The 5 Family Roles – by Virginia Satir

Meet the 5 typical family roles described by Virginia Satir: distractor, computer, leveler, accuser and appeasement.

Hello friends!

I got to know Virginia Satir’s work through NLP, Neurolinguistic Programming. As I have already explained here in other texts, NLP seeks to model the exceptional behaviors of people in their area of ​​expertise or activity. For example, a man who speaks 56 languages ​​fluently is certainly an amazing language learner. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to understand as does he learn languages?

NLP, then, did and does this. To understand the positive results of therapists considered excellent, NLP founders Richard Bandler and John Grinder also modeled the behavior of Virginia Satir and it was from this modeling work that I first heard about her.

Who is Virginia Satir?

Virginia Satir was born in 1916 in the United States (Winsconsin). As a young girl, she was ill and, as a result, lost her hearing for two years. It is said that during this period she would have learned to carefully observe people’s non-verbal behavior in order to communicate with them.

Most of us pay attention to the content of speech, while what is said non-verbally remains unconscious. With this “training” still in infancy, Satir would have created the ability to listen not only to the content. She says: “Every word, every facial expression, every gesture or action of the parents gives the child a message about his own worth. It’s sad that so many parents don’t realize the message they are sending.”

His background, however, was not in psychology. He trained for teaching and later earned a master’s degree in social work.

Another aspect that the author herself tells about her story was the fact that her father was an alcoholic, which made her observe the dynamics of the relationship between an individual’s behavior and his family.

And it was precisely in the area of ​​family care that Virgina Satir stood out. She is acclaimed worldwide as one of the most important therapists in the field of systemic family therapy, which she even helped consolidate, disseminate and expand.

The 5 family roles

Satir developed the theory of the 5 family roles. These roles (just as in the theater the actor plays roles) appear more clearly when family members are unable to express their feelings, thoughts, affections and ideas in a clear and direct way. Roles are also called, in contexts other than family, Satir’s “postures”:

1) Accuser

2) reliever

3) Computer

4) Distractor

5) Leveler

If we think about a situation of family conflict, we will see that it is not difficult to identify each of these roles. The names are indicative of the behavior.

Thus, the accuser is that member of the family who keeps pointing out mistakes, failures, mistakes, problems. The appeaser is practically the opposite of the accuser, it is the individual who tries to put “warm cloths” in fights and disagreements, without, however, trying or seeking to resolve the situation definitively.

The computer and the distractor have, basically, a similar objective: to seek to point everyone’s attention in another direction. But, while the distractor points out to everyone a way of not looking at the difficulty in question, the computer tends to close itself off in its world as a “distant intellectual”.

Finally, there is the role of the leveler who is the one who seeks to communicate in a sincere, open and understanding way about what is happening and really looks for a way to improve whatever is causing the problem. unlike the other 4 roles who don’t face or show their real feelings.

As an example, we can take the Simpsons cartoon – which I believe almost everyone knows. Bart Simpson, the naughty and playful boy, would be an example of a distractor. With his jokes and pranks he aims to distract and entertain other family members. Lisa Simpson, the brilliant super-gifted, would be an example of the computer, of using intelligence and intellectuality to not deal with one’s own feelings (her own and those of others in the family).

Margie oscillates between the roles of accuser (she is critical and keeps pointing out the mistakes, especially of her husband Homer) and of peacemaker (when dealing with the children). Homer, in turn, presents himself as an accuser (when he strangles Bart) and as a distractor due to his stupidity, his alcoholism and his escape from reality. Meg is a baby and cannot be assigned one of the roles.

Despite everything, the confusions and misunderstandings, the role of the leveler, the one who communicates real feelings appears here and there by one or another of the characters, depending on the episode. Thus, Homer and Bart sometimes have crises of conscience and talk about what they really feel, but the role of the leveler is more often assumed by Marge and Lisa.

Conclusion

Evidently, Satir’s job is not to classify and label people and that’s it. Like any classification we can make in therapies (like a diagnosis), the goal is to find an orientation to help with the problem of the individual or, in the case of family therapy, the family.

For example, one of the techniques developed by the author was that these roles could be enacted by people (individually) in order to find their own role, the role of other people who grew up around them. This technique is called “party of the parties”. The idea is to create an environment in which it is possible for everyone to recognize the role they have played and to step out of it.

One of the author’s quotes that I like the most is the following: “What remains of the individual parents’ past, unresolved or incomplete, often becomes a part of their irrational way of dealing with their children”.

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