Journal of Family Therapy (1981) 3: 341-352

Family Sculpting: I. Some doubts and some possibilities

Jeff Hearn and Marilyn Lawrence*

Family sculpting is reviewed within the context of general doubts that confront family therapy, in particular the need for a certain act of faith in therapy, and the search for some sort of underlying theory. Family sculpting is most often used in reference to the psychoanalytic tradition of family therapy, but here the case is made for more serious attention to structural approaches. The potential of family sculpting is further explored in a number of other respects: its concreteness, its portrayal of ambiguity and its use with students, workers and other groups.

Introduction

Family sculpting is now an accepted technique within the repertoire of the family therapist (Simon, 1972; Duhl et al., 1973; Walrond-Skinner, 1976). I t is most often used to help family members to become aware of feelings about one another which they might find difficult to put into words. Thus, it is a technique most usually associated with those family therapists who focus particularly on the feelings which exist between family members and who see the therapeutic task as making those feelings explicit. Those family therapists who envisage family change in terms of behaviour, rather than attitudes (such as Minuchin, 1974, who believes that changes in ‘feeling’ often follow changes in behaviour), have tended to view family sculpting as a Gestalt-type technique which is of little relevance to their attempts to restructure family transactions.

This paper is, amongst other things, an attempt to show that family sculpting has distinct structural possibilities and could be put to uses other than those of helping a family to gain insight into the feelings and perceptions of its members. Family sculpting essentially involves the family in the formation of a ‘living sculpture’ as directed by one of the members-the sculptor-under the general direction of the therapist. The

Received 20 July 1980; revised version received 19 January 1981.

* Lecturers in the School of Applied Social Studies, University of Bradford, Bradford, West Yorkshire BD7 1DP.

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0163-4445/81/040341+ 12 $02.00/0 0 1981 The Association for Family Therapy

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sculptor-member will also usually join the sculpture, as may the therapist on occasions, for example, to represent a dead or departed member. ‘The total representation may be of the family as it appears to the sculptor at present or in the recent or distant past. I t may also represent the family as the sculptor expects it to be or would like it to be in the future. The assumption behind family sculpting is that the representation and the experience will in some way be therapeutic for all concerned.

Family sculpting in its basic form thus involves:

(i) concrete sculpting ; (ii) work with families, actual or imagined ; (iii) therapy, actual or assumed.

More will be said on this and other possible justifications or explanations of the technique below.

In this paper we shall explore a number of issues that arise out of the development of family sculpting. First, we examine some doubts of a general nature, that bear on dilemmas of family therapy as a whole and secondly, some more specific possibilities of family sculpting itself.

Some general doubts The act of fai th

Family therapy clearly works for certain families and in certain situations. However, at the same time much family therapy has to be underpinned by an act of faith in its efficacy. Despite the increasing number of evaluative research studies on outcome, painstakingly reviewed by Gurman and Kniskern (1978) (see also Lask, 1979), this act of faith must persist for each family and each therapist throughout each therapeutic encounter. This is not only a matter of matching particular families with particular therapists or type of therapy, but a more general issue inherent to all forms of therapy. In many ways, family sculpting and the act of faith which is maintained in it exemplifies the more general predicament of family therapy. Family sculpting is above all a concrete and fairly precise technique for working with families. This concreteness and relative pre- cision show up, for all to see, the process of the family at that time. In a less structured, more conversational session, the members of the family may be truly mystified by the purpose or direction or impact of the therapy but in family sculpting the process cannot be denied or ignored. Any failure in outcome is displayed ; any act of faith may have to become a leap of faith for the therapy to continue.

Family sculpting is concrete, but it is clearly not a simple replication

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of the present or past family process that is made concrete. The sculpture is always created at secondhand, or more accurately through the percep- tions of the sculptor. It is not a stark reproduction of family form, real or imagined, even though it may be perceived as such. This still leaves considerable room for uncertainty about what the sculpture is actually portraying. Is it recalling a particular incident as remembered from the past or is it depicting some stylized image of present dynamics? Broadly six possible sources are available : A. Past-centred

(i) Usual family process, e.g. sitting arrangements for watching

(ii) Unusual family process, e.g. a particular family quarrel; (iii) Imagined family process, e.g. stylized image of power relations,

television ;

dominance and submission. B. Present-centred

(i) Usual family process; (ii) Unusual family process; (iii) Imagined family process.

