do that, you are a treasure to the human race. And you know in these days with societal regression, society often dictates the opposite. And you see these cases, in other words how can you relate to somebody as another human being and let them be responsible for their lives without you being responsible. That’s a trick. And I could tell you that I work on that one for years and years and years. But there is nothing there’s nothing in human experience which would say that you can not be helpful to your own family and to your own best friend. It is not a characteristic of the human race which says that that is a problem within you. And it is possible to design a satellite which can go home to it’s mark on that one if you’re willing to work on it. And if you can’t work on it and you’re not successful at it you will get killed. To me I think these things are all worth working on. I think that’s what life is a about. But if somebody just tells you to do it you can’t go do it. You’ll mess it up. You’ll mess it up the way you messed it up with your own kids. Why, you don’t mean to do it your just trying to do the best you can. You’re trying to be loving and caring and killing it while you’re doing it. And that doesn’t mean that love in not important. Love makes the world go round. You know, I was listening to a love song I was listening to one the other day. I was listening to one yesterday the same old thing you know. You’re the light of my life. Last night I was listening to You Are My Sun Shine. This is what an infant feels in relating to the principal care taker. That is the saying of a completely dependent individual on another individual. And so many of love songs are that. That is a feeling , it’s not a fact. But it is a feeling in all of us. Jerry you know I get off into preaching I don’t like to be a preacher, I’m gonna quit.