A tradition little sensitive to emotions

The systemic tradition has hardly been sensitive to the importance of emotions. If Bateson (1973) went so far as to consider emotions a dormitive concept, there is no cause for surprise that communication theory ignored them and that figures such as Virginia Satir were regarded, from within Palo Alto itself, with reticence when it was not with contempt. Moreover, Minuchin (1993) also avoided any explicit statement of the emotional in therapy, resorting to the periphrasis of “the therapist’s use of self” to designate the obvious fact that his affective reactions play an important part. Asking what the patient, or such and such a member of the system, feels was held to be heretical and disqualified as banal by systemic orthodoxy, which insisted on the value of substituting for it what he thinks or what he does, depending on whether one is dealing with the strategic or the structural version of that orthodoxy.

Against this reality stands the obvious fact that psychotherapy is done by working with emotions and, assuredly, not only with those of the patient or the family, but also with those of the therapist. European systemic authors have been more sensitive to this, perhaps because, the bulk of their work being of more recent date, they did not have to pay the tribute their American colleagues paid to differentiation from psychoanalysis. Indeed, and to cite only a few, authors such as Cancrini (1984) and Andolfi (1977) have made explicit the importance of emotional work, and Elkaïm (1995), by coining the concept of resonance, has provided a useful instrument as a systemic alternative to the transference / counter-transference play.

Selvini’s (1987) taking up of Bowlby’s attachment, together with the theorisation corresponding to the last stage of her thought, places her in the same line of recognition of the emotional space that characterises a great part of European family therapy.

But let us not be mistaken: the question is far from settled, and in the current panorama of psychology positions are taking shape on what could become a new polemic around emotions. On one side, those who study the cognitive structure of the emotional phenomenon (Ortony, Clore and Collins, 1988) tend to universalise it and to define it intrapsychically, differentiating it radically from language.

Wierzbicka (1986) states in this connection that the absence, in one language, of a term designating the specific emotion to which a word of another language might refer does not mean that the people of the cultures that speak the first language cannot experience that emotion, nor that they do not experience it.

On the other hand, for many authors emotions are inseparable from language, since they are socioculturally constructed and felt as expressed on the basis of systems of belief, moral orders and social norms proper to particular communities (Harré, 1986).

Social constructionists reject the physiological character of emotions – an idea in any case hardly tenable today from any serious position – and join the cognitivists in claiming the importance of the cognitive process, in the form of values and beliefs. But agreement stops there, for what genuinely interests socioconstructionism are the situations and the ways in which the words that express emotions are used. Emotions remain condemned to the Batesonian condition of dormitive concept or, in Hoffman’s (1992) contemptuous phrase, to that of “sacred cow of modern psychology”.

Three spaces, three channels

There are three great relevant spaces in the relational world, and consequently in the psychological-individual world: the cognitive, the pragmatic and the emotional. It is in relation to them that the different psychotherapeutic models have oriented themselves, combining, in equations more implicit than explicit, different proportions of what to think, what to do and what to feel. As privileged vehicles of expression they have had language and behaviour, the fitting channels for cognitive communication and for pragmatic communication. But the emotional one? Beyond the obvious fact that emotional communication exists, the communicationalism of Palo Alto managed to sidestep it by referring its distinction between digital and analogic languages to messages of content and of relational process.

And yet it is perfectly legitimate to attribute analogic language to emotional communication in a preferential link, just as digital language is the emblematic vehicle of cognitive communication and behaviour the clearest expression of pragmatic communication.

Prescription and reformulation

The systemic therapist has possessed two technical instruments of inestimable value for moving at ease in the pragmatic and cognitive spaces: prescription and reformulation.

Through behaviour prescription, the therapist suggests to individuals, to subsystems or to the family as a whole certain behaviours or certain rites tending to modify their pragmatic communication. He thereby aims to introduce a germ of change independent of any insight – which would be, in the end, a cognitive elaboration – and, of course, without focusing the affective reverberation. Prescriptions have fallen into disuse in the universe of postmodern therapies, and in particular in the conversationalist branch of constructivism, on the basis of a biased and narrow interpretation of certain ideas of Maturana (1980) that would disqualify structural directiveness as tending towards “instructive interaction”. In reality, suggesting behavioural patterns to others may be, depending on multiple circumstances, either an intolerable intrusion, doomed to rejection or, at best, to the insignificance of an impossible interactive instruction, or a conversational resource of the first order, as timely as it is well received and accepted. Not to mention the inevitable cognitive and emotional components associated with prescription, which may operate as elements that disturb the dysfunctional equilibrium, independently of the relative banality that its execution represents.