These possibilities are shown in Table 1.

TABLE 1. Sources of perception in family sculpting

Temporal basis

Substantive basis Past-centred Present-centred

Usual process A ( 4 B (i) Unusual process A (ii) B (ii) Imagined process A (iii) B (iii)

There are, however, three further complications upon this sort of classification. Firstly, even those sources that are past-centred are necessarily mediated through present perceptions ; secondly, the portrayal of past or present family process is itself an instance of present family process ; thirdly, the ‘usual’ process is rarely depicted in any pure form, so that often elements of stylizations, even caricature, will be included. Arguably, all sources of perception rest on some sort of image, part imagined, part remembered from experience.

Although family sculpting can thus by its concreteness illustrate some general dilemmas of family therapy, paradoxically its concreteness may

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also further mystify. Family sculpting is concrete, but it is not the usual family process that is made concrete. Instead it cannot be fully clear whether it is the family process as seen or remembered by the sculptor or the family process as it exists at that moment that is made concrete. This uncertainty brings us on to the second area of doubt: the theoretical interpretation of the method; or in other words, the presumed relationship between this concrete state or states and that non-concrete process.

The search for theory

The theoretical interpretation of therapeutic relationships, whether with individuals, families or groups, is notoriously problematic. Madanes and Haley’s (1977) review of approaches to family therapy and their division between those based on psychoanalysis and those based on communications theory may be useful as a form of simplification.

There are a wide range of possible contenders for theoretical justification within the psychoanalytic tradition. These range from transference and other therapist-based interpretations to group therapeutic modes, such as psychodrama, encounter and Gestalt (Lewis and Streitfield, 1972; Fagan and Shepherd, 1972) to more blatantly behavioural and bioenergetic stances (Palmer, 1973). There are problems with each of these possi- bilities with the possible exception of the bioenergetic, in terms of the interpretation of the rBle of the sculptor. Either, the sculptor is in effect redundant and a similar outcome could be achieved under the direction of the therapist alone, or there is a need to explain all three major relation- ships: therapist-sculptor, therapist-family, sculptor-family. Conceivably one could hypothesize three distinct psychoanalytic processes operate simultaneously, with in the last case the sculptor receiving part of his or her credibility indirectly from the therapist. This, however, presents a confusing, if not bewildering, task for the therapist, and an inherent unpredictability to the process and its relationship to concrete form. This confusion and unpredictability cast further doubt on the nature of catharsis within family sculpting. The display of emotion in therapy sessions remains no guarantee of therapeutic success. The general reverence for emotional display within family therapy may simply be a response to the search for the concrete within an essentially intangible process. In family sculpting emotional display may be welcomed for cathartic reasons, but the validity of this welcome is unknown. An example showing the potential of sculpting as one of a range of Gestalt techniques to elicit strong feelings and to use them therapeutically is to be found in a recent paper by Jefferson (1978).

The latter approach based on communication structures would portray

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family sculpting as a strictly technical means of freeing and focusing communication. The family is presented with an object of interest, a common experience and possibly an illustration of specific communicative difficulties. However, an approach which focuses solely on communication falls down as an adequate theoretical explanation on a number of counts: it fails to account for the complete, dramatic participation of the members; it is not clearly preferable to simpler exercises that might show up par- ticular communicative patterns; and it fails to encompass possible further difficulties that might arise from misinterpretation of the concrete form by family members. I n short, it is either insufficiently reflexive, or alter- natively an argument in favour of less elaborate family exercises. However, if this idea is broadened from considering primarily communication struc- tures to a commentary on the total system of the family a more promising possibility is available. Indeed if family sculpting is crucially concerned with the making explicit of the implicit set of relationships, rbles, mutual perceptions and expectations which underpin family functioning, the making concrete of the intangible, then this concern closely parallels Minuchin’s definition of family structure. He defines family structure as the ‘invisible set of functional demands that organises the way in which family members interact’ (1974).

