Fam Proc 16:353-356, 1977

Owning and Disowning: The Structural DimensionJEFFRY KLUGMAN, M.D.a

aClinical Instructor in Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine.

Stierlin (11) recently examined owning and disowning in the parent-child relationship from apsychoanalytic-developmental perspective. This paper examines the same phenomena from a structural viewpoint,deriving implications for the conduct of therapy.

Stierlin (11) has recently discussed the developmental plight of the child who is overowned or underowned by hisparents. The overowned child becomes intensely bound up with his parents, losing ownership and awareness of hisinstinctual needs in the process of"id-binding," losing his reality based functioning by "ego-binding," and his potential forindependent self-direction through "superego-binding." The child overowned by his parents then has difficulty owninghimself, and as a result may focus his attention on the effect of his actions on others, instead of the effects of his actions onhimself; self-defeating, or masochistic, behavior may ensue. The parents overown their child in their attempt to disownunacceptable parts of themselves or in the hope of embodying in their child fantasies they have disowned behaviorally intheir own lives. All family members here manifest a deficit in what Stierlin, following Jacobson (7), calls "the capacity forself-object differentiation, implying that normally an individual can differentiate the self from objects."

The concept of a breakdown in the capacity for self-object differentiation is a psychoanalytic, intrapsychic embodimentof boundary blurring. The object-representation and self-representation become confused. This is an analogue of whatBowen calls "fusion" (1, 2, 3, 4). Fusion is a concept for boundary blurring at the individual's interpersonal boundary. This,I have shown elsewhere (8), is a manifestation on the individual level of the family system's boundary blurring thatMinuchin and other structuralists call "enmeshment" (9, 10). The behaviors that comprise id-binding, ego-binding andsuperego-binding are the same behaviors that characterize the enmeshed, or too richly intraregulated, system (6). Theunderowned child, says Stierlin, may become a sociopath (11), a product of a disengaged family system (8, 5). Rigidindividual boundaries develop in family systems with rigid internal boundaries.

There are other repositories for a parent's disowned, split-off parts, than his overowned child, however. One suchrepository is a disowned symptomatic behavior, be it a "causeless" depression ("I don't know why I feel like this"), anhysterical symptom, a phobia, or a compulsion ("It is out of my control"). The unifying feature is that the behavior, alongwith its (presumed) underlying, unconscious motivations, is disowned. It is viewed as a sort of foreign body that the patientwishes treatment to excise. Behavior is overtly disowned.

Another repository for the disowned is a spouse. Here the mechanisms of projection and projective identification areused, leading to phenomena like intrusiveness, clinging dependency, pathological conflict, unclear communications (i.e.,assumptions about shared meanings), and pseudo-intimacy. In marital conflict, or other dyadic disownings, behavior istypically overtly owned but experienced as a reaction to the other. "I'm doing this because of you" or "because you make meangry" or "for your sake". Thus behavior, and its motivations, is overtly owned but covertly, unconsciously, disowned.

The capacity to recognize and tolerate, or own, ambivalence is an essential for the inner ownership of the self, forself-object differentiation. Tolerance of ambivalence breaks down through either disowning the negative side of theambivalence by projecting, or through getting "bogged down in an obsessive, indecisive, i.e. 'ambivalent' stewing" (11).Projecting produces a covert disowning, as described above. Ambivalent stewing involves a more subtle disowning. Bothsides are owned overtly, "On the one hand this, on the other hand that." What is not owned is the capacity to resolveambivalence, or the capacity to live with it. "I can't make up my mind, I can't live with indecision." This is a disowning ofthe active behavior of maintaining the conflict, of the constant balancing and rebalancing of the scales. This is anunconscious disowning of the motivations that forbid resolutions or tolerance.

The repositories for split-off parts form a sequence. The most distant repository is the behavior of another whom oneinfluences, e.g., the child used as the repository of the parents' disowned material, the child being overowned. The nextmost distant repository is a foreign object, either an overtly disowned behavior as a symptom, an abstraction like a religionor belief, or a substance or object like alcohol or its containers. Closer is the repository of interpersonal conflict, e.g.,fighting with one's projected disowned feelings. Closer still is the repository of ambivalence.

Interestingly, therapy often proceeds through this sequence of symptoms and treatments. A child is symptomatic; thefurthest repository is being used. When the child is appropriately treated, often a parental symptom or a marital conflictappears. The spouse's symptom may be transformed into a couples problem. A couples problem, treated, reveals anindividual's ambivalence. Closer and closer, the disowned parts, the disowned potentials, are pushed toward their trueowners.

