ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author provides two aspects of the her experience: psychoanalytical theory and clinical practice, and work as a consultant to institutions. She focuses on individuals and on family groups as the author explores relationships between individuals and wider social groups, here exemplified by institutional settings. The dual themes that healthy development depends greatly on the availability of appropriate models for such identification, and equally on the management of identification with inappropriate ones, is illustrated with some detailed material. A danger in children's institutions is that boundaries are inadequately controlled and there is unwarranted intrusion into sub-systems and into the individuals in them. There is something about residential institutions that seems to make people feel and act as though it is perfectly all right to have everything open and public and to claim right of entry to almost anywhere at almost any time.
