Red-Eye Milton And The Loom Of Learning: English Professor Expertise

  "Family Games and Imbroglio in *Hamlet*"

   "`Wandering Between Two Worlds:' The MLA & English Department   
             Follies"   (Forthcoming in Style 34.4)

    *Reading the Family Dance: Family Systems Therapy 
             and Literary Study*
       Edited by John V. Knapp and Kenneth Womack
 

The grammar of narrative is ... fraught with the same ambiguities -- arising from the same social ambivalences -- that distinguish the biogrammar itself. Male versus female, self versus kin, kin versus non-kin, group versus group -- these gene-bred antagonisms are embedded in a social life that is always demanding (through gene-bred imperatives) their resolution. Robert Storey 

I no longer believe in individuals; rather, I think of scapegoats, sent out by their families-of-origin to do battle with their new spouse over whose family they will recreate. Carl Whitaker 

I 

Psychological literary criticism has sent out generations of scholars to do battle with recalcitrant imaginative texts, armed most often with the psychological tools of an early twentieth-century intrapsychic psychology that no longer answers all the interesting questions posed by those standing on the brink of the twenty first (Livingston 1992, 93; Storey 1997, 354; 1995, 207). While classic psychoanalysis and its variations are all widely used in literature departments these days for the analysis of character, and have been for several generations (Almond and Almond 1996; Bleich 1996; Skura 1981; 1992; Wright 1984), most practitioners of real-world therapy have long since moved on to many other theoretical models (Corsini et al., 1989). Even very recent psychoanalytic literary models that seek to incorporate contemporary psychological thinking -- including recent versions of ego psychology (Kohut 1984), language-oriented Lacanian theory (Gallup 1985), and narrative (Brooks 1994; Bowie 1993) -- are still tied to many classic and, in my opinion, no longer tenable Freudian ideas such as the Oedipus complex, the (singular) unconscious, and drive-reduction versions of mental processes (Eysenck and Wilson 1973; Grunbaum 1984; 1993, 64-65, 178-79, 204-28; Masson, 1985, 113; Morson and Emerson 1992, 28-30; Spence 1994, 112-17). 

One of the more widely used therapeutic models in the "real world" -- family systems therapy (hence, fst) -- has barely made a ripple in the ocean of literary criticism from which most of us try to keep from drowning (Bump 1991; 1993; Cohen, 1991; Knapp 1983; 1996; Womack 1996). Indeed, why this is so -- why the discipline of literary criticism has virtually ignored the contemporary social sciences while at the same time deifying one pseudo-scientific model from the nineteenth century -- remains somewhat of a mystery to this day (even though there has appeared in recent years a certain restlessness with the status quo) (Morrison 1968). Elsewhere I have asked this same question and tried to give some answers (Knapp 1987; 1996, chapt. 2), but, beyond attributing such a massive cultural lag to the negative reasons associated with cognitive authority (hero worship), sheer inertia, and careerism, as well as the more positive one of loyalty to an ideational system one finds personally congenial, I have not been able to fully resolve this question in my own mind even though others besides me have tried (Holzner and Marx 1979, 109-10; Crews 1993, 55; Storey 1996, 37-38; Murray 1997, 93). Hence, the reader will have to proceed without an imprimatur from what Robert Pirsig might call the contemporary psycho-critical Church of Reason, and to explore actively some hitherto unfamiliar yet highly interesting new territory. Since literary characters are endlessly fascinating anyway, one may well profit, when thinking about them, by looking at this most ancient of literary conventions (or codes) with newer spectacles (Milowicki and Wilson 1995, 219; Margolin 1993, 105). 

However, the issue before us here is less to finish certain old and perhaps unresolvable matters but to pose new and fascinating questions. What would happen to our understanding of many literary characters in/and imaginative texts if critics were to analyze them using the intellectual tools and insights from family systems theory (fst)? What shifts in thinking would be required, especially if one grants that psychoanalysis and almost all of contemporary literary criticism are one and the same? To accommodate this new and interesting way of looking both at the world many of us live in and at imaginative literary art forms, we must first discard many assumptions about psychological "reality" that seem both invisible and commonsensical -- repression, the unconscious, Oedipus complexes and so on -- and take on some new assumptions (Anderson and Goolishian 1988; Aponte 1994). Even though we may occasionally share some of the same vocabulary, practitioners of fst will employ it in a different way for quite different reasons (Fishlov 1991, 132; Schafer 1976, 257-58). 

