Material, Myth, and Magic: A Cultural Approach to Family Therapy

Abstract

This paper presents a model for a therapeutic approach to the cultural systems of families. Using anthropologically derived concepts of material and ideational planes of culture, magic, and ritualistic intervention, the inducement of culture change in frozen familial systems is framed in dialectical terms. Four brief case studies are presented describing the systems engaged, the material-ideational rituals employed, and the cultural transformations induced. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of some of the theoretical and practical implications of this cultural approach to the family in therapy.

Theoretical Reflections on Rites of Passage in a Hungarian Therapeutic Community

“…But if beliefs and other ideas are linked to rituals as well-documented in a classic of cultural anthropological theory (Kluckhohn, 1944) this appears to increase markedly their change-inducing impact on the group. As maintained in earlier anthropologically framed accounts of the role of ritual in family therapy, successful therapeutic work (i.e., change productive work) may be understood as simultaneous ritual intervention by therapists into both the ideational and material spheres of a family's culture (Seltzer and Seltzer, 1983, 2000.…”

Myths of Destruction

“…This has been employed by this author as a way to understand and act upon the process of therapy in familial groups. Although this approach has been described elsewhere (Seltzer, 1983(Seltzer, , 1984(Seltzer, , 1985a(Seltzer, , 1985b(Seltzer, , 1987, a concentrated summary of some principles of this model will be attempted here.…”

“…These two ingredients are referred to as existing at a material and ideational plane (Seltzer & Seltzer, 1983). At the material plane of family culture are found those behaviors which are made explicit by the family, thus subject to direct observation.…”

Witnessing Death: Ballard's and Cronenberg's Crash

“…48 The wound, wherever it appears, whether on the body of a crash victim or on the car, is a "crossing-point" between the individual and the collective-it allows us to indulge in the fantasy of sharing the pain. 49 This is also the case in the relationship between the viewer and the screen, particularly so in what may be the most painful and dif cult image in Cronenberg's lm, where the crippled woman Gabrielle is penetrated through the gash in her thigh. This wound, throbbing under James' touch, recalls the gash in Max Renn's stomach in Videodrome (1982), where it appears, as it does here, as a vaginal slit.…”