Crises in the family and health team - the doctor's role

Abstract

All people play games with themselves, each other, within families and in their daily social and business circles. These games consist of self-righteousness, arrogance, superior attitudes, inferiority, guilt, remoteness, helplessness, invasion of each other's space. avoidance of the truth and fact, pretences. pretending not to see or know things that are not easy to face, or accept, suppression and a host of others. When a crisis occurs in a family and one is consulted or invited to interfere, it is sometimes difficult to see through the smokescreen and cut through the layers of fantasy, fiction and mist with which a member or members of the family have surrounded themselves. To get to the core of the problem, a doctor may have to uncover a lot of sensitive areas and, in doing so even upset the current family dynamics. This may lead to resentment and aggression, but it is no substitute for accepting responsibilities and the truth. There are however cases where the play acting has been in action for so long, that the intervention or involvement in a crisis will lead to such chaos within the family, that one can only give support, direction, be a good listener and help to carry the burden. I will present two cases - the first of which was an ongoing process which was very taxing to all concerned, and the second one an incident which became a process and involved the whole family.