The Presence of the Absent: Therapy with Families and their Ghosts

129 Pages·2015·1.3 MB·English

by  Carlos E. Sluzki

The Presence of the Absent
Where live our most cherished (or painful) memories? Where are lodged those
whom we loved (or dreaded) after they have departed? They inhabit, at least for
a while, in a gray zone located between our self and our world, sometimes as
internal reminiscences sometimes as strikingly vivid images detected and inter-
acted by individuals and occasionally by whole collectives, as tenuous or as solid
presences.
This book familiarizes us with six examples of individuals and families in
therapy who live and interact with the presence of their absent, pivotal people in
their lives who either died or disappeared, but are still there. It familiarizes us
with their plight in a tender, compassionate style, describing in detail interviews
and therapeutic transformations and, in several cases, follow-ups as well as
echoes of those processes. It teaches us to respect those presences as well as how
to help families and individuals treasure them, and in many cases to let them go.
Written in a vivid, intense language, The Presence of the Absent offers a marvelous
insight into these processes that may prove transformative for the therapist (both
family and individually oriented), as well as enlightening to the general public.
Carlos E. Sluzki, MD is Professor Emeritus of Global and Community Health
and of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University, and
Professor (Clinical) of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington
University School of Medicine. He is an internationally renowned psychiatrist
and family therapist who trained in both Argentina and the United States.
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The Presence of the Absent
Therapy with Families
and their Ghosts
Carlos E. Sluzki
First published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Carlos E. Sluzki
The right of Carlos E. Sluzki to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sluzki, Carlos E., author.
The presence of the absent : therapy with families and their ghosts /
Carlos E. Sluzki.
p. ; cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
I. Title.
[DNLM: 1. Family Therapy—methods. 2. Attitude to Death.
3. Culturally Competent Care. 4. Family Relations. 5. Hallucinations.
6. Professional-Patient Relations. WM 430.5.F2]
RC488.5
616.89′156—dc23
2014049492
ISBN: 978-1-138-84779-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-84778-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-72650-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Berkeley
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
About the Author vi
Acknowledgments viii
Foreword, by Salvador Minuchin x
1 Ethereal Presences 1
2 Forbidden Words, Forbidden Thoughts: Semantic and
Somatic Effects of Political Repression in a Family with
a Hole in its Center 10
3 Rekindling the Experience of Freedom: Ghosts of
a Dictatorship and Reverberations in a Liberating Process 34
4 House Taken Over: Culture, Migration and Developmental
Cycle in a Moroccan Family Overtaken by Ghosts 45
5 The Ancient Cult of Madame: When Therapists Trade
Curiosity for Certainty 68
6 The Naming: The Awakening of Two Ghost Children 80
7 Saudades at the Edge of the Self and the Merits of
“Portable Families” 89
8 Wrap Up 100
References 105
Index 110
About the Author
Carlos E. Sluzki, MD, was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where
he graduated from medical school and was trained in psychiatry and in
psychoanalysis. In turn, he was trained in family therapy at the Mental Research
Institute (MRI), Palo Alto, California, during the early days of that discipline.
In 1972 Dr. Sluzki migrated to the United States with a prestigious John
S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Since then his career has included
being Director of Training and later Director of the above-mentioned MRI
(1976–1983) as well as Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California
San Francisco (1975–1983), at the University of Massachusetts Medical
School (1983–1993), and at the University of California Los Angeles
(1993–2003). Dr. Sluzki resides currently in Washington, DC, where
he is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at George Washington University
School of Medicine and Professor Emeritus of Global and Community
Health and of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.
Dr. Sluzki has been Editor-in-Chief of the journals Acta Psiquiatrica y Psicologica
de America Latina, Family Process, and the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry,
and Vice-President of the American Family Therapy Association. He is a twice
awardee of the American Family Therapy Academy, a Distinguished Life
Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and of the American College of
Psychiatrists, and a honorary member of multiple professional organizations in
the United States, Latin America, Asia, and Europe.
He has published extensively—including more than 200 articles in professional
journals, book chapters and books, including The Double Bind: Foundation of the
Communicational Approach to the Family (with Donald Ransom) and his recent
The Social Network, Frontier of the Systemic Practice. Dr. Sluzki has also been
actively involved in human rights and the plight of refugees/IDPs, has been
About the Author vii
consultant to the World Health Organization and to the Office of the Prosecutor
of the International Criminal Court, has received multiple awards and delivered
countless keynote and panel presentations and conducted workshops worldwide,
with special emphasis on family therapy, social networks, violence and victimization,
refugees and human rights (www.sluzki.com).
Acknowledgments
Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7 evolved from articles previously published in professional
journals, listed below. I acknowledge with appreciation those journals for their
authorization to utilize that material as a base for the corresponding chapters.
Sluzki, C.E. (1990). “Disappeared: Semantic and somatic effects of political
repression in a family seeking therapy.” Family Process, 29(2): 131–143.
Sluzki, C.E. (1997). “Rekindling the experience of freedom: From the
personal to the collective . . . and back.” Human Systems, 8(3–4): 225–238.
Sluzki, C.E. (2004). “A house taken over by ghosts: Culture, migration
and developmental cycle in a Moroccan family invaded by hallucinations.”
Families, Systems and Health, 22(3): 321–337.
Sluzki, C.E. (2008). “The ancient cult of madame: When therapists trade
curiosity for certainty.” Journal of Family Therapy (UK), 30: 119–130.
Sluzki C.E. (2008). “Saudades at the edge of the self and the merits of por-
table families” Transcultural Psychiatry, 45: 379–390.
I also wish to express my gratitude to these and many other families, couples,
and individuals whom I accompanied, and who accompanied me, in the course
of my professional practice. They incorporated me temporarily as a meaningful
member of their social network, and allowed me to dive into their stories—
stories that ended up inhabiting a space that included me—while opening up
to my contributions, sometimes incorporating them into their worldview and
sometimes wisely questioning my premises. In doing so they taught me many
things about life, suffering, rebuilding, hope and joy, about my fallibility while
occasionally validating my capacity to help them to introduce changes in their
Acknowledgments ix
lives. This recursive process of learning and helping to learn, of changing and
helping to change, has been and is for me an ever-present source of nourishment.
Likewise, my heartfelt appreciation to mentors, colleagues, and friends
who have oriented, expanded and enriched both my personal and my profes-
sional life and contributed to its evolution at different moments of my journey.
Looking backwards, a few shine with special light: Mauricio Goldenberg, Eliseo
Veron, Paul Watzlawick, Virginia Satir, Don D. Jackson, Janet Helmick Beavin,
Heinz von Foerster, Gianfranco Cecchin, Elida Romano, Julio Aranovich, and
Donald A. Bloch. To them, and to many other colleagues and friends with whom
I shared and share community, my love and my debt.
I wish also to express my deep appreciation for colleagues and friends who at
different moments provided me with constructive suggestions in the process of
writing this book. Special thanks are due to my beloved wife and personal and
intellectual companion, Sara Cobb, PhD, for her solid stimulation and warm sup-
port and for the many ideas conveyed in many conversations and in her admirable
book Speaking of Violence (Cobb, 2013); to my admired senior colleague, creative
pioneer and generous friend Salvador Minuchin for his kind prologue and for
so much more; to my friend Saul Malozowski, MD for his detailed review and
feedback of this book while in progress; and, of course, to the late Gabriel Garcia
Marquez, Nobel Prize of Literature, who brought forth magic realism and validat-
ing that dimension through the esthetic door, thus bringing it out of the closet of
our private if not secret world into the light of our explicit daily experiences.
CES
Washington, DC.