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If this sequence of repositories is kept in mind, they may be used as way stations in the reowning of the disowned. A taskmay be structured requiring parental cooperation to relieve the symptom of their child. This will open the path to the thirdrepository of marital conflict if the task is not performed cooperatively. Perhaps the detour to the second repository will beusedfor example, one spouse may become depressed. Interfering with a couple's projections by means ofcommunicational techniques that block fusion confronts each with his unresolved ambivalences, his internal contradictions.Individual therapy techniques help in the journey from the last repository of the disowned, ambivalence, to the "home" ofthe self-owning, the feeling of being "embodied," of "having trust in one's physical integrity (i.e., wholeness and intactness),and of having a cohesive, nuclear ego" (11).

REFERENCES

1. Anonymous, "Toward the Differentiation of Self in One's Own Family," in J. Framo, (Ed.), Family Interaction,New York, Springer Publishing Company, 1972.

2. Bowen, M., "The Use of Family Theory in Clinical Practice," Compr. Psychiat, 7, 345-374, 1966. 3. Bowen, M., "Family Therapy and Family Group Therapy," in H. I. Kaplan, and B. J. Sadock, (Ed.), Compr. Group

Psychother., Baltimore, Williams and Wilkins, 1971. 4. Bowen, M., "Principles and Techniques of Multiple Family Therapy," in J. O. Bradt, and C. Moynihan, (Ed.),

Systems Therapy, Washington, D.C., Groome Child Guidance Center, 1971. 5. Hoffman, L., "Deviation-Amplifying Processes in Natural Groups," in J. Haley, (Ed.), Changing Families, New

York, Grune and Stratton, 1971. 6. Hoffman, L., "'Enmeshment' and the Too Richly Cross-Joined System," Fam. Proc., 14, 457-468, 1975. 7. Jacobson, E., The Self and the Object World, New York, International Universities Press, 1964. 8. Klugman, J., "'Enmeshment' and 'Fusion'", Fam. Proc., 15, 321-323, 1976. 9. Minuchin, S., Families of the Slums, New York, Basic Books, 1967. 10. Minuchin, S., Families and Family Therapy, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1974. 11. Stierlin, H., "The Dynamics of Owning and Disowning: Psychoanalytic and Family Perspectives," Fam. Proc., 15,

277-288, 1976.

COMMENTARY BY STIERLIN

I read Jeffry Klugman's short paper with great interest, the more so since it takes off from my own paper "Owning andDisowning." There are several points where I feel the author has not correctly grasped the meaning of what I said. To methey reflect the fact that the paper's strength its shortness and conciseness, sticking to a few essential points is also itsweakness. It gives hardly an inkling of the complexity and dialectical nature of the processes that are under discussion.

First I find the author's phrase "The Structural Dimension" ill-chosen because of the meaning the word structure has inpsychoanalytical theory (e.g., in the "structural" point of view). Why not simply say "Owning and Disowning: One FurtherDimension," or something like it.

Second, when we consider the interpersonal in contrast to the intrapsychic aspects of owning and disowning, werealize at once that there is no one-way street. However, the helpless child, who is dependent on the stronger parent'sreality, presents here a special situation. His dependency-and hence his availability as a repository for his parents' disownedaspects- is existentially enforced upon him, whereas it is a different matter between spouses. Between spouses there is oftena quid pro quo, a collusion (Willi) or a contract, something that Lyman Wynne called a "trading of dissociations." If wekeep this complexity in mind, therapy, too, appears in a more complex light than Jeffry Klugman's short paper suggests.Here I can mention only two elements that I hold to be important in any therapy that helps the clients to own, or re-owndisowned parts. These are, first, the sense of importance and power inherent in being an overowned child and, second, thischild's (often unconscious) wish to take revenge on his exploitative parents. This accounts then for a relational andtherapeutic dialectic whose complexity I have described elsewhere (cf. references in my "Owning and Disowning" paper).If we consider this complexity, it becomes apparent that Jeffry Klugman's exposé of the therapeutic process seemssimplistic.

KLUGMAN REPLIES

I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Stierlin that this paper does not do justice to the complexity of the therapeutic process. Ialso agree with his statements to the effect that the developing child takes a progressively more active role in the shapingand maintenance of the family interaction system and that this becomes a source of resistance to change, or perhaps what is

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to be changed, as is the spouses' collusive contract. Interpersonal disowning is a cooperative task albeit that a young child'scooperation is enforced.

I am rather taken by the term "structural," however, and do not want to give it up. "Structural," for me, refers to patternsand correspondences between patterns. For example, gratification-seeking is a regularity linking many behaviors, and wepostulate something intrapsychic called "id" to correspond to this pattern. Thus, "id" is a structure. My interest in this paperis structures (patterns or organizations or regularities) and the way that patterns may be seen to be similar even though theelements that comprise them are different. Along a hierarchy of levels, blurring of intrapsychic structures corresponds toblurring of interpersonal structures (dyadic relationships and family interactional systems). "Structural" cannot be limited tothe psychoanalytic structures of ego, id, and superego, just as it cannot be limited to the structures of the family interactionalsystem, as in the work of Minuchin et al. Structures are where you find them.

Reprint requests to Jeffry Klugman, M.D. 400 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511.

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