In the fall of 2006, I’ll be returning (for the first time in five years) to a course I love. Back in 1998, inspired by a conversation with my mother, I decided to develop and teach a course on "The Dysfunctional Family and the Western Tradition." I worked quickly to pull together a syllabus, and taught it for the first time (under the rubric of Humanities, which allows us to teach anything we like) in the spring semester of 1999.
I have long been a huge fan of pop psychologist John Bradshaw. He’s the fellow normally given credit for championing the notion of the "inner child", an important concept now widely ridiculed. His bestselling books on family dynamics, shame, and love contain a certain amount of hokum — but also some tremendously valuable tools for understanding ourselves, our upbringing, and the possibility of healing.
I decided to use Bradshaw’s wonderful, controversial, and oft-maligned On the Family as the basic text for the course. I then added the Book of Genesis, Euripides’s Medea, Hamlet, and Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to the syllabus. After one semester, I dropped Hamlet and replaced it with Ibsen’s The Doll’s House. I invited my students to read the opening book of the bible along with these three classic plays from different times and places in Western culture — all through the perspective of a modern understanding of family dynamics.
On the one hand, the course was a huge hit from the first time I taught it. On the other hand, I knew perfectly well that it was — and is — whoppingly anachronistic and reductionist to use the work of a pop psychologist to reinterpret four masterworks of Western civilization. From a faith perspective, it’s understandably dicey to have students earnestly discussing the role of alcoholism and family secrecy in the story of Noah’s drunkenness and the responses of his sons!
Yet "looking for dysfunction" in these four texts became a fun and intriguing game for my students to play. They read with far greater enthusiasm than they might otherwise have done. They also did the valuable emotional work of connecting what they were reading to their own family narratives. And though some of my colleagues were and are appalled by it, I was proud of the way we were able to tie together the intellectual and the therapeutic in the same classroom. Trust me, the students had plenty to write and plenty to read; the fact that they were called upon to do so much personal reflection on their own families does not mean that the course lacked academic rigor.
My parents are both retired professors. My brother is a professor. They disagree with me about teaching much of the time, particularly when I insist — as I do when teaching this course — that personal emotional growth ought to be a key expectation for every student. One of the things I love about gender studies/humanities classes is that they offer the opportunity to reach both the head and the heart in an academic setting. It makes some folks apoplectic when I suggest that good teaching (at least in this field) operates as much on an emotional as on an intellectual level. I’ve been told, oh, a thousand times that I deliberately and shamelessly blur the line between the therapeutic talk show and the classroom — particularly with this course. Rather than deny the charge, I’ll say that I’m darned proud to create courses that try to blend together the journey of intellectual inquiry with that of inner psychological — and perhaps, spiritual — development. For me, that’s the essence of good teaching.
I stopped teaching this class in 2001. One reason was that a good friend of mine, a professional psychologist, was horrified that I took John Bradshaw so seriously. Bradshaw, she said, was not only not a reputable researcher, he was also woefully ethnocentric. In his "WASPy" view of the family, my friend said, intense loyalty to family at the expense of personal autonomy will always be interpreted as dysfunctional. His goal of helping his clients/patients/audience reach autonomy and independence was utterly at odds with non-Western understandings of the purpose of the family. She convinced me that I would be doing a disservice to my students (most of whom are from Latino and Asian backgrounds)if I continued to promote the Bradshaw interpretation.
I also stopped teaching the course so I could develop my courses on gay and lesbian history and men and masculinity, which I’ve been trading off the last five years. But though those subjects are immensely important to me, I feel compelled to return once again to the subject of the dysfunctional family and our Western heritage. My psychologist friend’s criticisms are not without merit — but then again, Bradshaw’s understanding of the family isn’t without significant merit either. A course like this can offer students insight into themselves, their families, and some significant masterworks of the past three millenia. It’s a heck of a lot of fun to teach, too.
Am I qualified to teach it? Well, that’s the beauty of teaching "Humanities" courses that are inter-disciplinary. It allows those of us who wish to do so to step outside of our areas of professional expertise. And though I am neither a psychologist or a literature professor by training, I’ve got enough confidence in my general preparation to be able to pull something like this off once again.
Hubris on my part? No doubt. Challenging fun for all? I’m convinced of it.
For those interested, the course will be offered under Humanities 1 on Monday and Wednesday afternoons from 1:35-3:10PM.
“loyalty to family at the expense of personal autonomy will always be interpreted as dysfunctional”
To me, that sounds a lot like your series of posts on the importance of children gaining “independence” from their families (#2 & #3 in your “popular posts” lists). I think you are underestimating your committment to WASPy individualistic values and should talk to your friend about alternative ways to approach this topic before you start the class.
