Families’ Emotional Health: a Psychological Violence StudyAbstract:
Psychological violence directly affects the emotional health of families. This study aims to discuss the different types of psychological violence present in families attending psychotherapy and their repercussions on the emotional health of family members. Reports on ten families with low socioeconomic status in Rio de Janeiro, composed of adults, children, and adolescents, attending the Applied Psychology Service of a university between 2014 and 2023, were analyzed. The records include reports of family assessment sessions, transcripts of the Structured Family Interview (SFI), and a sociobiographical form. A thematic clinical-qualitative analysis of the material extracted from the records was carried out. From the results obtained, the category of psychological violence was divided into the following subcategories: ridicule and humiliation; threats and embarrassment; destructive parentification; and incestuality. Repercussions of psychological violence on the emotional health of the family and difficulties in identifying the violence suffered by family members were observed.
Keywords:
psychological violence; health; family members
Resumen:
La violencia psicológica interfiere directamente en la promoción de la salud emocional en la familia. El objetivo de este estudio es discutir las diferentes formas de violencia psicológica, presentes en familias atendidas en psicoterapia, y sus repercusiones en la salud emocional de los miembros familiares. Se analizaron los informes clínicos de diez familias de capas com bajo nível socioeconómico de la pobloción carioca, compuestas por adultos, niños y adolescentes, atendidos en el Servicio de Psicología Aplicada de una universidad entre 2014 y 2023. Los informes incluían sesiones de evaluación familiar, transcripciones de la Entrevista Familiar Estructurada (EFE) y un formulario sociobiográfico. Se realizó un análisis temático clínico-cualitativo. La categoría violencia psicológica fue desglosada en las subcategorías: ridiculización y humillación; amenaza y coacción; parentalización destructiva e incesto. Se observaron repercusiones de la violencia psicológica en la salud emocional de la familia y dificultad para identificar la violencia sufrida por sus miembros.
Palabras Clave:
violencia psicológica; salud; miembros de la família
Resumo:
A violência psicológica interfere diretamente na promoção de saúde emocional na família. O objetivo deste estudo é discutir as diferentes formas de violência psicológica, presentes em famílias atendidas em psicoterapia, e suas repercussões na saúde emocional dos membros familiares. Foram analisados prontuários de dez famílias com baixo nível socioeconômico da população carioca, compostas por adultos, crianças e adolescentes, atendidas no Serviço de Psicologia Aplicada de uma universidade durante o período de 2014 a 2023. Os prontuários incluem relatórios de sessões de avaliação familiar, transcrição da Entrevista Familiar Estruturada (EFE) e uma ficha sociobiográfica. Foi realizada uma análise temática clínico-qualitativa dos prontuários. A partir dos resultados obtidos, emergiu a categoria violência psicológica, desdobrada nas subcategorias: ridicularização e humilhação; ameaça e constrangimento; parentalização destrutiva e incestualidade. Foram constatadas repercussões da violência psicológica na saúde emocional da família e dificuldade de identificação, por parte dos familiares, de violências sofridas.
Palavras-chave:
violência psicológica; saúde; membros da família
The family environment is usually a privileged locus for emotional support and offers a fundamental reference framework for the emotional health of family members, establishing contours and limits for interpersonal relationships. The concept of emotional health of families can be understood by means of the postulations presented by Féres-Carneiro (2005), who defines family dynamics that promote emotional health as those in which communication between family members is clear and congruent; the rules are explicit and flexible; and roles are defined and differentiated. Furthermore, conflicts can be expressed and a solution is sought; aggressiveness and anger can be expressed in a constructive way; physical affection is present and has adequate emotional charge. In families that promote emotional health, marital interaction is also well demarcated, allowing individualization and gratifying both members of the couple; individual identities are preserved, but there is a group identity, which enables the formation of feelings of high self-esteem in family members.
