The Primacy of Discourse in the Study of Gender in Family Therapy

Family therapists and scholars increasingly adopt poststructural and postmodern conceptions of social reality, challenging the notion of stable, universal dynamics within family members and families and favoring a view of reality as produced through social interaction. In the study of gender and diversity, many envision differences as social constructed rather than as “residing” in people or groups. There is a growing interest in discourse or people's everyday use of language and how it may reflect and advance interests of dominant groups in a society. Despite this shift from structures to discourse, therapists struggle to locate the dynamics of power in concrete actions and interactions. By leaving undisturbed the social processes through which gendered and other subjectivities and relations of power are produced, therapists may inadvertently become complicit in the very dynamics of power they seek to undermine. In this article, we argue that discourse analysis can help family therapy scholars and practitioners clarify the link between language and power. We present published examples of discourse analytic studies of gender and sexism and examine the relevance of these ideas for family therapy practice and research.     

Pichon Rivière's psychoanalytic contributions: Some comparisons with object relations and modern developments in psychoanalysis

Enrique Pichon Rivière's work, fundamental to Latin American and European psychoanalytic development, is largely unknown in English‐language psychoanalysis. Pichon's central contribution, the link (el vinculo), describes relational bonds in all dimensions. People are born into, live in, and relate through links. Psychic structure is built of links that then influence external interaction. Links, expressed in mind, body and external action, continuously join internal and external worlds. Links have two axes: vertical axis links connect generations through unconscious transgenerational transmission; horizontal axis links connect persons to life partners, family, community and society. For Pichon, treatment constitutes a spiral process through which interpretation disrupts existent structures, promoting new emergent organizations at successively deeper levels. Psychic and link structures evolve over time unless repetitive cycles stunt growth. For Pichon, transference is constituted in the here‐and‐now‐with‐me because of the analytic link. Pichon also undertook family and group psychoanalysis where individuals become spokespersons for unconscious links and family secrets. He developed operative groups that apply psychoanalysis to both analytic and non‐analytic tasks. After describing Pichon's major contributions, the paper compares Pichon Rivière's ideas with those of Klein, Fairbairn, Bion, Winnicott and Bowlby, and contemporary writers including Ogden, Kaës, and Ferro whose works echo Pichon Rivière's thought.     

Analytical practice: do the new technologies have an impact?

Through commentary on four clinical vignettes, this article focuses on the anthropological transformations taking place in contemporary society, underlining their differences from the anthropologies of reference of the founding fathers of psychoanalysis. Hybridization between man and machine and the speeding up and alteration of communications which the new technologies promote are now crucial issues facing psychoanalysis. Social media and a 24/7 internet connection have produced deep changes in the way people live and perceive relationships. Analytical practice is not exempt from such issues, which can be particularly insidious, often subtle and difficult to recognize, or even underestimated or ignored by psychoanalysts outright, in order to preserve the illusion of a complete understanding of what unfolds in the analytical space. The authors suggest that such transformations, by (partially) rendering inadequate the theoretical and technical corpus on which the various depth psychologies are founded, require personal engagement on the part of psychoanalysts in the search for new strategies to treat their patients, with the consequent abandonment of the ‘certainties’ offered by sclerotic models of clinical procedure.     

Destigmatization by Association: Improving Children's Reactions to an Obese Storybook Character

Second- through fourth-grade students were read a storybook that described a typical boy who interacted with an obese boy for one of four reasons (sympathy, curiosity, teacher instructed, or no reason) to explore the manner in which a typical storybook character's reason for associating with an obese storybook character influences children's responses to both characters. Results revealed that the children responded more favorably to the obese storybook character after than before learning about the typical storybook character's association with him, especially when the typical storybook character's reason for association was presented as internally motivated (sympathy or curiosity). In contrast to “stigma by association” findings reported in prior research, the children also responded more favorably to the typical storybook character after than before his association with the obese storybook character.     

Peering into the “black box” of education interventions and attitude change: Audience characteristics moderate the effectiveness…and then only toward specific targets

To probe the inconsistent link between education and attitude change toward minority social groups, we conducted a field study that focused on audience characteristics and education about lesbian, gay, and transgender (LGT) targets. Participants enrolled in a sexuality course were compared to those in a neurology course, both taught by the same professor. Multiple regression analyses predicted attitude change toward LGT targets from social dominance orientation (SDO), right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), ratings of professor’s characteristics, SDO by course interaction, and RWA by course interaction. Only the SDO by course interaction significantly predicted attitude change. Simple slopes analyses indicated that high-SDO participants in the sexuality course showed the most positive attitude change. These findings suggest that education may reduce prejudice for certain audience characteristics.