When we talk about the parents who are rejected by their children in divorce and separation, we call them ‘parents in the rejected position’. We do this on purpose because it describes what has happened to the family system where children align and reject – ie one parent has become idealised and the other is demonised and rejected.
Contrary to the claims peddled by women’s rights campaigners, this display of behaviours does not denote that the parent in the rejected position has done something to cause this. The parent in the rejected position is most often a helpless bystander to the attachment trauma which is triggered when the parent to whom the child is seen to be strongly aligned (often clinging), has breached the inter-subjective boundaries in the relationship they have with that child.
Simply put, the parent who is being idealised is almost always psychologically and emotionally abusing the child in some way and the idealisation behaviour is a way of regulating the parent in order to find safety. In attachment terms this is an inter-subjective boundary violation, which is hidden in a relational dynamic which looks like warmth but which is in fact pathological.
In every case I have ever worked in, this has been the truth behind the presentation of the child who aligns and rejects and it is the case that in judgment after judgment, the evidence of this reality is presented both here in the UK and elsewhere in the world. So why then, do the projections of the women’s rights campaigners gain such traction, especially when they are based upon exactly the same claims made by the abusive parents they support – that the child is rejecting because of something that a parent has done and the parent to whom the child is aligned is protecting the child? Why does this myth continue to be perpetuated despite the repeated evidence which shows it to be untrue? The answer lies in a defence mechanism called projective identification, which is recognised in the extensive trauma literature and which is at play in most, if not all cases of hidden abuse in divorce and separation which is flagged by alignment and rejection behaviour in the child.
Melanie Klein described projective identification in 1946 as part of her exploration of primitive defence mechanisms in early infancy. In her paper “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms”(1), she suggested that infants split off intolerable feelings or parts of the self and project them into an external object — typically the mother. The object is then controlled or manipulated to contain or manage these projected parts.
Unlike simple projection — which is about attributing one’s feelings to others — projective identification implies an interpersonal enactment: the other person is pressured to feel or behave in line with the projected material. (2).
Projective identification typically involves three stages (3).
Projection: A person unconsciously disowns aspects of the self and projects them onto another.
Induction: The recipient of the projection feels pressured to experience or enact the projected feelings.
Re-introjection: The projector re-identifies with the projected part now perceived as modified by the other.
This process can shape intense relational dynamics — the recipient may feel confused, manipulated, or inexplicably influenced by the other’s unconscious material.
Wilfred Bion, another major theorist, expanded on Klein’s work and linked projective identification to containment (4). He argued that infants “project” raw emotional states into the caregiver, who processes these beta elements through maternal reverie — the capacity to hold and transform intolerable feelings.
In psychotherapy, patients may unconsciously push therapists to feel what they cannot bear: for example, a patient overwhelmed by anger may evoke countertransference rage in the therapist. The therapist’s task is to recognise this dynamic and help contain, understand, and transform the projected feelings.
Contemporary thinkers see projective identification as common in close relationships — especially where boundaries are porous, such as between partners, parents and children, or in intense group settings (5). For instance, a parent who cannot bear their own anxiety may induce anxiety in their child through subtle interactions. In my own clinical experience, this is the most common presentation of projective identification seen in family court cases.
Some modern relational psychoanalysts, like Thomas Ogden, have argued that projective identification is not just pathological but can be a mode of communication (6). It can enable empathy and emotional understanding — if both parties can process the experience reflectively and this is certainly the aim in psychotherapeutic work with those who have insight. Critics from attachment and mentalisation-based perspectives (7), highlight that projective identification may reflect failures of mentalisation — the ability to hold minds in mind — and thus understanding it can help restore this capacity in therapy.
Projective Identification in the Family Courts
In divorce and separation, a small group of families end up in an entrenched dynamic in which a child rejects one parent in favour of clinging to or idealising the other. Within this group of families, the dynamic of projective identification is likely to be strongly present and it can run all the way through to the case conclusion and beyond causing chaotic and often distorted beliefs.
Annie and Johnny are two children aged 10 and 12 who are rejecting their father, their mother calls herself ‘protective’ and acts as if their father is a risk to them. She has stopped the children from seeing their father on the basis that he is a safeguarding risk after the youngest child Johnny, returned home saying that his father had locked him in his bedroom. To support her belief that their father is a risk, their mother has a number of supporters from her local domestic abuse charity, this charity frames all of its services upon a model of understanding interpersonal relationships through a feminist lens.
The family court is presented with two children who are rejecting their father but who cannot say why they are rejecting him other than he is reported to have locked Johnny in his bedroom, something which is father denies. There is no other evidence of harm done to the children but their mother is adamant that their father is a risk. The children’s mother believes that if the children were to spend time with their father he would harm them and is rigid in her presentation. When the children are observed with their father however, they appear to be relaxed and calm, their father appears to respond effectively to their needs.
The children’s mother escalates her resistance in the family court process, producing evidence from her support workers that the children’s father is only interested in the children as a way of causing her post separation abuse. There are allegations made against the social worker who is assisting the family by undertaking a Section 37 report, she is said to have sided with the children’s father and is putting the children at further risk of harm. A complaint has been made to the Local Authority that the social worker is colluding with the children’s father.
As the process evolves, the mother’s presentation becomes more rigid, now she has alerted the media to her situation, which she says is one which puts the children at serious risk of harm because her children are being ‘handed to the perpetrator’…reports appear in the media about the failures of the family court to protect Annie and Johnny.
