by the Rev. Lee Woofenden
Lectures delivered atFryeburg New Church AssemblyFryeburg, Maine
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Swedenborgians have long emphasized personal spiritual growth. Based on our teachings about regeneration, or spiritual rebirth, we have scoured Swedenborg and modern psychology for methods of spiritual growth. Yet by focusing on the individual, we have missed much of the richness of our church's teachings. In Swedenborg's idea of the universal human we have an equally strong case for family and community growth. This morning I would like to draw some parallels between the concept of the universal human and family systems theory, a relatively recent arrival on the psychological scene. Along the way I hope to provide a few insights that might be helpful not only in our families, but in all our interactions at work, with friends, and in our communities. I have drawn on the excellent book Generation to Generation, by Edwin H. Friedman, for most of my material on family systems theory.
Systems theory grew out of the need to find a better way to handle the glut of information that accompanied the development of computers from the 1950's onward. It soon became apparent that if we attempted to manage each piece of information individually, our task would be impossible. A new way of managing information emerged that focused on the interactions of information--the way different pieces of information function in relation to each other. By viewing a large amount of data as a functional, interrelated whole rather than as millions of bits of individual information, we could organize all that information and make it available in an easily accessible and useful way.
Family systems theory applies this same principle to human beings. Right now there are about five and one half billion people living on planet Earth. If we tried to think individually about each of those five and one half billion people, we would quickly become overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the task. However, if we think of them as an interacting human organism, along the lines of Swedenborg's universal human, the task becomes more manageable. An entire nation can be seen as a single system that makes up part of the larger system of humankind. We can speak of the relationship between the U.S. and China without it boggling our mind. Of course, we lose much of the detail, just as we do not see the workings of every cell in a friend's body when we are talking to him or her. Seeing our friend as one person rather than as several trillion individual cells enables us have a conversation with our friend in a way we couldn't if we were trying to keep track of every cell.
Even much smaller systems, such as a family, are too complex to treat simply as a collection of individuals. To take an analogy from physics, scientists since Newton have been able to calculate far into the future the exact paths of two planets orbiting each other. But as soon as a third planet is added to the equation, the complexity of the system becomes so great that long-term calculations become nearly impossible.
In human interactions, it is hard enough for us to keep on top of the relationship between two closely attached people, such as a married couple with no children. When a third, fourth, or fifth person is added to the mix, such as by the birth of children or by aged parents moving in, the relationships immediately become far more complicated. Three people--a human triangle--form the first and perhaps the primary human system that needs a family systems approach rather than an individual approach. As more people are added to the family, the need for a systems approach continues to grow.
How would we view the individual and the family differently from a family systems perspective than from an individual approach such as the psychoanalytic school of psychology? A therapist trained in one of the individual modes of therapy would see the individual as the center and source of psychological, emotional, and relationship problems. Such a therapist might ask, "What are the problems in this individual's psyche that are causing his or her problems?" A therapist trained in systems theory might ask a different question: "How are this person's relationships to others in the family out of kilter?"
As an example, let's consider a common human triangle: a husband, a wife, and an ex-wife. Let's say the wife goes to a therapist trained in individual methods, saying she cannot have a full relationship with her husband because his ex-wife is always interfering. The therapist would tend to focus primarily on the issues for the individuals involved--especially for the one who came to therapy. Does the wife have a lack of self-esteem that makes it hard for her to assert herself in the relationship against the claims of the ex-wife? Does she have problems because her own parents were divorced and her father re-married while she was a teenager?
The family systems therapist, on the other hand, would look more at the interactions between the three people involved in this triangle. Is the wife acting as a buffer between her husband and his estranged wife? What other relationships bear on this? Is her mother-in-law using the divorce and re-marriage as ammunition to attack her son, thus drawing his present wife into a conflict that is really between mother and son? The family therapist will attribute the wife's problems in the relationship more to her role in her network of relationships than to problems in her individual personality.
