Haley: There have been some studiesshowing that addicts are really veryinvolved with theirfamilies—much more so than was ever thought. We assume that if the parentstake charge of the kid and get him off drugs, he’ll stayoff; but often, if the problem ishanded to an expertwho tries to get him off drugs, he’ll collapse and go back home and startall over again. Now I don’t want to imply that the parentscaused it. It’s just that once a kid isinto it, the wayto get him off drugs isto bring him together with the parents and have the parentstake charge of him. The parents don’t cause it, but theycan cure it.
Pines: Do you have any evidencethat parents can cure it?
Haley: There was a program atthe Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic, agroup led by DuncanStanton, on family therapy of street addicts, in which there was quite ahigh cure rate. They did very well there with the samesort of organizational, structuralapproach of putting theparents in charge.
Pines: You really believe inhaving the parents take charge.
Haley: In recent years I’ve gonefurther in that direction. For example,when young peoplecome out of a mental hospital and start family therapy, I prefer to havethetherapist side withthe parents againstthe offspring during the first interview, in order toconstructthe correct hierarchy. This is quite the opposite of 20years ago, when we tended toside with youngpeople against the parents because of the idea that the child was a victimand the parents were a noxious influence.
Pines: What if the parents aredivorced or remarried?
Haley: In some of these blendedfamilies, with children from severaldifferent manages,there are special problems. We’ve been seeing more ofthem.
Pines: What kind of problems?
Haley: Oh, "my kids, your kids,and our kids"—that sort of thing. If a guybrings a coupleof kids into a family and the woman has a couple of kidsof her own, very oftenthere’s adisciplinaryissue: Who has the right to discipline whose kid: There arealso hierarchical problems. You may get a family withtwo 12-year-old boys, and that can bequite a problem.
Ordinarily, kids work out a hierarchy by age.
Pines: In such cases, what doyou do?
"My impression is that Hinckley’s parents objected to whathe wasdoing while financing his doingit. I don’t think that’s sensible."
Haley: Negotiate. Lay out a planfor the family. Mostly we work on gettingthe parents toagree on what to do which the kids. And if there’s a realproblem—a kid with aproblem that looksas if it’s the result of a blended situation—we may not only bring in allthe kids and both parent, but also the previous family–thebiological father or mother—and geteverybody toagree. I remember we did that with an adolescent who stole women’s underwearand hid it in his room. To deal with his sexual confusion,we brought in his biologicalmother as well as hisstepmother and his father.
Pines: Did it help?
Haley: Oh, yes.
Pines: Is he still doing it?
Haley: Not as far as I know.It’s been two years. It was an exasperatingcase. His fatherjust sort of vaguely protested. So we put the father incharge of solving theproblem. Theprocedurewe gave him was that every time the kid stole lingerie again, thefather would have to come home from work and go out inthe backyard to watch the kid dig ahole three feetdeep and bury it there.
Pines: Who dreamed that up?
Haley: I did. If you make itmore difficult for somebody to have a symptomby makinghim go through an ordeal of some kind every time he showsthat symptom, he’ll giveup the symptom.
Pines: Did you explain to thefamily why you wanted the kid to dig thathole?
Haley: Not in this case. We justtold them he’d get over his problem if hedid that.
Pines: And they followed yourinstructions?
Haley:Yes.Peoplewhiledowhatyouask.That’stheartofdirectivetherapy.Imean,ifyoucangetsomebody
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