Generation to Generation: Family Process in Church and Synagogue (The Guilford Family Therapy Series)

Generation to Generation by Edwin FriedmanEdwin Friedman (1932-1996) was a noted family therapist and ordained rabbi. He worked for more than 35 years in the Washington, DC area in government, professional, and consulting capacities. Generation to Generation is required reading in many seminaries for its analysis of emotional processes in families, within religious communities, and at work.HIGHLIGHTS:Process models that portray human interactions in terms of individuals functioning among themselves in simple cause and effect relationships are mistaken. A more correct view is one that sees human behavior as dependent upon individual positions within systems of homeostatic relationships.Implications are wide-ranging. Although stress varies depending upon personalities and circumstances, all individuals naturally seek to reduce their stress. Different positions (father, mother, child, grandfather, etc.) within a system are subject to different kinds and degrees of stress. Thus the same individual will behave differently if located in different positions within a system. Nuclear and extended-family relationships are more immediate and are therefore more influential in producing stress and shaping associated behavior. At the same time, family life always involves growth and that growth unavoidably injects stress into close relationships. Individuals can reduce the stress in destructive or constructive ways -- they can refuse to grow -- or they can go onto a greater maturity (differentiation) that can lead others to greater maturity as well. Conversely, individuals can "respond" (vice "react") constructively to differentiation (growth) in others -- and the associated tension -- by differentiating themselves. Or, they can "react" destructively by refusing to differentiate. Refusal to differentiate may be manifested in (1) trying to undermine the growth of others or (2) attempting to shift anxiety to a third party (triangling).Unless they know better, triangled parties can wind up bearing the burdens of other people's anxiety and can easily find themselves as "identified patients" in troubled relationships not of their own making. The anxiety they absorb can produce, not just emotional and behavioral problems, but physical problems as well. Interlocking triangles of troubled relationships can produce identified patients far removed in time and space from the root causes of their anxiety. The challenge of "systems thinking" is to discover and address sources of stress rather than focus on the symptoms of persons reacting to it. Visiting the relatives of the sick, for example, may be more fruitful than visiting the sick themselves.Systems thinking suggests a model of leadership focused on emotional process rather than emotional content. The systems model assumes content is secondary and a distraction from the more important emotional process. In the systems model, leadership requires self-definition rather than expertise, questions rather than diagnoses. The idea is to lead by differentiating oneself while staying connected to others. The goal is to foster the same "differentiating while staying connected" process in others.Leadership based on systems thinking recognizes opportunities for growth and healing in lifecycle events. Birth, marriage, sickness, retirement, old age, death, divorce, and even geographical moves provide opportunities to "un-stick" relationships stuck in high-anxiety states. The result can be the exorcism of "demons" (emotional baggage) passed down from "generation to generation."Everything systems theory has to say about families also has analogs in churches, synagogues, and even the workplace. The problems of individuals within larger communities have more to do with their relational networks than with their individual personalities. The departure of the leader from a religious group, for example, is much like a divorce. His or her arrival is like a marriage. Such insights are particularly important to religious leaders because they must manage relationships within three intense "families": (1) their nuclear family, (2) their extended family, and (3) the "families" represented by their religious communities.COMMENTS:One irony of Friedman's book is that he, being Jewish, provides a compelling argument for the Christian doctrine of total depravity, a doctrine that views every aspect of human nature as having been flawed by the Fall -- and flawed it certainly seems to be. If Friedman is correct, humanity's most fundamental relationships and needs are unavoidably conflicted. On one hand, people are naturally inclined to create and maintain homeostatic relationships highly resistant to change. On the other, they cannot avoid changes that threaten the stability of those relationships. High anxiety is therefore inevitable -- and unbearable. Not surprisingly, people try to escape the tension in the easiest ways they know how. Those ways, however, are often steeped in fear, ignorance, and moral failure. The results are relational pathologies that are passed on to future generations who, in turn, focus and amplify the burden for their descendants.The cascade of dysfunction from "generation to generation" illuminates the question of where do we get our souls -- our lives writ large. One could use Friedman's book to argue we get them from our parents. As he notes, "the problem with parents is that they had parents."Generation to Generation is classic in giving readers the sense of being told what they knew all along. Most of it seems patently obvious -- once it is articulated. Take, for example, the trivial case of two strangers in an elevator who "triangle" smalltalk about the weather into their relationship in order to relieve the tension between them. If that is true of momentary contact between strangers, how much would it be true of more intimate relationships?Systems theory focuses on emotional process rather than content. It holds that the same cause (content) can have (1) a particular effect, (2) the opposite effect, or (3) no effect. Accordingly, it is not falsifiable and is therefore not scientific. That, however, does not mean it is not worthwhile. Rather, it is profound. The difference between (1) that which is obvious and (2) that which is profound is that profundity can simply be common sense that is made to appear deep by long-standing cultural denial of the obvious. For centuries, Western society has denied the importance of community -- the obvious -- in preference for exalting the individual. Generation to Generation offers a compelling argument for the importance of community -- the obvious -- and it is profound.The book, however, is not without its faults. Friedman champions systems theory to point of setting aside larger concerns. "Differentiation," for example, is not necessarily the highest good. People may find themselves in situations where they must set aside growth for the sake of higher values. Discerning those values will itself be problematic. More specifically, Friedman does not address the question of authenticity. Which values arise out of the self and which are externally imposed? The tension in a marriage relationship, for example, may be traceable to a wife's embrace of either feminist or traditional ideology. The question, therefore, will not be differentiation along the lines of one ideological stance versus fusion with its opposite. Rather, it will be fusion with which ideology. In the end, authentic differentiation may not be possible. The only decision may be the choice of which culture (which set of values) will define fusion versus differentiation.In the end, systems theory may be one of the most compelling realizations of Christian theology within nature. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exist in a relational network. Human beings, created in the image of God, follow the same pattern. The only difference is that the divine relationship is always functional while the human counterparts are often pathological. The divine network, however, is not without its stress. Human sin creates tension between God's mercy and His justice. God's response is to "triangle" humanity back into fellowship with Him via the cross. The church, in turn, is the historical continuation of that triangulation in the form of interlocking triangles that extend the resultant inheritance from "generation to generation." -- Bill Brewer[...]

