Literature and Family Systems Psychotherapy
Style
Home
"The Family Dynamics of the Reception of Art"
James M. Decker
"‘Choking on My Own Saliva': Henry Miller's
Bourgeois
Family Christmas in Nexus"
John V. Knapp
"Family Systems Psychotherapy, Literary Character,
and Literature: An Introduction"
Judith Ann Spector
"Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant:
A Critical Feast"
Gary Storhoff
"‘Anaconda Love': Parental Enmeshment in Toni Morrison's
Song
of Solomon"
Kenneth Womack
"‘Only Connecting' with the Family: Class, Culture,
and Narrative Therapy in E. M. Forster's Howards End"
Family systems theory, especially that originating in research on chemical dependence, can generate a new reader-centered criticism that reveals how readers, including literary critics, interact unconsciously with the family dynamics embedded in the text. This approach seems particularly valuable for realistic family fiction of the last two centuries, especially Victorian novels, the fiction of D. H. Lawrence, and contemporary American novels. From a survey of American fiction by Allison, Banks, Brown, Chute, Conroy, Erdrich, Ferro, Furman, Gibbons, Garcia, Heller, Hinojosa, Humphreys, Islas, Kingston, Larsen, Leavitt, McMillan, Morrison, Oates, Plante, Russo, Smiley, Smith, Tyler, Updike, and Winthrop, one may suggest the need to revise Freud's "family romance" to focus on both the reader and the protagonist as "orphans" in search of a functional family. In particular, one may suggest that family systems theory is quite cognizant with themes found in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, Dickens's Great Expectations, Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, and Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist and Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
back to top
James M. Decker, "‘Choking on My Own Saliva':
Henry Miller's Bourgeois Family Christmas in Nexus" / 270
Although most critics view Henry Miller's narrator as overly confident,
a family systems approach to Nexus reveals the narrator as extremely anxious
in regard to his mother. Employing the theories of such psychologists as
Michael E. Kerr, Murray Bowen, Peggy Papp, and Evan Imber-Black, one quickly
recognizes that Miller's narrator uses a pattern of accommodation to avoid
confronting his mother. In sharp contrast to the fiercely independent nature
he displays in the public sphere, the narrator "escapes" potential anguish
by aniticipating his mother's desires and adjusting his behavior accordingly.
Placed in a broader context, the narrator's escapism reveals both the cathartic
nature of Miller's ongoing literary project and the relation of reputation
to interpretation.
back to
top
John V. Knapp, "Family Systems Psychotherapy,
Literary Character, and Literature: An Introduction" / 223
Psychological literary criticism has sent out generations of scholars
to do battle with recalcitrant imaginative texts, armed most often with
the psychological tools of an early twentieth-century intrapsychic psychology
that no longer answers all the interesting questions posed by those standing
on the brink of the twenty-first. Unfortunately, one of the
most widely used therapeutic models in the "real world"—family systems
therapy (hence, fst)—has barely made a ripple in the ocean of literary
criticism from which most of us try to keep from drowning. Hence,
when thinking about the imaginative construct called character, readers
may profit by looking at this most ancient of literary conventions through
newer psychological spectacles, the lens of family systems. This introduction
briefly explains many of the basic assumptions of fst—how the family system
becomes the matrix of identity for the self, the cybernetic origins of
fst, the tension between emergence and reduction—and then surveys several
of the competing models of fst, including those practiced by Virginia Satir,
Murray Bowen, Sal Minuchin, Carl Whitaker, and finally the Milan school
of Mara Selvini Palazzoli. Finally, the essays in this volume are briefly
touched upon as examples of practical criticism employing fst. The editors
of this special issue of Style candidly acknowledge the strains in moving
toward a seemingly alien but highly stimulating new tool for literary analysis
while, at the same time (pace George Orwell), rejecting total allegiance
to literary Freud, Lacan, and all the other familiar little orthodoxies
which are still contending for our souls.
back to
top
Judith Ann Spector, "Anne Tyler's Dinner
at the Homesick Restaurant: A Critical Feast" / 310
Based on the work of John V. Knapp and in particular his argument that
a psychological approach to literary interpretation can be enhanced by
broadening the hermeneutic base to include a variety of psycho-social perspectives,
one may argue that an interpretation of Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick
Restaurant based on family systems therapy not only affords the readers
an understanding of both the intra-psychic and inter-psychic dynamics of
the characters, but also ultimately leaves them with a sense of connection
to the work, a sense of the characters' connections to one another, and
an enhanced ability to forgive the characters their flaws. Such a reading
of the text results in a more comprehensive, integrated, and optimistic
perspective on family outcomes than is possible with a purely Freudian
examination of individual characters. Anne Tyler constructs the charactes
and the influences of their families of origin so meticulously that not
only do they lend themselves particularly well to clinical study, but they
also require such study to be understood fully.
back to
top
Gary Storhoff, "‘Anaconda Love': Parental Enmeshment
in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon" / 290
One may take issue with critical analyses of Morrison's novel that
treat psychoanalytic, political, racial, and feminist concerns. Too often
constructing overly simplified dichotomies in the novel—villain versus
victim, Northern versus Southern, urban versus rural, masculine versus
feminine, materialistic versus "aesthetic"—critics divorce the novel from
the day-to-day rituals of family life that Morrison's Song of Solomon
exemplifies. It centers on the etiology and the consequences of parental
enmeshment with children, what Morrison might call "anaconda love"—a suffocating
bond parren. By emphasizing the contextual dimensions of her family dramas,
the interpersonal family patterns that develop intergenerationally, Morrison
extends her sympathies to all her characters, even those who seem to be
the "villains." If readers understand the entire web of family dysfunctionality
without attempting to take sides in the "family feud," they will more fully
appreciate each character's complexity and the ambitious thematic design
of Song of Solomon.
back to
top
Kenneth Womack, "‘Only Connecting' with the
Family: Class, Culture, and Narrative Therapy in E. M. Forster's Howards
End" / 255
In Howards End (1910), E. M. Forster employs narrative therapy
as a means for challenging his nation—with its collection of disparate
classes and cultures—to, if nothing else, "only connect." The terminology
of family systems psychotherapy, moreover, provides scholars with a useful
mechanism for understanding not only Forster's philosophical debt to G.
E. Moore's Principia Ethica (1902), but also the novelist's own
agenda for highlighting the social inequities of Edwardian life. The evaluation
of the characters and their experiences in Howards End—from the powerful,
class-conscious Wilcoxes and the leisure-class intellectual Schlegels to
the lowly esthete Leonard Bast and Howards End itself—demonstrates Forster's
particular interest in reforming the very heart of England's social conscience.
By illustrating how the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes emerge, via their conflicting
experiences with Leonard and Jacky Bast, as a functional system from their
initially spurious union, Forster's narrative suggests the possibility
of a larger family system capable of yielding in the future yet other fully
realized selves.
back to
top