FEST Writing Group

Dear FEST, I would like to work toward publishing these sessions in some form; would appreciate any kind of thoughts you may have. I’m submitting it to you without any theory, but I was thinking of providing some theory regarding triangles, etc. to accompany the sessions if I publish them. Any thoughts?

February 2, 1987 (first half of session, lightly edited)

Dr. Bowen:
Well… Last appointment was canceled. The one in November, whenever it was, December.
Client:
Right.
Dr. Bowen:
And this one you made by telephone. What goes with you? You sent me that envelope of stuff last fall after that first appointment.
Client:
Right. And I saw my parents over Thanksgiving. I spent some time with my mother. I asked her about what it was like when I was born.
She and my father were living with her mother when I was born, just for a few months before I was born, in Dyersburg. And, my father went back to school at Vanderbilt. He would just come and visit on weekends. I brought you some photographs. Would you like to look at them?
Dr. Bowen:
Yeah. You were born when?
Client:
1950. That’s me with my grandmother.
Dr. Bowen:
Mm-hmm.
Client:
And here’s me with my mother. That’s me with my mother, and that’s my father. That’s the room where they lived in my grandmother’s house. That’s my father, his mother, and my father’s grandmother. They all lived in Dyersburg. And that’s me. I guess I was about a year old.
Dr. Bowen:
You got those pictures when you were down there?
Client:
I had them. It seemed that you were right, that I was very close to my mother. [Sound of Dr. Bowen tapping on desk with his pencil]

One of the things that I wanted to do while I was visiting was to encourage my mother to take a trip with me to Tennessee, to visit a relative who knows a lot about the family genealogy, and she seemed really delighted that I asked her. She has a spring break in April and a trip she was planning to take fell through, so it seemed like good timing. She seemed enthusiastic and then she pulled back and said, “Well, it depends on if your father is in good health and how he feels about it.”
She called me on New Year’s Day and said that she and my father were probably going to take a trip together in the spring, implying that it would take the place of my trip with her.
Dr. Bowen:
Trip was planned for when?
Client:
It was going to be around April 11th. April 11th to 15th or so.
Dr. Bowen:
You know, my guess about that is, would be that your parents are so involved with each other and your mother would be unusually protective of your dad.
Client:
Yes.
Dr. Bowen:
And it would be terribly hard to get her away from him. She’s probably stuck to him as much as she is to you, [sound of tapping] so you just don’t go in with them either/ors. Not into that family. That’s a fairly common one for parents to be protective of each other. [Tapping] Dr. Bowen:
So, what the hell? So that’s the order of things you got. You do as best you can to make contact with them.
Client:
I thought it would be interesting to visit them on my birthday in April.
Dr. Bowen:
I don’t see anything wrong with that. How often do you visit your parents?
Client:
I usually visit them about three times a year, four times.
Dr. Bowen:
So that’s usual for you.
Dr. Bowen:
See, April would be your birthday, and I think it would be better to plan it around something happening to them than something happening to you.
Client:
Oh. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Bowen:
It makes you terribly important in it. So make you less important and them more important.
In other words, if you can set up some kind of a plan or visits or there’s some kind of family event that would get you there, or some kind of planned thing rather than make something special out of it.
Dr. Bowen:
The more special you make it, the more un-special they’ll make it.
Client:
Mm-hmm. Okay. Maybe it would be better to wait until around Easter time.
Dr. Bowen:
That’s a good time.
Dr. Bowen:
From what you say, you’re going to have a hard time getting your mother away from your dad. She’s sort of become his keeper.
Client:
Right.
Dr. Bowen:
She thinks he needs a keeper. That’s her view of it. Course, he can get along perfectly well without her, but that’s not her view.
Client:
Yeah, there’s a long history of her protecting him. She wouldn’t let the children talk to him on the phone or even his mother talk to him.

Dr. Bowen:
Have you figured a way to, how often you talk to him on the telephone?
