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.

Reborn