Family dynamics and therapeutic interventions in Parent Trap

¶ … Parent Trap 1 and 2" is a movie that depicts a family that would benefit from family counseling. Using Bowen's Family Systems Therapy and McGoldric's Ethnicity and Family Therapy, the following essay outlines the cultural and social contributors to this family's issues. Drawing on the theoretical approaches covered in this course, the following is a 15-page analysis of the family dynamics and structures that are causing the presenting problems. It provides ample examples and explain relevant theoretical notions. It also describes the strengths and resources that would enable this family to tackle these issues more effectively. Finally, it develops and justifies three culturally sensitive therapeutic interventions: family intervention, dyad, and individual.

I decided to use the "Parent Trap" since it revolves around a family conflict -- children separated from parents - and show the subsequent stressors. Both twins (Hallei and Annie) have a divided picture of their lives. It is only when their picture is merged that they can feel complete. Bowen's Family Therapy is, I feel, ideally suited to this situation since she talks about stress of one individual being exacerbated within and by family, of this stress expanding by involvement of others within 'triangle', and of need to differentiate one. The triangle was extending in Parent Trap 2 by Susan becoming involved with the family comedy almost imploding into tragedy.

Bowenian therapy would focus on having twins and other family members understand the family dynamics and help them differentiate themselves.

I further decided to use MacDougal's theory, too, to help Hallie, Annie, and their parents in Parent Trap One and Sharon, Susan and Nikki in Parent Trap 2. Whilst MacDougal's theory of ethnicity, as I show, is irrelevant to this family who are educated, multi-generation American, influential Whites, and the theory of genograms is extremely relevant since various striking patterns have been transmitted through three generations that are played in the movies. The therapist can practice individual, dyadic, and family therapy by informing members of these genotypes and helping them better recognize their roots.

The Parent Trap

The Parent Trap is an endearing move about twins (Hallie Parker and Annie James) who have been separated at birth and find themselves in a girl's camp after a quarrel and punishment to be related. Each pretends to be the other and goes off to the other's home for one to find that her father is intending to remarry. Displeased with the woman and determined to stop it, the girls intervene, the parents reunite only to briefly quarrel before making up their differences. Parent Trap 1 also leads into Parent Trap 2 where the girls many years later are adult. They are now called Sharon and Susan. Sharon is divorced and planning to move to New York. Nikki, her daughter resists. Meanwhile Nikki has a best friend in her class (called Mary Grand ) who wants Nikki's mother to marry her father, Bill. The classmates try various strategies each of which backfired. Eventually they bring Susan who lives now in LA into the scheme. With her husband, a Navy official, abroad, Susan impersonates the sister, with Bill wanting to marry her as a result. The plot straightens out in a funny twist, and Sharon almost leaves for NY, but for the girls stranding man and woman on the sea and Sharon and Bill agreeing to marry.

Bowne's Family Therapy

Family therapy, developed by Murray Bowen, believes that all problems of the individual stem from the family. Families are interconnected; an integrated whole and any emotional dysfunction originates therefrom. Each family member seeks approval from the other; some end up as scapegoats. Whilst too there is interdependence, at the same time there is a huge amount of independence and when one family member feels stress, this stress escalates and rubs off onto he others with the result that each member is stressed and effect the family dynamics as a whole. The emotional system is, therefore, at the core of the family functioning.

This emotional system is aroused by external factors and by a system of emotional stress that may be internal in the family and be passed down to it as inheritance., if family does not react to it productively, it may affect each of the members and cause ongoing destructive stress.

Example from Parent Trap:

Elizabeth and Nick are divorced. Hallie and Annie, their twin daughters, are unaware of this; each thinks their missing parent has died. Each twin has her individual problems. Even when reunited, the twins realize that to be happy they need to have the parents together or, at least, each needs to be with both parents. Each twin breaks up and dissimulates to seek the other parent. They call each other regularly. They're unhappy apart. They seek an integrated family unit. The scenes that show us the private life of each parent also indicate how lack of closure invests a sense of anxiety. Neither parent has managed to get on with his or her life. It needs their daughters to bring them together, but until the twins do so and succeed they evidence a huge amount of anxiety, squabbling, and stress that impacts the larger family group (grandparents, butler and housekeeper) from both sides and eventuate in the parents quarreling:

Hallie as Annie: His and hers kids. No offense, Mom, but this arrangement really sucks.

Elizabeth James: I agree, it totally sucks. (Imdb. Memorable quotes for the Parent Trap (1998) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120783/quotes)

In a longer sequence, we see this same stress:

Annie: Hallie, what was your mother like?

Hallie: I never met her. She and my Dad split up when I was a baby, maybe even before, I'm not sure. He doesn't really like to talk about her... But I know she was really beautiful.

