All in the Family
Archibald Hart
Every problem has a context, and to solve a problem we often have to work on the context.
—Archibald Hart
Until she turned fifty, Marjorie had been an "ideal" housewife and mother. She had without complaint sacrificed her needs to move with her husband to the country so he could set up shop as a lawyer in a small town. She had raised a daughter to the conservative standards of their town. She was faithful in attendance at church and the women's group and regularly volunteered for Sunday school duty.
When she turned fifty, though, she began to wonder if life wasn't passing her by. She became lethargic. She thought her life dull and meaningless and without hope. She became severely depressed. She talked of suicide.
That's when she came to see me. She remained depressed until her 17-year-old daughter began dating, weekly going out drinking and dancing in a nearby city.
Suddenly the mother came out of her depression: she started dressing like a teenager and mimicking her daughter—much to her daughter's embarrassment. The daughter got angry, and the next thing I discovered was that the daughter became pregnant.
Somehow most of this was kept from the busy husband. But when he discovered what had been going on, he became extremely depressed himself. He tried to placate his wife and keep her out of the view of the townspeople, setting her up in a separate apartment in the city.
What's the problem here? Partly, it's the wife. She just could not handle aging. She had never come to terms with getting old.
But had I counseled this woman as if she were the problem, I would have missed the larger dynamic.
After bringing the husband and daughter into counseling, I realized the wife had, with the husband's prodding, become deeply enmeshed in her ...
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