ABSTRACT
In one sense, the Littleton family is fragmented; individual members go their separate ways, and there is relatively little communality of emotional worlds or overlap in the routine of their daily lives. In another sense, the family is tightly bound together with affective ties and mutual needs so intense that avoidance of intimacy and contact has emerged as a protective necessity. For this family, avoidance has become a mode of relating to each other—a means of coping with tensions and minimizing frustration. This fact and its implications are the most distinguishing features of the group. Strong centrifugal pressures, both physical and emotional, are easily apparent. These are balanced by less apparent but equally significant cohesive forces. The impulses and motivations underlying both sets of forces are powerful but threatening, and the equilibrium achieved by avoiding intimacy is an uneasy one.
