ficial sense can be linked to the trauma of the fatal accident the previous year, the Jarretts appear to present with a family structure marked by remarkable balance between individuality and togetherness (Nichols & Schwartz, 2004, p. 119).
As more details of the family unfold, of course, what is manifest and superficial conceals a host of life forces within the Jarrett family system that are overlapping, converging, and colliding. In other words, the picture of family balance neither told the whole story nor was static. Rather, it was less balanced than it appeared, and the accident affected, complicated, and strained family dynamics, to bring to the surface a range of psychoemotional issues embedded in the family system.
Conrad's self-differentiation became more strongly felt--and threatened--after the accident because of his experience of seeing his mother withdraw from him emotionally. During Buck's lifetime, it appears not to have occurred to Conrad to question what, at some level, he would have understood to be Beth's favoritism toward her firstborn. With Buck gone, Conrad's ego strength required support and help from surviving loved ones, but Beth seems to have been unable or disinclined to provide it. Calvin, while well-meaning and while not so fused as Beth was with Buck, could not fill the emotional gap, and in any case he seems to have been somewhat emotional distant from the family circle. However, Conrad's need and Beth's increasingly obvious avoidance of him--as well as her increasingly obvious attempts to fuse closer with her husband--have brought to the surface Calvin's realization of just how emotionally tangential to the family's emotional life he has been. This has created conflict in Calvin's perception about how he feels about his attachment to his wife.
Beth, meanwhile, so keenly feels the loss of Buck that a whole chunk of her persona seems to have been cut off of her. Nichols and Schwartz cite the perils...