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Viewing therapy through a new lens.

Article Excerpt
This article presents a snapshot of a family in crisis and the author's spontaneous intervention. It deconstructs the intervention and the father's perceived personality type through the lens of the Enneagram Personality Typing System. It introduces a hypothesis about why the intervention was effective from the vantage of this system with comments about common transference and counter-transference relationships. An accompanying article with brief comments about each of the nine Enneagram types in therapy is included.

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Viewing Therapy Through a New Lens

"Sometimes the magic works and sometimes it doesn't," said Chief Dan George in the movie Little Big Man. This philosophy resonates when I'm not sure why my actions as a therapist work or don't work. I mentally archive the mysterious cases as puzzles until new theoretical insights, even years later, provide the missing pieces. For instance, a client I'll call "Linda" was helped after I acted intuitively with her father during a family crisis session. The Enneagram eventually contributed to my understanding why that intervention had such a positive outcome.

Linda was a severely depressed woman who was hospitalized after a near fatal overdose. When I evaluated her, she was still lethargic and determined to end her life. She wanted to divorce her husband, yet was certain her father would reject her if she did so.

All three of Linda's older sisters and her mother were at the hospital to support her during the intake visit, although the mother remained very quiet and withdrawn. Linda's father, "Harold," was not there. Family members described him as a "my way or the highway kind of guy" who was sometimes violent, often intimidating, and never admitted to any wrong. Linda's husband was not present and, as it turned out, she wasn't ready to consider the possibility of including him in her treatment.

Suicidal intentions signify a need for major change. The question, "what needs to die?" can be useful. Linda believed she had no choices. So, as we developed a bit of rapport, I suggested a family-of-origin session to gather information and identify resources to begin evaluating her belief system.

All the sisters agreed to attend and to bring their mother. None of them wanted to risk setting off Harold's anger by asking him to come, but they allowed me to invite him. They did not believe he would show up and, if he did, expected him to leave as soon as anyone began to talk about unflattering inside workings of their family.

Harold did agree to attend. It was interesting to sense the change in the room when he entered. He seemed to radiate control of all the space around him. I thanked them all for coming and then asked each person's thoughts on how the family might be a resource for Linda at this time.

The already-tense situation heightened as one of Linda's sisters saw this as her opportunity to accuse Harold of abuse. No one disagreed or defended him, and within seconds, Harold headed for the door. From a surge of pure gut energy, I reacted to block his exit. "Yeah, this is just what your daughters expected," I challenged. "They figured you would be too chicken to stay, but your daughter is suicidal, and she needs your help now. She needs you to stay." After a tense stare-down between us, his face softened, and he returned to his chair. It could not have been easy for him to realize he was going to hear more about the destructive effects his bullying and abuse had on the family.

With the information they gave me, I drew a large genogram to frame the current circumstances in a developmental context. As one might predict, violence and misused authority shadowed Harold's own childhood. Despite his gruffefforts to minimize this fact, it seemed to help his daughters to learn more about both their parents' stories in relation to their own. By the end of this long session, Harold acknowledged damage he had caused his family and he apologized. In response, his family neither abandoned him nor backed away from their truth.

When Harold revealed his own humanity, he seemed to open the door for Linda to live outside of his control. He had demonstrated his love for her by staying and facing the consequences of his actions. Linda's energy increased as she appeared empowered by this new information. Released from her limiting beliefs about Harold's...

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