Minuchin’s Action Metaphors

An Example of the Relational Arts

By Lynn Hoffman
(written sometime in the late 1970s)

Looking back, I see there's a whole side of Minuchin at work that

seems to have been forgotten in favor of his theory. He had the ability
to create the most astounding metaphoric playlets. He would ask the
family to play out the problem behavior while he watched, calling
these events "enactments." This would help him assess a problem in
its relational context. But in practice, he went much further than that.
He often created a scene himself, using a physicalized metaphor to
carry his message. We watchers of his interviews would be spellbound
by his performances.

For instance, there was the case of the "Fierce Little Maedl." I
attended a consultation featuring Minuchin organized by Mel Berger at
South Beach Psychiatric in the mid-70s. A resident called Jonathan
Kane brought in a family he had been working with. The setting being
a traditional one, we first heard from Berger, and then from Kane, with
Minuchin asking few questions. Kane's "history" of the family was
copious and included a fire in the family apartment, the father having
mental problems, the children witnessing physical abuse of their
mother by their father, and the subsequent divorce. The problem now
was that the children were living with their mother and were said to be
out of control. However, the long tail of history that the family was
dragging behind them made me expect a down and out family with no
strengths.

But when Minuchin asked to see the family, they turned out to be a
nice, voluble Jewish mommy, a quiet boy of eight, and a lively daughter
of six. Minuchin, as he often did in such cases, asked the mother to get
her children to sit down. The boy readily did, but the little girl refused
to, and ran around hooting and shrieking. She was a cute little kid,
wiry and small, with black curly hair. Minuchin put more pressure on
the mother, who argued with the child to no avail. So he turned to the
girl and said "You're a feisty little thing." And she said, "Yes, all the
boys at school are afraid of me." He looked at her and asked, "Why is
that?" And she said, "Because I come at them like this," bunching her
little fists and going straight for Minuchin's privates. Before she could
touch him, he scooped her up in his hands and held her high above his
head, smiling at her and saying something like "What a fierce little
maedl!" He then put her down and told her to sit down and she did. At
least I think she did. I was so surprised by Minuchin's movement that I
have a kind of amnesia that blocked my memory. All I can remember
is that Minuchin somehow shrunk the size of that forbidding little girl in
her and everyone else's eyes.

At the time I thought what an amazing way to shrink the long,

pathologizing spiels that introduced this family, and how "normal" they
seemed at the end of the interview, which also included a touching
conversation with the boy, who had become invisible in comparison to
the monopolizing sister.

That was only one of many action metaphors that I saw Minuchin
engage in. Read "The Open Door," (with Harry Aponte, in Family
Process 12, 1-44, 1974) for an analysis of other powerful change
enactments in a situation of almost open incest.

Lynn