In this approach family structure is thus more than the sum of family communications and transactions ; it is portrayed as a specific entity which underlies them. Nor is it simply co-extensive with the idea of family system, which can be represented in a straightforward and diagrammatic way, without specific reference to the behaviour of the family members who make up the system (a geneogram or family tree, for example repre- sents family members and their relationships ‘cold’ that is without reference to their dynamic quality),

To return to Minuchin and the idea of family structure:

In essence, the structural approach to families is based on the concept that a family is more than the individual biopsychodynamics of its members. Family members relate according to certain arrangements, which govern their trans- actions. These arrangements, though not usually explicitly stated or even recognised, form a whole-the structure of the family. The reality of the struc- ture is of a different order from the reality of the individual members. (1974)

I t seems at least possible that family sculpting could be one of the tech- niques used by the therapist to elicit the family members’ own subjective impressions of the structure within which they interact. It has the advan- tage of enabling family memhers to generalize about their way-of-being- together, rather than merely to cite examples. Even so when each sculpt is

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discussed, the sculptor’s efforts will often be illustrated by the discussion of various specific examples of the interaction shown in the sculpt. Sculpting could also be used to help the family define therapeutic goals in restructuring terms, as is discussed below.

If family sculpting can be used to make available to both therapist and family some aspects of family structure, it is interesting to speculate about the marked absence of reference to it in the literature specifically concerned with structural, as opposed to other types of family therapy. In Minuchin’s Families and Family Therapy (1974), the basic handbook of structural family therapy, sculpting is not mentioned at all as a possible diagnostic or therapeutic technique. He does, however, devote some time to the discussion of the importance of ‘manipulating space’, recognizing that ‘location can be a metaphor for the closeness or distance between people’ (1974). He describes the way therapists can alter family members’ geo- graphical arrangements in the therapy session. Spatial manipulation is seen as having the following advantages: it ‘has the power of simplicity. Its graphic eloquence highlights the therapist’s message’ (1974).

Minuchin’s description of the richness of possibilities in the technique of spatial manipulation sounds very like a kind of ‘unofficial’ sculpt. The therapist uses their chosen geographical arrangements diagnostically, and manipulates it therapeutically. His manipulation underlines for the family some aspects of its structure and some future possibilities for restructuring. Never, however, is the technique given the kind of formality and autonomy which one would normally associate with sculpting. The reasons for this, are, we suspect, more practical than theoretical and more to do with style than conviction. Minuchin is master of creating the therapeutic out of the ordinary, of using ordinary family talk about ordinary family situations to bring about change. ‘This suits his own style extremely well and may indeed be an ideal way of conducting family therapy. I t has the advantage of retaining the family’s sense of naturalness, of not intimidating them with unfamiliar techniques which might increase their resistance.

I t has to be said, though, that not all family therapists are able to function in this particular way. Some will be a t home with more formal techniques which they can learn and practice in a rather more autonomous way. Family sculpting may too have another advantage over the informal ‘manipulation of space’ for some therapists. ‘This possible advantage lies in the participation of the family in the therapeutic task. In the structural tradition, exemplified by Minuchin, the family sculptor is in fact the therapist. He or she makes a structural diagnosis based in part on the family’s unofficial geographical arrangement of themselves ; it is the therapist who suggests spatial changes which will indicate changes in

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family structure of a more lasting nature and which facilitate more effective family functioning. In family sculpting proper, the family are invited to participate in this process. While not suggesting that this approach is necessarily preferable, it may suit some family therapists.

Family sculpting need not in itself, be tied to any one particular method of intervention within the field of family therapy. I t can be used simply to help the family with the therapist to formulate therapeutic goals. The family can recreate and observe how they perceive their relationships with one another and discuss together how they would like those relationships to change. This need not be seen as a therapeutic event in itself. A realization of emotional distance between certain members for example, does not necessarily enable that distance to be bridged. If sculpting is used in this way, as a kind of shared diagnostic tool, the therapist is then free to choose his or her own therapeutic model for achieving change. Some therapists may attempt this by helping the family members to talk about the feelings involved, others may prefer an approach which concentrates more directly on changing behaviour.

