[page 15]
REVIEW: FAMILY LIFE Marx said: under all circumstances a negro has a black skin but only under certain socio-economic conditions is he a slave. Under all circumstances a man may get stuck. lose himself, and have to turn round and go back a long way to find himself again, Only under certain socio-econamic conditions will he suffer from schizophrenia." "Dilemmas abound. If / do not destroy the "family, the Tamily' will destroy me, I cannot destroy the family in myself wothout destroying 'it in them. Feeling themselves endangered will they destroy me?* "Until one can see the family in onesself nor any family clearly."
These quotations from Laing's Book Politics of the Family Indicate some of the most important things contained in Family Life.
This film is about a girl who cannot get on with her mother, who cannot become a socially mature and responsible adult woman, who cannot adjust to society. It is about a girl who breaks down, who is mentally sick, who becomes schizophrenic.
This film is about a society where people must be procussed so that they will fit in, so that they'll be good workers, will respect authority, develop a proper sense of decency and responsibility, and will accept that things cannot be other than they are.
This film is about traditional methods of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment and abaut modern progressive methods. It shows the girl talking about her feelings to the Laingian psychiatrist, and in a group of fellow patients in the informality of the progressive/experimental wing of the psychiatric hospital. After this wing has been closed by the hospital authorities it shows the girl undergoing electric shock treatment and becoming progressively in stitutionalised under more traditional care within the hospital.
It is a film about family life, about psychiatric hospitals, about British society in the 1970's. It is a totally depressing film. It shows us with cruel and sometimes amusing perceptiveness the way in which "normal" family relationships are a means of processing people for conformity within this society. Family relationships are oppressive relationships, a preparation for an oppressive society. Those who resist -in the isolation of the family at least are likely to get hurt or defeated. Schizophrenia is seen as a response to oppressian.
At the end of the film the psychiatrist responsible for "her case" produces the girl as a specimen of catatonic schizophrenia for his class of psychiatry students, In his view this is an example of a girl who has had a happy. healthy, untroubled childhood in a loving family. Suddenly in late adolesence she begins to develop symptoms of schizophrenia-to leave one job after another, to challenge and reject her parents, and particularly her mother's authority and love, to recognise a conflict between the person she sees in herself and the person her mother insists that she is, to mix with bad company, to begin to do bizarre things..... The psychiatrist has taken over the mother's view of what has happened to the girl. He hoped through the electric shock treatment and hospital care to be able to return the girl to her family-and society- with her desire to be a good worker, a good citizen, a good daughter fully restored The girl resists this by retreating further into her schizophrenia. The girl is engaged in a struggle to establish and integrate her personal identity and independence, but all her attempts to become herself are challenged and undermined. Her struggle is one against her mother who so sincerely believes that she knows what her daughter is really like, against the psychiatrist, against the whole power structure of society. The girl has some allies, but they are weak, The progressive psychiatrist who treats her first, tries to help her understand the struggle and to strengthen her resistance and develop her independence. But his appointment is not renewed by the hospital authorities and he has to abandon his patients. The girl's older sister tries, too late, to rescue her from her family: the sister's defiance of her mother is built out of her own marriage and family which may only become a subtler version of the same story. The student boyfriend is on her side" wanting her to leave home, to be herself, to have fun, trying to rescue her from the hospital. But when the hospital officials come to take her back he offers no resistance.
And so overwhelmingly this is a depressing film. It is a story of total defeat not because the mother wins-she does not get "her" daughter back-but because there appears to be no alternative. There is no way in which the girl could escape.
This isn't a review of Family Life. Rather it's a list of some of things the film is about. It's a superb film and an important contribution to understanding the family to-day. The relationships which are explored -personal and social —are sensitively and realistically drawn. I accept all that is portrayed here as a general statement about re lationships between people, especially women, families and society in Britain-except the inevitability of defeat. Margaret Coulson History Archive, 2325 Oak Street, Berkeley, Calif. 94708, and is available on microfilm through Bell and Howell, Wooster, Ohio.
----- pull-quotes -----
92999952522205222 This publication is on file at the International Women's