Dr.Phil and the Family

The first thing I need to say on this post, is that I am not a Dr. Phil fan. If you think he is the best thing to come around since sliced bread, well I will pray for you. My primary reason for not liking Dr. Phil is that in his books, he essentially says we need to get rid of all moral authority because it has bound us and keeps us under its heavy weight. However, he then proceeds to become the moral authority. He sets himself up to be the readers only friend or at least the only one on his or her side. I have difficulty with this, because there are a lot of people on my side. God is one of those on my side and God is the only moral authority I need.

Anyway, I happened to be home one day when my wife was at home as well and she was watching Dr. Phil. I admit it, I watched it with her. Understand this Dr. Phil is not a therapist, he is a consultant, he has no liscense in any state and it is unclear he was ever a liscensed therapist. This particular episode of Dr. Phil featured a family who was having a great deal of difficulty with thier oldest daughter. If I remember correctly there were two children the oldest being a daughter and the youngest a boy. The youngest in the family was barely mentioned. The mother and the father were both on the show and the mother was the first to talk. She talked about how her husband was too hard on thier daughter and that some of his discipline was extreme. For example he would make her stand in the corner with her arms outstretched for up to four hours, he would send het to bed without eating and various other such things. The father explained that he believed discipline should be strict and did not think that this was over the top.

This conversation took about five minutes and then they did this little film footage thing about the daughter. It showed how she had run away from home, would disapear for a few days, how she cussed out her mother, yelled at her father and other such things. This took about ten minutes, then they went to commercial. They came back and Dr. Phil started asking the father questions about his relationship with his daughter. The questioning lasted quite a while and then Dr. Phil met with the daughter and talked to her about her actions and such. Lastly he came back to the couple and talked more about the daughter, with a brief thirty second line to the mother about her need to realize that she is too passive. All in all 99% of the show was focused on the daughter, the identified patient.

Here is my problem, the daughter is the identified patient, but it seems to me that she is acting out the problems in the marriage and the family system. Therefore it is the family system that needs to be focused on, not just the daughter. In my opinion, Dr. Phil actually exasperates the problem, because he keeps the focus on the daughter. It was briefly mentioned that the mother felt that the father was too controlling and emotionally distant. It seems to me that the first issue to take care of in the family system is the stress between the mother and father. In other words, they have an issue (or more likely issues) between themselves, but rather than handle that issue, they have chosen to focus on the daughter. Hence, unconsciously, the daughter has been taught that if she acts out, then her parents get along better. The reality is though, it just gives them and excuse not to handle thier problems. The more they focus on the daughter, the less they fight. They can have a common enemy to fight in the daughter. Thus, they have a false intimacy, not a true sharing of each other. You see if one coaches or counsels the daughter into being healthy, the parents are going to put unconscious pressure on her to return to the "normal" roll of the trouble maker, because this keeps them from fighting. However, if the whole family is looked upon as a system and whole family coached, then a truly healthy family can begin.

I believe that this focus on the individual is a problem in American culture. Do not get me wrong, I do not blame the parents, nor do I take away individual responsibility. Each individual in a system needs to change, because they have all added to the problem. However, individuals exists within emotional systems and each one of these puts pressure on the individual to act a certain way and play a certain roll. We have to be aware of our connection to other people and how our actions affect them. We tend to think of individual rights, what I do is my own business and nobody else will get hurt. This is wrong. Whatever we do affects other people, we are all connected. We need to remember this and think about our own actions and how they affect others.

Dane