Mara Selvini demonstrated, with the invariable prescription, the infinite complexity of this modality of interventions, which should on no account disappear from the systemic patrimony through a mere whim of fashion.

Reformulations constitute the other great traditional resource of systemic therapists, firmly anchored in the cognitive space. Modifying perception, the representation of things, in individuals and families, by proposing alternative visions in which symptoms have no place, is an important exercise: it is enough to recall the spectacular character of the effects of positive connotation, capable of presenting to families realities radically different from those that until then made them guilty and held them in their grip. Reformulations, largely dependent on digital language, have fared better than prescriptions in the current panorama of systemic therapies, their conversational structure fitting more closely with postmodern expectations. Socioconstructionist narrativism itself handles complex reformulations with ease, within the framework of its proposals of new narrative options intended to counter the overdetermination exercised by the discourse of power.

The trigger of change

But a cognitive change – or epistemological, as the systemic model has historically preferred to call it – is unimaginable without the corresponding emotional vibration, and both would be insignificant if they were not accompanied by pragmatic modifications. Fortunately, the three psychological-relational spaces communicate with one another, so that a change in one of them may extend to the others and generate a transformative wave with unforeseeable consequences. Unforeseeable… except for a therapist aware of his power and able to master and assess it: he, indeed, will be able reasonably to anticipate the evolution of events and to adjust the subsequent course of therapy to it. That is why a minimal change occurring in any one of the three spaces, endowed with sufficient disturbing capacity, that is to say capable of generalising to the others in a significant way, may constitute a more than satisfactory result for a therapy.

A couple who follow the therapist’s suggestion to go out a few evenings may find themselves, in the midst of the apparent banality of their action, perceiving in one another aspects that had escaped them until then. For the first time in many years, they have come out of the routine to spend a pleasant moment together, and this has allowed them to discover unsuspected perspectives in each other: what for him was an unbearable and asphyxiating taste for control in her becomes the expression of a fragility and a need for support; and what for her was irresponsibility and selfishness on his part becomes the legitimate need for a space of his own. Both become tolerant, at the same time as they feel a tenderness already forgotten. The order may vary. The appearance of a new vision in which, at the therapist’s prompting, an adolescent begins to consider his parents clumsy but full of affection, instead of arbitrary and repressive, relaxes and relieves him, which makes his provocative behaviour decrease and his collaboration in domestic tasks increase.

And the trigger of change may occur in the emotional space, in the form of an ineffable seizing, when one feels the shame of the father who asks forgiveness, the anguish of the wife who fears for her life or the powerlessness of the son who believes himself a failure. There too, new cognitive representations and new ways of behaving may follow. All this, obviously, if the ecosystem proves favourable and if the therapist, as a significant element of it, assumes his responsibilities in a reasonable way.

Intervening in the emotional field represents a serious challenge for the systemic therapist trained in the cult of prescription and, above all, of reformulation and narrative, when it is not, explicitly, in the doctrinaire contempt of emotions. And yet emotions possess in analogic language a most refined instrument, capable of singularising their expressiveness to extremes unimaginable in any other communicational channel.

The therapist’s emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a concept coined recently to designate people’s capacity to use their emotions relationally, in a controlled way (Goleman, 1995). It has always been known that success in accomplishing concrete tasks, as in the most ambitious enterprises, depends on something other than the intellectual capacity measured by IQ, but we now have a timely instrument for conceptualising this phenomenon. The person who mobilises and brings into play his emotional intelligence has a greater power of conviction, he is more credible and considerably increases his capacity to influence others. All of these are precious qualities for a therapist. Let us look at a few examples.

Pablo: “curing his mother”

Pablo is a child who does not speak, except in the strictest family intimacy, and even then as little as possible. His parents have gradually become worried as their son’s silences have begun to hamper his schooling and to cast a shadow over his professional and social future. They overprotect him, not allowing him to go to summer camp “to spare him difficult situations” and excusing him from any task involving extra-familial contacts. Pablo is an intelligent boy, capable of brilliant school exercises provided they do not involve entering actively into relationship with teachers or classmates. During the therapy sessions he remains mute, contemplating the world with his large frightened eyes and following with interest what is happening around him. The therapist’s attempts to modify the situation, by suggesting to the family less rigidly protective patterns, have met with little echo.

