Waubonsee Community College

Intimate worlds, life inside the family, Maggie Scarf

eng

Includes bibliographical references (p. [439]-452) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Intimate worlds

bibliography

31970627

Maggie Scarf

life inside the family

The dramas of families are the dramas of life, and in this remarkable book Scarf weaves a rich tapestry of the human story as she explores such topics as the nature of human love, nurturance, and attachment; sexuality and other appetites; substance abuse, including alcoholism and bulimia; the conscious and unconscious levels of a family's world; maladaptive yet common coping strategies, such as emotional triangling and scapegoating; and the eerie ways the past can exert an influence on a family in the present. These and so many other topics that affect a family's life over time are illuminated, and clarified, in Intimate Worlds, an astonishing and beautifully written book

Acting out the pain: the child as symptom bearer and delegate -- The beavers scale of family health and competence: levels 1-5 -- Family legacies: the ways in which the past invades the present -- Styles of relating: emotionally enmeshed and emotionally disengaged families -- The genogram: the family's existential blueprint for being -- Closely connected people: the family script, projective identification, and paradoxical tasks -- Establishing order and predictability: the emergence of a tyrant -- A core family dynamic: the oppressor and the oppressed -- Struggling for control: the bulimic strategy -- Re-creating the pain of the past: an attempt at resolution -- Early development: of love and survival -- Intimacy: patterns in human attachment -- What would the first sentence of your own autobiography be? -- A rule-bound emotional world: control of the self and of the system is established; intimacy remains elusive -- Her side of the genogram--an enmeshed family system and a quasi-incestuous "family affair": Toni Gifford -- His side of the genogram--a chilly, distanced family: Henry Gifford -- Opposites attract-or are they opposites? The merging of two family styles -- Alcohol and the family -- Intimacy, self-knowledge, and self-esteem -- Self boundaries and family boundaries -- Family tasks -- An important part of loving: acknowledging human separateness -- Why some children thrive despite early family trauma -- Love: unconditional, or conditional/earned -- Resolving conflict, managing power -- Journeying home