Client:
Almost never, because he doesn’t like to talk on the… Well, I don’t know if he likes to talk on the phone or not, but my parents, as a block, discourage him from talking on the phone. He doesn’t have good hearing.
Dr. Bowen:
So what?
Client:
Yeah, they set that up. My parents set that up.
Dr. Bowen:
What do you do to get through that?
Client:
Well, I used, well, he writes. He’s pretty good at writing.
Dr. Bowen:
Well, I’d write him a letter, ask him why his wife won’t let him talk on the telephone.
Client:
And say I’d like to talk to him?
Dr. Bowen:
Tell him you miss talking to him on the telephone. Why does he think his wife keeps him from it.
Client:
Okay.
Dr. Bowen:
When you talk to your dad about your mother, call her his wife. She’s your mother, but she is his wife. And you focus on that relationship and not on you.
Client:
What do you think I should write to my mother?
Dr. Bowen:
About what?
Client:
About, should I mention the trip again?
Dr. Bowen:
I would. Tell her you’re looking forward to the trip. And you want to know when she can go with you. By all means, take her by herself. Don’t take your dad.
Where are you going with her?
Client:
McMinnville. It’s in the middle of Tennessee.
Dr. Bowen:
McMinnville is way the hell over there. How are you going to travel?
Client:
She’ll probably drive.
Dr. Bowen:
Okay, that’s a good one. She can drive. McMinnville is… She lives where?
Client:
My mother? Richmond, Virginia.
Dr. Bowen:
You mean your mother and dad live in Richmond?
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
I thought they still lived in Tennessee somewhere.
Client:
No. They couldn’t stand Tennessee, is my opinion. And they left.
Dr. Bowen:
What was wrong with Tennessee?
Client:
They didn’t like the small-town mentality of people. They didn’t like the social obligations. They think people should be able to do what they want to do. They didn’t want to be held back by guilt and obligation.
Dr. Bowen:
Where’d they live in Tennessee?
Client:
Dyersburg.
Dr. Bowen:
How many other people lived there?
Client:
Well, my mother was born there, and so her whole family lived there and my father’s family also lived there.
Dr. Bowen:
What they’re doing is getting away from family.
Dr. Bowen:
So I would say if you can set it up, good for you. Trip like that with your mother.
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
And it’s hard to know what your dad’s situation is. Your mother will be making him the sick one so damn long. And he’ll be playing sick for her.
Well, I’d say the more you can get a direct relationship with him, the less these physical things will get in the way, I bet you.
Client:
But, what do you think my best move would be in getting a direct relationship with him? You know what happened, another thing that happened while I was there, my father, my sister and her husband, and myself were together in the living room and my sister was talking about shoes. And she said she thought she and I wore the same size shoe. And my father said to me, “You have a little foot, you have a graceful, little foot.” And then to my sister, he said, “You have a big, fat foot. You have a big, fat foot like your mother.” I felt really uncomfortable, but I didn’t… and our feet are the same size.
Dr. Bowen:
Well, what the hell.
Client:
Is that something I could, is there anything I could do with that?
Dr. Bowen:
You remember it, so it’s emotionally laden.
Client:
Yeah. It is. It’s hard for me. When my mother called me on New Year’s, the other thing she said was that she saw a movie with Jane Fonda in it and that it reminded her of me, because I’m so beautiful and I have such a beautiful body. It bothers me, because at times, she’s expressed jealousy. What should I do, just ignore it?
Dr. Bowen:
Oh, you can ignore that. I would go back on that thing about feet and I would approach that in a way that says, “I’ve thought about that a hundred times,” and you have.
Client:
To tell my dad this?
Dr. Bowen:
I would just ask him, I wouldn’t tell him. Tell him you thought about that a hundred times and your sister’s feet are the same size yours, and you wonder what in the hell he meant.
Client:
Okay.
Dr. Bowen:
And let him answer that. In other words, you’ve thought about it. That makes it emotionally important to you. So you bring it up to him in the form of a question rather than telling him.
Client:
What about this little thing with my mother about Jane Fonda?
Dr. Bowen:
Oh, what the hell.