Although no family is a full-time promoter of emotional health, based on this conceptualization, families, as well as individuals, can be considered as predominantly healthy or predominantly ill. In the second case, it is possible that failures in meeting the demands for recognizing early affective-emotional needs are experienced as invasions in the development process (Winnicott, 1999), producing psychological symptoms, as well as deep marks on the psyche.
Among the environmental invasions that permeate family dynamics and that put it into the opposite side of promoting emotional health, experiences of family violence stand out. Although episodes of violence can shake any member of the family, it is understood that, in the case of children, scenes of family violence can hinder their ability to process and compensate for the environmental failure. As a result, the child, even one who does not remember the episodes of violence suffered, may establish an unreliable relationship with the environment considered invasive (Bonfatti & Granato, 2021).
In addition to individual repercussions, marks of violence are transmitted generationally within the family (Benghozi, 2024; Brum et al., 2021; Luévano-Martínez, 2021). Violent relationship patterns and family models experienced in the context of families of origin tend to have repercussions on the subject’s subsequent emotional relationships, perpetuating the transgenerational cycle of family violence (Mosena & Bossi, 2022).
It is noteworthy to highlight the differences between aggressive and violent aspects in family psychodynamics. Aggressiveness is an important element for the individual development of family members and the family group as a whole simply because human actions are not possible without it. The subject needs aggressive impulses to break the passivity associated with the emotional dependence that is characteristic of primordial bonds, channeling them to constructive ends towards autonomy. In the individuation process, the child needs to disintegrate and destroy the world. The family environment must be able to stand children’s aggressive attacks, offering stability and security, instead of becoming disorganized (Winnicott, 1999).
When treating families, however, it is common to see that subjects are often not clear about the distinctions between aggressive and violent aspects in the family (Slep et al., 2022), being led to use violence as a means to impose limits on relationships or as a reaction to the mobilization of psychic weaknesses. These types of violence often constitute psychic defenses that can be identified, recognized and transformed by means of psychotherapeutic work, leading to the emotionally healthy use of aggression in the family and contributing to family resilience (Torres et al., 2020).
Among the different types of violence that permeate family dynamics, psychological violence stands out due to its difficult delimitation, and there is a lack of accuracy regarding what manifestations should be typified as such (Aoyama et al., 2022). Thus, although the psychological damage associated with domestic violence is widely discussed in the specialized literature (Mosena & Bossi, 2022; Xiao et al., 2023), psychological violence itself, in general, has only been recognized on the basis of its effects, when the victim presents visible signs that expose that condition.
Psychological violence can be characterized by conducts that cause emotional harm, reduce self-esteem and/or damages and disturbances to the victim’s physical, emotional or social development. It is described in the law about domestic violence and is understood as any conduct that disrupts the full development or that aims to degrade or control the victim’s actions, behaviors, beliefs and decisions by means of threats, constraint, humiliation, manipulation, isolation, constant surveillance, persistent persecution, insults, blackmail, privacy violation, ridicule, exploitation and limitation to the right to come and go as people please, or any other means that causes harm to psychological health and self-determination (Lei N.º 14.344, 2022).
Studies and legislation in the field of family violence generally point to violence suffered by children, adolescents or women, since statistics indicate that violence is more lethal when committed against these segments, who are therefore the most vulnerable members in a family. Disqualification and ridicule based on gender, for example, represent a type of psychological violence and women are often the main victims of gender violence. The types of subjectivation of men and women in the patriarchal order legitimize the domination of the male gender over the female gender, creating a hierarchical inequality between them that allows men to use different types of violence to dominate, control and depreciate women (Fernandes & Natividade, 2020).
