ABSTRACT
A child lives immersed in the emotional and affective culture of his or her family, and the family constitutes, in the full sense of the word, a group. Each family has its own emotional culture and its own way of organizing its defences against the anxieties it must continually face as a group (Gaddini 1976; Giannotti and De Astis 1989; Bonamino et al. 1992). Bleger (1966) gives us an incisive description of four different ways in which a family can organize its defences. A ‘healthy’ family functioning is one that is capable of organizing multiple and elastic defences. The others, in contrast, erect interlocked symbiotic defences, schizoid defences, psychopathic defences and hypochondriac defences.