At first glance, this seems to contradict Swedenborg's views on spiritual rebirth. Don't we each craft our own salvation by correcting the wrongs in our character and behavior using the Ten Commandments and other spiritual laws as our guide? How can we solve our problems simply by adjusting our relationships to others?
The counterbalance to the individualism implied in Swedenborg's views on regeneration comes in his concept of the universal human. Like systems theory, the universal human enables us to look at groups of people as an interrelated, functioning whole rather than as a collection of individuals. In the human body, limbs and organs can be looked at as individual parts of the body, but they only take on meaning when they are working within the whole. What use would a heart be if there were no vascular system to distribute the blood it pumps, and no body for it to supply? Without the body, the heart is just a complex lump of tissue--and a dead one at that. Not only would it make no sense to fix the heart's problems if it weren't in a living body, it would be impossible.
Similarly, an individual human being has no meaning and no existence in isolation from other human beings. On the spiritual level, we would have no one to love--no one to be in relationship with. On a physical level, without at least two people--a male and a female--the human species would die out; without more than two to form a community, our existence would be very fragile. Socially, we live not just in ourselves, but in our relationships with those around us. The missing element in our traditional view of regeneration is that regeneration always involves how we love and care for those around us--or how we do not love and care for those around us. Without our relationships, our personal spiritual growth is not only meaningless; it does not exist.
For most of us, our earliest, closest, and longest lasting relationships are those with our family--both the family we are born into and the family we form in our adult years if we marry and have children or join another type of family. This suggests that much of the deepest work of our spiritual growth will take place in the context of our family. It is the closeness of our family relationships that makes the family such a powerful atmosphere for our own inner growth--if we are willing to grow.
Before going on though, who is included in our family? We have traditionally considered our immediate family--mother, father, and children--to be the family. But others may be just as much a part of our family. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, or close friends may be so involved in our family life that they take on roles just as important as our parents. Family systems theory broadens the definition of family to include everyone who plays an important part in our past and present family life. Unlike traditional psychoanalysis, which tends to focus on our parents' effects on us during our childhood, family systems theory sees the whole extended family as significant both in the past and in the present.
Our family is usually where we have our closest relationships. We live with the people in our family every day. The good face we put on for outsiders is usually dropped at home. This is where our raw edges scrape against each other. It is where we especially face what is really inside us.
The point of both family systems theory and the universal human is that our lives and our personal growth are not just inside us, but in our relationships with others. Notice that all of the Ten Commandments involve either actions or feelings toward someone else--toward God or toward other people. Spiritual growth is not just about correcting our individual selves; it is also about correcting our relationships with others and with God.
I have a growing sense that our "self" does not end with our skin, as many people have said. To illustrate this, let's look at Swedenborg's views on the Trinity. God has three aspects: a soul represented in the Bible by the Father, a body, represented by the Son, and creative action, represented by the Holy Spirit. The Father and Son conform to our traditional ideas of distinct individuals, but what about the Holy Spirit? God's spirit reaches out and fills all the universe and every human being. Saying our self ends with our skin would be like saying God ends with the divine body and does not extend out into the universe and into us as the Holy Spirit.
Our actions and relationships are an image of God's Holy Spirit. By our actions and our relationships, we extend ourselves into the lives of other people. In one sense we are still distinct individuals. In another sense we are an interconnected part of the whole. Like the heart, which extends into the whole body through the vascular system but maintains its own distinct existence, we extend into those around us while still maintaining our own distinct personality.
Even this is not the whole picture. We tend to think of ourselves as having a particular personality that determines how we will relate to other people. Family systems theory points out that we act and even feel differently according to our role in our family, our community, our workplace, and so on. We are not the same person at work as we are at home. We may be coarse and abusive at home but a model of politeness and decorum at work. Or we may be cool and businesslike at work, but warm and affectionate in the intimacy of our home. It is still the same "us." But we are functioning in different contexts and different roles.
Within the family, changing roles can change our personality. For example, if the mother in a family leaves or dies, the oldest daughter may take on part of the mother's role--cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the younger children. From being spontaneous, carefree, and unskilled in household tasks, she may become serious, responsible, and capable just because of her changed role in the family.
