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This paper discusses one family's struggle with domestic violence involving three generations. In this case, coercive negative maternal attributions interacted with parent-to-child projective identification, which resulted in the child's internalization of parental perceptions involving confusion around danger and protection from danger. Projective identification occurs as readily from a parent to a child as from a child to a parent. As is illustrated, when the parent's use of projective identification is excessive, it has severe implications for the whole of the child's psychic development (Lieberman, 1992, 1994, 1997,