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I am a son; I have no other fathers, even though they bequeathed me poison.
Multigenerational transmission occurs in every family, healthy and dysfunctional. However, the dynamics of the process are more readily discernible when resulting from personal, social, or natural trauma or when magnified by pathology. Case material and reference to the literature will illuminate the mechanism of role induction in the multigenerational transmission process, its effects on development and identification, and its significance in the youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s, here and abroad.
A six-year-old boy, Henry, suffering from encopresis, was referred to me long before I became knowledgeable about family systems theory, having read only Nathan Ackerman's (1954) article on neurotic marital interaction, but not yet Mishler and Waxler's (1968) Family Process and Schizophrenia; it was many years before I had a good idea of generational transmission. Henry's mother reported that he refused to be toilet trained, held on to his stool, moaned with pain during his sleep, and let