A further possible interpretation of family sculpting is that which seeks to transcend the divisions between the structural and other approaches. In this scheme a more holistic approach is used that attempts to integrate the emotional and behavioural elements of family life (Walrond-Skinner, 1976). Such an approach is underwritten less fully by a clear theoretical base and the working out of details is altogether more difficult. However, tentative examples may be drawn from such diverse work as that on the interrelationship of symptoms and feelings (Scherz, 1970), the limits of emotional expressiveness and behavioural norms (Brown et ai., 1972), above all the notion of emotional distance. Thus, family sculpting can be con- strued as a direct intervention in the management of emotional distances between family members, that attempts to adjust those distances within broadly acceptable limits. The doubt about this approach is that by seeking to integrate the emotional and the behavioural, one unwittingly accepts a rather rigid model of family dynamics premised on a balancing of personal space and interpersonal spaces. More broadly still, family sculpting can be placed within the theoretical context of the psychology and sociology of personal spaces (Sommer, 1959; Little, 1965; Goffman, 1972). There are a number of possible strands and themes here, ranging from the relationship of physical proximity, orientation and social intimacy (Argyle, 1969, 1978) through to the significance of posture and ‘body motion’ as a learned form of communication (Birdwhistell, 1973). Most importantly, family sculpting, seen in this way, becomes an arena for the exploration and explication of the display of and intrusion into personal spaces within

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the family. This is needless to say an essentially concrete matter, though one with immense emotional consequence.

With these reservations and doubts firmly in mind we can now move on to the more positive terrain offered.

Some specific possibilities

The inescapability of the concrete

Although family sculpting is best seen as a technique, it is clearly in- appropriate to isolate that technique from the whole process of a particular family therapy. I n that sense, it must be seen in the context of what pre- cedes and follows it, so that the actual business of sculpting may be merely an elaboration of previous discussions of spatial distance, seating arrange- ments and so on. Even so the most fundamental element in family sculpting is its unusual display of concrete form. Despite the dangers of misinterpre- ting, reifying or revering this form already noted, it must be admitted that its explicitness is valuable. If therapy always involves a search for underlying pattern, usually through the interpretation of concrete move- ments and events as symptoms, family sculpting at least has the advantage of demystifying part of that process. There is, at least, something, living, dynamic, organized and bulky that is available as a resource for all con- cerned to refer to. Interpretations of this form by family members and therapist will vary, but the form is something to be remembered. In less explicit therapeutic devices, the symptoms to which memorizing relates, or from which transference proceeds, or upon which interpretations rest, may be hardly noticeable. In family sculpting the concrete is inescapable, as if it ever was other than that.

The portrayal of ambiguity

One specific possibility of family sculpting that is particularly noteworthy is the portrayal of ambiguity, in relationships and within individuals. Ambiguity may be a ubiquitous part of social life, yet there are greater difficulties in expressing the full meaning and complication of ambiguity in language alone. The tug-of-love may be hard to articulate, not only for emotional reasons, but also for conceptual ones. Bateson et al.’s (1956) double-bind and Frankl’s (1973) paradox are theoretically complex notions, yet highly amenable to sculpting in what may appear almost too simple a way. The sight and/or experience of relating in contradictory directions to two or more people is so obvious that it cannot be missed. The daughter

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who is facing towards her father, holding hands with her mother in another direction, and leaning towards her sister in another is almost ‘being pulled apart’. The terms ‘two-faced’ and ‘double standards’ are not cliches, but expressions of emotional fact, available to be seen in concrete detail. Having noted these two general positive possibilities, we now turn to three further applications of family sculpting that offer particular potential.

Working with children and families as children

Because sculpting involves a good deal of physical activity and bodily movement during the creation of the sculpture, it can be an extremely useful means of engaging the interest of younger children, for whom non-verbal modes of expression are natural (U‘alrond-Skinner, 1976).

Walrond-Skinner sees sculpting as an ‘extremely useful means’ of involving children in family therapy. In contrast, it is possible to see family sculpting as child-centred family therapy par excellence. This is for several reasons. Firstly, family sculpting is readily accessible to children in terms of its immediacy; secondly, the whole family, or more precisely the family apart from the sculptor, may come to draw on the child part of themselves in the sculpting. ‘The family may be cast as ‘children’ relative to the ‘adult’ of the sculptor and the ‘parent’ of the therapist (Berne, 1964). In addition the actual physical process of sculpting may involve the family members behaving in a more overtly childlike way. This process may of course in turn reach out and relate to the way the children in the family are seen or see the rest of the family. In such a way the process of ‘being children’ or ‘acting like children’ has implications for the substantive business of there being children in a family. Such possibilities may be shown up through family sculpting. Along with dramatizations, pretending and make-believe (Madanes, 1980), family sculpting is a technique of particular appropriate- ness for children and families with children.

