ABSTRACT
This chapter considers a new area of work with parents, which results from legislative attempts to protect children within families. It may seem obvious to mental health professionals that in order to improve the situation for children, it is important to understand and address the needs of parents. The Children Act 1989 attempts to translate this understanding into legal imperative. Freud and Klein both saw the acceptance of reality as a mental state that is constantly vulnerable to anxiety. Britton expanded Klein's concept about the experience of deprivation during the oedipal situation to suggest that the child has to contend with his new awareness of the reality of the parental sexual relationship. Klein originally described projective identification as a mental mechanism used by individuals to project unwanted aspects of the self into an object. Couple therapists have expanded this concept of a defence mechanism from the intrapsychic to the interpersonal realm.