This has its analog in the human body. When we first start out as a single celled organism created by the union of an egg and a sperm, there is no differentiation of the cells, because there is only one cell. When the cells first start dividing, they are all nearly alike, and function the same as each other. But as the new embryo becomes more complex, the cells begin to differentiate. Within a few weeks, there are definite parts to the embryo, and the cells in each part are taking on a form and function that is different from the cells in other parts.
Why does one cell become different from another in the developing embryo? It is not because of any intrinsic difference in the cell; all the cells divided from the single, fertilized ovum. Each cell comes to function in a distinct way because of its location in the whole. It would not matter which cell happened to be where the brain was developing. If it was there, it would become a brain cell.
Notice, however, that this ability to move into any function in the body comes mostly in the formative stages. Once a bone cell has become a bone cell, it will not be transformed into a heart cell. Likewise, once we have begun to form a personality--which seems to happen sometime before birth--we are no longer completely moldable and interchangeable. We still can have a variety of functions, just as bones provide both structure and protection, and muscles provide both the ability to move and padding. But if, like the daughter mentioned before, we are pushed into roles for which we are not well suited, or for which we are not yet ready, we may fulfill those roles, but it will come at a price.
A better human body analogy for this situation would be what happens when we break a leg. Normally, we have two legs to walk on. When we lose the use of one of them, other parts of the body have to take over. We may have to be on crutches for a while. The crutches will provide the function of the bones of our broken leg--supporting our body as we move. But our armpits have to function as hip joints, and our arms and shoulders as leg muscles--all in addition to their usual tasks. The broken leg will become stiff and lose muscle tone, while our armpits, arms, shoulders, and neck get sore from doing things they're not used to and not designed for.
This leads us to one of the practical aspects of family systems theory. Each member of the family has what might be called a "natural" or normal role in the family. These roles are defined by the relationship to others in the family. There are spousal roles, parent-child roles, child-child roles, and others such as the role of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and so on. When looking at a family, one question to ask is whether the family members are in their normal roles. If not, this can be a source of difficulty in the family. If one of the parents has become incapacitated and taken on the role of a child, while one of the children has taken on the role of a parent, it will create disturbance and stress. It could also be more subtle, such as parents putting pressure on their son to start fulfilling the role of an adult and be on a particular career track when he would normally be having fun, learning, and having a social life with his friends.
In these cases, family problems may come, not from character defects, but from the members being asked to do things they're not meant to be doing. Looking at what role each person in the family is performing in relation to the others can give a lot of insight into family dysfunction. Trying to hold the individual personalities responsible often leads only to misunderstanding and blame.
Related to this is the family systems concept of the "identified patient." The person coming to a therapist or pastor with a problem may not really be the source of the problem; he or she may just happen to be where a systemic family problem has focused. Another human body analogy may help. If a doctor sees someone with cirrhosis of the liver, the doctor doesn't assume that the problem to be fixed is in the liver itself. Instead, the doctor will look for more systemic causes, such as the patient drinking too much alcohol. The liver was doing its best to function; it just happens to be the focal point for a more general problem that involves the whole body.
Families where one or both parents are alcoholics often show this type of pattern. A child in such a family may become a delinquent, or a super overachiever, or the class clown, or may withdraw into a fantasy world. It would be a big mistake to assume the problem originates with the child. More likely, the child has become the focal point for the family's dysfunction. Individually oriented therapy for that child will probably fail to deal with the real issues at hand. But seeing the family as a system and recognizing the broken role of the child in the family may give better results. At minimum, it will eliminate our tendency to brand the child a "bad" or "problem" person. At best, we may give the child permission and the necessary support to live at least part of his or her childhood the way childhood is meant to be--having good friends, enjoying life, and developing into his or her own person.
Did I say "developing into his or her own person"? Isn't the whole point of family systems theory that the individual personality doesn't matter--only the person's role in the family? This would be an extreme position. Perhaps there are some people who believe this. There are also some people who place everything in the individual and attribute almost nothing to the family or social context.
