Red Sistémica · Violence
Resilience in the family therapy of the sexual offender
Isabel Boschi considers sexual offending from a systemic perspective: she situates the offender in his social and family context and proposes therapy for him and for his family, in order to prevent him from becoming isolated from his own people without ending up either in prison or in ostracism. The ethical foundation of this work: moving from an ethics of proximity, in which one helps only those close to oneself, to an ethics of universality that respects the human being while rejecting his acts.
Editor’s note
Excerpt. The complete text appeared in no. 85 of Perspectivas Sistémicas. This article prompted a reply from Irene Loyácono, Debate on the family therapy of the sexual offender, to which Isabel Boschi responded in Why work with sexual offenders?
“Sexual offenders need therapy. The State should make it compulsory.”
Isabel Boschi
Ethical foundation of the family therapy of the sexual offender: from proximity to universality
I consider sexual offending from a systemic perspective. I situate the sexual offender in his social and family context and I strive to elucidate his particular ethnography, his norms of behavior and his belief system.
I propose therapy for the sexual offender and his family, in which I integrate various techniques.
I try to prevent the sexual offender from becoming isolated from his family and his circle. In family therapy, he is taught to approach his own people in a non-aggressive way, and the relatives or friends in his network are taught to develop supportive relationships among themselves.
The family is taught to avoid the witch hunt, personified in the sexual offender, and to behave in such a way that the identified patient ends up neither in prison nor in ostracism. Sexual offenders need therapy. The State should make it compulsory.
We must extend our actions from an ethics of proximity, through which we help only our relatives, our friends and those who share our way of thinking, to an ethics of universality, as Edgar Morin puts it, which regards as a person and respects the human being who engages in behaviors condemned by the culture, while rejecting his antisocial acts.
Ethics of proximity
We help only our relatives, our friends and those who think as we do.
Ethics of universality
To regard as a person and to respect the human being whose behavior the culture condemns, while rejecting his antisocial acts.
In my clinical practice, I help the person who has been abused, and also the abuser within his family, on the assumption that the family was unable, or did not know how, to provide containment and coherent differentiation to one of the most stigmatized members in the configuration of its primary group.
Faced with any unexpected and rejected sexual episode, society and its institutions condemn, thinking: “Someone will pay for this.” A judge illustrated this, smiling, when she said:
“I treated myself to the pleasure of seeing him handcuffed before my eyes and thrown into prison.”
The patients, sexual offenders, cry out:
— “And me, who helps me?”
— “And if I go to prison, will I come out of it a better person?” (out of prison)
Ethics proposes replacing aggressive contexts with flexible contexts that include the interests of all, with the least possible harm. Aggressive contexts are the product of the individual’s relationship in his mistaken search for the other. In aggressive contexts, the abuser believes he is restoring the fullness of his own soul by approaching the other, even as he treats him as prey of his own species.
When the abuser becomes aware of his aggression before others, supported by the therapist, his relatives and his friends, perhaps he will found a new ethics or, at least, decide which new values he will share with those around him.
The family that learns to support this transgressing member fosters his axiological and behavioral change.
Key takeaway
For Boschi, the therapy of the sexual offender is inseparable from that of his family: it is the network of family and friends, trained not to isolate him without for all that excusing his acts, that makes possible the awareness of the offense and the work of resilience.
Who is Isabel Boschi
Isabel Boschi is a couple and family therapist, clinical sexologist, first vice-president of FESEA (Federación Sexológica Argentina), president of the Isabel Boschi Foundation, devoted to sexuality, the family and education, and director of the ISDE (Instituto de Sexología del Desarrollo).
This article is an English translation of “La Resiliencia en la Terapia Familiar del Ofensor Sexual”, published by Red Sistémica (first published in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 85, mars-avril 2005). Translated and republished with the journal’s permission.
Read the original articleHow to cite this article
Boschi, I. (2022). Resilience in the family therapy of the sexual offender (Complexe Systémique, Trans.). Complexe Systémique. https://app.complexe-systemique.com/en_GB/articles/resilience-in-the-family-therapy-of-the-sexual-offender (Original work published in 2005 in Perspectivas Sistémicas, n° 85, mars-avril 2005; republished in 2022 by Red Sistémica, https://redsistemica.ar/2022/07/19/la-resiliencia-en-la-terapia-familiar-del-ofensor-sexual/)
To go further
- Sexual violence, a systemic perspective: acting and preventingThe systemic view of sexual violence that Boschi applies to the offender and his family.
- What you need to know about resilience — Boris CyrulnikResilience, the central concept of the article, explained by the man who popularized it.
- Ethics, morals and deontology for therapy and social workFrom proximity to universality: ethical guidelines for the therapist confronted with the unacceptable.
- Debate on the family therapy of the sexual offenderIrene Loyácono’s text to which this article responds.
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