Client:
You see, it’s odd, because my father always says, “You’re so beautiful. You look just like a movie star.” And he used to say that to my mother, but he doesn’t say it to my mother anymore. And now my mother is saying I look like Jane Fonda.
Dr. Bowen:
Well, I would be inclined to let them know, and you’ve thought about it, and you don’t agree with their opinion. ‘Cause, they get in a position of building you up, building you up, building you up, building you up, and the more you get build up, the more superhuman you become. You ain’t superhuman.
Client:
I either go from thinking I’m really superhuman pretty or I think I’m just awful looking and I can’t seem to get a-
Dr. Bowen:
Get the midline.
Client:
Yeah. Something realistic, and pleasant, you know.
Dr. Bowen:
Few years ago, I have a niece that graduated from medical school. I went to her graduation. She had a couple of aunts there on her mother’s side, and I was sitting by the mother’s side and aunt at graduation. She says, “Isn’t she the prettiest thing?” I said, “Oh, only fair to middling. She’s not in the class with that girl five feet behind her.” But there they were doing a build-up on my niece, which is crazy. It comes out as a myth. It comes out of that family. All I was trying to do is to, “Well, she’s done pretty well in medical school. Everybody recognizes that.” I didn’t recognize her the way that aunt has her built up.
Client:
Yeah. That’s just what’s happened. Is there something that I could say to my sister about it?
Dr. Bowen:
If you have a notion that you’re trying to tone it down, tone it down.
Client:
Because what happens is, I tend to get caught up into it and believe it. That’s what tends to happen.
Dr. Bowen:
I know it.
Client:
And I don’t think I’m prettier than Suzanne, but I tend to believe that I am, because everyone, my whole family thinks I am. But I don’t know that someone outside the family would think so.
Dr. Bowen:
Okay. Someone else doesn’t think so, what you’re trying to do . . . I’d say most family histories are riddled with mythology and that would be one of them.
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
That you’re pretty as a movie star. Well, horsefeathers. So how do you get out of that mythology? I think every family has dozens of these, and these are family myths that get communicated, and it gets to be “How wonderful my family is,” or, “How terrible.” One or the other.
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
So you’re… I don’t remember those in your family write up, but it’s there. So they will either see you as the greatest or the lousiest. They’ll see you as the greatest and how you supposed to be that great. You can’t be that if you live a thousand years. So how do you cut the myth down to size? The more impaired a family, the more they build up these myths.
Client:
The more what?
Dr. Bowen:
They build up the myths. But, they’re in every family to some degree. I got fooling around recently with George Custer’s family. So George Custer’s either being built up as the greatest hero or the biggest nut. There’ve been recent stories about George Custer, that he walked into the middle of a trap. I was out in Minnesota recently. I asked people if anybody had ever been to Little Big Horn. Somebody said, “I had, when I was a little girl.” “What do you remember about the Little Big Horn?” She says, “I cried for those poor people.” In other words, she was living out the myths, too, getting caught up in the feelings.
Client:
Uh-huh. Well, I know that my father’s aunt, the one who never married and never worked, and went into a coma when she was 28, on Valentine’s Day, and never came out of it, was considered really beautiful.
Dr. Bowen:
It’s either the smart ones or the beautiful ones that die.
Client:
Yeah. Well, I was considered smart and beautiful.
Dr. Bowen:
Can you find anybody with an operatic voice? I had somebody somewhere. I’ve heard of a family with, they had a boy and, at least he was known locally for baseball pitcher. He had a tryout one time scheduled for a major league team but never got to go. So he lived a lifetime under the myth that he was a great pitcher.
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
So the family had another . . . They left in groves in that family, and never got anywhere.
Client:
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
So that’s all under family myths that get exaggerated.
Dr. Bowen:
You know I don’t know what you’ll find in McMinnville, but I think there’s an army post there. Well, there was during the war. I’ve never done any more than just go through McMinnville, so I don’t know much about it, but I think there used to be an Army post there. And I think the town is built up around that. But I’ve forgotten the name of that place. But I think it’s in McMinnville.
