George BrekoulakisAuthor (original Greek version): George Brekoulakis
Psychologist – Psychotherapist
Translator-Editor: Sofia Poimenidou
Philologist – Text editor
In the French-Belgian film “La Famille Bélier “, the protagonist, the 16-year-old Pola, acts as interpreter for her deaf parents and for her deaf brother, especially on issues that have to do with their family farm. Pola falls in love with one of her classmates, whom she follows at the class choir, where her talent unfolds. With the encouragement of her professor who discovered her talent, she decides to participate in a music contest. That decision causes a dilemma since in order to attend the contest she will have to be away from her parents.
Bowen (1974), a psychiatry professor and one of the pioneers of family psychotherapy, refers to the differentiation of self as a person’s ability to separate his emotional and cognitive function from his family one. The process of the emotional differentiation is important, because through it a person is, substantially, separated from the relationships in his family of origin and they can create their own independent adult relationships.
People with low emotional differentiation usually constitute the emotional partners of their parents. This fact means that they are motivated from an inner need to stay emotionally attached to their parents, by caring a lot for their physical and mental health and, in this way, they lose the ability of caring for the personal needs and goals of themselves. The familiarity within a family can cause such an emotional intensity, so that the members of a family can think they know the emotions, the fantasies and the dreams of the others, bringing out simultaneously the over-ownership and the rejection of the members. In people with low emotional differentiation dependency relationships are observed, which they cover intense feelings of anger, sadness, fear and stress as a result of lacking substantial emotional negotiation.
Emotional differentiation means that every time a person can consciously recognise their emotions and negotiate or not on their behalf in all their relationships. The process of the emotional acknowledge and differentiation starts from childhood and adolescence when the parent tries to help his child at emotional communication. At the early stages of life the child’s brain is emotionally immature and that’s why he needs an adult – parent, so he can cover the role of the external regulator of his child’s brain. In childhood as well as in adolescence, the child needs the parent for his psycho-emotional maturation. In a healthy and differentiated family an adolescent starts to develop intimacies with his peers and he develops gradually more adult relationships away from his family of origin.
In “La Famille Bélier” we see that Pola, by participating in the choir and feeling love for one of her classmates, starts gradually to differentiate of her family relationships by choosing a path more close to her heart, her sexuality and her creativity. The song at the end of the movie “Je vole” (I am flying) shows the effort of Pola’s emotional differentiation from her parents.
My dear parents, I’m leaving
I love you, but I’m leaving.
You won’t have a child anymore
Tonight
I am not fleeing, I’m flying
Understand well, I’m flying
Without smoke, without alcohol
I fly, I fly.
She was watching me yesterday,
Concerned, troubled, my mother
Like she felt it
In fact she doubted
Heard.
I said that I was well
Everything seemed serene
She did nothing
And my helpless father
Smiled.
Do not turn around
Distance yourself a bit more
There is the station, another station
And finally the Atlantic.
My dear parents, I’m leaving
I love you, but I’m leaving
You won’t have a child anymore
Tonight
I am not fleeing, I’m flying
Understand well, I’m flying
Without smoke, without alcohol
I fly, I fly.
I ask myself on my path
If my parents suspect
That my tears cast
My promises and the desire to move forward.
Only believing in my life
All that is promised
Why, where, and how
In this train so far away
Each instant.
It’s bizarre, this cage
That’s blocking my chest
I can’t breathe anymore
It keeps my from singing.
My dear parents, I’m leaving
I love you, but I’m leaving
You won’t have a child anymore
Tonight
I am not fleeing, I’m flying
Understand well, I’m flying
Without smoke, without alcohol
I fly, I fly
Lalalala…
I fly
References
Bowen, M. (1974). Toward the differentiation of self in one’s family of origin. In Georgetown family symposium (Vol. 1, pp. 00).