In systems theory, the family is treated as a whole that cannot be reduced to the sum of the characteristics of its members. What characterizes the family as a system is rather the specific transactional patterns it reflects.
Every family, considered as a transactional system, tends to repeat these patterns with a high frequency and consequently gives rise to redundancies. The latter enable the observer to deduce the rules, often secret and generally implicit, governing the functioning of a given family at a given moment and helping to maintain its stability.
If we define the family as a self-governing system based on rules established through a series of trials and errors, then its members become so many elements of a circuit in which no one element can be in unilateral control over the rest. In other words, if the behavior of any one family member exerts an undue influence on the behavior of others, it would be an epistemological error to maintain that his behavior is the cause of theirs; rather must we say that his behavior is the effect of past interaction patterns. The study of this type of family transaction is therefore the study of fixed behavioral responses and of their repercussions.
We have spoken of an epistemological error; the latter results from the arbitrary separation of a given behavioral pattern from the pragmatic context of the preceding patterns with which it forms an infinite series.
When I speak of "epistemology" I am not referring to an esoteric discipline reserved for professional philosophers. Every one of us, by his very being in a world he has to share with others, is bound to take a stand vis-à-vis his particular mode of existence, and hence to adopt a certain epistemology.
Again, when I speak of epistemological errors or bad faith, I am referring explicitly to a common error of modern Western culture (and hence of psychiatry): the idea that there is a "self" capable of transcending the system of relationships of which it forms a part, and hence of being in unilateral control of the system.
It follows that even such behavior patterns as reduce the ostensible victim to impotence are not so much stimuli as responses. In other words both partners in the transaction are mistaken --- the manipulator who believes in his omnipotence no less than his apparently powerless victim.
But if both are mistaken, where does the real power lie? It lies in the rules of the game played in the pragmatic context of the behavioral responses ofallthe protagonists, none of whom is capable of changing the rules from the inside.
By defining the patient as a pseudo-victim, we are avoiding the blind alley of moralistic psychiatry. It would appear that R. D. Laing and his school, precisely because they have adopted Sartre's distinction betweenpraxisandprocess,have fallen into just this moralistic trap. By contrast, if we treat the family as a system in which no one member can hold unilateral sway over the rest, then praxis and process become synonymous. "Persecutor" and "victim" become so many moves in one and the same game, the rules of which neither one can alter from within --- all changes depend on strategic interventions from without.
In the particular case of a family with an anorexic patient, we find that the epistemological error of the whole group is that all of them believe that the patient, because of her symptom, wields power over the rest and renders them helpless. If we were to take a snapshot during the very first therapeutic session, we should see an anguished expression on the parents' faces, the patient sitting apart from the rest, straight as a statue, pallid and detached, her face showing utter indifference to the others' distress. Her behavior is a clear message, not least to the therapist:If you think you can get me to break my fast, you'll have to think again. Just look at me: I am nothing but skin and bones and I might easily die. And if death is the price I have to pay for my power, then I shall willingly pay it.
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