Psychological violence tends to become a relationship pattern of families influencing the subjectivation process of children, who learn to use violence as a strategy for coping with conflicts and difficulties throughout their lives (Mosmann et al., 2023). The work of elaborating traumatic experiences in the clinic with families can benefit from investment in clinical-qualitative research, as the deepening of knowledge about family violence produces theoretical-clinical support for the broader development of listening skills on the part of health professionals. We have been conducting clinical research in this sense by means of the analysis of clinical records of families treated at the Applied Psychology Service (APS) of a university in the city of Rio de Janeiro, in order to typify the types of violence present in the dynamics of these families. We seek to understand the types of family violence, regardless of who suffers them and who commits them. In order to categorize the existing types of family violence, we focused on the study of seminal works and articles that address the topic (Benghozi, 2024; Kaës, 2023; Mello et al., 2020; Racamier, 2010), as well as the current legislation in Brazil on violence against women and children (Lei N.º 14.344, 2022). After analyzing the clinical material, we have identified two types of violence that are not typified in Brazilian legislation. This study aims to discuss the different types of psychological violence present in families attending psychotherapy and their repercussions on the emotional health of family members.
Method
The clinical-qualitative methodology used (Turato, 2003) was centered on the analysis of the reports on preliminary clinical interviews with families.
Participants
The clinical records of ten families treated at the APS of a university in the city of Rio de Janeiro between 2014 and 2023 were analyzed. Inclusion criteria: records of families who sought treatment spontaneously and reported experiences of violence during the family assessment process. Exclusion criteria: records of families who did not complete the family assessment process and did not report experiences of violence. These families have low socioeconomic status among the local population and the following configurations: four married (F1; F2; F5; F7); two remarried (F4; F9); two separated (F6; F10); two one-parent (F3; F8).
Family 1 (F1): Mother (M1), 45 years old; Father (P1), 47 years old; Daughter (F1Fa13), 13 years old; Daughter (F1Fa6), six years old. Family 2 (F2): Mother (M2), 35 years old; Father (P2), 36 years old; Daughter (F2Fa13), 13 years old; Son (F2Fo11), 11 years old. Family 3 (F3): Mother (M3), 30 years old; Son (F3Fo16); (F3Fo14); (F3Fa12); (F3Fa5); (F3Fa4). Family 4 (F4): Mother (M4), 36 years old; Father (P4), 33 years old; Son (F4Fo8); Son (F4Fo1), one year old. Family 5 (F5): Mother (M5), 39 years old; Father (P5), 40 years old; Daughter (F5Fa11), 11 years old. Family 6 (F6): Mother (M6), 42 years old; Father (P6), 44 years old; Son (F6Fo14), 14 years old; two 11-year-old twin daughters (F6Fa11A) and (F6Fa11B). Family 7 (F7): Mother (M7), 54 years old; Father (P7), 54 years old; Son (F7Fo8) eight years old. Family 8 (F8): Mother (M8), 47 years old; Daughter (F8Fo18), 18 years old. Family 9 (F9): Mother (M9), 38 years old; Father (P9), 40 years old; Son (F9Fo14), 14 years old; Son (F9Fo2), two years old. Family 10 (F10): Mother (M10), 53 years old; Daughter (F10Fa27), 27 years old.
Instruments
Clinical records of the reports on preliminary interviews with families, including the Structured Family Interview (SFI) (Féres-Carneiro, 2005), which is a diagnostic tool. A sociobiographical data sheet containing data on age, gender, education, profession, marital status, sexual orientation, family of origin configuration, current family configuration, social and economic status, religion, family income, and each family member’s individual contribution to the total income achieved.
Procedures
Data collection. Clinical data were collected from clinical records, based on reading the reports of sessions that occurred during the family assessment phase, which consists of four to six sessions. Data analysis. A thematic clinical-qualitative analysis (Turato, 2003) of the material extracted from the clinical records was carried out. The clinical-qualitative method seeks to understand the meaning of subjects’ experiences. It relies primarily on psychoanalysis and phenomenology and recognizes the role of the researcher as an instrument of listening and interpretation. Through a preliminary reading, the researchers highlighted the units of analysis, passages containing accounts of psychological violence. Relevant themes emerged from comparing the material highlighted by each researcher. Thematic categories were derived after successive rereadings of the material, which was discussed in relation to theory. The clinical-qualitative analysis presupposes and involves a critical reflection on the processes carried out at each step.
