Here's the latest in my reading on cross-cultural psychology in an attempt to complexify the pop-psychology understanding of boundaries and separation-individuation:
According to Turkish psychologist Cigdem Kagitcibasi, it is possible for a family to be close and interdependent and still give their children autonomy and individual responsibility. It's also possible for parents to exercise both a high level of control and a high level of warmth (closeness), as long as the control has a positive meaning in the understanding of the child, and especially if this fits with the surrounding culture. American culture in the 20th century emphasized individualism (high autonomy, low connectedness), and psychology mistakenly took this as normative and healthy; many cultures in the Majority World were traditionally low autonomy, high connectedness. With families from these traditional cultures moving to the cities now, they are becoming more high autonomy, high connectedness, which Kagitcibasi says is a healthy target.
All this reminds me very much of grid-group analysis in Doug Fraser's cultural anthropology class.
I want to hold onto Kagitcibasi's idea that autonomy and closeness are both in-born human needs. Kagitcibasi does us a service in framing these as two different axes on the same plane rather than as two opposite points on the same axis. That we can have both if we do it right.
I also want to complexify the developmental perspective. Henry Cloud and John Townsend say in their book Boundaries that certain aspects of the soul may have been damaged or underdeveloped in childhood, and that they can be developed later in life in safe community. I would add to this a perspective championed by Laurie and Matt Krieg that lists a number of core needs (e.g. to be seen, to be known, to matter to someone) which we are created with, which are sometimes unmet in childhood, and crucially, which are designed for God to fill primarily, and thence indirectly to be filled by others in community. So it's not quite a matter of needing to develop boundaries to keep God and others at arms-length until one feels safe, but rather getting close to God (including through lament) and then becoming safe enough to let others come close too.
Finally, I think social and cultural change has affected not only the Majority World but also the US. Thus, in a family like mine that continued my grandparents' generation's parenting methods in some ways, and in other ways followed certain psychologically- and historically-informed neotraditional reactionary movements (e.g. literature by Mennonites, Bill Gothard, James Dobson, and the patriarchal homeschooling and home-business movement etc.), what we got was moderate to high closeness, high control, and also opportunities for high autonomy and personal responsibility. And yet as the surrounding culture shifted and called for less control, and my parents had less energy, I think there developed more tensions that were difficult to resolve because there was less energy and flexibility to maintain the family system and because certain existing practices took on different meanings when compared with the changing cultural context.
This makes me want to look more tolerantly on my parents' choices, as examples of burdened agency imperfectly working toward an ideal.
I also would like to add some sort of goal of maturity to this discussion of family systems. It's not enough to want your children to grow up to be autonomous, interdependent agents. This has to be a mediate goal on the way toward virtue. I don't mean Gothard's list of 49 character qualities; I feel that's too complicated and focused more on numerology than coherence. To be honest, I don't have a list yet. But I'd like go back in history and look more toward the mystical moral development program of Evagrius Ponticus and John Cassian (and earlier the Apostle Paul), with their idea of shedding the old self with its troublesome passions, proceeding toward singleness of heart and charity, and putting on a new self with new practices that lead to patience, a moderate selflessness, and clearer and more personal knowledge of God and others.
Another group of psychologists who would agree with Kagitcibasi are Ashley Barrrera, Markie Blumer, and Shayna Soenksen. In a 2011 article, they stress the importance of careful listening on the part of the counselor to find out the cultural background, family context and specific story of each individual they counsel, so they don't make hasty generalizations based on binary values like enmeshed vs individuated families. Even kids from enmeshed families can turn out well, depending on the meaning they place on their relationships and how they grow from them.
Last week I watched the film Ragamuffin (2014), depicting the life of musician Rich Mullins, especially in his tense relationship with his dad. A motif was a swinging lighbulb in the dark, from a memory of how as a young boy helping his dad fix a tractor, he hadn't held the light still and his dad had berated him. It was only after a retreat with a mentor, Brennan Manning, where he got alone and poured out his heart in lament to God, and then wrote a letter as from his then-deceased father to him, that he was able to reconcile the memories and remember how his father apologized afterward for his outburst and reaffirmed his affection for him. Somehow the processing of the overwhelming feelings unlocked the more complex memories and enabled him to re-evaluate his dad in a more balanced way, regain God as his true father, and recapture his love for his earthly father, leaving aside the unmet expectations on both sides. I have hopes to, slowly, over time, continue to do the same.
Recommended reading:
William Harmless. 2004. Desert Christians: an introduction to the literature of early monasticism. Oxford Univ. Press.
Cigdem Kagitcibasi. 2005. Autonomy and relatedness in cultural context: implications for self and family. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. Vol. 36, No. 4, July 2005, pp.403-422. https://local.psy.miami.edu/
Grid-group cultural theory. https://changingminds.org/
Ashley Barrerra, Markie Blumer, and Shayna Soenksen. 2011. Revisiting adolescent Separation-Individuation in the contexts of enmeshment and allocentrism. The New School Psychology Bulletin 2011, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp.70-82.