I have detailed elsewhere just what I believe is problematic with the old psychoanalytic thinking and vocabulary (1996 Chapt. 1; see also Satir 1967, 180ff.), so for now I wish to describe in capsule form some of the newer assumptions. In the narrative that will shortly follow, I have highlighted some important terms in fst, a vocabulary that owes more to cybernetic and systems research and much less to many of the philosophers who contributed to Freudian and neo-Freudian theory (Grunbaum 1994, 113-21, 138-41; Powers 1973, 10-40; Taylor 1988, 317; Sass 1988, 321-27). For most of us in literary study, this cybernetic language and the systems thinking that goes along with it will be a decided wrenching away from the familiar but, by now, well-worn psychoanalytic terms and theories we first may have mastered in graduate school; but then, as we'll soon learn, a little morphogenetic pain is required of any group wishing to keep evolving. 

II 

For me, no form of trouble, [Sibyl], Is new, or unexpected: all of this I have known long since, lived in imagination. Aeneas, Bk VI, The Aeneid 

From the point of view of family systems psychotherapy (fst), the family system becomes the source of the matrix of identity, rather than only the individual character. Thus, the "causes" of a given problem in growing up (and beyond) is much less the person construct or event, and more the emotional process that links people and events (Minuchin 1993, 112). The whole is greater than the sum of its parts (the principle of emergence), so that to understand a member(s) of a fictional family, one needs to understand the family system -- "real" family or step-family (Visher and Visher 1996, 34-39; Minuchin 1993, 63). In actual therapeutic (and presumably, literary critical) practice , one always notes an unresolvable and fluctuating tension between the representations of the individual (biological?) self ("hard reality") and the living system to which that self belongs, the family network ("soft or cultural reality"); thus, it is important when looking at an emergent family system not to fall into the other extremity, "holistic reductionism," which leaves the represented person (and his/her ethical responsibilities) out of the system (Dell and Goolishian 1981; Palazzoli, et al., 1989, 260; Selvini 1988, 289 ff.). 

Secondly, families are said to represent a co-evolutionary ecosystem (Churchman 1968; Bateson 1972). Within the family system, each member is said to determine the conditions for the development of all the other family members. For the family as a unit, the surrounding sociocultural system forms the coevolutionary ecosystem. 1) Individual, 2) family, and 3) social environment (work, church, school, clubs, etc.) represent a complex, close-knit, three-tiered feedback system with each of its units belonging to a different "logical" type (ie, a unit of a lower order is an element of a unit of a higher order (Mayr 1982). 

One of the most significant tasks for the family is to provide support for both integration into a solid family unit and differentiation into relatively independent selves -- to think, act, and feel for oneself (Bowen 1985; Kegan 1982; 1994). This mutual process is life-long, as members of one's primary group change from family-of-origin to one's created (married, cohabitating, close-knit intimates) family, and is somewhat different developmentally for male and female (Haley 1973, 40). In functional families, each member develops a solid self, able to act, think, and feel so that the inside and outside of the self are usually congruent. In dysfunctional families, fear and anxiety usually force members to create a pseudo-self, so that one's inner feelings and outer behavior are often not congruent. Hence, Virginia Satir believes, in contrast to Freudian dogma, that sex in not the basic drive of man; rather, "the sex drive is continually subordinated to and used for the purpose of enhancing self-esteem and defending against threats of self-esteem" (1967, 55; 1988). 

