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Some years
ago, several family therapists were watching a news program that
showed protestors on both sides of the abortion debate screaming
at each other across barriers. They suddenly realized that
the opposing sides were a lot like the families they were seeing
in family therapy. These families cam into therapy
polarized, usually doing a lot of yelling and very little
listening. Family therapy is, in part, the art of getting
people who are angry and alienated to sit down in the same room
and begin to relate respectfully to one another. Usually,
once that happens, we therapists can help these families solve the
problems that brought them in.
These
therapists decided to organize a project to bring together the
"two sides" of the abortion debate in a respectful
dialogue. What emerged was quite interesting. Once the
opponents started listening to one another, they discovered more
common ground than they thought they had. (For example, they
all wanted to keep unwanted children from being brought into the
world.) They also discovered, when they were given the
opportunity to explore and converse in a nondefensive atmosphere,
that many of them had more complex views than the either-or
positions that they first espoused. (For example, some of
the "anti-abortion, pro-life" folks reluctantly admitted
that there were circumstances in which they would support the
right to abortion and some of the "abortion rights,
pro-choice" folks admitted that there were some circumstances
in which an abortion should be denied.)
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Once they
included both the possibility that the "other side"
wasn't necessarily all bad or evil and the possibility that there
weren't just two sides to the issue, they could begin to work on
possible solutions (better prenatal care and adoption and foster
care services in their area). This is an example in which
acknowledgement and inclusion helped to bring about some change in
a social context. This book, of course, is more about the
personal context than the social, but individuals who learn
to accept themselves and intimate others set the stage for similar
breakthroughs among groups, countries, and cultures.
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