Abusive families and character formation:
Family research studies confirm that abusive parents tend to be
undifferentiated partners who competewith each other and with their children
for attention and nurturance. More or less healthy parents make demands on
children to counteract their own injured narcissism, but they do so largely
without devaluation and the sadistic use of projective identification. Under
sufficient stress abusive parents attack the child who fails to gratify their
needs, thereby giving vent to longstanding frustrations and feelings of being
threatened by the child's individuation and competency. The emotional
atmosphere in such families facilitates ego deficits like those of the borderline
personality as it molds the child's efforts to avoid anxiety. Devaluation, loss,
and defenses against mourning partially account for depression and paranoid
traits in abused youngsters. Early neglect and abuse exposes them to
influential models who act out rage and primitive defenses. Some abused
individuals project their rage and later become paranoid or antisocial, whereas
others fragment or retain infantile defenses. The destructiveness of severe
psychological abuse lies in the constriction of the experiencing self and
healthy character development, together with the conditioning to repeat
abusive relationships and to avoid intimacy. Achieving individuation under
these circumstances entails overcoming the internalized abusive relationships
and relinquishing the unconscious wish to be transformed from the abused
into the abuser.
