Relationship triangles—It's not what you think
At home with a cold..
I got my internship application in yesterday and have an interview scheduled for the middle of October. I have only applied at one site and would be wise to apply at a few more.
I’m almost done with The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients and am finding lots of gems for my counseling theory paper. I also started reading Working with Relationship Triangles: The One-Two-Three of Psycotherapy. It’s a little late in the game, as I was supposed to finish it months ago, but I’m really liking it. There are so many areas where triangles are created to dissipate tension (of whatever kind) that exists between two individuals.
The triangle may be between two parents and their child, a parent and two siblings, ore even two individuals and an activity or distraction like working too much or over consuming alcohol. I can see many triangles in my own family; I can see them in my relationships, too.
However, being aware of how they manifest and locating where the tension actually lies allows for change.
Tom Fogarty, influenced by Bowen but less enamored of psychoanalytic thinking, was the first to focus on relationship movement in the study of triangles. He described how individuals move toward and away from each other in response to their discomfort about being too close or too distant. He pointed out that movement created the structure of the triangle: An individual moves toward a third person as he or she moves away from the second member of a dyad (for example, a husband moves toward an affair as he moves away from his wife). In other words, Fogarty viewed triangles as a short-circuiting mechanism that serves the purposes of avoiding discomfort with intimacy and of avoiding discomfort with facing conflictual issues.
With my own family, I’ve tried to cease the pattern of triangulaiton between my father, brother, and myself. When a single aspect of a system changes, it affects the system as a whole; eventually, a new way of relating is made possible.
I got my internship application in yesterday and have an interview scheduled for the middle of October. I have only applied at one site and would be wise to apply at a few more.
I’m almost done with The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients and am finding lots of gems for my counseling theory paper. I also started reading Working with Relationship Triangles: The One-Two-Three of Psycotherapy. It’s a little late in the game, as I was supposed to finish it months ago, but I’m really liking it. There are so many areas where triangles are created to dissipate tension (of whatever kind) that exists between two individuals.
The triangle may be between two parents and their child, a parent and two siblings, ore even two individuals and an activity or distraction like working too much or over consuming alcohol. I can see many triangles in my own family; I can see them in my relationships, too.
However, being aware of how they manifest and locating where the tension actually lies allows for change.
Tom Fogarty, influenced by Bowen but less enamored of psychoanalytic thinking, was the first to focus on relationship movement in the study of triangles. He described how individuals move toward and away from each other in response to their discomfort about being too close or too distant. He pointed out that movement created the structure of the triangle: An individual moves toward a third person as he or she moves away from the second member of a dyad (for example, a husband moves toward an affair as he moves away from his wife). In other words, Fogarty viewed triangles as a short-circuiting mechanism that serves the purposes of avoiding discomfort with intimacy and of avoiding discomfort with facing conflictual issues.
With my own family, I’ve tried to cease the pattern of triangulaiton between my father, brother, and myself. When a single aspect of a system changes, it affects the system as a whole; eventually, a new way of relating is made possible.
posted by Elizabeth at 7:29 PM
1 Comments:
Hi,
I am about to begin my MFT program shortly! I have been researching "triangles" because I feel my fiance' somehow enjoys creating them in our world! I came across your blog in my search and I'm glad you like this book - I wanted someone in the fields opinion on it! Thanks for your post.
Post a Comment
<< Home