Minuchin’s Action MetaphorsAn 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