Diego Lasio

Department of Psychology, University of Cagliari

Although the topic of court technical advice has recently been studied in psychological and juridical literature, there are still some problems associated with the theoretical background experts refer to and about the techniques they consequently use.

The attention for the relational aspect ideally joins most of the psychologists and psychiatrists consulted by judges for having technical advice about problematical cases that make the decision about the custody of a child complicated. Nevertheless, the analysis of relational aspect is often only an initial intention not followed by the choice of suitable techniques to survey the literally relational aspects. Often though, in fact, court technical advice is carried out with diagnostic techniques suitable for exploring personality patterns of individual characters involved in the judicial separation, but unfit for surveying the jointly constructed matter represented by the relationship between these characters. Undoubtedly, in some cases, personality aspect analysis is really important, and above all in situations in which there is the possibility of a serious psychic disorder for one of the parents; but this analysis must be followed by the one that represents the proprium of the separation, that is the relational aspect.

Within the court technical advice it’s necessary to use techniques and procedures that allow the gathering of information from several levels that characterise family events and that can explain their complexity. The need to refer to the systemic-relational perspective, to consider the individual within their family system, has been highlighted by many authors; nevertheless the social perspective applied to the family doesn’t often take into due consideration the interdependence relationship with the wider system in which the family itself is integrated. Actually the individual is part of a system and they can’t be considered taken out of their primary context (family); in the same way, family is part of a wider system that has repercussions on its functioning and therefore also on its re-organisational strategies during its difficult moments. Family has a strong relationship based on mutual exchange with the environment (populated by groups, organisations, formal and informal institutions) that can provide support during those moments that require an amount of energy higher than the system’s ability.

Social system support offered to the family during separation operates at different levels: emotional, affiliational, instrumental, informational. Particularly we think that the informational support could have remarkable implications on judicial separation; it can influence one of the most important criterions for the decision about the custody of a child: parental continuity. Informational support operates on difficult event’s elaboration so it can be well defined and therefore faced in a better way, thanks to the cognitive contribution offered (Francescato, Ghirelli, 1998).

Several authors, in agreement with recent researches’ suggestions, have stressed the need to consider, among the variables that influence adaptation after separation, perceptions, representations, meanings ascribed by subjects to the event. Cognitive variables take up the role of mediators and of explanatory factors about the reactions adopted by the family to gain an equilibrium suitable for the system’s new requirements. People who live separation’s experience go through moments in which they are more absorbed by themselves than their parental functions, because the breaking of the bond of matrimony and the consequent failure of the united couple to refer to, requires dedication to revising the self-image and relation’s image. The strategy of disqualifying or disclaiming an ex-partner and to have an exclusive relationship with children, can hide the attempt to defend themselves, so it’s possible to acquire the confidence of being a valid parent and to avoid the personal catastrophe. In many cases, at least one of the two ex-spouses can’t accept separation and keeps on expecting to gain a reconciliation or, he/she concentrates a lot of psychic energy on the ex-partner’s image to hate him/her or to feel nostalgic. The more it’s impossible to reach a constructive psychological divorce, and the more the person remains anchored on the previous image of the partner and of the relation, the more the risk of those kind of behaviours increases. Actually, in these cases separation is not accepted and redefining his/her own role (and his/her ex-partner’s one) becomes difficult. This situation can delay the achievement of an agreement about the custody of the child, and it actually slows down the reaching of a new equilibrium and causes long struggles, legal and not, to win the battle. Cognitive support offered by the social environment, particularly by family mediators, psychologists, psychotherapy experts and by informal agents as relatives or friends, can have an important role to reach a new self-image, a new ex-partner’s image and to overcome the difficult event. The achievement of an organisational form that allows the preserving of the bond between non-foster parent and his/her children, and to maintain, with different ways, a good relationship between the two parents, is subordinate to the relation’s redefinition that should foresee a strong collaboration to fulfil parent’s duties. This cognitive process occurs every day within the interaction with others who contribute to the construction of a new meaning about his/her own relational event.

We show here the findings a rising out of a qualitative research that involved a sample consisting of 27 mono-parental families, a homogeneous sample of the separation event, about the feminine gender of the foster parent, about the number of children (from 1 to 3) and about their age (at least one with an age of between 8 and 16).

We administered to every family, at their own home, the Family Life Space. This technique allowed the research to get fully into the relational model both for the kind of administration used (Family Life Space has been jointly executed by children and foster parent) and for the kind of task employed: the family was requested to represent itself in a space with borders, beyond which it was possible to place other significant social entities that exchange energies and information with it. Subjects were then requested to represent, by means of lines, the relation with all the other outlined symbols (a continuous line for "good relationships", a dotted line for "so so relationships", a line with a cross for "bad relationships). We also recorded the conversation during the task’s execution and then we analysed it by Content analysis, to identify interactive forms and social system attributes. Single cases analysis allowed us to highlight the relation with non-foster parent (the father) and the social environment’s role relative to the family unit. In the most cases we found a correlation between the position of non-foster parent’s figure and the support level offered by the social environment. Families with rigid borders, isolated from their context, had more difficulties in ascribing an exact position to the father figure. In some of these cases the father was completely omitted or, if he has been drawn, always and only by children, his figure appeared shady; moreover, the family seemed to be hardly to able to find an agreement about his spatial position and about the kind of relationship with him. In several cases, in fact, during the drawing by a child relative to the symbol that represented the father there were unfavourable remarks (by the mother or other children) to disqualify the ex-partner or his relationship with children.

The situation is really different for those families actively integrated in social systems recognised as a support source. In the majority of these cases the non-foster parent has been placed, mostly by children, in a position characterised by emotional closeness with the family unit and, though in a small number of families, the mother herself presses children to draw their father. It seemed therefore that the relationship between the family system and wider systems in which it is placed correlates with the relation between the parental unit and where the children are and where the non-foster parent’s figure. This correlation’s nature should be explained; probably difficulties in the relationship with the parent who has gone away from home determine the mono-parental unit’s need to look for alternative support sources. Nevertheless, according to the theoretical assumptions we described, it seems likely to suppose that a family's insertion into significant social systems can offer a support that operates also on the cognitive sphere and can also contribute to the event’s revision so that the parental relationship can be safeguarded. Undoubtedly, within the court's technical advice it’s necessary to join a perspective that considers the social dimension of the family, both inside its structure and relatively to its bond with the social macro-system. The possibility of guaranteeing the parental continuity and therefore of considering binuclear families instead of mono-parental ones, can be realised through the analysis of (and the action on) the relational level relative to the family, trying not to neglect the relational system that contributes to give a real meaning to the family bond.

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