When you dance the tango

When you dance the tango…, you have to wait for the music to begin. On the first bar, on the second, perhaps on the third or the fourth, the couple sets off across the floor. They walk together, one goes forward, the other goes back. They turn. The one who was going back now goes forward. The one who was going forward goes back.

Going forward, going back, turning together and by common accord: an ordered system.

When you dance the tango with other couples – at the same time and in the same room –, distance and closeness are sensed, are felt. Above all, you must not fight over the same space; in other words, you must not collide.

Braking as though you were not braking, elegantly. Waiting for the other couple to move so as to move next.

Braking, moving, turning. All of it is part of an organised, complementary, harmonious relational interplay: a complex system.

The scene of family therapy

Just like a ballroom scene, the scene of family therapy unfolds in the same terms. An exquisite choreography that is woven and draws us in from the very first contact.

The members of the family arrive for the consultation. They settle in. They explore the place in different ways. They look at one another and observe the therapist, even if, at times, pain and anguish do not allow that freedom of the gaze.

The dance begins as it begins on the dance floor: the play of glances gets under way – searching, questioning, seductive and knowing glances, glances of invitation, of refusal or of acceptance.

The silence of the beginning gives way to the language of gestures, while the music of words starts to resound.

Someone takes the initiative. The member who is most involved… or not. That mother who, anxious, asked for the appointment. The circumspect father who begins to lecture. The distant brother, who we sensed was keeping further away. The sensitive, emotional sister, in front of whom the therapist wonders: “where did I put the tissues?”.

In this ballroom there are also the other couples. Those who stand for the extended families and the ones we have made for ourselves, the neighbours, the friends, the lovers, the other professionals who have intervened in the critical situation. The bad ones and the good ones. Companions and persecutors. Supporters and helpers. How many contexts are at work in this social network! How many couples for this one room…!

Which tango is the family dancing?

There are different tangos (1): some “canyengues” (2), with cortes and quebradas, ganchos, ochos and sentadas. Others aristocratic, bourgeois, antiseptic ballroom tangos. All of them carrying distinct beliefs and values.

Which is the tango the family dances? The therapist observes, listens, tries to understand the universe of meanings in which the family problem unfolds.

He draws near, curious to the point of naivety, trying to dance according to the context the family belongs to.

He tries to dance with each member. He dances with all of them. He makes them dance with one another. But the tango can only be danced once the bond is established, once that amalgam of complementary interactions comes about; otherwise the tango is not a tango, it is a succession of missteps.

The interactions are scanned by the interventions, at the same time as the interventions arise out of the interactions. And so, one after another: harmony.

One of the possible tangos

Let us describe one of the possible tangos: a therapist provokes and confronts, and a mother becomes angry. Her daughter offers her a containing hand. That daughter who had never been able to come close to her affectively.

The son watches this scene with an air of indifference. He shuts in his anger at this shift and desperately seeks an alliance with another member. He finds himself alone on the floor: everyone has paired off and he has been left unable to dance the piece. He will have to change his way of interacting, failing which he will once again become – in this new relational game – alone and abandoned.

Later, the therapist notices the father staring at the floor, sits down beside him and invites the son to come closer. The son comes forward, reluctant, timidly takes his father’s arm, and the father embraces him, stroking his head.

He positively connotes these attitudes that redefine the bond. His colleagues behind the mirror are moved and signal to him to take a little distance: they see him as too involved.

Moving, going forward, going back, braking, turning together, occupying other spaces. Dancing a new tango.

The dance of contexts

Far from this dance floor, far from this dance, beyond this context, other models of knowledge and the actions that follow from them give importance to other contexts that influence one another reciprocally.

This dance of contexts rarely resembles a tango; far more often it looks like a desperate struggle to conquer and hold on to territories, spaces and meanings.

Orthodoxly biologist physicians disown the psychic factors in their patients’ illness. Others centre their gaze on the individual, relegating those around them.

There are also those who use the analytic method in their research. They assume that the sum of the parts will yield the whole, isolating the phenomenon in the attempt to understand it.

And so watertight compartments go on being built. It seems to be unbearable to accept the insecurity that uncertainty brings, to give up objectivity and to understand that there is no presupposed reality.

To dance the tango of therapy, the pieces have to be respected; the other couples who share the floor must commit themselves to this sharing of the dance.

Imprinting passion

The dance of human relations can display a delicate aesthetic, at times a coarse or even clumsy one, or else a careful aesthetic in constant homeodynamics.

The therapist inserts himself into it. He introduces new information, generates differences, proposes new steps, prompts new figures that make it possible for other narratives to emerge.

But above all, he imprints passion. Passion which, as a feeling, makes it possible to bring affect into the bond, to draw close through the gaze (sometimes through the body) and to clothe speech in a particular emphasis.

Moving, going forward, going back, braking, turning together, occupying other spaces and dancing a new tango, like therapy, like life.