This is a book to be absorbed slowly.I don't think I can summarize this book any better than Friedman himself does on page 1: "It is the thesis of this book that all clergymen and clergywomen, irrespective of faith, are simultaneously involved in three distinct families whose emotional forces interlock: the families within the congregation, our congregations, and our own. Because the emotional process in all of these systems is identical, unresolved issues in any one of them can produce symptoms in the others, and increased understanding of any one creates more effective functioning in all three."This book will invite you to take a good, hard look at your own functioning. "There is an intrinsic relationship between our capacity to put families together [or, Friedman would also say, to put congregations together] and our ability to put ourselves together" (page 3). Friedman looks at family issues and congregational issues from a systems perspective, arguing that when a member of a family (or a congregation) is demonstrating "symptoms," it is necessary to look at the whole network of relationships that that individual is involved in -- because the root cause of the problem may lie in a completely different part of the system.Friedman illustrates in detail how clergy can positively effect change in a family system or a congregational system. He also (somewhat indirectly) stresses the critical importance for clergy to resolve their own lingering family-of-origin issues.The book is heavy reading -- full of terms that may be unfamiliar (and that, unfortunately, he doesn't directly explain, which can be confusing at first), such as "identified patient" and "self-differentiation" and "detriangulating." Frankly, I think he could have used a good editor, so that the book would be more accessible to people who are new to the concepts of Bowen family systems theory.But don't miss this book. Read it, slowly. Digest it. Read a few pages at a time, then put it down and process what you have read before trying to proceed further. It took me months to work through the book. But I'm a heck of a lot stronger and wiser than I was when I first started. This book will help you grow.Then, if you want to keep learning and applying the concepts in this book, read Friedman's unfinished manuscript, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (available through the Edwin Friedman Trust), and/or do a Google search on The Center for Family Process in Bethesda, Maryland.

Friedman's book is a great compliment to any text on family systems theory/therapy and for those studying organizational leadership. He offers his own evidence as a religious leader of a congregation and as a father, but his work as a therapist lends deep insight in managing people toward healing and self-actualization. A leader's establishment of their own identify outside of a family/organizational system is almost radical in 1982, and yet the concept has not caught on as the world obsesses over sacrificing happiness and martyring oneself for more materialistic gains, overcoming competition or to fulfill the narrative that a happy family is one that is heavily interconnected. I cannot imagine what Friedman would think of parents friending and monitoring their children on Facebook or the tethering of technology and the resistance to Results-Oriented Work Environments.

Friedman's expansion of Murray Bowen's Family Systems Therapy, as Friedman it applies to Church organizations, is a ground-breaking work that will cause you to look at conflict and change in a whole new way. Unless you are a family systems therapist, this book will allow you another angle for resolution of issues. While some of the techniques explained seem as if they are applied to disconnected portions of the "family" system, his evidence for results seems uncontestable. The only issue is his neutral approach to the outcomes, which in the context of certain faith systems might be undesired (divorce for example, is seen as a desired resolution). That aside, and if one does not take this as scripture but as a flexible way to look at dynamics of human interaction, then this is a great book to buy and keep as a reference for pastoral care.

A well thought through alternative to approaching pastoral issues on an exclusively individual basis. So many insights. One of very few books I've had to (wanted to) re-read chapters to make sure I'd 'got it'. Would thoroughly recommend.

The book arrived in the delay and condition I expected, and it is a fascinating read - more technical than I originally thought (charts and diagrams), but that is a plus in many ways.

this is going to be very helpful in understanding strained relationships and work towards healthy interactions. The book was received in mint condition in a timely manner.