Ethical Considerations
The participants signed an Informed Consent Form agreeing to the use of clinical data for teaching, research, and scientific publication purposes. The research project was approved by the Ethics Committee of the institution (038/2020 - Protocol 129/2019).
Results and discussion
Several categories emerged from the analysis of the clinical records and were discussed. Some of these categories are addressed by Brazilian legislation and others were identified and discussed on the basis of the literature on couples and family. The results presented in this study refer to the category of psychological violence, which is divided into four subcategories: ridicule and humiliation; threats and embarrassment; destructive parentification; and incestuality. The first two are already addressed by Brazilian legislation and the last two are more subtle types identified in family psychodynamics and discussed on the basis of the literature on couples and family.
Ridicule and humiliation
The clinical records analyzed present numerous reports of ridicule and humiliation among family members, associated with insults. The association between insults and ridicule contributes to the humiliation experience, affecting self-esteem and constituting a sort of psychological trauma, especially when it occurs in the family environment with emotionally important figures whose main function would be the provision of emotional protection.
In family 1, for instance, the mother constantly makes harsh criticisms and insults her daughters, especially the eldest one. She uses terms such as “perverse” and “evil” when she talks to that daughter. The youngest daughter (F1Fa6), although still very young, forms an alliance with her mother to insult her sister, contributing to the psychological violence against F1Fa13. In family 6, F6Fo14 reports that his mother calls his sister (F6Fa11A) “retarded”. In family 9, the mother and the stepfather call F9Fo14 “abnormal” and “perverse”. It is noteworthy that psychological violence evidenced by insults becomes even more serious when two or more family members join forces, forming collusion and repeatedly reiterating violent behavior, creating dysfunctional family patterns.
In families 2, 3, 4 and 9, for instance, in addition to insults, mocking laughter is a sort of ridicule and disqualification that contributes to the humiliation experience. In family 2, this type of violence appears in the behavior of both parents towards their children. The parents laughed and disqualified their children’s speeches, humiliating them when they expressed themselves. The daughter also demonstrated this behavior, presenting aggressiveness hidden by laughter. Everyone spoke loudly during the sessions and interrupted each other, demonstrating great difficulty in establishing clear communication and empathetic listening (Figueiredo, 2012; Figueiredo, 2024).
In family 4, the father’s use of violent and mocking verbal expressions stands out, being related to his 8-year-old son’s difficulties in expressing himself. He uses terms such as “shameful” and “silly”, disapproving of his son’s behavior, while ridiculing his partner for her caring relationship with the boy, saying that she treats him like a “poor thing.” In family 9, the mother’s and the stepfather’s laughter disqualifies the son’s emotional expression, calling his behavior abnormal and perverse. During a speech, the stepfather says, also laughing, that marrying a woman with a child is like having a car with a “gas kit”, devaluing his family configuration. The manifestation of psychological violence in families is therefore present in the form of aggressive verbal and non-verbal communication. At the same time that communication transmits information, it also defines the nature of the relationship between the communicators (Bowen, 1978), indicating that violent communication between family members also identifies violent relationships between them (Magalhães et al., 2023).
In family 5, the husband’s insults and humiliations to his wife constitute domestic violence against women, as described in the legislation (Lei N.º 14.344, 2022). Furthermore, in this context, the fact that the daughter (F5Fa11) witnesses this type of violence causes emotional harm to the child, with severe damage to her emotional health. The psychological violence experienced at home has repercussions on the girl’s aggressive behavior at school. Mosena and Bossi (2022), based on a systematic literature review on the repercussions of domestic violence on children, emphasize the need to prepare health professionals for interventions aimed at breaking this cycle of transmission of domestic violence.
