I am halfway through reading Edwin Friedman’s The Myth of the Shiksa, which was published posthumously a couple of years ago as a collection of essays and lectures from Friedman.
The first essay is a classic entitled, “An Interview with the First Family Counselor.” What makes this a unique work is that Friedman identifies the First Family Counselor as none other than Satan. This 30 page essay is really a “Screwtape Letters” from a Family Systems perspective as “Satan” shares his strategies for undermining maturity and increasing anxiety in systems.
At one point “Satan” discloses that “My primary tactic is to get flesh and blood to focus on the wrong information, on data, for example, rather than maturity, or on empathy rather than responsibility, or on self as a category of narcissism rather than a matter of integrity.” (8)
He later adds, “…the more anxious I can make society, the easier it becomes for me to tempt creatures into violating the nature of their being, and that’s when I’ve really got them.” (11)
So what are the important things people should focus on and dwell on?
He writes, “The important categories of the soul (and they are the real bridges to community) are:
- Knowing what you believe. I mean not only what you live for but what you’d die for.
- Knowing where you begin and where other people who are important to you end.
- Being able to preserve your own self, that is, having integrity, in a close relationship.
- Having horizons that are not limited by what you can actually see.
- Being able to stay on course when others sabotage you. By that I mean mustering up the self-regulation not to be reactive to the reactivity of others when you succeed at the above.
- And, as I said earlier, making your own salvation dependent upon your own functioning rather than on using or saving others.
These are the information categories that count and they totally transcend social science data.” (14-15)
I love reading Friedman’s stuff. There’s a directness and irreverence that I really am drawn to. This is a great follow up to A Failure of Nerve. I would recommend reading A Failure of Nerve first, but this is a great follow up and I’ve enjoyed reading some shorter, more focused essays.
There’s more to come, but what do you think about the above “categories of the soul?”
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Thanks, Beav, for sharing this. I'd really like to borrow this book when you're done. I'm wondering about how i can use these "categories of the soul" in a group therapy session somehow
I like them a lot, especially knowing not only what you live for but what you'd die for, and not 'using or saving others' for your own salvation. although, i do believe the latter involves a really fine line since we are so called to be involved in others' lives and it's hard to know when it crosses the line to 'using or saving others' dysfunctionally.