Annie: How do you know that?

Hallie: Because my dad had this old picture of her hidden in his sock drawer and he caught me looking at it all the time so he gave it to me to keep. & #8230; (ibid.)

They talk about their pictures:

Annie: Mine's a pathetic little thing, ripped right down the middle... What are you rummaging in your trunk for this time?

Hallie: [she finally faces Annie as she hold a picture to her chest] This. it's the picture of my Mom. And it's ripped too.

Annie: [knowing] Right down the middle?

Hallie: [nervously] Right down the middle. (ibid.)

The picture ripped down the middle is symptomatic. The family is ripped apart. All are suffering, experiencing stress:

[they both gasp as they place the photo together and realize... ]

Hallie: That's my Dad...

Annie: That's my Mom...

Hallie: [as she wipes away her tears] I'm not so hungry anymore. So if your Mom is my Mom and my Dad is your Dad... And we're both born on October 11th, then you and I are... like... sisters. (ibid.)

There is the closure with the recognition:

Annie: Sisters? Hallie, we're like twins!

Hallie: Oh my god!

Annie: Oh my god!

[they hug] (ibid.)

The fact that that each of their pictures is ripped down the middle is telling in a Brownian sort of way. The family is ripped down the middle in stress. With the twin reuniting -- hugging -- and with each putting the pictures together the stress has started to dissipate.

Parent Trap 2 shows similar dynamics with neither Nikki nor Mary able to continue with life until her has parent has remarried. Sharon too still feels unsettled after her divorce. This introduces stress which Nikki seeks to defuse. She brings in her aunt. This stress then travels like a triangle through the whole pyramid. The entire family is stressed. Since Mary too is stressed and wishes her father to remarry, this element of stress impacts her father too. The stress travels back and forth, stirred and intensified by the classmates, until Sharon and Bill marry each other.

Bowen presented eight interlocking aspects for understanding the situation in order to promote effective therapy. Each, in this essay, is connected to the case history in Parent Trap and elaborated on below:

1 - Emotional Fusion and Differentiation of Self

This is where individual choices are set aside for the sake of stabilizing the whole. It can be expressed as "a sense of intense responsibility for another's reactions" (Kerr and Bowen, 1988, p. 15) or by "emotional cutoff from the tension within a relationship" (Herz Brown, 1991, p. 21).

This is the opposite of differentiation where individual makes self-directed choices within family system (Kerr and Bowen, 1988). Bowen's 'differentiation of self-scale' serves as instrument to measure this. At the one extreme you have 'complete differentiation' where individual has totally shifted out of triangle and is able to function as independent within family group despite family stressors. Bowen said that this is uncommon

2. Triangles

This process of triangles is central to Bowen's theory. Triangling occurs when a third party steps in who either takes a certain side or creates a detour for the anxiety (Lerner, 1988; James, 1989; Guerin, Fogarty, Fay and Kautto, 1996).

Family therapy believes that problems that the individuals evidence stem from the fact that problems occur within the family unit itself and that the family is divided into several component parts. To address these problems the therapist, as it were, therefore steps into the family unit, becomes "a part of it" and intervenes. His doing so not only enables him to see the family patterns from the inside; thereby understanding faults of fission but also enable him to practice therapy. Intervention in the family is called enactment.

Enactment refers to the therapist encouraging acting of dysfunctional relationship patterns within the family therapy session and him acting out some of this behavior by actually entering the family unit. The therapist thereby learns about the family's structure and interactional patterns and is able to interfere in the process by modifying some of the negative elements, pointing these out, intensifying positive elements, and modifying others. The therapist may also have the family enact more positive transactional patterns which will serve as a guideline for continued positive family interactions outside therapy.

Triangle positions come out more clearly under stress when external others may intercede in the problem crating many more 'corners' to the stress. In Parent Trap this is seen where the housekeeper steps in and criticizes Nick ("I'm not saying anything but…"). It can also be seen where the grandfather intervenes to help the twins out. The stress has spread to another corner. In Parent Trap 2, the same can be seen where Susan is dragged into the picture and complicates the affair. The greater the degree of fusion in a relationship, the more intense the pull to preserve emotional stability by forming a triangle. We see this particularly with Susan's interference, where the relationship had a great deal of stability and the aunt wanted to preserve this. Sometimes, when the third party is drawn in triangulating becomes problematic and the scheme can become complex. When the grandfather was drawn in such was not the case, but it certainly became so with the aunt.

Bowen's thesis too is that the triangle can become an inter-generational inheritance. Hypothetical though the Parent Trap may be, we certainly see the theme of conflict handed down to the twins as they mature into adulthood. Susan herself remarks that she seems to be handed the role of peacemaker by using her identity of twin hood to over and again simulate the other.

