Triangular relationships

April 4, 2004 3:14 PM

The Drama TriangleHere's an example. Dad comes home from work to find mom coming down hard on Junior with, "Clean up your room or else" threats. He immediately comes to the rescue,"Mom" he might say,"give the boy a break". Any one of several possibilities might occur next. Perhaps Mom, feeling victimized by dad, turns on him, automatically moving him into a victim position. They might do a few quick trips around the triangle with Junior on the sidelines. Or maybe Junior joins dad in a persecutory "Let's gang up on mom" approach, and they could play it from that angle. Or Junior could turn-coat on dad, rescuing mom, with; "Mind your own business, dad . . . I don't need your help!" So it goes, with endless variations perhaps, but nonetheless, round and round the triangle. For many families, it's the only way they know how to communicate.
posted by SpaceCadet (11 comments total)

This is not uncommon in groups of three people, and is sort of a natural dynamic. I've heard it called "The Positive, The Negative, and The Neutral."
The concept being that the Positive person is the advocate, the Negative person is opposed, and the Neutral person is both referee and arbiter--the one to be persuaded.

For example, the Positive person would say, "Let's go out to eat tonight." The Negative person would respond, "I don't feel like eating out, let's stay home." The Neutral person could vie for either position; propose a mutually acceptable alternative (such as food delivery); or just stay out of it "I don't care, whatever you(pl.) want."

In a way, this is a good way of going about things. The Positive person is protected from bad decisions, the Negative person is motivated to do more, and the Neutral person gets to play the middle man, with all its benefits.
posted by kablam at 4:00 PM on April 4, 2004

That example sounds all too familiar...
posted by thebabelfish at 4:17 PM on April 4, 2004

The Rescuer role is the shadow mother principle. It's the typically co-dependent response we think of as "smothering".

Can a qualified person tell me if the link is good psychology or psychobabble? Regardless, I'll bet that Lynne Forrest eats well.
posted by Mayor Curley at 4:30 PM on April 4, 2004

kablam writes: In a way, this is a good way of going about things. The Positive person is protected from bad decisions, the Negative person is motivated to do more, and the Neutral person gets to play the middle man, with all its benefits.

Indeed. Though this model may seem inefficient by creating needless opposition where little actual diagreement exists, it is far favorable to unanimous consensus. This often results in a phenomenon called Groupthink, where groups of people actually make worse decisions than they would on their own.
posted by ChasFile at 4:39 PM on April 4, 2004

Reminds me of The Soprano household.
posted by shoepal at 6:18 PM on April 4, 2004

I'd just like to point out that this triangle is maintained in larger families as well.
posted by banished at 8:02 PM on April 4, 2004

Referring to the two antagonists in the triangle as a "Persecutor" and a "Victim" sounds to me like a bunch of nihilistic "all human relationships are inherently oppressive" Critical Theory bullshit.
posted by techgnollogic at 8:52 PM on April 4, 2004

Transactional Analysis is a bit of a simplification of complex interpersonal schemas, but it does narrow in on a pretty common family dynamic that I'm all too aware of, given the days events.

I just got home from another scinitlating day of wedding planning with my fiance and mother, whipping between extremes of playing interpreter/mediator between my fiance and mother and barely supressing the impulse (and occasionally failing) to launch some mega-victim histrionic screaming along the lines of , "Shut up, shut up shut up!! It's my wedding, mine, mine, mine!!" Veruca Salt-style. Definitely old family pattern shit playing out, compounded by long-supressed pre-pubescent princess wedding fantasies.

I'm a big enough woman to admit that my previously fierce and finely-honed feminist mind is no match for the Manchurian, MK Ultra machinations of the evil Wedding Industry Cabal. Between this and the dysfunctional family-of-origin mental templates, I have no choice but to take to my bed, quivering in fear. Pray for me.
posted by echolalia67 at 8:54 PM on April 4, 2004

techgnollogic writes: Referring to the two antagonists in the triangle as a "Persecutor" and a "Victim" sounds to me like a bunch of nihilistic "all human relationships are inherently oppressive" Critical Theory bullshit.

sigh... I must assume that this is trolling. But just in case, the chief proponent of that 'nihilistic Critical Theory bullshit,' Michel Foucault, writes:

Power relations are extremely widespread in human relationships. Now this does not mean that political power is everywhere, but that there is in human relationships a whole range of power relations that may come into play among individuals, within families, in pedagogical relationships, political life etc... Liberation is sometimes the political or historical condition for a practice of freedom. - The ethics of the concern for self as a practice of freedom (1984)

and

My role - and that is too emphatic a word - is to show people that they are much freer than they feel, that people accept as truth, as evidence, some themes which have been built up at a certain moment during history, and that this so-called evidence can be criticized and destroyed. - 'Truth, power, self' (1982) in Technologies of the Self

You are correct that terms like 'persecutor' and 'victim' are value-heavy oversimplifications that replace agency with labels, and therefore kinda suck, but please don't confuse family therapy practice with critical theory.
posted by ChasFile at 10:10 PM on April 4, 2004

"Can a qualified person tell me if the link is good psychology or psychobabble?"

Qualified as in "this is an exact replica of the exact dynamics of my family"? Will that do? (No diploma on a piece of paper with a seal, to assuage any authority-credulity you may suffer from, I'm afraid.)

Finding myself with one foot already out of the triangle, and well aware of how I'm being labelled as the persecutor by the persecutor proper, as a result of my escape, I have to say this article articulates very well my familial situation: mother 'persecutor' (to a T); father 'rescuer' very much so, and I was certainly the victim of their destructive and dis-abling attitudes and behaviour.

Lynne seems to have it down pat, and her advice that it is honesty with oneself; truthfulness to oneself about one's emotions, one's feelings, that will liberate you from such an inter-personal hell, is something that I can attest to. It's crucial.

Thankyou for the link, SpaceCadet: it articulates fully what I'd failed to for myself, and it's given me a spot-on accurate template which will, actually, be of great personal use.

Metafilter - sometimes bloody useful
posted by Blue Stone at 7:13 AM on April 5, 2004

Another way of looking at it...

They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

--Knots
posted by soyjoy at 9:43 AM on April 5, 2004