All families have subsystems: a) spouse-spouse (at the top of the hierarchy); b) parent-child; c) sibling-sibling (Simon et al., 1985, 183-185). Maintenance of boundaries between various subsystems may range from rigid to diffuse, although the parent's boundary from children is clearly separated by sexuality and responsibility (Minuchin, Lee, & Simon 1996, 226-27). The original pair-bond (spouse-spouse) forms a dyad; dyads are thought to be inherently unstable as each member of the pair-bond seeks to develop a new self who is now part of a larger entity. During the inevitable pushes and pulls to establish a balance between intimacy and self-independence, the pair-bond can become unstable, calling in a third entity (child, parent, friend, lover, career, etc.) in order to reduce the tension and establish an equilibrium, even though this is often done at the considerable personal expense of the third party. The "Milan School" has developed a systematic "paradox and counterparadox" approach to help resolve family difficulties when the third entity is one of the family's children (Palazzoli, et al., 1978). As Mara Selvini Palazzoli has theorized, "this implies relationally redefining the symptoms in terms of a protective-sacrificial conduct the patient is said to be enacting for the benefit of someone else in the family" (1989, 7). 

With this third entity the pair then form a triangle, and the original relationship is thus said to be triangulated (Imber-Black 1988, 64-66), where one or the other spouse may be enmeshed (overly involved) with, say, the child while the other is disengaged or uninvolved (Palazzoli 1989, 143-48). Parentification may occur when a child assumes or is assigned a parental role (eg, primary emotional bonding or primary breadwinner tasks (Boszormenyi-Nagy 1965, 143-212). Usually, this third element reduces intimacy even though both of the original partners yearn for their former mutual intimacy -- but on their own terms -- and the triangle thus often creates secrets. 

The effects of secrets on the family system is often devastating because it introduces distortion at the fact-gathering level (Imber-Black 1993). For example: A tells B something about C; B's feelings, thoughts, behavior, theoretizing about C are all based on information obtained about C but B is asked to keep it a secret. When this information is incorrect or a lie, and B is bound to secrecy, B cannot check out information about C. Secrets help maintain illusions and prevent evidence contrary to one's fixed perception. B cannot do anything to change relationship with C. 

In the vocabulary of early cybernetic theory, families are said to maintain homeostatic balance through constancy loops. Family change occurs through variety loops. Homeostatic balance is the equilibrium in the system. The family is an open system and yet has limitations on its openness (Simon et al 1985, 81-82). Morphogenesis is a deviation from the usual balance in all relationships in the system; morphogenesis is the risk all dysfunctional families must take: change or die (divorce) because homeostasis is far stronger in families than morphogenesis. Once a pattern (eg, a triangle) is set in motion, it may last the lifetime of the members involved (Minuchin 1974; Bowen 1985). 

Any change in the system affects all members. Families (as well as individuals) undergo a life-cycle (courtship, marriage, first child, subsequent children, career moves (choices), illnesses, leaving the nest, aging, and death of spouse, sibling), and families are said to have developmental tasks appropriate to a given stage in the life-cycle (Kegan 1982; 1994). For example, with the birth of the first child, the dyad (spouse-spouse) must overnight become a triad; each parent must now relate to the child both separately and as a pair-bond, and must as well adjust to the inclusion of the child's needs into the spouse's availability and interest in the other spouse. Carl Whitaker (1982) thinks of marriages with words like "engagement," "involvement," and "locked in together." He says that it "is ordinarily a lessening of `engagement' in a marriage that leads to a provocative act by one partner or the other" (197). 

All family interaction is governed by transactional rules; if a does x, b will counter with x2 or y; a then responds to b's response, and vice versa. Thus family behavior is an adjustive process where cues are given and individual members respond to those stimuli. These rules are largely unspoken, circular, and oftentimes, endless. Understanding events in a family is best understood by a cyclical model of causality (a > b > c > a > ...). Punctuation is an attempt by individuals to divide cyclic processes into beginnings, middles, and ends (eg., Mom to squabbling children: Who started it? Children: He did it! She did it! pointing to one another like Haldeman, Erlichman, Mitchell, and Dean of Watergate fame). 