3 - Nuclear Family Emotional System

Undifferentiating can result in three different categories:

a. couple conflict; - this is an emotionally intense relationship where each is unable to separate from the other and views the others as criticizing the one and perceives the emotional state of the other as his particular responsibility (Kerr and Bowen, 1988: 192).

b. illness in a spouse;

Responsibility may lead to one spouse controlling the other and the other feeling a sense of powerlessness, dependence eon the other. The dependent one may feel symptoms such as depression, substance abuse and chronic pain, whilst the other may become overburdened by attempts to make things 'right'

c. Projection of a problem onto one or more children.

This is when a child develops behavioral or emotional problems and is discussed in Bowen's fourth category:

4 - Family Projection Process

Children develop systems of stress when they get caught up within the inter-generational dyad of quarreling. This is seen all too clearly in Parent Trap when Annie and Hallie feel incomplete parts with each feeling they have a parent missing from their lives (evocatively portrayed by the picture torn in the middle). They then get caught up in the anxiety of figuratively putting these two picture together and making their life one whole.

A detouring triangle is created when attention from parent stress (other family stressor) is deflected to suffering child. This is what the twins attempted to do in Parent Trap when they asked their father to choose between the twins or between Meredith Blake. In both the 1961 version and the newer version of 1998, this happened too when Elizabeth and Nik had to decide how to reconcile their differences in order to make both children content. In both events, tension in marriage was decreased.

5 - Emotional Cutoff

This may be emotional or physical where stressor is so great that family member removes himself form triangle. Says Bowen:

If one does not see himself as part of the system, his only options are either to get others to change or to withdraw. If one sees himself as part of the system, he has a new option: to stay in contact with others and change self (Kerr and Bowen, 1988: 272-273).

A central Bowenian theory is that the more individuals retain emotional contact with previous generations, the less stressful reaction they are bound to feel

6 - Multi-generational Transmission Process

Patterns, themes and positions (roles) in a triangle are passed down from generation to generation are passed down through generations from parent to child. Understanding this can help the characters. As Monica McGoldrick (1995: 20) writes in applying Bowenian concepts:

By learning about your family and its history and getting to know what made family members tick, how they related, and where they got stuck, you can consider your own role, not simply as victim or reactor to your experiences but as an active player in interactions that repeat themselves.

This could certainly help the characters in Parent Trap 2, particularly Susan who seems fated to over and again play the part of her twin, pretend to be the other, in order to save the family.

7 - Sibling Positions

Sibling positions, Bowen theorized, play a part in determining the kind of role that siblings will take in healing the family. In BOTH Parent Trap 1 and 2, the children were the oldest in both cases. Both showed a responsibility to diffusing the stressors. Clients in Bowen's therapy were encouraged to see connection between their sibling role and their attitude towards stressor and, thereby, to differentiate themselves.

Develop and justify three culturally sensitive therapeutic interventions (family intervention, dyad, and individual)

The main goal of Bowenian therapy is to diffuse anxiety by:

1. facilitating awareness of how the emotional system functions; and

2. Increasing levels of differentiation of family members, where the focus is on making changes for the self rather than on trying to change others.

In other words, when connected to the twins in Parent Trap and providing individual therapy, the therapist would:

1. help each twin and family member see what it is that gives them the emotional stress that each feels and,

2. Increase the levels of differentiation of family members by separating each twin from the other, separating mother from father - making each feel an individual in her own right. This same thing would be achieved in Parent Trap 2 where the two classmates would be separated from one another -- showed how they can live separately and how Nikki can adapt in New York, also how each parent can effectively live single lives. Focusing on the individuality would break the buildup of stress within the family.

Three culturally sensitive therapeutic interventions would be family intervention, dyad, and individual where, as family intervention, the therapist will enter this situation by uncovering and teasing apart each of these family dynamics. She will then reenact these trends within the session helping Anie / Sharon and Hallie / Susan to embellish on some that are positive, reduce others, and modify still others. The therapist too may include other family members so that all are involved in changing the destructive family dynamics. By helping the family to understand that the roots of their problems originate in these substructures and by helping them change and appreciate them, the therapist uses structural therapy to alter behavior. So for instance, - and this may be individual intervention - in Parent Trap 2, Nikki may be brought to see how her behavior parallels that of previous behavior, and seems to be a pattern. Nikki too may be brought to see that her behavior is like that of her aunt where either refuses to accept the situation and strains to get their way regardless of change.

