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July 31, 2007
triangulation
I have returned from the year's best conference. I am still processing (meditating on/ murmuring about) some of the lessons. One in particular was helpful to me as I work through these medical issues.
Bowen applied the term "triangulation" to dysfunctional family systems. Having trained in family practice during the height of systems thinking, I was forced to read some of this. So when my favorite Barfieldian used this concept, it brought back many bad memories.
But at the base of it, it explains much of the behavior I see every day. When two people relate (dysfunctionally), they cannot talk about each other very long before the conversation turns to a third person or object. That third stabilizes their relationship, but when a child (in Bowen's analysis), this attention is usually negative, and leads generationally to greater dysfunction, even schizophrenia.
When a doctor and patient relate, the suffering patient does not want to be suffering. Ever since Sydenham, we have attempted to isolate the disease as a separate entity, to reify it, to give it its own existence. This has been an apparently effective approach. Much of this blog has been an attempt to demonstrate the limitations of this approach by revealing the limits of the effects. But this approach ultimately fails because it is flawed in its understanding of humans and history.
A disease is not a separate entity. There is no such thing as cancer or diabetes or hypertension. There are people who suffer. Many times their suffering falls into patterns that we construct into logical systems and name cancer or diabetes or hypertension. When it is named as a self-existent entity, it makes the patient and the doctor feel better. They triangulate on the disease. If the disease is given too much emphasis, too much weight, too much glory, that is idolatry. But to eliminate the disease as the object of triangulation is to destabilize the relationship between doctor and patient, and to cause the patient to feel his suffering once again.
The only solution to this problem is one outside the relationship who agrees to take the burden. Ultimately, this is done as the sufferer gives thanks and rejoices. The Holy Spirit, the ultimate paraclete, comes alongside and bears this burden. We are called in the body of Christ to bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
| By Robert Maddox | 06:34 PM