Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The family nucleus, to which systemic therapists devote attentive care in the course of their clinical practice, is not a timeless entity. The family has a history. And this is even truer of family fuctioning. That history is, in terms of the evolution of human societies, at least in appearance a very rapidly changing one. Adopting a historical perspective on the family leads us to a constitutive and conflictual identification of its various parameters. The relative importance of each of these parameters varies with the period that is under consideration (Flandrin, 1984): •  topographical: the domus , the house, the oikos , the home; •  symbolic: transmission of the patronym and/or matronym, filiation: •  dynamic: persons living together ‘for better or for worse’; •  genetic: genealogical relatedness, by consanguinity and marriage; •  economic: the community of interests. The whole of the Christian West has put the child at the centre of the family. Byzantine representations of the Virgin and Child appear as early as the sixth century (Goody, 1983). Until the Middle Ages, children were depicted with the same features and clothing as adults. They are simply smaller in size. Or rather, if they are adultified - if not indeed parentified - they are then portrayed as founts of wisdom and as guardians of the ancestral values which need to be perpetuated. The Virgin and Child are symbols ... log in or subscribe to read full text