Impinged-upon adults have received some confusing communications from their parents. They are given unconsciously because of the parents’ basic psychological need. These parents do not punish or destroy intentionally; more likely, they are passing on unwritten laws that may have been given to them by their parents. To survive psychologically, these mothers need their children to be extensions of themselves and need to be needed by those children. Therefore, they take unconscious steps to sabotage their off-springs’ independence.
Download Author: McArthur, Dorothea Ph.D. ABPP
Commands Given to Impinged-upon Adults by Fathers
Many of the commands from fathers are designed to support the commands from mothers. The fathers satisfy many of their psychological needs at work, and leave the role of taking care of the mothers’ psychological needs to their children. Since their marriage may often be unfulfilling, these fathers issue commands that request their children to provide some of what is missing.
The Patient’s Relationship to the Family
In this chapter we will consider some of the complex ways in which symbiotic families remain as a unit longer than is beneficial for the individual growth of each member. These interactions cause troubling feelings of confusion, guilt, despair, and helplessness for children.
Birth of a Self in Adulthood
This book is about the treatment of a large clinical group termed borderline, referred to here as impinged upon adults. She clarifies the underlying pathological commands given without conscious destructive intent by parents to their children. The author describes the step-by-step changes necessary for the birth of a self that can occur as a result of psychotherapy. (329 pages)
Reviews
“Dr. McArthur succinctly and cogently pulls together and explains the variety of depersonifying messages (commands) that disturbed parents, themselves victims of identity-distorting depersonifications within their own families, direct toward their children. Her book fills an important niche in the psychodynamic literature devoted to personality disorder, family dysfunctionality, and their treatment. It richly deserves, and will undoubtedly achieve, a wide lay and professional readership.”
—Donald B. Rinsley M.D.
“Birth of a Self in Adulthood sensitively captures the drama of how implicit, unconscious messages sent by parents bind us to them, to fulfill their unmet needs and wishes. Dr. McArthur clearly describes the unconscious character of these message that become internalized as if they were commandments, which we must not break.”
—Donald R. Fridley Ph.D.
“Birth of a Self in Adulthood is a very readable work, rich in clinical examples and free of psychological jargon. The book concisely describes how some parents, due to their own feelings of profound psychological incompleteness, use members of their families to achieve a sense of personal wholeness, and the emotional damage this causes to everyone involved.”
—Charlotte Fletcher Ph.D.
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