Working with mock families, students and others

Despite the potential of family sculpting for working with children and with family members as children, and the specific advantages of the method in focusing on the concrete and the ambiguous, the doubts noted earlier can be taken no less seriously. Family sculpting’s shortcomings may be rendered of less importance when the method is developed explicitly towards and for children, but they do not go away. For this reason it is worth attending to the uses of ‘family sculpting’ with groups other than actual families undergoing therapy.

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The most obvious non-therapeutic use is with a variety of mock families, such as with student groups and others concerned to learn about family dynamics. ‘These may either be students involved in the purely academic study of families, for example, as part of social psychology sequences, or those studying families with some practical application in mind-social work, health visiting or whatever. In either case the sculpture may be of the students’ own families or families with which they are well acquainted. An extension of this mode is to use sculpting as an adjunct to supervision of students in practical placements where it is the ‘client’s’ family that is sculpted by the students. All of these possibilities do not completely negate the objections previously raised, but they do at least simplify and clarify the nature of the sculpting. The development of concrete form is instru- mental, illustrative and experimental rather than therapeutic. And apart from possible psychodynamic complications within the educational pro- cess, such as transactional r6le differentiation, transference and so on, educational sculpting is on the face of it a more straightforward exercise than its therapeutic equivalent.

Moreover, this kind of educational use has implications for the edu- cational process itself. Sculpting may certainly be a more concise and effective way of showing certain, and particularly complicated, forms of family dynamics. I t also raises the question of what indeed is meant by understanding something in educational terms. T o be able to describe or analyse a phenomenon verbally or in writing using abstract terminology is but one form of understanding. A more complete understanding of certain phenomenon may be obtained by rational analysis coupled with just this sort of experiential learning. This is not to say education itself must be a therapeutic experience ; merely that it is a multi-faceted one.

Working with non-families, workers and others

A final possible application of family sculpting is not only non-therapeutic but not even with families. An example of this is workgroup sculpting conducted with groups of workers. The similarities between the dynamics of organised workgroups and families are of course well known (de Board, 1978), while Bennis (1966) explicitly refers to such groups as ‘family groups’. Although these family similarities may be important in certain workgroups, sculpting can be used in a strictly instrumental way. This can be as an aid to team-building, such as when a workgroup is newly formed or when communications difficulties are marring both the effective- ness and the enjoyment of group life. Alternatively, attention may be directed towards the issue of leadership and authority in the workgroup,

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with the explication of the varying social distances between the team leader as ‘head of the family’ and the worker members. In such situations a sculpting approach may illustrate very simple structures that do operate or that even operate at the level of myth (Bradford and Harvey, 1970). Thus sculpting can act as a common emotional and above all learning experience for members of the workgroup.

Other non-families with which sculpting may be advantageous are adolescent groups or social groups, where team-building is agreed as necessary by the members. Sculpting that is conducted in a relaxed informal manner may of course be a social occasion in itself as well as affirming some sense of group identity. For certain specialist groups, such as those involved in intermediate treatment or consciousness-raising, sculpting can secure the further purpose of breaking down the isolation of individual members or even reflecting on members’ own family situations. However, with this we clearly come full circle and back into the difficulties of the therapeutic model discussed earlier.

Concluding remarks

The consideration of the usefulness and limitations of family sculpting also directs attention to more general issues within family therapy, that of the underlying assumptions of therapists. While Minuchin and the structural family therapists have clear theoretical justifications for the emphasis they place on such spatial clues as physical proximity, distance, seating arrangements and so on, many therapists who work with a different or,more eclectic model attach similar importance to these considerations. I t may be that by doing so they are merely ‘borrowing’ one aspect of structural understanding or it may be that the importance of spatial arrangements have simply become part of family therapy folklore. Everyone knows it is important and yet it is rare that anyone asks why!

Though family sculpting must remain problematic as a generic activity, its adaptability is undeniable. Its practical usefulness is enhanced by its application within the context of a profound scepticism.

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