Seventy-five families who were abusive to their children are described. The intimacy of the parent-child relationship places such abuse halfway between suicide and homicide. The child is often seen as a persecuting monster. Both the parent and child are ambivalent, and both are active in the abusive situation: the child in order not to be isolated, the parents in an attempt to use chaos to avoid awareness. Galdston also finds a discontinuity between the generations, phobic ideation, and a sadomasochistic relationship between the parents, with the child caught between them. Finally, he sees the need to find a focus for rage and unmastered aggression as related to "ghosts" in these families.