Chapter Seven The Relationship

1
Chapter SevenThe Relationship

• The basic unit of relationship is not the person
  nor two individuals but interaction, behaviors
  responding to other behaviors.
• Palo Alto Group ( a bit of cybernetics)
• focuses on the premise that when two people
  communicate they are defining their relationship.

2
In the presence of other people

• you are always expressing something about your
  relationship with the other person, whether
  conscious or not.
• Patterns are established because any behavior is
  potentially communicative.

3
patterns

• a) One pattern that emerges is the symmetrical
  relationship where communications respond in the
  same way and sometimes lead to power struggles.
• b) Another pattern is the complementary
  relationship where communications respond in
  opposing ways and has the potential for
  dominant-submissive relationships.

4
control in a relationship

• four ways a person may respond to an assertion by
  another.
• 1. A one-down means the person accepts the
  assertion.
• 2. A one-up response is when the person rejects
  the assertion and makes another.
• 3. A one-across move means the person neither
  accepts or rejects the assertion.
• 4. A complementary exchange occurs when one
  person asserts a one-up and the other responds
  with a one-down.

5
The Sociopsychological Tradition

• employs variable analysis and relies on typing
  and characterizing individuals and relationships
• Relational schemas in the family describes
  different family types and explains the
  differences among them.

6
Schemas, or more specifically relational schemas

• are the ways in which family members think about
  families. It addresses three areas of content
  knowledge.
• a) What you know about relationships
  in general.
• b) What you know about family
  relationships as a type.
• c) What you know about your
  relationship with other family members of your
  own family.

7
In addition to content knowledge

• a familys schema includes a certain type of
  orientation to communication, either conversation
  orientation or conformity orientation.

8
These various schemas create four family types

• Consensual families are high in conversation and
  conformity
• (1) The parents make decisions.
• (2) They tend to be traditional in marriage
  orientation, and have little conflict.

9
four family types

• Pluralistic families are high in conversation and
  low in conformity.
• (1) They tend to have parents who do not
  control.
• (2) They are independent and unconventional
  in their views about marriage, and have many
  conflicts

10
four family types

• Protective families are low in conversation and
  high in conformity.
• (1) They tend to have parents who are
  ambivalent about their relationship and are typed
  as separates.
• (2) They may have conventional views of
  marriage views but as emotionally divorced they
  do not share much and are quick to retreat from
  conflicts.

11
four family types

• Laissez-faire families are low in conversation
  and low in conformity
• (1) They tend to not care what other family
  members do.
• (2) They are mixed in terms of marriage views , a
  combination of separate and independent.

12
Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylors social
penetration theory

• identifies the process of increasing disclosure
  and intimacy within a relationship.
• It was premised on the economic proposition that
  human beings make decisions based on costs and
  rewards, or social exchange.
• Social exchange theory says you seek to maximize
  rewards and minimize costs.

13
social penetration theory

• You reveal information about yourself when the
  cost-rewards ratio is acceptable to you.
• There are four stages of relational development.
• a) Orientation is when only very public
  information is exchanged.
• b) Exploratory affective exchange
  is when deeper disclosure takes place.
• c) Affective exchange is when
  critical and evaluative feedback takes place.
• d) Stable exchange is highly
  imitative and allows partners to predict each
  others actions.

14
The Sociocultural Tradition

• theory of relationships shifts to an emphasis on
  interaction, and a focus on typology to process
  explanations.

15
Mickhail Bakhtins theory of dialogics

• A dialectical theory of relationships
• emerged from the work of Leslie Baxter and
  explores ways in which persons in relationship
  use communication to manage the naturally
  opposing forces that impinge on their
  relationship.

16
dialectic

• 1. A dialectic is a tension between opposing
  forces.
• 2. A dialogue is a coming together of diverse
  voices in a conversation.
• a) Relationships are made in dialogue.
• b) At the same time you also identify
  differences between yourself and the other
  person which enables you to develop as a person,
  or self-becoming.
• c) Dialogue affords an opportunity to achieve
  a unity within the diversity.
• d) Through dialogue we manage contradictions,
  or dialectics.

17
dialectic

• 3. Relationships are dynamic. Five qualities
  change as relationships develop.
• a) Amplitude or strength
  of feelings, behaviors or both.
• b) Salience or focus on
  past, present, and future.
• c) Scale or how long
  patterns last.
• d) Sequence or order
  of events in the relationship.
• e) Pace or rhythm is
  the rapidity of events in the relationship.
• 4. Dialogue is aesthetic and involves a sense of
  coherence, or form or wholeness.
• 5. Dialogue is discourse and is the idea that the
  practical and aesthetic outcomes are not things
  in themselves but are made, or created in
  dialogue.

18
The Phenomenological Tradition

• focuses on the internal, conscious experience of
  the person.

19
Carl Rogers self-theory

• says the self cannot be separated from the
  relationship and thus leads to empathy.
• 1. Your overall experience as a person
  constitutes your phenomenal field.
• 2. The self is an organized set of perceptions
  about who you are and what distinguishes you from
  others.
• 3. As the self grows, you want autonomy
  and growth.
• a) Congruence, or consistency, means you
  feel clear about who you are and where you fit in
  the world.
• b) Incongruence refers to feeling confused and
  yourself and where you fit in the world.
• 4. Relationships characterized by negative
  criticism breed incongruence while supportive
  relationships produce congruency.
• 5. The study of these helping, healthy
  relationships led Rogers to develop
  client-centered therapy, person-centered
  communication.

20
Martin Bubers studies of religion

• provided a coherent view of what it means to be a
  human being in modern times and defines God as a
  special type of relationship referred to as a
  dialogue.
• 1. In an I-Thou relationship, you see yourself
  and others as whole persons who cannot be reduced
  to characterizations.
• 2. In I-It relationships, you think of the
  other person as an object to be labeled,
  manipulated, changed, and maneuvered to your own
  belief.
• 3. There are three types of interaction within
  an I-It frame.
• a) In monologues you privilege your ideas and
  interests over those of others.
• b) Technical dialogue is exchange about
  information rather than participants experience.
• c) Disguised monologue is where participants
  talk around issues without honestly engaging the
  self and other.