Book Review: The Family Crucible

Already, I've realized that hospital chaplaincy involves just as much work with patients' families as the patients themselves.  It's amazing the things people will say about each other in the pressure-cooker of a crisis - worried things, sweet things, spiteful things, and bitter things.  But it's saddened me to see the frequency with which anger and blame tinge these most serious bedside conversations.

So I've been reading a fantastic book about family systems from the hospital's Pastoral Care library: "The Family Crucible" by Augustus Napier, Ph.D, and Carl Whitaker, M.D. It's both an introduction to family systems theory and a case study of a particular family's extended pychotherapy sessions.  As I've studied at YDS, the basic premise of family systems theory is that the family constitutes its own operational unit, with parts that pull and push on each other.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing - after all, this pull and push is the relational force that ideally helps members mature and grow.  But it also means that, when family dynamics become entrenched or grow cold, the interlocking and systematic nature of family makes for a difficult  pathological knot to untie.  Problems are never one person's issue - everyone in the family system plays a role.

In "The Family Crucible," Napier and Whitaker do an awesome job of presenting family systems theory in an understandable way.  I'm not sure how this will help, but I'm hoping to get quicker at parsing what's going on when people at the hospital argue over their relative competencies to have power of attorney for their dying family members.