Ultimate cues for action are understood through metacommunication, which serves to mark the context of a communications act. Metacommunication could be called communication or information about the act of communication itself, and may take almost any communicative form: eye-rolling, shrugs, tonal qualities, and facial gestures. The "simultaneous transmission of mutually exclusive messages and behavioral imperatives on the level of communication and metacommunication" is called the "double bind" (Bateson 1972; Simon et al., 1985, 223). Schizophrenic children of parents who simultaneously hugged them and pushed them away to keep from getting too close were victims, in Bateson's view, of the double bind. Much of Bateson's work was, however, built on early theories of schizophrenia, before the mental disorder's genetic and biochemical origins were better understood (Goodwin and Jameson 1990, 96-123; Salzinger 1991; Subotnick and Nuechterlein 1988). 

Families and individual family members are influenced by themes that are present in the preceding generation and are transmitted from one generation to the next through narratives, family stories, assumptions of "correct" behavior, etc. Eg., we ... are survivors; or in our family, we never fight; therefore, we better not talk about ... (the problem). William Randall suggests that the family is a "collection of stories -- however differently compiled and told by different family members -- through which each of us sees ourselves,interprets others, and makes sense of our world. It is a repertoire of `forms of self-telling' by which we each transform our existence into experience" (1995, 196). 

Another view sees some themes as becoming family myths. According to one fst theorist (Stierlin, in Simon et al., 1985, 133), family myths may be categorized as follows: 1) myths of harmony (rosy pictures of a family's past and present life); 2) myths of forgiveness and atonement (often one family member is made solely responsible for the family's predicament; cf. scapegoat); 3) rescue myths ([subset of # 2] a person outside the family is attributed magical powers and regarded as the savior and benefactor, or one person is expected to achieve life goals not possible for grandparents, parents, or siblings). 

The interactive and circular quality of family behavior has led fst theorists to posit the principle of equifinality (many "causes" can result in the same "effect"; the same "cause" can result in different "effects"). Equifinality applies to development within family processes since it is impossible to make deterministic predictions about family or human development. This element of the general fst theory has been under attack by many, including some feminist theorists, because it appears to do away with the issues of time, history, and responsibility (Hare-Mustin 1987). By focusing on the "here and now," some fst practitioners have tended to minimize family history and individual responsibility from the past (Palazzoli et al., 1989, 159-60). More recently, many fst practitioners have tried to integrate knowledge of previous actions within the family and plans for solving contemporary familial issues. Indeed, James Framo (1996) thinks "hidden transgenerational forces exercise critical influence on current intimate relationships" (299). 

III 

And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy, (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense,) they present their young unmatriculated novices, at first coming, with the most intellective abstracts of logic and metaphysics ... to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy. John Milton, "Of Education." 

Very briefly, I would like to describe some of the major differences among the several competing models of fst in ordinary language since we are all, at this point, "unmatriculated novices" in fst. It is exciting to see how the different theoretical models usually began with an individual therapist's creative and sometimes idiosyncratic coping with recalcitrant family issues, but then, as the therapists as persons kept interacting with one another, how they borrowed and often imitated techniques from one another (Piercy and Sprenkle 1990; Berardo 1990). Indeed, fst theorists in the '90s are noted for their eclectic approaches while still maintaining the artistry of their own personal therapeutic strengths. This is one of the crucial contrastive features with literary psychoanalytic thinking. By relying on one text (Standard Edition of Freud) and one authority (with a nod here and there to a Lacan, or a Horney, or a Kohut), our own contemporary "family of critics" has repeated the mistakes of Freud and his generation: cutting off from interaction with the rest of the psychological community. Hence, cut-offs, whether intellectual or emotional, are merely a temporary solution to life's and criticism's anxieties. 
CUT ......... 

IV 

Brief Conclusion to FST Theory 

One must study the coalitions and apparent power balances and imbalances in relation to the symptomatic behavior -- [the] detective work in devising a hypothesis that will explain the symptom in the family and how all the pieces fit. Lynn Hoffman (1981). 

Clearly, the use of family systems thinking in literary criticism will require some major changes in the reader. In adapting this "new psychology," the critic (or just plain reader) will have to assume that one examines a character's motivations for reasons other than merely intrapsychic ones alone. The critic will quickly perceive that simple linear causality is merely one component in a much larger set of loops and zig-zags, and that to understand fictional characters and their families, one must look for a character's behavior as a response quite often to a move by another, or a countermove to a response in a previous round of moves. Further, the critic sees that both real and fictional families maintain enormous strength over their members, sometimes lasting for generations, and that each family develops its own "game" or style and forcefulness of communication in order to contain the centripetal forces threatening to modify their daily processes. Family members are enormously protective of one another to those outside, even in the middle of the most painful battles within. 