Well, Vacula, that’s why I call the course in the “Western Tradiition.” Bradshaw, like Ibsen or Williams or Euripides, writes in a very distinct tradition that is worthy of understanding better. That doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to understand reality, nor does it mean I intend to make all of my students accept Bradshaw hook, line, and sinker.
What I want them to do is consider a “Western” way of understanding family — and then either reject it or embrace it, but only after thinking and feeling their way through the material.
I suppose we can argue whether those different values regarding individual versus family loyalty are “WASP-y” or whether they are simply agrarian or pre-enlightenment? Or maybe they really do reflect a universal tension: Wasn’t Medea’s downfall attributable to the fact that she expected love and loyalty in return for her own rather significant contribution to the family enterprise?
In any event, in nearly any culture you can think of, as families become smaller the individual trumps the group dynamic to a greater or lesser extent, over the generations. Even parents tend to view their children differently when they have three or more clustered as opposed to one or two separated by several years or more. Which is all to say that your friend might have been overstating differences in psychology between western and non-western family dynamics, or focusing on family structures that are dissimilar to those of your students. You could hit the topic full stop and ask your students what they think about it.
Oh believe me, I do give the students tons of opportunity to respond.
I’ve taken several of your courses and hope to take this in the fall. Thanks for the heads up.
It bugs me sometimes that more people can’t agree to disagree about what the goals of college teaching are. We have no problem respecting diversity of teaching methods, I find, but a great deal more difficulty accepting different goals. Because you incorporate a thereapudic component to your class and I don’t isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The marketplace of courses available to students should be substantive and procedural.
This sounds like a great course, although if I were you I’d try to get your psychologist friend to come in and give a talk about how pyschologists tend to view things differently than Bradshaw. The science of psychology, like pop pyschology, is part of the western tradition.
How much time do you spend comparing the difference between the “western” norm and our actual varied traditions? I get the historicity and the literature connections and all that, but I see a big disconnect between your description of your material and your goals for your students. If you want students coming from non-white, non-western traditions to apply a western tradition to their own lives, why not include some things that show how the (white) western tradition has been challenged by other cultures in this area?
If you’re trying to have the students make personal connections but don’t give space for differences between their norms/values and the implied norms/values you’re dealing with, It may not be as applicable as you want it to be. And this doesn’t have to be a racial thing, either - I’m white and a lot of your stated ideas about individualism and the family really don’t jive with my experiences and values.
The intellectual “game” of applying theories to stories in new ways is fun and challenging, but it can also easily produce false insights if you don’t treat the original context carefully enough. Even if these theories do shed a new light on everything that’s problematic in their family, you don’t have the personal context an actual therapist would. I don’t see how you can judge how “insightful” it is for them to apply such a broad and culturally biased theory to their lives without a lot more information than an impressionable student’s personal reflections can give.
I’m sure your class allows for a much more complex conversation than you imply in your post above. But you’ve shown a lot of “blind spots” in using theories that you identify with personally to make large judgements about relationships. Given all the reservations and/or outside criticisms you’ve noted, maybe you need to consult some of your critics for ways to improve the course rather than ending with “But I like it!”
A lot has changed in the way cultures and familys exist since the time of the literature you’re using - your students, with their backgrounds, show this. Why not use a woman writer or an American writer from a non-white culture to deal with some of these issues?
My personal preference for the dysfunctional family story is Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison.
Vacula, I will likely bring in a friend experienced in cross-cultural psychology to talk about the Bradshaw book, something I did not do in the past.
I don’t think that idea of family-free “personal autonomy” has much history as a WASP idea. My background is mostly British Isle and I am reasonably described as a “WASP,” but I came from a large family, and I find that I have entirely different expectations of family relationships than people from small families. Indeed, I believe that the “nuclear family” is no family at all, but only the wreckage of a family. I think this different expectation of family and family obligations contributed enormously to the breakup of my second marriage. The workings of a large family can be simply incomprehensible to a person from a small one.
Indeed, I believe that the “nuclear family” is no family at all, but only the wreckage of a family…The workings of a large family can be simply incomprehensible to a person from a small one.
Heh. And vice versa, evidently.
I think I’m going to take this course too! I can already relate to it. And then I’ll hopefully be taking your men and masculinity class. And then the human sexuality block. By the way, when will the human sexuality courses be offered?
We’re still working out details, Mermade — fall 2007 looks like the time.
I find myself thinking, “What would Bradshaw say about ____” to virtually everything that goes on in my family and relationship now. Jeremy and are so thankful that we had the opportunity to take this course together, as it has greatly influenced how we handle disagreements, how we talk about our past, how we interact within out own families, etc. in a positive way - though I am still a 6 out of 10 at this moment on applying all the lessons, I think.
Anyway, he and I had fun discussing the dysfunctional motifs of this article today: http://www.biblicalwomanhood.com/article12.htm
You gotta check it out. Whew!