Negative maternal attributions, projective identification, and the intergenerational transmission of violent relational patterns

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, in press; Seligman 1993, 1995, this issue; Silverman, Lieberman, and Pekarsky, 1997).