Client:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Bowen:
Generally, I would say that you tend to run down your family. You focus a lot on what’s wrong with ’em.
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
So, you focus what’s right about them. Maybe they build them up so high you focus on what’s wrong with them to equalize them.
. . .
What’s next?
Client:
I don’t know.
Dr. Bowen:
Neither your mother and dad are working now.
Client:
My mother.
Dr. Bowen:
She’s working in what?
Client:
She works for the State of Virginia with… She counsels families and works with infants who are blind, and works with families.
Dr. Bowen:
So she has a regular job with the state?
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
It probably’s life-saving for him.
Client:
You mean gets her out of the house?
Dr. Bowen:
If she stayed home with him, she’d probably kill him by focusing on what’s wrong with him.
Client:
His health, you mean?
Dr. Bowen:
Because you put those two people together and keep them together long enough, one of them’s going to get sick, so keep your mother working. Course you can’t govern that. I’ll bet you if she didn’t work, your dad would go into more dysfunction. God knows what that stroke business is with him.
Client:
Well, you know what happened?
. . .
Dr. Bowen:
Well, when you deal with that now, I don’t know how he’d built you up, but he’s built you up to something very important. All you want to do is just be a normal human being and not be important and not be unimportant. If he threatens to get sick, I’d joke about that. I don’t think he’s going to get sick.
Client:
It’s odd, because he said, he says he’s fine. He wrote me a letter and he said, “Everything’s under control. I saw my doctor about glaucoma and he said I won’t go blind until I’m 105 years old.” He was joking and very positive about it. And I guess, my mom’s a little more positive now, but just a couple of years ago, she was implying he might not live a few years into the future, saying, “I want these next two years to be really good for your dad.” But I think he wants to live.
Dr. Bowen:
Everybody wants to. And not get caught up.
Client:
But it’s been a very painful thing.
Dr. Bowen:
What’s painful?
Client:
Worrying about him.
Dr. Bowen:
Why don’t you quit worrying. Let him worry about himself.
Client:
What should I, what do you think would make sense? Should I say anything about it? He wrote me a letter and he said, “These are all the things that are fine. Just so I thought you kids would want to know your father’s a survivor.” Should I respond?
Dr. Bowen:
I would joke back with him. You can do it any way you want to. I would joke back with him and say well, you’re glad to get his letter. Way he’s been talking, you thought he’s going to be dead in three years.
Client:
Okay.
Dr. Bowen:
You always thought that was an error. I wonder where you got that. You must’ve got that from him.
Client:
I should tell him that?
Dr. Bowen:
Yeah. Well, he tells you one time he’s a survivor, and then he tells you the next time he’s about dead.
Client:
Although, it’s usually my mother who tells me.
Dr. Bowen:
That he’s about dead. When is she going to stop making him dead? With her thoughts. See, all you’re trying to do is to equalize all that junk.
Client:
What do you mean equalize?
Dr. Bowen:
Well, he’s not going to live the longest, he’s not going die next either. Bet you he lives to an average age.
Client:
So even though he’s had these problems, there’s no reason to think he’s going to die early.
Dr. Bowen:
Probably not. And your mother doesn’t want him to die, she’s just afraid he’s going to die.
Client:
Right.
Dr. Bowen:
That’s fear, anxiety.
Client:
Yeah.
Dr. Bowen:
I’ve known one in which a wife was always anxious about her husband, which came partly from her orientation, partly from his family. But, even though her husband was making a good job, making a lot of money, she was always concerned that he’s going to be a screw-up somewhere. He’s going to go broke. you know, got to look at him. Another one of the myths that come out of nowhere.
Client:
Well, they don’t come out of nowhere. I mean, maybe because of my mother’s father died.
Dr. Bowen:
I don’t know, they come from somewhere.
Client:
But maybe her mother was worried about her father.
Dr. Bowen:
But that’s another one of the mythologies. And if you get a mythology and you keep harping on it, maybe they will [become ill or die].