Until the day the mother recounts an episode of her life that she had hidden until then. She too was very shy as a child, and spoke almost as little as Pablo. As an adult she went through several depressions that made her suffer a great deal. After the last one, the doctors advised her to have a child in order to recover and, indeed, she became pregnant and had Pablo. Since then she has never again known what a depression was and, in effect, her character improved a great deal: she became more open and more sociable. As she relates these facts, she is visibly moved, and so is Pablo, while the rest of the family – the father and a slightly older daughter – contemplate them with serene understanding. The therapist feels that he too has been won over by the intense affective atmosphere that reigns: his eyes moisten slightly and a light knot tightens his throat. Clearing his voice with a gentle cough, he begins to speak in a vibrant tone. He too has been moved, he says, so much has he been struck by the story of this so privileged relationship between Pablo and his mother:

“I can now better understand this solidary silence of a son clinging to what he believes to be his mission in the world: to cure his mother.”

There follow some reflections on the timeliness of discharging the patient, now cured, and of reassuring one another about non-existent risks. Nor is the boy in any danger, even though he resembles his mother so much, since he has fulfilled his mission beyond all expectation and this has endowed him with powerful resources.

It is the father, above all, who will be able to reassure them, by taking on the functions of carer of the mother during her convalescence and by showing his son how many other fascinating missions there are in life.

The family leaves visibly comforted, and the therapist explains to the team that what he felt during that session was very useful to him, since each time he experiences that kind of emotion he knows that a positive change is about to occur in the course of the therapy. “That allows me to follow the trail in complete tranquillity, because I know I am going in the right direction.”

Certain signals in his body – the moistening of the eyes, the knot in the throat – let the emotionally intelligent therapist know that what is happening is good and that he must not be ashamed of it but, rather, allow analogic language to communicate a positive message to the family. The emotional channel thus created allows the cognitive and pragmatic elements which, on other occasions, had not been registered, to have this time a good opportunity to be processed.

The “boring” couple

A couple are entangled in yet another quarrel, this time in the middle of the session, in the therapist’s presence. They hardly speak to one another, but both address him, arguing warmly for the excellence of their respective points of view. The underlying situation is not too bad: they love each other, they want to have children together and they have not yet had time to accumulate much resentment, but a ferocious symmetry sets them continually against each other over trifles. When, as at present, they are going through a bad patch, she has anxiety attacks and he tends to drink to excess.

The therapist has tried to bring out unsuspected aspects of each of them, which might open new perspectives to them, but his suggestions have been lost in the din of battle. Time passes without any progress and the therapist begins to grow impatient. He glances discreetly at his watch and, helping himself with his hand, politely sketches a yawn. The discussion stops and the husband says in a sombre tone: “we are terribly boring, aren’t we?” She confirms: “deadly”. The therapist rules, smiling: “you have just reached a remarkable agreement”. From that moment the session changes sign and it becomes possible to move forward in a negotiation.

That the therapist does not deny, dissimulate or hide his emotions does not mean that he exhibits them or imposes them without consideration. Emotional intelligence requires that the person administer with the greatest delicacy the expression of his affects, in such a way as to inform without doing violence. If, in the case of the quarrelling couple, the therapist had let out a resounding yawn, he would have run an excessive risk of disqualifying himself as ill-mannered, which would probably have invalidated his work.

The Martínez family

The Martínez family is made up of the father and the mother, around forty, and four children aged twenty to thirteen. The reason for the referral to family therapy is the physical violence the father exercises on the children, whom he has maltreated one after another in order of age. The current victim is Carlos, the third, the only boy, fifteen years old. In the course of the first session a complex situation manifests itself: the father and the mother, well-groomed and attractive in appearance, compete harshly with each other, while not too much dissimulating that there exists between them an intensely sensual play of seduction and attraction. The mother’s explicit discourse is nevertheless very critical of her husband, and defensive and protective towards the children. Stimulated by this comedy, Carlos launches an attack on the father, whom he accuses of being a dictator while attempting to ridicule him in front of everyone, as the mother, laughing, watches her husband out of the corner of her eye.