Elizabeth and Nik too in Parent Trap 1 need enormous help with their communication that seems to inevitably result in conflict. This would be dyadic intervention where therapist's focus is on couple. The sudden dream-ending of the movie does not resolve this and we get the feeling that the conflict will continue. If so, it is bound to affect the twins. Helping them realize this and change this mode of communication may help not only parents but, in extension, their children and anyone else involved in the triangle (Bowen Theory. Multigenerational Transmission Process http://www.thebowencenter.org/pages/conceptmtp.html).

As per treatment, Bowen recommends that client goes back to family of origin in order to establish a connection. The therapist is also interested in the family's history of dealing with emotional stress. Re-establishing contact with previous generations and understanding them may help both father and mother understand their inevitable pull towards strife. Connecting to their roots certainly made both twins feel whole.

Part II McGoldrick -- Ethnicity and Family Therapy

Monica McGoldrick's therapy is divded into two categires: (1) Ethnicty (2) Genograms. Each will be discussed separately.

Monica McGoldrick and Genograms

In her well-known book, "You Can Go Home Again: Reconnecting With Your Family" (1997), McGoldrick talks about genograms saying that however far we have distanced ourselves from our family, we always remain connected to this 'family tree' and their patterns of conduct replicate themselves. McGoldrick uses genograms (family trees) to illustrate family patterns to discuss the influence of birth order and sibling rivalry, family myths and secrets, cultural differences, couple relationships, and the pivotal role of loss. Once we remember the past, says McGoldrick, we can transform the future.

Genograms look like the following image:

They can be prepared via word processor, or a computer drawing program. There are also computer programs that are custom designed for genograms. The symbols represent gender; the lines represent family relationships. The genograms contain a detailed history of the family including illnesses and events that happened to them. In this way, we can trace recurrent patterns.

We can do little in connecting McGoldrick's first thesis (of race) tot the Parent Trap, but the Parent Trap 1 and its sequel Parent Trap 2 are more than adequately realized by McGoldrick thesis of genograms.

In Parent Trap One, the parents are separated and the twins pretend to be the other in order to reunite them. In Parent Trap 2, Sharon is divorced from her husband and Susan again pretends to be her sibling in order to bring stability into her sister's life. The pattern of divorce and masquerade continues. Sharon's daughter, Nikki, also gains the idea of interfering in her mother's life from Sharon's own experiences of intervention. It is her mother's history that gives her the inspiration for repeating it. The genograms are evident.

The twins, in Parent Trap One, also had to reconnect with their past. Once they knew who they were and where they came from, they could move forward and choose their future.

Genograms may also include emotional relationships which indicate the way that people within the family interact with one another (McGoldrick, M. And Gerson, 1985). The Genogram for Emotions looks like the following image:

It is interesting to note that the loving reciprocal relationship of Hallie and Annie was transmitted to Sharon's own daughter where she was able to love her friend, Mary Grand, in the same direct, transparent way. She may have been influenced by seeing the way her own mother, Sharon, interacted with her aunt, Susan.

There is one other genogram that comes into relevance in the family history of the twins and this is the Relationship genogram. The Relationships genogram traces different types of relationships such as family relationships, emotional relationships and social relationships that have happened within the family (Hartman, 1995) as illustrated by the following image:

Note that Nik seemed to make reckless and ill-informed choices regarding the person he wished to marry being firstly divorced from the twin's mother before plunging into love with Meredith Blake, an opportunistic woman far younger than he who in actuality despised him and sought his money. These ill-informed marital choices may have been repeated by Sharon since we receive the inference that her former husband mistreated her, and we are told that he was distant from the lives of both his wife and his daughter. Nik was also unhappy in her first marriage. Awareness of this tendency to select unhealthy spouses may help both Sharon and Nikki in the future as well as the offspring of both Sharon and Susan.

Develop and justify three culturally sensitive therapeutic interventions (family intervention, dyad, and individual)

Each of the family members may be helped by therapist drawing up for them their genograms and by way of doing so illustrating how their behavior patterns tend to be repeated throughout the generations. Knowing this can influence them to actively search for ways to break this pattern would they so wish to do so.

One destructive pattern that the twins may wish to break is the destructive family communication that appears between the parents in Parent Trap 1 and later obliquely appears in Parent Trap 2 where Susan pretends to be a single woman who woos a man without informing her husband. This lack of communication may have, if not for Sharon's intervention, led to critical consequences. It also indicates that Susan may have inherited her parents' communication patterns. The therapy can be dyadic or individual: dyadic in that both partners work on understanding each other and building up their communication together; individual in that each twin and their children understand the patterns intrinsic to the family. Again, this knowledge can be relayed within the format of family therapy where the family meets as a whole and their genograms drawn up for the enlightenment of the unit.

Sharon too at the end of the tale is entering a new relationship that began with conflict. She has also had a history of divorce. It may be helpful for her to see the replication of her patterns as transmitted from the past.