The description of Phase I above is an idealized version of our experience, as is any model; it is the minimum effective set of patterns which we have come to distill from our work in family therapy as adequate for Phase I. We have found it extremely useful in organizing our experiences in family therapy. We invite you to try it, change it, modify it in any way which makes it work for you, for your own personal style.
II. TRANSFORMING THE SYSTEM
Once the therapist has gathered enough information to understand, at least to some degree, the present state of the family system, the state desired by the family, and how the present state, as a system, is closed to the experiences desired by the family members, then he is ready to help create that experience — to take the steps necessary to make it possible for the system to transform itself. When we are training family therapists, the most common complaint we receive is that there is too much to keep track of. The purpose of this book is to assist you in understanding which elements you should pay attention to and which are extraneous. All too often, family therapists expend their major resources in focusing on every detail of the content of the problems of family members. The family members, however, are calibrated to the problem — operating on expectations and calibrated loops — and, even though there may be three, four, five or more of them, they have found no solution. Why, then, does the therapist think he can do more? The therapist's advantage lies in the realization that he also has calibrations, and so he focuses, not on the problems and content, but on the processes of coping and communicating. This allows him to select useful information from the perspective of process, instead of being overwhelmed by detail. Transforming the system will entail change at the coping level, not at the content level. A change in the system of how the people in a family give and receive messages from one another is the goal of family therapy, not the solution of problems — the problems are too many. Every day, people need to learn about coping — they need new tools at the process level. So, the therapist gathers information: a set of hopes (nominalizations) which the family members want, such as more love, affection, privacy, freedom, trust, respect, responsibility, etc. The therapist needs to find out which input channels and which output channels are essential for the family members to know when they are getting what they want. Comparing what is wanted with what is presently possible to express, based on the forms of calibration which exist in the family as they communicate about what it is that they do want, gives the therapist important information. One way to accomplish this is for the therapist to pick one set of hopes (nominalizations) — a desired state for all family members and then to create, with the family, an experience in this set of hopes (nominalizations) by using all of the techniques which are described here. The result is not just a single experience outside of the system, but, rather, it is something which is more important. In order for the family members to go from their present state to a single experience in the desired state, they must first learn about changing. They will have to break some calibrated loops, open up some new channels; they will find out how all of this can be done by the therapist's becoming a model from which they can learn.
For example, the husband (Fred) wants more attention from his wife (Mary). Mary wants more respect from Fred and their daughter. Daughter Judy wants freedom and the understanding from her parents that she is almost an adult. This constitutes one set of information. When the therapist understands how Fred knows when he isn't getting attention from his wife, Mary — what she would be doing (saying, or acting) that would allow him to know he is getting attention —he has a linguistic de-nominalization of the desired state. The therapist needs this same information for each family member. Next, the therapist will have to discern what it is that prevents each family member from perceiving that he is getting what he wants, or what stops other family members from giving him what he wants. This is a second important set of information. For example, Fred might say, "I know my wife is paying attention to me when she is being affectionate and she is touching me." This means that all of the attention Mary gives Fred which is not kinesthetic (touching) is outside of Fred's experience. Presently, he can detect and appreciate attention only through his skin and not through his eyes. So, when Mary is paying attention to Fred but not touching him, he doesn't respond. The result is that Mary feels that Fred doesn't respect her.
These sets of information can be compared to help you understand this process of coping which is not coping at all with respect to the desires of the family members. The desired state is outside of the limits of a system which is closed in this way. The task of the therapist is to lead the family members to the experience of getting what they want with three general strategies:
a) Intervention by challenging fixed generalizations from the past (calibrated communication cycles);
b) Giving perspective of process (achieving meta-position to system processes);
c) Transforming the system by re-calibration.
These three tactics will overlap with respect to individual techniques, but the result will be to teach the family the skills of all three strategies, as well as helping them obtain what they desire. So, transforming a system is really adding to the system the tools necessary to achieve any desired state, by showing the family members how it can be done. The family will learn tools to break calibrated communication, tools to focus on process, and tools to communicate in new and more satisfying ways. This is what makes the task of a family therapist primarily that of an educator.
Tools for Intervening to Challenge Fixed Generalizations from the Past (Calibrated Communication Cycles)
In order for a therapist to help create an experience which is an example of the desired state but which is outside of the possibilities of the present state of the family system, calibrated loops will have to be broken. Family members will have to see, hear, and feel in new ways so that they can respond in these new ways. The transformations which are necessary for this to take place must start with the therapist. He will have to intervene in the ongoing process and provide new examples of how to respond and how to understand those new responses. Interventions which break calibrated loops can occur at any of the five transition points from which they were originally constructed:
1. Personal communicates incongruently;
2. Person B decides to which message he will respond;
3. Person B generalizes about his feelings and his decision about the messages;
4. Person B builds fixed generalizations (Complex Equivalences);
5. Person B Mind Reads Person A (is calibrated).
The therapist can intervene at one or more of these points. A complete intervention will require that the therapist break in cyclically through this process until the calibration is broken and the family members learn how to get feedback instead of calibrated communication. The particular content of the broken calibration is important only with respect to achieving the goal of providing an experience which is an example of the desired state. The real value of the intervention is the degree to which it teaches the family members that feedback will get them more of what they want than will calibrated communication and that they will learn much more about the other family members when they use feedback to break calibrated loops on their own.