De dulce y agraz: las críticas a las cuotas electorales de género

Through exploring and engaging with ideas and concepts arising from my project, I considered how to bring together my reflections and learning. I devised a theoretical model, shown in Figure 5 below, which I find helpful to integrate some key understandings. On this, I have illustrated my view of the conscious relationships and unconscious connections between an individual, their family and wider social contexts. This reflects Mindell’s (2000) conception (based on quantum mechanics) that, as individuals, we are both separate from the whole and, at the same time, inseparable aspects of this same whole.

121 Figure 5: My proposed model for integration

To explain Figure 5 in more detail, ‘above ground’ there are the verbal and non-verbal relationships within the person (corresponding to intrapsychic processes) and between the person, their key attachment figures, wider family and the community (the interpersonal and contextual realms of relating). Although the focus of my research has been families, I felt it was important to include community here to show that family life also exists within a wider

Present Future Past ‘Below’ ground: Personal and collective unconscious Self Self Key attachment figures Wider family Community Relationship ‘Above’ ground: Verbal and non-verbal relationships and systems

122 context; other authors have look at these issues in more detail, for example the afore mentioned Rigazio-DiGilio et al. (2005) who have developed specific community genograms.

I have separated out a person’s key attachment figures because, based on neurobiological findings, I think the attachments between a child and their main caregivers are crucial in developing the child’s sense of self, their ability to regulate their emotions and their contact style throughout life. As shown by research into the transgenerational transmission of trauma, it is through the complex and subtle patterns of communication within these attachment relationships that aspects of traumatic experience and disassociation can be passed between a caregiver and child.

But, in my mind, these interactions take place within the context of wider family history and dynamics, including the relationship between the parents, the attachment between each parent and any other siblings and between the child and their siblings and any other regular caregivers, such as child minders or grandparents. So I strongly adhere to Dallos’s (2009) contention that it is important to have a more systemic view of attachment because children do not form the same attachment to different people. The child may hold different constellations of beliefs based on varied attachments and as influenced by family roles, stories, secrets and patterns of relating (including triangles) within the wider family as a whole. A more systemic view thus acknowledges the mutually influencing nature of families, where a ‘reciprocal, circular (pattern of relating) involves all family members not just the mother and child’ (Feldman, 1992). I also think it is important to reflect the situation of many modern families, where a child does not necessarily spend his first few years primarily with his mother (Gerhardt, 2010).

The ‘below ground’ part of my model is the NCR where we are connected through the ‘roots’ of a personal and collective unconscious where events in time are interlinked. Within what is shared, there are links within the different groups outlined above, being our key attachment figures, wider family and community.

123 In this part, it is possible to understand the transmission of unconscious family processes and intelligence which guide behaviour and emotions ‘above ground’ in the ways which I have hypothesised previously. These ideas might provide an explanation for how a mother’s unconscious and that of her child are connected. So, as Dolto-Marette (1971) believes, the child knows, guesses and feels family events over two or three generations, in a similar way to Freud (1939) postulating the existence of ‘reverents’ or ghosts of previous family members. This could also be another mechanism by which unconscious transgenerational transmission of trauma occurs. In addition, in the context of my research, if using a genogram in one-to-one therapy allows access to this unconscious domain, it explains the power and impact of what can be revealed.

As a whole, this model helps me conceptualise what might be involved and evoked when using a genogram in therapeutic work with an individual. It brings together what I see as key ideas in individual, systemic and transgenerational therapy which I have drawn upon to understand different processes and ideas surrounding my research topic. Therefore, it builds on systems theory and family therapy by acknowledging the unconscious and extends attachment and intersubjectivity theories by emphasising the importance of how relationships develop within a systemic framework. It mirrors the trend for and urges further integration in our understanding of intrapsychic, interpersonal and contextual processes, showing how internal and external systems have a significant reciprocal influence on one another and how the unconscious plays a powerful part in these dynamics.

Indeed, what is important for me about my model is that it incorporates a sense of the known and unknown, maybe even the rational and the mystical. It reminds me of a recent edition of Therapy Today, where Van Gogh (2012) espouses the need to balance the scientific with what is poetic or soulful in therapy. Going back to our therapy ancestors who wrote and thought poetically whilst furthering scientific discipline, it is crucial in our identity as counselling psychologists to sit “somewhere between scientific psychology...and the more creative realm of artistry, reflection and self-awareness” (Orlans & Scoyoc, 2009; p.vii).

124 Similar to my integrative framework outlined in Figure 3 above, relationship plays a key role in this model. However, whilst I think it offers new ways for me to view developmental processes within a wider context, I am unsure at this point how it fits with other aspects of my framework, such as the spiritual and temporal. It also does not show how the ‘organising principles’ (Storolow & Atwood, 1992) between a therapist and client may interlink. Therefore, I would like to take more time to consider how and if these models can be integrated further in a way which provides a larger integrating structure for my approach. But I am also aware that, as much as theoretical understanding is important, I also want to discuss the implications of my findings for the professions of psychotherapy and counselling psychology as well as myself as a clinician.