La Famille — Essai D'Interpretation

Abstract

Although every period in history has been witness to a state of crisis in the family, none has ever known its complete disintegration. Each period of crisis seems to have been followed by a phase of formation of a new family behaviour. Until now scientific analysis has not succeeded in formulating the causes producing this equilibrium and the alternating disintegration and reintegration of the modes of family behaviour. Our main proposition is that any hypothesis in family behaviour must be able to analyze both the existence of integrated family groups and the phases of disintegration of family behaviour. The concept of family that we wish to introduce is that of an interrelational system, whose basic elements are the conjugal, parental and sibling relationships. The modes of familial behaviour appear, are transformed and disappear but the family as an interrelational system remains. The concept of levels of analysis, which follows logically, becomes that of the determinants of familial behaviour, psychosomatic, social and cultural. If each one of the levels of analysis is linked to one of the determinants, and by this fact has a certain autonomous existence, none alone could lead to a generalization nor even a global hypothesis on family behaviour. Moreover, it would be an illusion to present these levels as ‘complementary’ because on the contrary, their very connection shows how much their existence is ‘conflictual’, in the individual as well as in scientific theory. In the present state of research on the family it is impossible to elaborate a general theory by the simple juxta-position of conclusions and findings contributed by different specialists. The will or the capacity of the individual to maintain a certain family behaviour cannot be restricted to the subjective maturity of his individual conscience. The family situation of each person remains part of a wider interrelational system; the individual act exists in social and cultural conditions of the whole family. If it is possible analytically to separate the determinants influencing family behaviour into psychosomatic, social, cultural, and the integrative quality of the personality of each member, institutional action on the family is also another determinant, but representing very different possibilities from those usually included in the concept of determinant. This is because institutional action is global, conscious and active. We are not questioning the validity of scientific research when we emphasize how institutional action, based on this research, is at present in a very ambiguous situation. Firstly, because our scientific knowledge of the family is incomplete. Secondly, because we have not yet developed wide enough general hypotheses to serve as a basis for institutional action of a scientific nature. It is fitting then to emphasize that an institutional action which seeks to be an extension of scientific knowledge, even though it is desirable, is always of a very delicate nature because of the very limitations of scientific investigations.