| Interview with Gladis Brun,
June 2001 by Janine Roberts To talk with Gladis Brun, author
of Pais, filhos & CIA. Ilimitada
(Parents and Children, Unlimited & Co.)
and Bem-me-quer, Mal-me-quer: Retratos de Divorcia
(Loves Me, Loves Me Not: Images of Divorce)
and cofounder of first the Center for Families and Couples, and then the Instituto
de Terapia da Familia in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is to be taken up into the
saga of a professional woman who has journeyed with and richly applied a wide
range of ideas about families and therapy. The parallels are present in her
personal life as well, considering that she has migrated to and lived half
of her life in countries other than Brazil. She is a woman who bridges languages,
cultures, and worldviews about therapy, a woman generously attentive to complex
dynamics, nuance and detail, and the ways that changing families teach us
to shift our theories and ways of working. Gladis explained that the need
for her to leave Brazil came precipitously in 1967 because of political problems.
"At that time, Latin America was tainted by political dictatorships
and violence became a part of many people's daily lives, resulting in
differing degrees of destructiveness for the people involved. I was working
in an international network that gathered documents to be published in different
media channels abroad, as evidence of the existence of torture in the basements
of the Brazilian dictatorship, in hopes that international resources and support
networks would be mobilized. Once my name was brought before
the police, I became a person who could not afford to be interrogated without
risking the security of a network built at great effort. Therefore, even though
my sudden departure from the country was undertaken initially as a preventive
measure, my migration soon revealed itself to have been more than just a sensible
choice, and, due to the social circumstances at that time, it assumed the
colors of exile." Gladis went to Chile and began
working with groups of mothers who were being trained to help other mothers
who had children with dyslexia. This was the opening of a new vision for her,
for the project was based on the belief that community members can be agents
of health for each other. She also began working with children using her training
in psychoanalysis. However, she started to feel constrained with this work,
and concerned that she did not see, for example, the parents of the children
as supportive of the therapeutic process. A social worker asked her if she
had ever studied systems family therapy and introduced her, first, to a book
by Ackerman, and, then, to the work of the Mental Research Institute in Palo
Alto. Gladis told me that during this
migration experience, she was always thinking about how to read cues in her
new environment, how to adapt to the different worldviews embedded in another
language and in the cultures of Chile. This gave her a deep respect for the
intricacies of how clients need to do this when two families come together
in a couple to create a new family (a type of new culture). So, from the inside
out, she learned myriad ways to join and connect with others different from
herself. With the coup in 1973 of the
military forces and Pinochet, Gladis, now married and with and two children
born in Chile, had to escape to Argentina. Once again, she was uprooted. In
Buenos Aires, she worked closely with Maria Rosa Glasserman, founder of C.E.F.Y.P.,
and many others. "I was always surrounded by very generous people,"
Gladis told me. She began to be invited to do trainings. "They were
like reflecting team conversations as we listened and learned from each other."
She was also asked to do workshops in Brazil but she could not safely return
there. Finally, through a dear uncle who had some political power in Brazil,
a plan was made to clear her passport. She flew with her children and husband
to Brazil knowing that she would be arrested on the plane, but in a place
where, it was hoped, her uncle could guarantee her safety. Friends in Argentina
helped her to prepare for the interrogations that would come with her arrest.
This process cleared her passport so that she could cross into Brazil via
airports. This was also a kind of family of origin reconnection for Gladis. At the end of the seventies,
as Argentin's political upheavals intensified, Gladis, now divorced,
decided to move back to Brazil. Gladis and Anna Hoette, another long time
AFTA member, began their long-term collaboration and pioneering establishment
of several Institutes. "In 1980, Anna and I and a group of other people
started to meet at our first systemic headquarters, the Centro de Familias
e Casais. While I kept busy with the additional groups that were coming together
in several cities around Brazil, Anna focused in on university teaching. We
created study groups, always looking for new theoretical nourishment and trying
to be multipliers of ideas. Then, in 1987, as the centers coalesced, Anna
and I and others founded our family therapy institute in Rio. In 1991, I also
founded the journal Nova Perspectiva Sistemica,
working as its editor until 1996." Gladis describes the impact
of all of these migrations in her life (geographical; political; within her
family of origin "from yacht clubs to unions," from psychoanalytical
to systemic work; from the fairy tale of marriage to the reality of divorce
and supporting two children) as central to opening her up to different points
of view and ideas. "I have lived it, it is in my flesh." It is striking how Gladis took
on all of the forced movement in her life on as a way to open up possibilities.
Her writing carries this same open spirit. In her first book, Pais e filhos, Ms. Brun offers to families savy, grounded ideas and
advice about how to navigate the ins and outs of divorce and remarriage. It
is presented through stories and presented in a framework of good supportive
conversation. Like women and men sitting around talking. In her second book Bem-me-quer,
Mal-me-quer, through the stories of nine women all divorced for
at least five years, the reader is introduced to different ways of separating,
divorcing and creating new post-divorce lives. With down-to-earth examples,
she enourages people not to get "married to divorce" and stuck
in a world of right and wrong, allies and enemies. As Gladis said, "I was
afraid to write in everyday language, rather than the ways in which things
sound more important. But I feel good about what I have done in my books.
I did not put distance between us. I see my books as invitations to speak
and share together. This is what surprises me the most about my work now—conversations
inside and outside of the therapy room are quite similar. I don't have
to change so much anymore when I am a therapist." Gladis Brun, a woman who invokes
generosity in so many ways—through her writing, through her work, through
her presence in the world. Talk to her at the next AFTA Annual Meeting, get
one of her books to read—you will be brought into the vibrant space
that Gladis creates as she embraces the challenges of life, working within
a framework that considers what can grow from them. Janine Roberts, Ed.D. Professor School of Education |
