Family Album: Family Roles That Cause Psychological Harm

The family is the socializing instrument that mediates the relationship between the individual and the rest of the world. It is the first model we have for starting to relate to each other: a social starting point that, in many cases, has an influence that goes far beyond childhood. In this sense, Álbum de Família is a film that materializes a reality far from what is idealized, but that repeats itself more than we would like to admit.

The film shows a familiar environment that looks exemplary on the outside, but only those who live inside know what really happens in each house. Characters who struggle between brotherly love for the people who gave them life and the desolate panorama of an environment of frustration, envy and competitiveness, instead of love and protection.

Family Album : summary

After the family father’s suicide, the wife calls the three daughters to return to the family home and witness his funeral. For each of them, this visit is a reunion with the conflicts and resentments of the past.

The father had been a refugee in alcohol for years and the mother was a drug addict. The couple had a very destructive relationship that basically was limited to satisfying her demands and complaints. The woman believed that she was not being treated as she deserved. She punished her husband with impunity for an infidelity that happened many years ago, from which a child was born. Both hide this fact as the great family secret.

Both came from a marginal environment of poverty and abuse by their parents. Rude people who are used to the rigors of life. Both are proud of having left that environment lacking opportunities and of having won thanks to sacrifice and hard work.

They projected their own desires for success onto their daughters, but none of them seem to have lived up to their expectations. The mother feels a deep contempt for the three of them, and doesn’t miss the opportunity to question their way of life.

A passive-aggressive mother

The mother’s character in  Family Album  has some narcissistic elements, but the passive-aggressive personality defines her especially well. She focuses solely on the mistakes her daughters make. She reproaches them for having the opportunities she didn’t have. She is manipulative, overly theatrical and dramatic when her antics don’t work as she would like.

She feels like she’s in competition with everyone else. Any information you get from the daughters is used as a weapon against them. Constantly uses the associated double message (negative-positive-negative comment).

She plays the role of the sick person who dominates the world. She feels attacked because her daughters have built their own lives. Do whatever it takes to get them to come back, and remind them of “your obligations to her.” He keeps talking about how little she had and how much they had.

the big sister

The older sister has always had the role of mediator of order in family crises, both with the younger sisters and with the parents themselves. She developed a more controlling personality, and this caused her a lot of problems with her husband, who eventually divorced her. The family is still unaware of this last fact.

Despite the love that her husband and daughter feel for her, it turns out to be unbearable that she does not allow herself to relax, even for a moment, with them. There is an internal struggle in her not to repeat the patterns of the old generations.

the middle sister

In traditional families, there is always a daughter who plays the role of caregiver to the parents. This is the case with the middle daughter in the film. She didn’t get married, nor did she do anything great with her life, apart from taking care of her parents, and that made her build up a lot of resentment towards them and her sisters. She has a very strange relationship with a cousin, but nobody knows it.

Her mother doesn’t see any problem with the fact that this daughter perfectly fulfills the role she was given, but she doesn’t value her. She hides her guilt by constantly attacking her.

The mother reproaches her daughter for not having formed her own family, and blames her unfeminine appearance. In fact, she dares to compete with her in that sense, just to make fun of her. This daughter has severe problems relating to others, and appears to have developed an avoidant personality disorder.

the younger sister

The youngest daughter is totally lost. She is a very childish and fragile woman, who only wants to please everyone to be accepted. She has spent her entire adult life jumping from one love affair to another, each one worse than the last, taking risks with men who don’t treat her well.

However, for her, all her relationships will be “forever”. He is a very emotionally dependent person. He makes great efforts to demonstrate to his mother how happy she is and how perfect and idyllic their current relationship is, whatever it may be.

To other people, their love mates are just “this year’s boyfriend”. It’s hard to tell from just the data the movie shows, but it could be a borderline personality disorder.

recognizing patterns

The three daughters grew up under an authoritarian parenting style. Their parents never showed any kind of affection for them, and they maintained strict control over their lives. There is a disorganized attachment in all of them, although each has dealt with it in a different way.

Still, when family crises arise, the first strategy they use is denial. This causes them to sustain a false family balance, and each one develops a different defense mechanism to survive that family nucleus.

It is definitely a “normal” familiar environment for the eyes of others, but tremendously dysfunctional inside, where many triangulations take place.

Family Album is just a movie, but it knew how to show many of the roles that are automatically given to members of a family. It materializes the amount of problems these roles can cause in the future, in the form of frustrated and denied desires. The film takes place during the month of August, with asphyxiating heat (in the northern hemisphere). A suffocation that can be felt in his characters.

A few months ago, the Provincial Hospital of Castellón (Spain) presented a brilliant analysis of the film  Álbum de Família  in one of its personal formation seminars, and it shows each of these subjects in depth from a therapeutic perspective.

These are roles with which many people can feel identified, and are very interesting information, both for the psychological well-being of those who suffer from these disorders, as for the people around them in adulthood.