As with so many points in Swedenborgian theology and in life, neither position works; only a combining of the individual and systems views can give us a complete picture of the whole. In Divine Providence #42, Swedenborg says:
The more closely we are joined with the Lord, the more distinctly we seem to ourselves to be our own person, and the more clearly we recognize that we belong to the Lord.
This is a challenging statement. At first glance, we would think exactly the opposite--the more we are joined with the Lord and belong to the Lord, the less we are our own person. However, understanding the truth in Swedenborg's statement gives us the key to combining the individual and systems views of family relationships.
In the human body, there are trillions of cells, and many thousands of distinct organs, muscles, bones, nerves, and other functioning parts. No two cells are exactly the same, nor are any two of the larger structures of our body exactly the same. Each has its own distinct structure and function. We could paraphrase Swedenborg's statement this way: The more closely a cell or organ is joined with the body, the more distinctly we see that it has its own role to play, and the more clearly we see that it belongs to the body. Cells and organs that are cut off from the body have no function and soon die. Cells and organs that are part of the body have very specific, distinct functions.
Similarly, in a family or community, no two people are the same. We each have our own unique contribution to the whole. When we are closely connected with each other, our individual personalities can shine. When we are cut off from each other, we lose much of our life. The individual and family systems views of community are not contradictory; they are complementary. Family systems theory does not negate personal responsibility; it puts it in context. As Edwin Freeman says in Generation to Generation in a discussion of individual differentiation within a family:
One other dimension of Bowen's scale of differentiation is worth noting. It comes up four-square on the side of personal responsibility because it does not blame forces outside the family for problems inside the family. Today there is much important discussion among concerned people about schools, neighborhoods, etc., and their effect on families. But the focus on how society affects the family, rather than on how the family affects the family, can be self-defeating. Cults, for example, do not destroy families as much as stuck-togetherness attitudes in families create candidates for cults. When parents focus on societal influence it actually serves to increase their anxiety even though it helps them avoid personal responsibility. On the other hand, parents who accept the fact that their children are less likely to be influenced by other systems to the extent that they are comfortable in their own, while they might find the idea more painful at first, are given a means of approaching the problem that is quite within their power, and that can, in turn, contribute to their own self-respect. (Edwin H. Friedman, Generation to Generation (New York: Guilford Press, 1985), 30-31.)
The means of approaching the problem that Friedman refers to requires a blending of individual and systems work. The individual part involves becoming very clear about what our own beliefs are and how we wish to live based on them. We will have to examine very closely just how and why we are currently speaking and acting as we do within our families. The systems part involves changing our relationships with others in the family so that we will have more healthy patterns of relating. This especially involves making sure we communicate with each member of our family directly rather than always working through other members of the family.
Paradoxically, the more we try to change the people around us through direct means such as argument, nagging, bribery, withholding of affection, and so on, the less likely there is to be any real change. But the more we focus on making sure we ourselves are clear in what we believe and that we personally live by it--without trying to coerce others into doing so--the more likely those around us are to notice and respond in a positive way. It is our own consciously chosen and deliberately lived presence in the family context that will have the greatest effect on others. Of course, this doesn't mean we should let children or adults run wild and wreak havoc on us. But it does mean that our conscious, constructive presence in family and community life will have a greater effect than any mechanical attempts to teach and reform.
A side benefit is that when we stop trying to run everyone else's lives and concentrate on running our own, a tremendous weight is lifted from our shoulders. The real trick is to give those around us the freedom to live their own lives while continuing to love them, be honest with them, and stay connected with them. This is how the Lord relates to us. Perhaps that is why he could say, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light."
By combining the individual and family systems approaches, we can have the best of both worlds. We can delve into the depths of our own soul and we can form healthy, fulfilling relationships with others. Of course, this talk has only scratched the surface. I hope it will give you a few new insights and pathways that you can use in your own family and community.