The generational transmission of violence is evidenced in the clinical records of family 4. There are several reports of the father’s outbursts, who defines himself as a “brawler” and says that demanding things of his son is a sign of affection. He reports that his own father was an aggressive person and that his paternal grandfather also beat his father and treated him as an employee, rather than as a son. A certain psychological functioning transmitted by parents impacts the constitution of subjectivity, although it is possible to appropriate and transform what is inherited. This transmitted material marks not only the personal history of a family member, but the history of the entire family. It is noteworthy that for a long time there was great permissiveness towards physical and psychological violence for “educational purposes.” Threats, insults, spanking, pinching, and beatings with a belt or stick were socially permitted when they aimed to “correct” children’s behavior (Smiley et al., 2021).
In the reports of the preliminary sessions, a specific type of gender-related ridicule also emerges. In families 4 and 6, the insult “slut” is intended to belittle women. In family 4, for instance, the paternal grandfather called his own daughter a “slut” when he found out she was pregnant and rejected her. In family 6, the mother called her 11-year-old daughter a “little slut” due to the clothes the girl wore, such as short shorts, and a “clown” due to her makeup, especially red lipstick.
Ridicule related to gender roles can be directed at both genders, reinforcing stereotypes. In family 2, the father’s physical violence against his son is justified by the argument that men should tolerate aggression better than women. The mother points out that her husband is very aggressive with his son, but he is more tolerant towards the girl because she is female. In family 4, the father says he feels uncomfortable when the boy (F4Fo8) stays with his maternal grandmother because she “spoils” him too much. He reports that the boy does not know how to behave and, in one of the sessions, calls his son a “little faggot”, disqualifying him and reprimanding him for not knowing how to “scrub” himself like a man during bath time. In family 3, the mother assigns most of the household chores to her daughter (F3Fa12), even though she is one of the youngest children, justifying her attitude by the fact that the girl is female.
In the context of domestic violence, children, in addition to being silent witnesses in situations of violence, are also one of the preferential targets of aggressors in the family (Silva, Tiellet, et al., 2020). It is possible to think that such findings on psychological violence are related to epidemiological data on other types of violence against children and adolescents in the private sphere, but we must recognize the phenomenon of underreporting of cases of family violence. Given the finding that the main victims of sexual violence are girls (Vicente et al., 2021) and that, in the first ten years of life, the main victims of physical violence are boys (Riba & Zioni, 2022), it is clear that gender issues are present not only in the ways in which bodies are violated, as has been widely debated, but also in the ways in which children and adolescents have been verbally disqualified in their homes.
Evidently, this violent dynamic linked to gender issues demands reflection beyond the families whose clinical records comprised the material analyzed, encompassing a broader discussion on patriarchal culture. It should be considered that, despite social changes, families continue to reproduce a division of labor according to traditional gender roles, with women mainly doing household chores and being called upon to play the role of good wives and mothers, while men remain associated with the active position of facing the public sphere (Picanço et al., 2021). The invisible protocols to which children, from an early age, are subjected, involving, for instance, toys that represent masculinities and femininities, have been generating discussions due to the perception that confronting the types of violence described here requires the deconstruction of gender stereotypes (Silva, Jorge, et al., 2020).
Threats and embarrassment
This subcategory includes threats and embarrassment that occur in different family subsystems, including insinuations of abandonment, collusion, and isolation. The constraints identified in the marital relationship have repercussions on children and adolescents, especially when they are directly exposed to marital violence.
In family 1, this type of psychological violence appears in the mother’s speeches to her eldest daughter (F1Fa13), whom the mother threatens to send to live with her paternal grandmother. That particular speech is revealed by the daughter in one of the sessions in which the mother talks about the love she feels for her daughters and the fear of losing them, and is confronted by this daughter, who recalls the threats made by her mother. In families 2 and 3, the main sorts of threats reported by the members involve physical violence, especially against the children. In family 3, the members also report that, when the mother “loses patience” with her children, she threatens to abandon them and take them to an orphanage. In this specific case, the aggravating factor is that two of the five children are already in institutions, which further reinforces the threat. In family 9, the mother sends her son (F9Fo14) to his grandmother’s house as a sort of punishment after arguments, and the stepfather continually threatens their affective bond by saying that he is not the boy’s father when they disagree. The maternal grandmother also repeatedly recalls the abandonment by the boy’s biological father, reinforcing his trauma. In family 10, the daughter (F10Fa27) reports that, as a child, she felt forced to always leave everything “perfectly tidy” to avoid violent outbursts from her father, who used to threaten and break her toys.
