Intimate Worlds

Intimate Worlds

I hope all is well with you and that you are as healthy in body as you are strong in spirit.

3 John 1:2

When John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President Reagan on March 30, 1981, the commentators announced in a tone of wonder and mystification that little was known about Hinckley except that “he comes from a good family.” Of course, it is possible for a “bad” adult to come from a “good” family, but what did they mean by a good family, after all? That he had two parents at home, that they were religious, that they were respected in the community? The truth is that families aren’t good simply because they have traditional signs of success. On the outside, a family can be filled with high achievers, live in a nice neighborhood, attend church regularly—and be miserable on the inside. So what makes the difference?

Award-winning author Maggie Scarf spent eight years attempting to answer this question, and the result was her extraordinary book, Intimate Worlds.^a She outlines the structural blueprints that characterize most families’ patterns of being and relating. On the low end of the continuum of family functioning are “severely disturbed” families. Then moving upward, one encounters the “polarized” and “rule-bound” families; and at the top of the scale are families belonging to the “optimal” group.

According to Scarf, families at this healthier end of the continuum have achieved an ability to be comfortable with both their loving feelings and with their feelings of annoyance and frustration. Family members, in other words, take personal responsibility for their mixed, ambivalent thoughts and emotions and are willing to work through them. Families in this position generally find no conflict that cannot be resolved. According to Scarf, because their fundamental relationships with one another feel so secure, there is always the sense that “we can work it out.”

The same holds true for all couples, with or without children. So how’s your intimate world? Are you enjoying the benefits of the “optimal” level of family functioning? Why or why not? What can you do to create an environment that is safe enough to allow one another to work through even mixed emotions?

Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.

—Anthony Brandt

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