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The notions in this paper stem from my practice of working with “children-within-families', combining two approaches, that of the psycho-analyst interested in the unconscious phantasy of the individual, and the family therapist, who sees that distress never occurs in isolation, and is therefore interested in the group process and the language of the family myth.
Ferreira in 1965 pointed out that family myths can be seen as patterns of mutually agreed but distorted roles providing models and plans for social action. If a family has to use too many, or the roles played are too extreme, then the family acts in a very rigid way and the individuals are tied into a crippling performance. Byng-Hall (1973) shows that family myths of this kind originate within an unresolved crisis such as a failed mourning. He describes various ways in which the young may be recruited into the drama of the parents' inner world. Under the description of closed-circuit families I sought to show how very disturbed individuals share unconscious phantasies as a way of surviving (Elles 1961). Over decades and even generations, these family myths may be maintained without testing their “reality”. Thus they create a pathological focus of tension in the family member who must suffer a widening rift between privately held views and actions and family ordained experience. This is felt as the passively endured intrusions described by Heimann (1965).
Up to this point the myth can be seen only in pathological terms. Yet I would suggest that the myth can also stand for the seed of the family's actual past experience, and can be the important bridge between what at one point in time was unknowable and at another unknown.
To illustrate these two points of view I have selected three cases of family myths encountered during analytic work with children in sick families and have compared these with depth interviews with some 20 “well” couples all expecting the