Showing posts with label Family therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family therapy. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Bibliotherapy - Object lessons by Anna Quindlen


Anna Quindlen's Object Lessons is a coming-of-age novel set in suburban New York City during the 1960s. It tells the story of twelve-year-old Maggie Scanlan as she navigates a pivotal summer marked by significant changes within her large, Irish-Catholic family and in her own life.

Summary of Object Lessons

The novel centers on the Scanlan family, dominated by the wealthy and imposing patriarch, John Scanlan. Maggie is particularly close to her grandfather, who attempts to impart "object lessons" – life lessons – to her. However, Maggie's world is in flux. Her family dynamic is strained by her Italian-American mother, Connie, who feels like an outsider within the Irish clan and struggles with isolation and a distant relationship with her husband, Tommy (John Scanlan's son).

As the summer progresses, several events challenge Maggie's perception of her seemingly stable world. Her powerful grandfather suffers a stroke, leading to his eventual death, which deeply impacts the family's hierarchy and emotional landscape. Maggie witnesses her parents' struggles, discovers uncomfortable truths about her own conception, and grapples with the unraveling of her friendship with her best friend, Debbie, as they drift into different social circles and confront challenging adolescent experiences, including peer pressure and even a brush with delinquency. Through these experiences, Maggie begins to shed her childhood innocence and gain a more complex understanding of family, identity, and the adult world.

Therapeutic Benefits of Reading Object Lessons

Reading Object Lessons can offer several therapeutic benefits, particularly for those reflecting on their own coming-of-age or family dynamics:

  • Validation of Adolescent Experiences: The novel realistically portrays the often confusing and emotionally charged period of adolescence. Readers, especially those who experienced similar transitions, can find validation in Maggie's struggles with identity, shifting friendships, and the growing awareness of adult complexities. This can foster a sense of "I am not alone," which, as Anna Quindlen herself has noted, is a significant benefit of reading.

  • Exploration of Family Dynamics: Quindlen's keen observation of family relationships, particularly the complexities of a multi-generational, somewhat dysfunctional family, can be cathartic. Readers might recognize echoes of their own family challenges, power struggles, and unspoken tensions. This can lead to greater understanding and empathy for their own family members and their past.

  • Processing Change and Loss: A central theme is the impact of change and loss, particularly with the grandfather's illness and death. The novel demonstrates how individuals and families cope with grief, shifts in power, and the redefinition of relationships. This can be beneficial for readers who are experiencing or have experienced similar losses, offering a fictional space to process these emotions.

  • Understanding Intergenerational Conflict and Cultural Differences: The novel subtly explores the tensions between Irish and Italian cultural backgrounds, particularly through Connie's experience as an outsider. This can provide insight into the challenges of navigating different cultural expectations within a family and the impact of prejudice, even within seemingly homogenous communities.

  • Empathy and Perspective-Taking: By immersing themselves in Maggie's perspective, readers develop empathy for the characters and their struggles. Seeing events through a young girl's eyes, while simultaneously understanding the adult world around her, can broaden one's perspective on human behavior and motivations.

Reflection on Personal Growth and Resilience: Maggie's journey is one of self-discovery and resilience. Despite the unsettling changes, she finds her voice and begins to forge her own identity. This can inspire readers to reflect on their own journeys of growth and the strength they've found in overcoming challenges.

This book might be of help to parents of adolescents and to people interested in and working with family systems.

Friday, October 19, 2018

Kinship Care



I see a few families in my private practice where grandparents and aunts and uncles are involved in kinship care.

Friday, August 4, 2017

Families pay a key role in the treatment of addiction

Sociologist, Robert Ackerman, spreads the message that families play a key role in the treatment of addiction. Here is part of his message:

"Relatives need to understand the disease of addiction, learn skills for living with addiction, learn how to discourage excessive alcohol or drug use, and understand how to communicate with an abuser in a positive manner.Family counseling sessions should help addicted people and their relatives to lay out long-term plans and goals for recovery. Families also should learn that the recovery techniques don’t work the same way for everyone, Ackerman said. Some may take longer than others to respond, some will respond in different ways, and not all will reach the same level of recovery — a factor called recovery lag."

My experience has been that families struggle with four primary emotions when a family member is addicted: anger, fear, confusion, and love.

The confusion comes from a lack of understanding about what they are dealing with and the conflicted messages that our society sends about addiction. Even professionals and the health care system is conflicted.

The anger comes from being stolen from, injured, lied to, and mistreated and, of course, the underlying fears of being hurt again or our loved being harmed or harming someone else.

Because of these emotions of anger, fear, confusion, and love there is a tendency to enable, punish, or cut off. These managements strategies usually not only don't help, but make the situation worse in the long run. And so what does help?

What helps is detach with love, that is creating appropriate boundaries of what you can do and can't do to help. Providing appropriate help, but not rescuing. Helping means supporting the person's well being and ability to help him or herself by providing information, coaching for better life skill management, and providing opportunities for using that information and skills. Rescuing means bailing people out, covering things up, minimizing and denying so that the using person doesn't have to experience the consequences of their own use.

Getting help from a professional coach that can guide the family's development, implementation, and evaluation of their management strategy often is the best way to engage with the addicted family member in a consistently helpful way. While every person struggling with addiction and every family is different there are some basic principles that can be helpful for all families. These principles will be described in future articles.

For more about the article about Robert Ackerman click here.