Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Scapegoating Families

What Are They?

- Violent pattern of family dysfunction
- With the election of a preferential target inside the family
- Generally, the target is elected by one of the parents, who has a severe personality disorder
- The dysfunctional pattern is used to keep the family united, in a pathological and distorted way
- The other members of the nuclear family get secondary gains from such form of functioning (among which not assuming responsibility for their own acts), which are not always conscious but when they become conscious remain very hard to modify
- Pattern of misplaced blame, projection, negation
- Blackmail, cruelty, psychological pressure, coersion of the target
- Emotional, psychological and sometimes also physical violence, which persist for years or decades

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