The family projection process describes the primary way parents transmittheir emotional problems to a child. The projection process can impair thefunctioning of one or more children and increase their vulnerability to clinicalsymptoms. Children inherit many types of problems (as well as strengths) throughthe relationships with their parents, but the problems they inherit that mostaffect their lives are relationship sensitivities such as heightened needs forattention and approval, difficulty dealing with expectations, the tendency toblame oneself or others, feeling responsible for the happiness of others or thatothers are responsible for one's own happiness, and acting impulsively torelieve the anxiety of the moment rather than tolerating anxiety and actingthoughtfully. If the projection process is fairly intense, the child developsstronger relationship sensitivities than his parents. The sensitivities increasea person's vulnerability to symptoms by fostering behaviors that escalatechronic anxiety in a relationship system.
The projection process follows three steps:
(1) the parent focuses on a child out of fear that something is wrong withthe child;
(2) the parent interprets the child's behavior as confirming the fear; and
(3) the parent treats the child as if something is really wrong with thechild.
These steps of scanning, diagnosing, and treating begin early in the child'slife and continue. The parents' fears and perceptions so shape the child'sdevelopment and behavior that he grows to embody their fears and perceptions.One reason the projection process is a self-fulfilling prophecy is that parentstry to "fix" the problem they have diagnosed in the child; for example, parentsperceive their child to have low self-esteem, they repeatedly try to affirm thechild, and the child's self-esteem grows dependent on their affirmation.
Parents often feel they have not given enough love, attention, or support toa child manifesting problems, but they have invested more time, energy, andworry in this child than in his siblings. The siblings less involved in thefamily projection process have a more mature and reality-based relationship withtheir parents that fosters the siblings developing into less needy, lessreactive, and more goal-directed people. Both parents participate equally in thefamily projection process, but in different ways. The mother is usually theprimary caretaker and more prone than the father to excessive emotionalinvolvement with one or more of the children. The father typically occupies theoutside position in the parental triangle, except during periods of heightenedtension in the mother-child relationship. Both parents are unsure of themselvesin relationship to the child, but commonly one parent acts sure of himself orherself and the other parent goes along. The intensity of the projection processis unrelated to the amount of time parents spend with a child.
Example:
The case of Michael, Martha, and Amy illustrates the family projectionprocess. Martha's anxiety about Amy began before Amy was born. Martha feared shewould transfer inadequacies she had felt as a child, and still felt, to her ownchild. This was one reason Martha had mixed feelings about being a mother. Likemany parents, Martha felt a mother's most important task was to make a childfeel loved. In the name of showing love, she was acutely responsive to Amy'sdesires for attention. If Amy seemed bored and out of sorts, Martha was therewith an idea or plan. She believed a child's road to confidence and independencewas in the child feeling secure about herself. Martha did not recognize howsensitive she was to any sign in Amy that she might be upset or troubled and howquickly she would move in to fix the problem.
Martha loved Amy deeply. She and Amy often seemed like one person in the waythey were attuned to each other. As a very small toddler, Amy was as sensitiveto her mother's moods and wants as Martha was to Amy's moods and wants.
[Analysis: Martha's excessive involvementprograms Amy to want much of her mother's attention and to be highly sensitiveto her mother's emotional state. Both mother and child act to reinforce theintense connection between them.]
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