Family treatment of a psychopathic personality

Abstract

Summary We have tried to illustrate the three-generation format which eventuates in a “psychopathic personality” type of identified patient. Two families trained the father and mother of our patient to play a pre-cooled social game called marriage. The offspring of this marriage is part of a two-generation shuttle. She tries to warm her parents' relationship by enticing them into being more than audience to her life and death games of love and hate. They repeatedly “free” her to escape the primal family and join her own generation at the point when her game gets too hot for the family and she is in danger of psychosis. Later she structures the social situation so she can return in disgrace and defeat to mother, who cleans up the mess, and to father, who forgives her so she can repeat the cycle again. The pattern of therapeutic change necessitates use of the parcent team as cotherapist. This seems in marked contrast with the parents of the schizophrenic I.P. who seem to be trying to grow as persons and thereby try to be patients. The parents of our patient strive to get her to succeed so they can enjoy the cool fun of watching. Yet beneath this the parodoxical directive, “Lets reactivate the good old days,” can include the forgiveness of sin, which was their answer to the misbehavior of infancy. Marriages and suicide attempts are, after all, only adult counterparts of “the oatmeal mess of the high chair days.”