Critical Views of the Family

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Critical Views of the Family

• Radical Psychiatry

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Edmund Leach

• In Runaway World Leach suggests that the
  nuclear family is a negative force in industrial
  society
• Modern nuclear families he argues are isolated
  from kin and community.
• He compares the nuclear family to an overloaded
  electrical circuit
• Because it is isolated family members expect far
  too much from their families

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Edmund Leach 2

• Isolation and over expectation cause stress and
  tension within families
• Isolated stressed families also results in hate
  and fear in wider society too the privatised
  family huddles together and grows fearful and
  mistrustful of the outside world.
• Privacy is the source of fear and violence.
  Violence in the world comes because human beings
  are forever creating barriers between men who are
  like us and men who are not like us

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Edmund Leach 3

• Leach concludes that people need to break out of
  the oppressive prison of the nuclear family and
  reconnect with society
• His conclusion is the complete opposite of the
  functionalist view
• Far from being the basis of the good society,
  the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry
  secrets, is the source of all our discontents

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RD Laing The Politics of the Family

• Laing studied the connection between family
  experience and the development of schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia he argues can only be understood in
  the context of family relationships
• Within the context of a families interactions a
  schizophrenics behaviour can be seen as
  reasonable.

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Laing

• Families Laing argues operate on the basis of
  alliances and tactical games for favour
• The family is seen as a destructive and
  exploitative institution.

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The example of Jane

• Jane is diagnosed as schizophrenic and appears to
  live in a dream world sitting motionless
• She believes herself to be in a game of tennis
  (mixed doubles). She is the ball.
• Her mother and father constantly fight and use
  Jane as the go between.
• When the strain is too much she disappears into
  her dream world.
• Even in her dream she cannot escape family
  conflict as the dream symbolises the way her
  family interact

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How Families are harmful

• Laing argues the families battle for acceptance,
  respect, concern and attention.
• There is a constant battle with family members
  seeking protection from the negative opinions of
  other family members
• Families act as gangsters offering mutual
  protection against each others violence

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How the Family harms society

• Families draw a defensive barrier between
  themselves and the outside world
• This results in attitudes which see the world as
  them and us the foundations of racist
  attitudes
• Families value obedience. This produces
  authoritarian personalities who believe that
  orders should always be followed without question
  there are many negative consequences to this

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Criticisms of Leach and Laing

• Laings researched is restricted to the families
  of schizophrenics
• Both ignore social factors such as class and
  ethnicity
• Their work lacks historical perspective
• They have been characterised as extreme views
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