Treatment of families in conflict: Recurrent themes in literature and clinical practice

This article undertakes to demonstrate, through works of great literature throughout the ages, that our best writers have always understood the primacy and linkages between individual growth, character and destiny, and the context of the various living systems that impinge upon each individual, the primary context being the family of origin. Beginning with the immortal classic, theSophoclean Trilogy, which inspired Freud's use of the major character's name in these three dramas, Oedipus has been used to explain the psychological complex which Freud regarded as universal. The author in this article finds a rather different point of view borne out by these same dramas, as well as in the other literary works cited. It is the discovery that the identified patient is not Oedipus, but his natural and adoptive families.This often-quoted classic in family therapy literature is slightly revised and reprinted, with permission, fromNew Directions in Mental Health, NY: Grune & Stratton, 1968.