No evidence of harm being caused to the children by their father has been found by the family court, the professionals involved however are becoming increasingly concerned by the fixed and fused belief in the children’s mother and those who support her, that the children are being harmed.
Eventually another fact finding hearing takes place. This cannot be avoided because of the increasing number of allegations which are being made by the children’s mother against the father. Whilst there are some mild allegations made by Johnny, which mirror those of the mother, he retracts them each time he has supervised contact with his father. The professionals are beginning to be concerned that Johnny’s mother may be so fixed in her belief that their father is harmful, that she is actively influencing him to believe that what he is saying is true.
The fact finding hearing finds that the children’s mother has a fixed pattern of false beliefs about the father’s capacity to care for the children and that she is actively influencing them to believe something which is not true. The evidence of this is set out in a judgment which is published. The children’s mother and her supporters go to academics who listen to their story of how the family court handed the children over to her abuser and they write this up as a case study, which they say is indicative of a scandal which is hidden by the family courts.
The academics begin to co-ordinate their strategy to raise awareness of what they say is evidence that professionals in the family court are using a pseudo-scientific approach to understanding how children behave when they are being influenced into false beliefs. The mother of Annie and Johnny becomes a leading figure in this campaign which extends, via the media, to the door of governments around the world.
Annie and Johnny are living with their father now and they are settled and well. Each time they see their mother however, she tries to tell them that they have been abducted and given to an abuser, she continues to believe that they are being abused and accuses their father of alienating them from her. Her campaigning supporters continue their drive to make everyone believe that there is something untoward happening in the family court and that she is the evidence of this. Their voices are loud and their stories are shocking, no evidence is ever provided for their claims however and when they are confronted with the judgment which show that the Annie and Johnny were being abused by their mother’s fixed belief that their father was harming them, they say that this is evidence that the family courts are misogynist. When they are shown evidence that mothers are being rejected by their children because of the same fixed belief in fathers and that this is a pattern of psychiatric issues which is found in a small proportion of families going through the family courts, they refuse to believe it, those mothers who are rejected they say, must have done something to cause it. Eventually they say that there is a new label for the dynamic they have previously denounced as pseudo-scientific, this new label is based upon the self reports of mothers who have been found to have abused their children.
Containing Projective Identification
Projective identification runs out of control when the boundaries within a system are weak. As my mentor Dr Hamish Cameron says ‘the team around the family is only as strong as the weakest link’ and unfortunately, here in the UK, as in other parts of the world, the team around the family courts has several weak links. This means that projective identification, which occurs when those who are unable to tolerate the reality that some parents harm their children in divorce and separation, deny this, split it off and project it at others. The trigger for this is often a bout of interpersonal terrorism, such as that which has been directed at experts working in the family courts since 2020. This strategy, is designed to undermine confidence in a system by intimating risk and in this particular round of projective identification, the stories told to academics by mothers found to have abused their children, was part of that process.
Lurid tales told about children being abducted by their mothers to protect them from abusive fathers, were interwoven into media stories targeting first of all experts and then judges. And as this story telling tactic increased, the boundaries around the family courts became as porous as the boundaries in a family system, as even legal professionals fell into the projective identification trap.
Now, as academics rush to distance themselves from programmes like ‘Mums on the Run‘ because one of those mothers has been imprisoned, we may have passed the tipping point in terms of how projective identification has run rife through the family court and reality may once again be taking hold
Projective identification is a defence mechanism which is central in some cases where children align with a parent and reject the other. The projection into the parent in the rejected position, of all of the intolerable feelings of hatred, blame, helplessness and fury, are an attempt to relieve the self of the anxieties which are caused by not being able to fully control circumstances involving children. In this sense, the end game is to get the parent in the rejected position to behave as if they are hateful, helpless and furious, so that a) the professionals see that and believe that is the truth and b) the projecting parent can relieve themselves of intolerable anxiety. When the parent in the rejected position does not confirm the projection by accepting it and professionals are not captured in the projective identification process, the projecting parent seeks others to bolster their projection. With a ready audience of campaigners whose lives are framed by the binary split thinking of good women/bad men, it doesn’t take long for someone in this situation to find a channel to continue their defence and before long, everyone is mired in the grand delusion.
But perhaps not for long because the family court continues to protect children from emotional and psychological abuse and publish judgments which tell a story which is just like the fictional one above.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWFC/OJ/2025/179.html
Judgments such as this, demonstrate that within the family courts in England and Wales at least, reality based thinking prevails and children continue to be protected.
Projective identification it would seem is still very much understood and guarded against by strong boundaries within judicial management, which is reassuring and which requires highlighting.
We may therefore be at peak delusion in terms of the campaigning, currently focused upon the family courts , but it would seem that the judiciary remains far stronger and more resolute in terms of child protection, than those who rely upon projective identification as a defence would like the world to understand.
References
- Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27, 99–110.
- Klein, M. (1946). Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27, 99–110.
- Ogden, T.H. (1979). On projective identification. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 60, 357–373.
- Bion, W.R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann.
- Hinshelwood, R.D. (1991). A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought. London: Free Association Books.
- Ogden, T.H. (1982). Projective Identification and Psychotherapeutic Technique. New York: Jason Aronson.
- Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., Jurist, E., & Target, M. (2002). Affect Regulation, Mentalization and the Development of the Self. New York: Other Press.
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
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