Introduction

I am going to speak about the learning and reflections that came out of tasks in support of the policies of the government of the Federal District for the prevention and treatment of family violence.

By way of context, I will mention three circumstances in the life of Mexico: the earthquake of 1985, the Zapatista uprising of 1994 and the defeat of the PRI in 2000; all three were decisive in making possible the policies that the government of the Federal District has developed in recent years in the area of family violence.

The main actions that have been undertaken in this field, mainly on the basis of the Law on Assistance and Prevention of Family Violence for the Federal District (1996), are: the creation of the Council for Assistance and Prevention of Family Violence, of the Units for the Care of Intrafamily Violence (UAVIF), of the Center for the Care of Victims of Intrafamily Violence (CAVI), of the LOCATEL information service, of the Shelter for women experiencing family violence, of the Centers for the Care of Women (CIAM), of the Register of institutions working on violence, among others, as well as the advances of the Penal Code for the Federal District (1999), which establishes criminal classifications for family violence.

Its theoretical framework includes a gender-sensitive vision and the recognition of a power imbalance that exists not only between men and women, but also between family members of different generations, an imbalance that lies at the genesis of family violence.

Types of violence

We deal with family violence in the broad sense: physical, sexual, economic, neglect, emotional, etc. However, as mental health specialists, emotional violence must particularly hold our attention. Emotional violence is expressed through methods of subjugation and control that rest on terror, threats, insults and other attitudes, words or actions that wound the dignity of the other.

From the point of view of systemic family therapy, the mechanisms identified that involve the exercise of emotional violence are: disqualification (which invalidates communication), disconfirmation (which invalidates the person), the double bind, mystification (Laing), psychological control, and others besides. In Mexico, the law includes emotional violence, but very few people possess the knowledge that would make it possible to describe it, and fewer still to legislate on its effects.

The team and its task

The team to which we belong is the Center for the Care of Domestic Violence of the Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios de la Familia (CAVIDA-ILEF). The ILEF began its activities in 1982 and is devoted to the training of family therapists, to research and to care.

CAVIDA, one of the ILEF’s special projects, began its work in the field of violence a few years ago. We have had the opportunity in recent years to collaborate, as a non-governmental group, with the government of the Federal District. On the basis of this experience, we want to describe part of what we have learned in order to indicate the direction in which we think future actions should be oriented, building on what the City government has constructed with the support of non-governmental organizations.

One of CAVIDA’s collaborations is the work in various community centers. It consists of prevention tasks, the direct care of families and the training of staff, where we apply the theoretical elements we will set out below. We have set ourselves a task that goes beyond the clinical and therapeutic level, to make it the basis of a broader educational work of community and multiplier promotion. If we extend this care to low-income families in a place close to their community, to their network, we will contribute to developing the culture of community mental health in the very environment of the people concerned. In addition to the direct care of families, we also develop preventive work on violence in the organization and coordination of various therapeutic and psychoeducational groups: a group of elderly people, a masculinity group, a women’s group, a group for the prevention of violence toward children through early stimulation and massage, among others. With these groups, we develop two activities linked to the prevention of family violence: early detection and collaboration in the building of networks.

Theoretical framing

Carlos Fuentes quotes a Czech trade unionist who, speaking of the transition in his country, said: “To confront a dictatorship, one needs few theoretical ideas, clear and very firm, and great flexibility in the way one applies them.” I believe these comments apply to our work with cases of family violence. Families in which cases of family violence occur have elements in common with dictatorships: rigid ideas, lack of tolerance, lack of respect for differences, encouragement of isolation between subjects and groups, inequitable positions, etc.

Basic principle and ethical premises of our work

We start from the conception of violence as the exercise of power that negatively affects the freedom and dignity of the other (Foucault). This other is generally in a more vulnerable state than the one who subjugates him, whether by sex, age, physical strength, class, ethnicity, kinship tie, etc. This subjugation uses methods that generally cause serious physical or emotional harm to the one on whom it is exercised. Following Foucault’s distinction, when there is an exercise of power, the other has the possibility of reacting; when what is exercised is domination, there is no possibility of reacting, and at these levels of violence would be found the victims of torture, almost always, and populations in situations of extreme poverty.

Our ethical and therapeutic premises include the principles of transparency, multipartiality and recognition of the dual role we play as therapists and as agents of social control. We express the rejection of violence in all its manifestations (physical and emotional) as a relational form and, following the guidelines of Virginia Goldner, we insist on the accountability of the people involved: the one who exercises violence must take responsibility for his aggression, and the one who receives it, if an adult, must take responsibility for his or her own protection; adults must assume responsibility for the most vulnerable members of the family. From these ethical and theoretical positions flow respect for diversity and a vision that tends to highlight the resources of people and families.

Theoretical framework

In agreement with authors such as Virginia Goldner, Marcia Sheinberg and many others, we use a multidisciplinary framework. Although we include in this framework disciplines such as psychoanalysis and the developments of M. Foucault, we believe that the two main bodies of knowledge are general systems theory and social constructionism. I know that these concepts are familiar to all of you; I will nevertheless make a few comments on controversial aspects of these theories.

General systems theory

General systems theory is a metatheory, as von Bertalanffy described it, but it is fundamentally a new paradigm. It is, moreover, a lens, among others, through which the family appears as a totality inserted in a larger system, the social context, where the main origin of family violence is located; from this it is inferred that it is in this same context of social and family relations that the actors can find better ways of relating, which allow them to grow and to assert themselves without subjugating others.

General systems theory has received criticism in its approaches to certain social problems, such as violence. It is important to point out, however, that these criticisms stem from functionalist readings of the theory, whereas dialectical readings distinguish the idea of open systems, of systems more complex in their interrelations, rather than a simple sum of compartmentalized systems. The dialectical reading takes into account systems such as ideology and the belief system. Likewise, in systemic theory, the concept of hierarchy is fundamental, even if circularity is always present. The idea of hierarchy is indispensable for distinguishing the different weight between the responsibility of the abuser and that of the abused. Systemic family therapy proves economical, encompassing, multiplying and preventive insofar as it makes it possible to observe, in all its complexity, a whole system at once and, if necessary, aims at the reconstruction and participation of social networks, which are the ones that can consolidate the favorable changes of family systems.

We consider that the family institution is the depository of violence in its multiple forms: it lives it, reproduces it, engenders it, suffers it; but also, in our experience, the family as a system is capable of finding new and different paths for its difficulties, which allow each of its members to develop more healthily. A systemic intervention attends to transactional sequences, in particular to the feedback loops that appear as the immediate “cause” of escalations of violence, as well as to the relational process between the couple, the extended family and the other social services that constitute the system that maintains the problem. However, even though systemic family therapy has traditionally placed the emphasis on circular causality, one must not lose sight of the existence of hierarchies, as well as of social differences based on power; this means that not all the elements of a system bear the same responsibility in violent interactions…