The therapist first feels a vague malaise, which gradually gives way to a muffled indignation as the relational game defines itself and takes on meaning. Finally he intervenes, interrupting the boy: “Carlos, don’t you realise that this is how you always end up being beaten? Your father and your mother quarrel and you believe that gives you the right to intervene by attacking your father. Of course, since your mother defends you with her words… But if you could control yourself a little and look her in the face, you would see that at those moments she has eyes only for your father. That is why it is you who ends up taking the thrashing, while they make up in the end…”

The therapist’s words spring out, firm and warm, while his eyes look intensely at the boy and his body leans towards him. When he alludes to the parents, his face hardens. At the end of the comment, they appear ashamed, their gaze fixed on the floor, while Carlos seems surprised and disconcerted. After a few minutes of silence, the therapist announces some suggestions to help them change certain things. He does so serenely, looking each of them in turn in the eyes and showing himself amiable with all.

If the therapist detects any modality of abuse in the course of the session – meaning by this the use of power in a destructive way in the service of the interests of the one who exercises it –, it is normal that he should become angry or irritated, and it is equally normal that he should express it in a controlled way. If, in interpersonal relations in the broadest sense, people are expected to react in one way or another in the face of abuse, it cannot be otherwise for the therapist, endowed with sensitive instruments to detect it, in situations which – like family sessions – extraordinarily facilitate it. In such circumstances it would be artificial to ignore that, in their complexity, human relations, and family relations in particular, involve inequality and, hence, the possibility of abuse.

The therapist must know that abusive power may be exercised through physical force, but also through seduction, emotional blackmail, coercion and the verbal capacity to create threatening realities, and he must be prepared to react in the face of each of these forms. If he does so in a controlled and measured way, he will bring on the one hand his inescapable ethical testimony as a professional and a citizen and, at the same time, he will create an emotional channel through which to deploy his therapeutic intervention.

A continuous use, not an alternative

There are many situations in which the therapist may use his emotional intelligence. Indeed, as many as there are significant moments in any therapeutic process, since emotional experience is a continuous reality. He may thus show enthusiasm for a project expressed by a family member, or admiration for someone’s way of doing things. He may show himself disappointed by a failure or full of hope in the face of a prospect of progress, overwhelmed by difficulties or encouraged by possibilities, angered by one provocation or amused by another. He must always take care not to mystify his expressiveness in order to protect himself from his own ghosts, remaining honest in the use he makes of it.

In the systemic tradition there already exist powerful resources linked to the therapist’s emotions: declaring oneself powerless, congratulating effusively, criticising and scolding, speaking of one’s own intimacy… It is a matter of stripping them of an excessive strategic charge, restoring them to the space that is theirs, which is none other than the legitimate and inevitable exercise of emotional intelligence.

If the therapist can use the cognitive, pragmatic and emotional channels indifferently, resorting for that purpose, respectively, to his narrative capacity to create stories, to his practical sense to mount strategies and to his emotional intelligence to tune affects, it is obvious that the individuals and families with whom he works can also process his intervention in those same spaces.

Individuals perceive and think at the cognitive level, act at the pragmatic level and feel at the emotional level. For their part, families have values and beliefs as cognitive equivalent and carry out rituals as pragmatic equivalent. As for the emotional space, it is obvious that families do not “feel”, since they are not groupings of cloned individuals, but they do indeed share emotions, of various signs and to varying degrees.

That is why, if, in working with individuals, the therapist has the opportunity to act directly on cognitive representations and on behaviour by means of reformulations and prescriptions, when it is a matter of families these two instruments will act upon values and beliefs and upon rituals. As for emotional intelligence, it will act directly on people’s emotions, inducing some and diluting or reinforcing others, while at the family level it will modify the space in which emotions are shared, changing its composition and the equation according to which they combine.

In any event, if the ecosystemic circumstances are propitious and if the intervention is successful, change will generalise to the three spaces and will affect, more or less, the individuals and the family. It is then that one may assert that individual narratives and family myths have changed (Linares, 1996) and that, if in that change the previous symptoms and dysfunctions no longer have a place, the therapy has achieved reasonable results.

In short, interventions based on emotional intelligence cannot claim to be an alternative to the others, but a complement. To offer a conceptual framework for the therapeutic use of emotional intelligence, by means of the privileged channel that is analogic language, is to facilitate the use of resources as powerful as they are legitimate.

Psychotherapy, if it wants to have any credibility in the field of psychology and psychiatry, must flee the arbitrariness represented by taking refuge in justifying arguments such as “that is how I experience it” or “that is what I feel”, employed this time, indeed, in a tautological and dormitive way.

However, in times of complexity and uncertainty, when the consolation of an impossible objectivity is so hard to find, it becomes indispensable to recognise the validity of the therapist’s subjective emotionality, intelligently elaborated, as a channel of his intervention.

That is perhaps where one of the clearest markers of a postmodern psychotherapy lies.