Violent behaviors and threats in these families appear as controversial resources aimed at caring for and correcting children’s behavior. In the field of family relationships, communication is extremely complex and woven long before speech emerges, involving all the senses and changing as the family weaves its intricate network of interactions. In order to promote emotional health of families, communication must occur by means of clear and congruent messages (Féres-Carneiro, 2005). There must also be a consistent connection between ideas and feelings, that is, the subject must express, through verbal and non-verbal means, what he or she thinks and feels in a congruent way, avoiding paradoxical messages (Bateson et al., 1956).
Sometimes, communication is incongruent and paradoxical in the families analyzed. Parental figures resort to violence in an attempt to demonstrate positive affection and impose educational limits on their children. This resource evokes the concept of double bind, which refers precisely to communication sequences that express ambivalent feelings by means of ambiguous messages (Bateson et al., 1956). The paradoxical communication established in the double bind has harmful effects on the mental health of family members, who are stuck in a deadlock that causes a lot of psychic confusion.
Collusion in family relationships can be understood as the unconscious alliance built due to the combination of fantasies, desires, needs and unconscious demands of subjects who maintain a reciprocal bond. In other words, it is the formation of a collusion within the scope of a reciprocal and simultaneous investment. It can have a negative character when the alliance is built on defensive bases and is at the service of denial and repression (Kaës, 2023; Kerbauy, 2021). In this sense, when members of a family build destructive alliances against other members, isolating them and making them violence targets in the family system, the collusion has a negative character and indicates an imbalance in the family psychodynamics.
The formation of negative collusion and behaviors that lead to the isolation of someone else in the family are evidenced in the clinical records of some families. In family 1, for instance, the dynamics of exclusion is common and appears above all when the mother and the youngest sister join forces to insult the eldest sister or when the sisters join forces to disqualify the mother’s speech. In family 2, the father and the son (F2Fo11) join forces to belittle the daughter (F2Fa13), and the parents join forces to disqualify both children. In family 5, the father and the daughter (F5Fa11) maintain a negative collusion against the mother. In family 6, the mother and one of the twin daughters, whom the father considers “mommy’s darling”, form an alliance that sometimes turns against other family members when, for example, the mother orders the daughters to hold the eldest son so that she can hit him.
Some clinical records revealed situations of domestic violence that involve threats and embarrassment to the couple and their children. In families 1, 2, 5, 6 and 10, the children witnessed aggression between the parental couple and, in some cases, became involved in these aggressions in an attempt to prevent violence and defend a family member. In family 5, the daughter (F5Fa11) sees her father humiliating her mother, which causes great embarrassment to the child and characterizes a sort of psychological violence that also affects the mother-daughter bond. In family 6, the mother threw dishes against the wall during one of the marital arguments and hit the father with a metallic object when the children were present. In family 7, although there is no report that the son has witnessed violence between his parents, the mother embarrasses her children, saying that her husband “seems a little crazy”, suspecting adultery and that conflicts in the marriage are affecting her son psychologically, leaving him agitated and insecure. The literature indicates that marital conflicts often have repercussions on parenthood and on the emotional health of children, and that they can contribute to the depreciation of the parental figure (Mosmann et al., 2023). In family psychodynamics, interpersonal boundaries work as invisible barriers that regulate the contact with others. It is important that boundaries in the parental and marital subsystems are sufficiently established so that children are spared from issues that concern only the couple or adults.