The well-versed critic in fst admits that human behavior is, finally, far more complex, multi-faceted, and interactive than the simple linear models from the last century. This critic will need to master not only a new vocabulary but must also, at the same time, actively reject the hybrid language and thought processes that criticism and psychoanalysis have symbiotically created. One then sees that the unconscious is a primitive descriptor for the many mental processes unavailable for immediate conscious inspection; that drive reduction no longer describes a scientific consensus of the way the brain works and has not for over seventy-five years; that the Oedipus complex may not exist in the way Freud described and literary critics have used during the last three fourths of a century (Knapp 1996, 35; Masson 1985, 113). And, in so admitting, the critic candidly acknowledges the strains in moving toward an alien but highly stimulating new tool for literary analysis while, at the same time, pace George Orwell, rejecting total allegiance to literary Freud, Lacan, and all the other familiar little orthodoxies which are still contending for our souls. 
CUT .....

By John V. Knapp

Introduction

This study examines the nature and characteristics of English professor expertise in the example of teaching selected works of a major canonical author, John Milton, to advanced university-level undergraduates. Although teaching is perhaps the central public activity of most university English professors, there has been surprising little research in the specifics of expert professorial practice. This lack of investigation into English professor expertise is surprising because literature-as-story-telling has been a human cultural phenomenon for thousands of years, and teaching vernacular literature has been associated with Anglo-American universities for well over one hundred years (Court, 1992; Graff, 1987).

The first task of this investigation was to summarize previous research on the ways imaginative literature in English is taught in most institutions of higher learning here in the USA. I will argue that literature is most often taught via one of two rather generalized methods, each within its own 

theoretical framework (Langer, 1995; Probst, 1992; Wellek and Warren, 1949). The first could be called the precept or lecture method, supported theoretically by what has become known as the "(old) New Criticism" (Applebee, 1989, p.37; Rabinowitz and Smith, 1998, p. 97). Here, in its most stereotypical form, the professor modeled close readings of the text through a carefully crafted lecture where the right (or infinitely better) answer to literary problems was always preferred to the novice's halting attempts to reproduce what she had been taught. Students learned to read sophisticated texts by being told a text's real meaning(s), observing how one arrived at such conclusions, and then emulating the professor, who would judge the closeness of fit between professorial precept and student performance. 

The second method attempted to "correct" this so-called authoritarian and controlling approach to teaching fiction, poetry, and drama by placing a much greater emphasis directly on the student-as-reader (Langer, 1995; Rosenblatt, 1978). Supported theoretically by what has come to be called the reader-response (RR) school of criticism, this alternative method identified the locus of experiencing imaginative texts primarily in the minds of the receptor, or in some instances, within the collective mind of a community of receptors (Fish, 1980). As students discussed their own individual receptions of a given text and then attempted to coordinate these multiple receptions into a more orderly and unified overview, learning would take place, oftentimes regardless of the professor's own direct input. I will suggest that each of these approaches by itself is inadequate to account for all of the characteristics associated with English professor expertise. 

Effective Student Reading and Interpretation

What then are the skills, emotional attitudes, and types of knowledge required of students to read imaginative literature effectively? Any experienced teacher of literature would argue that students should be able to do or to know at least the following:

1) Develop an intuitive feeling for words, images, and short phrases, thus learning to identify the cognitive, emotional, and acoustic tensions that many words in an artistic context have with one another; it is understanding, as Cleanth Brooks suggests, that for the poet's language, "connotations play as great a part as the denotations" (1947, p. 8). This attention to the particulars of language and to the order and mixture of single words, short phrases, and images in an imaginative context is among the sine qua non of more sophisticated "aesthetic reading" (Rosenblatt, 1938/1976, pp. 49-51). Students must develop the capacity not merely to see the contemporary meanings of words but also to remain "sensitive to their histories, etymologies, and rhythms" within a context as well (Fussell, 1969, p. 18; Berry, 1997). 

