PRIMACY OF FAMILY OF ORIGIN
VERSUS FAMILY OF PROCREATION
Male addicts who are married or living with a woman are involved in
at least two intimate interpersonal
systems—that of the marriage and that
of the family of origin. Since more time is generally spent in the marital context, this system would appear to be the
more influential one in maintaining the drug pattern. This idea made sense to
us and our studies initially focused
on the addict's marriage. It was also easier, because the addicts much more readily acknowledged a marital prob-lem than difficulties with their parents. They
tended to pronounce their independence
from parents, saying they had outgrown the family, or the family had given up on them. Further, in looking at the marriage, it
did indeed seem to contribute to symptom maintenance. However, as our work progressed and we
began to make interventions, we found that this approach did not
go far enough. Couples treatment appeared to stress the marriage so
that, as Chein et al." have noted, the addict would leave his spouse and
return home to his parent( s). It sometimes seemed as if he were just
waiting for an excuse to rebound back to them. It became evident
that we could not deal with the spouse system alone and ignore the
parental system if treatment were to succeed. (This is consonant with the
findings of Eldred and Washington" that, in general, addicts believed the family of
origin or the in-laws would be more helpful
to them in their attempts to give up drugs than an opposite-sex partner.) Without getting ahead of
ourselves, we noted, as did
Scher,'''' that parental permission was often quite tentative for the addict to have a viable ma rriage.* There was
a subtle pull for him to
*The senior author (Stanton)
has asserted elsewhere'" that the majority of all marriages that fail do so
because one or both partners do not have
parental permission
for the marriage to succeed return. The conveyed inessage was, "Well,
if you have trouble with your wife, you can always come back and stay with us.-
While this might have a noble, -caring- ring to it, covertly it is an instruction
for him not to be too
content with his spouse. A truly successful marriage would signify that his parents had "lost- him.
As a perhaps interesting sidelight, we observed
three general types of relationships within one dyad of the system, that is, between the addict's spouse and his mother. In one type
there was overt conflict and they rarely if
ever spoke or came in contact. In the second, the daughter-in-law was tolerated, but mother
frequently endeavored to undercut the
marriage, usually through subtle means. For instance, on visits to the clinic she might make a point of
sitting between her son and his wife,
or she might mention how of ten he had been dropping by to visit her and tell her his troubles—visits of
which the wife was unaware. She might,
in addition, -let slip- information about his extramarital affairs or other transgressions that would upset the wife. The third type of relationship was somewhat
different. Here the mother and the daughter-in-law joined in what can
best be described as two sisters or young
mothers responding to the addict much as they would if he were a baby in a playpen. They would fawn over him, chuckle when he stumbled or made a mistake, and
rush to his aid if he hurt himself. They seemed to be happiest when his
behavior was most child-like. Thus
his incompetence brought them pleasure.
DUNCAN STANTON - THOMAS C. TODD
DUNCAN STANTON - THOMAS C. TODD
