The Family Crucible: The Intense Experience of Family Therapy

Individuation is a psychological process that occurs within an individual person throughout life and which represents their inner growth toward a distinct self that is assured, determined, and self-confident. Napier argues that individuation is a necessary process in family therapy, because learning to depend on and trust oneself is the only way that a person can healthily enter a close relationship. If a person is not individuated, they risk falling into harmful patterns of dependency with other people. In the Brice family, each member has their own process of individuation. Carolyn’s is the most pronounced, while David’s takes the longest to come to fruition due to his inner hesitation to change. Claudia also experiences the process of individuation, which gives her the strength to move away and be on her own.

A positive feedback spiral is a psychological process between two people that has its roots in the idea of the family system. Napier and Whitaker theorize the family as a system and make metaphorical comparisons to machines and other types of systems to better understand how families operate. The word “positive” in positive feedback spiral does not refer to something “good,” but rather to a change in the system and its homeostatic or normal/baseline state. When two people in a family enter a positive feedback spiral, they constantly challenge and “one-up” the other person until the system threatens to collapse. This was the case with Carolyn and Claudia, who pushed the boundaries so far that Claudia was considering suicide. Like any system, a family needs time to relax and return to an equilibrium, which the constant chaos in the Brice family was preventing.

Triangulation is an often unconscious psychological process that takes place within families. During this process, two family members who are in conflict with one another but who cannot express their thoughts and emotions to each other will unconsciously choose a scapegoat to act as their “go-between.” In the case of the Brice family, Claudia was elected the scapegoat by her parents, who were in the midst of an unsatisfying and emotionally distant marriage. Claudia’s parents endured years of built-up tension and unresolved conflict, and their daughter became the means through which they expressed it. Napier and Whitaker helped David and Carolyn recognize that they were doing this to Claudia and to slowly become comfortable confronting one another instead of using their daughter to do so.