The New Peoplemaking Book Review PDF

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Review of Virginia Satir's book The New Peoplemaking about marriage and family therapy ...

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Book Review of The New Peoplemaking In her book The New Peoplemaking, Virginia Satir defines nurturing and troubled family environments, emphasizes the importance of family members’ self-worth, encourages valuing the emotions of each family member, and explores the perception of role interpretation (1988). Nurturing Families and Troubled Families During her therapy sessions with families, Satir would ask an unusual question of family members, “Does it feel good to you to live in your family right now?” (1988). By using this query, she inevitably caused individuals to look beyond their everyday reactions to family life to determine if they truly like the personality of their family. According to Satir, a family’s personality may be nurturing or troubled, and usually falls somewhere in between with periodic phases of one extreme or the other. A troubled family exudes a general feeling of foreboding or secrecy. Family members use humor caustically or unkindly. They may seem bored and as if they do not like themselves as a person. Observers may interpret the mood as cold, overly polite or in a state of constant spinning. Alternatively, nurturing families portray a sense of genuineness, honesty, and love. There is a sense of life and intelligence. Family members feel valued, listened to, and respected, and freely desire to treat other family members the same. In nurturing families, members are not afraid to express affection, humor, or even disapproval freely and openly. Satir feels it is never too late to begin healing within troubled families. She asserts there are four basic steps to beginning the healing process: recognition that the family is sometimes troubled; forgiveness for past mistakes while allowing change to occur; the conscious decision to evoke change; taking action to start the process (1988). Theoretically, these steps should be relatively simple to follow if all members are on board with creating change. However,

limitation might occur when there is disagreement about the need to change the family temperament, the need for forgiveness, or the need to cause disruption to the status quo. Self-worth Satir places great importance on increasing each family member’s level of self-esteem. When family members have low self-worth, they have expectations of being unappreciated by others. They build walls of distrust to protect themselves from being cheated out of respect and love. They are more likely to display apathy and indifference and are more afraid of taking risks for fear of failure. These behaviors stunt the growth of the family as a whole and discourage openness and honesty among members. However, when family members have high self-worth, they treat other members with integrity, dignity and compassion. They are more open to change, less afraid to take risks, and are less affected by unexpected crises. It is of great benefit to families to encourage and support high self-esteem among each other. Per Satir, this can only occur when there is a culture that promotes appreciation of personal differences, open communication, flexible rules, and love. When these traits are modeled by family members, the family should be able to flourish. While Satir discusses the importance of the inclusion of children within the framework of the family, in regard to creating rewarding experiences for them, what was not discussed in Satir’s book was the possibility that children or members in non-parental roles can model behaviors such as integrity, dignity, and compassion for parents and other family caregivers. These types of cases might come about less frequently but may be more powerful in effect. Emotions Rather than suggesting that family members deny feeling angry or scared or hurt, Satir encourages family members to express their emotions in an open, honest, and non-judgmental

way. According to Satir, “Our emotions are our experience of feeling human. Our emotions carry the energy of life” (1988). By utilizing this energy in a positive way, through affirming communication, family relationships and the family unit may experience growth and healing. An example of such affirming communication is the exercise Satir suggests family members use to discern true meanings of statements. In this exercise, a family member makes a statement they believe to be true, such as, “I would like some ice cream.” The other person responds with, “Do you mean…” to see if he or she understands the real meaning of the statement. I tried this experiment with my significant other and found it to be somewhat helpful. At first, the exercise felt stilted or contrived. However, the next day during normal conversation, the exercise proved helpful to get to the underlying meaning or intent of the person’s statement. I feel this exercise is helpful in promoting clear communication in a family unit and can be taught quickly and used repeatedly. However, both people involved in the exercise must be willing to participate without jumping to conclusions or using sarcasm or judgment. To Satir, emotions play an important role in determining the health of a family. In nurturing families, members feel their emotions are perceived as important and authentic. They are less afraid to express their feelings and may do so with clarity since their thoughts may be less clouded with apprehension. However, in troubled families, there may be tacit rules that forbid the expression or discussion of emotions such as disapproval, personal hurt, shame, or regret. The result to these feelings being taboo subjects is a troubled family environment, where there is sarcasm instead of authenticity, coldness instead of warmth. Roles Satir defines roles as either marital, parental-filial, or sibling. Each family member has a specific understanding of what they believe their role to be. Since we all have different

backgrounds and family experiences, our interpretation of roles and expectations may vary significantly. At times, Satir would ask family members during therapy what his or her role means to them. Often, she heard two family members express different definitions about the same role, and it was helpful for them to finally understand how each was defining their role expectations. This role interpretation exercise seemed interesting, so again I tried this with my significant other. Even though we both agreed on each other’s general role expectations, there were several nuances that each of us expressed which the other did not know. These were things we had felt were obvious to each other, so openly discussing them created an opportunity for further reflection of each other’s roles and our specific needs within the relationship. In The New Peoplemaking, Satir explains how to use role-playing in therapy to help families problem-solve role expectation differences. Her family therapy exercise includes taking a specific situation occurring within a family and having one person role play various ways of responding to the situation. Roleplaying is followed by group discussion regarding how each felt as the roleplaying was occurring. This exercise would be very helpful in family therapy to ensure that all family members feel heard and that they are contributing to the solution. Summary Satir believes that families flourish in a nurturing environment which includes several key factors: the promotion of each member’s self-worth, open communication about feelings, and a clear understanding of role expectations. She further believes it is never too late for a family to experience growth and healing.

References Satir, V. (1988). The new peoplemaking. Mountain View, CA: Science and Behavior Books, Inc....