2) Move easily up and down what I call the "snakes and ladders of abstraction." The student must see the important relationships in any text between, on the one hand, its specific words, images, and sentences, and, on the other, the high level abstractions of theme, genre, characterization, and beyond, to inter-textual connections, generated in part by the specifics (Leinhardt and Young, 1996). Students' movements up and down these levels become the ordinary analysis of the text(s) in question (Rabinowitz and Smith, 1998).

3) In order to accomplish #1 & #2 above, students identify what Beiriter and Scardemalia (1993) call "pattern recognition of high significance." These patterns include entities between the elemental building blocks of word and image and the highest levels of abstraction mentioned above: theme, genre, character, and overall artistic structure. Such intermediate elements are very often part of the "progression of the text's unfolding structure," as described by James Phelan (1989, pp.7-12). They may include on-going character development (along with complications setting the various characters problems to solve), the part-by-part relationships of intermediate chapters or stanzas, or acts, and their immediate relationships and symmetry (or a-symmetry).

4) Develop the motivation to read and absorb lengthy works of prose and poetry whose immediate payoff in relation to emotional closure and completeness may be hours or even reading-days away. Often, this motivation is generated, at least at first, by the teacher and by those activities the teacher has structured that students' find enjoyable and useful. Part of this motivation is aided by the professor who helps students distinguish between what Rabinowitz and Smith (1998) characterize as "first time reading" contrasted to "reading from memory" (pp. 88-93). In effect, students recognize that first time through, reading "inevitably involves expectations that aren't met, predictions that don't work out, details that are missed, [and] patterns that aren't completed" (Rabinowitz and Smith, 1998, p.100) and that that is ok for now.

5) students add constantly to their knowledge base in order to improve comprehension and thus anticipations and expectations of different types of texts. This knowledge base is informed by awareness of genre differences, authors' biographical and bibliographical data, and by wide-ranging general knowledge that includes the historical and cultural information necessary to comprehend the work of literature being read (Leinhardt and Young, 1996).

6) Recognize the various narrative voices in texts and, following from # 5 above, understand how knowledge of authorial intentions will improve ability to read and comprehend texts. For some researchers, students' awareness of authorial intentions has become less important than the student's own cognitive and emotional operations (Purvis: "The classic is the work -- not the author" 1990, p.60), although all would probably agree that students must learn to focus attention on the narrator's voice (Rabinowitz and Smith, 1998, pp. 21-22; Smith, 1991).

Theory of Learning

If these are the requirements for students to read literature with knowledge and pleasure, the next step is to propose a theory of learning within which to ground the teacher's plans for student literary development. The most useful and appropriate learning theory accounting for the observations in my study is the "situated learning" model developed by Jean Lave (1988); Lave and Wenger (1991), and others (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989; Rogoff, 1990; 1992). Lave suggests that students learn best via what she calls "legitimate peripheral participation" in many of the actual activities of the expert practitioners in that field. She thinks that: 

In addition, the professor must also devise activities that preserve the essence of expert practices and that will allow students to explore their differing emotions as they read the two texts. As Rabinowitz and Smith (1998) suggest: it is "far easier for students to resist [the values of] authors when they see that authors resist each other" (pp. 102, 115). These activities are designed to help many students experience a clearly felt sense that literary definitions are subject to change, transformation, and renewal. By virtue of the culture that uses them and those within that culture who experiment with textual variations and innovations, literary definitions concerning genre, proper modes of verbal beauty, and so on, are subject to change through usage. 

Thus, Brown, et al. (1989), suggest that:

In the Review of Literature which follows, I will first summarize the existing research on 1) literary criticism/theory and then 2) the cognitive study of literature teaching. I will review the most important arguments in each of these areas and then discuss how juxtaposing these two research traditions could yield important insights into the study developed here. Following that discussion, I will propose a Statement of the Problem and outline the research questions to be investigated in the chapters ahead. Ultimately, my intent is to present a profile of English professor expertise -- one whose contours could be profitably traced by novice teachers-of-literature-to-be.