ABSTRACT
Urban industrial society has intruded forcefully on the family, taking over many functions that were once considered the family’s duties. The occidental world is in a state of transition, and the family, which must always accommodate to society, is changing with it. Family structure is the invisible set of functional demands that organizes the ways in which family members interact. In the face of all these changes, modern man adheres to a set of values that belong to a different society, one in which the boundaries between the family and the extra familial were clearly delineated. The adherence to an outmoded model leads to the labeling of many situations that are clearly transitional as pathological and pathogenic. Human experience of identity has two elements: a sense of belonging and a sense of being separate. The laboratory in which these ingredients are mixed and dispensed is the family, the matrix of identity.