Destructive parentification
Parentification is characterized by generational inversion, in which adults delegate responsibility for household and caregiving tasks to their children, disrupting the parental and sibling subsystems. It has a destructive nature because there are too many instrumental and/or emotional responsibilities attributed to children, which are inadequate for their stage of development and cultural expectations (Mello et al., 2020).
Destructive parentification is evident in some families, in which parents fail to take instrumental responsibilities and assign them to their children. In family 1, the mother demands that her daughters help her to take care of her boss’s house, where they all live, demonstrating difficulty in distinguishing her own job from her daughters’ household chores. In family 3, the children (F3Fo14 and F3Fa12) are responsible for most of the household tasks and for taking care of their little sisters. In family 6, the mother says that her son (F6Fo14) stopped taking a psychiatric medication and that the decision to continue would be up to him. In addition, she expects that her younger daughters (F6Fa11A and F6Fa11B) help her to physically restrain their eldest brother.
There are also many reports of contempt and devaluation of the tasks carried out by children, as well as unrealistic expectations of the instrumental responsibilities of children and adolescents. In families 1 and 3, the depreciation of activities is related to household chores done by daughters, which are not recognized by their mothers and are a target of criticism and comparisons. In family 4, the depreciation is mostly on the part of the father, who belittles his son’s self-care initiatives (F4Fo8), for example, basic care related to body hygiene.
Unrealistic parental expectations and the blocking of children’s initiative can hinder their healthy emotional maturation. Winnicott (2000) postulates that children should be able to experience the processes of integration, personalization and achievement that are necessary for their development and responsible for the ability to feel integrated inhabiting their own bodies, and to establish relationships with the external reality. For this result to occur, the environment for children must be good enough, offering physical and emotional support and welcoming the spontaneous gesture. The spontaneous gesture is the true self’s expression, corresponding to the dimension of creativity, the feeling of being able to change reality and, therefore, is related to authenticity and the freedom to be, beyond simply existing. In the clinical records analyzed, the blocking of children’s attempts to speak and the discouragement of their dreams are often indicative of a precarious environment in terms of providing emotional support to family members (Winnicott, 1999).
Some families also assign emotional responsibilities to their children, overwhelming them. In family 5, the mother assigns her daughter (F5Fa11) the role of “best friend” and, at times, of “sister”, sometimes competing with her and sometimes trying to make her an ally. It is important to note that parentification is a result of the emotional fragility of the parents, who, absorbed by fragile and unstable emotional lives, have difficulty in playing their due role in the family structure and direction. Furthermore, most of the parents in the families whose clinical records were analyzed have few material and financial resources and precarious support networks, so they must work and spend many hours away from home, without having anyone to leave their children with. Parentified children, on the other hand, do not usually have a clear perception of the little support they receive from their parents and feel responsible for meeting the instrumental and emotional needs of the family. In these scenarios, children begin to make an effort to ensure their parents’ well-being (Mello et al., 2020), which characterizes generational inversion and can be understood as psychological violence against children.
Incestuality
Incestuality can be understood as an incestual atmosphere between close relatives, not including sexual-genital activity between family members (Racamier, 2010; Thorstensen, 2021). In this case, psychological violence is very subtle, as it represents an inability of adults to contain sexual impulses within family bonds, contributing to a disorganizing arousal of the bonds and having repercussions on the family’s emotional health.
Incestuality appears in three families studied. In family 2, the parental couple, which consists of first cousins raised as siblings by their family of origin, has numerous difficulties in establishing protective boundaries in the family. There is a hole in the wall that connects the children’s bedroom to the parents’ bedroom, through which the children see sexual intercourse. Furthermore, during the preliminary interviews, the father makes erotic comments about his daughter (F2Fa13), referring to her sexy clothes and makeup. This eroticized atmosphere also has repercussions on the connection between siblings. The boy (F2Fo11) watches his sister (F2Fa13) play sexual games with other boys. The incestual atmosphere that began in the parents’ generation, considering that the couple originated from a relationship between cousins raised as brothers, expands and reaches the bonds between their own children who, in spite of not engaging in sexual intercourse, experience erotic scenes together. The excess of sexual arousal cannot be contained in this family, which breaks protective boundaries in two generations. The incestual nature of the sibling relationship is rooted in the flaws in the relationship between their parents (Razon, 2021).
