The family projection process

A colleague I supervise this morning asked me how to understand the discrepancy they observe time & time again between a parent who is describing their child as highly symptomatic & in need of diagnosis - but the clinical team and school have not observed the severity of these symptoms & instead see a relatively well functioning child in other environments. 

Murray Bowen’s concept of the family projection process can be very helpful in understanding this presentation. It describes the primary way parents can transmit their emotional problems to a child. This in turn can impair the functioning of the child & increase their vulnerability to clinical symptoms. It follows 3 steps:

1. Parent focuses on a child out of fear that something is wrong with the child. 
2. Parent interprets the child’s behaviour as confirming the fear. 
3. Parent treats the child as if something is really wrong with the child. The parent can then focus on ‘fixing’ the child & clinical services can affirm the parents fears by joining in on the focus, providing the child with an abundance of service support, assessment & often diagnosis. 

This can begin very early in a child’s life and continue on, developing a dependency for the child on their parents affirmation or focus in relation to the symptom. 

See the self-perpetuating cycle? One way of helping a parent break this pattern is to help them become a better observer of what is going on between them & their child, the other parent etc. Look at a recent interaction and break it down, get curious about each family member’s different responses. Not easy when these patterns are deeply entrenched but worth the effort!