Abusive Families and Character Formation

Emotional or psychological abuse is comprised of recurrent critical attacks in which both the child's emerging self and the child's individuation is contemptuously devalued. I wish to comment on abusive families' interactions and in particular on the role of psychologically abusive parent-child interactions in the development of character traits. As one type of trauma, persistent psychological abuse forces the child or adolescent to defend against disillusionment and dependency needs and to make extensive use of denial in order to avoid mourning or possible fragmentation. Unlike other types of trauma in which the child is able to identify with or rely on the parents for support and ego augmentation, the abused youngster tends to internalize the abusive family atmosphere while experiencing the loss of the good parent and the good self. Abusive family systems reinforce both interactional patterns of abuse and the child's reliance on early intrapsychic processes for dealing with attacks on the self.

The emotional impact of severe psychological abuse initially arises in family transactions that curb the child's ego development and perpetuate hostile symbiotic types of relatedness. Like physically and sexually abusive parents, psychologically abusive families contribute to the development of paranoid, depressive, and borderline character traits that become more apparent during adolescence and during psychotherapy. Empirical studies have documented the incidence of depression and disassociation in sexually abused children and of antisocial conduct in physically abused children. Abused youngsters in general encounter difficulty in negotiating the tasks of adolescence and in resolving the depressions that stem from guilt, shame, neglect, rage, experiences of loss, and the internalization of belittlement.

Psychological abuse can best be described as the parenting acting out of unconscious hatred and dependency, facilitated by means of the sadistic use of projective processes.