In family 3, the son was 13 years old when he saw his mother and her boyfriend having sexual intercourse on the stairs and, since then, he began to masturbate more frequently and with great anxiety. In family 5, the daughter (F5Fa11) sleeps in her parents’ bedroom, having already seen sexual intercourse between them. In this family, the boundaries between parenthood and conjugality are not clear. Incestuality is also evident when the mother says that F5Fa11 “receives her father after taking a shower and all dressed up”, insinuating that there is an eroticized relationship between them, although there are no reports of sexual contact. Mother and daughter act as rivals in the family psychodynamics, and the father is the triangulation figure (Bowen, 1978).
According to Brazilian legislation, such situations of exposure of children and adolescents to sexual intercourse can be considered episodes of sexual violence. In this study, however, it is important to highlight the extent of psychological violence that silently underlies these sexual situations, because even if there is no movement in families towards incest, the prevailing incestual atmosphere threatens relationships. The incestual element goes beyond the sexual intercourse or even fantasy, being a register that replaces fantasy and moves towards the real physical contact, overflowing and trespassing family boundaries. Thus, incestuality involves the repressed unconscious fantasy, that is, the Oedipus complex, but it also encompasses the sexual contact, more or less hidden, more or less consensual, more or less metabolized by the subjects and their family group (Racamier, 2010).
At family clinics, the therapeutic work is focused on promoting family health and empowering families in the face of adversities. Families treated in social clinics face many adversities, often presenting suffering due to different forms of violence experienced by one or more members. In preliminary interviews, complaints are often about one of the family members, but underlying collective emotional suffering is observed. The vulnerability of these families results to a large extent from the simultaneous occurrence of vertical and horizontal stressful events. Among the latter are traumatic events, such as experiences of violence.
Intra-family violence has a direct impact on the emotional health of families. When aggression is manifested in a destructive way, it hinders communication patterns and compromises conflict resolution strategies, impacting the self-esteem of family members. Intense conflicts, when not addressed constructively, hinder the individuation process and generate a cycle of destructiveness, putting the family into a dysfunctional pattern. Protective resources also must address risk factors recursively, and family resilience, which is necessary to face adversity, will depend on the family’s emotional health.
In the families studied, we noticed that their members have difficulty in identifying many types of violence they have suffered. In this sense, we emphasize that it is up to the psychotherapist to name the violence perceived within the family with care and attention so as not to contribute to the establishment of the roles of victim and aggressor, but rather to point out the way in which violent actions circulate in the family. Thus, the psychotherapist will help the family to stop normalizing violent actions, so that its members acquire tools to differentiate themselves from the violent patterns inherited from prior generations and can avoid repeating such patterns.
The present study presents limitations, such as the reduced number of families examined, as well as their heterogeneity in terms of family configuration. Other categories of psychological violence could have emerged if data collection had been expanded to include families not in psychotherapy, thus increasing the external validity of the findings. Nonetheless, the present research advanced knowledge on psychological violence occurring in families, allowing us to identify four, two of them (destructive parentification and incestuality) not currently considered in Brazilian legislation. Also, methodologically, the use of clinical record analysis proved useful to examine content on family violence, such as destructive parentification and incestuality, that are difficult to access otherwise in community research. Identifying and deepening knowledge about these categories of psychological violence provides input for the formulation of prevention policies in the areas of health and education. Finally, this study’s findings contribute to psychotherapeutic management and the formulation of educational programs, raising public awareness about types of psychological violence perpetrated in the domestic sphere.
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