6 ICSA TODAY
In therapy, I hear complaints by individuals who say their partner
wants to understand everything about them. The one who wants
to understand everything about the other thinks this is love, but
it may also be a subtle form of control. Sometimes one spouse
conveys that the other spouse who keeps a separate space
is selfish, or a man suggests that if his lover doesn’t disclose
everything, it means the lover has something to hide. The
person who keeps this healthy space of intimacy may feel guilty
or selfish doing it, and so may give it up altogether. In these
relationships, we say that there are no boundaries between the
members (see Figure 2). And when a couple without healthy
boundaries has children, they may treat their children the
same way, expecting the children to be almost extensions of
themselves.
Figure 2. Representation of a relationship without boundaries.
I should point out here that, when I speak about boundaries, I
refer to far more than sharing information. There is a saying that
when parents feel the chill of the breeze, they will command
their child to put his coat on. Some parents go a step further
and command their child to put a coat on when they see other
parents do so with their children. These may seem like innocuous
statements however, they really are about the degree to which
individuals may in fact dehumanize another human being by
viewing him wholly from the perspective of their own needs.
When a parent isn’t able to differentiate between her needs
and the needs of her child, she is quite plainly violating the
boundaries that her offspring needs in order to grow. In addition
to being deprived of his own space, the child isn’t allowed to
make his own decisions. While one factor underlying such a
lack of boundaries is a lack of trust in a child’s ability to make
appropriate decisions, another factor often is a lack of trust
by the parent in herself. As a consequence, as a psychoanalyst
would say, she will project that insecurity onto her child.
In families in which members trust themselves and each other,
the members are able to differentiate between their own needs
and the needs of others, which allows healthy boundaries to
develop. In these families, privacy is permitted without being
regarded as a threat. When this process of building boundaries
is thwarted, members of the family may either become overly
dependent on others’ opinions to make decisions, or they may
ignore the advice or opinions of others when that input might be
necessary or helpful.
Michael Langone (2016) has presented the concept of loving
distance, which he has explained is fundamental to respectful
relationships. Loving distance I believe is anther way of
describing healthy boundaries. In a family without this loving
distance, there will be what in family systems theory is called
enmeshed relationships (Minuchin &Fishman, 1981). Enmeshed
relationships are characteristic of dysfunctional families.
Enmeshed relationships have the tendency to be coercive or
abusive because they are based upon the shared assumption
between the two members of the relationship that one of them
is not good enough to make his own decisions. A parent, for
example, who too closely monitors and checks the homework
of a child may implicitly communicate that the parent thinks the
child can’t measure up on his own.
Boundaries within the cult. The lack of appropriate
boundaries that is characteristic of dysfunctional families is
also a characteristic of cults. Similarly, enmeshed relationships
are characteristic of cults. As in a family that assumes only the
parents are qualified to make decisions about their child, a
cult leader who insists that followers obey a myriad of minor
rules throughout the day may implicitly communicate that
the followers cannot measure up spiritually without him. The
unspoken assumption is that “Without me, you are nothing.”
People who have been involved in cultic groups, especially those
born or raised in them, often find the very concept of boundaries
difficult to grasp. They are so accustomed to another person
invading and controlling their emotional and psychological lives
that they may find themselves literally unable to make decisions
about even the smallest details of daily life, such as what to eat,
when to sleep, how to dress, or what to say to others in social
situations.
Boundaries between the family and the outer world. Families
who do not grant privacy to each other by means of healthy
boundaries (loving distance) also tend not to trust what is
outside their family so they also are often more closed toward
the outer world. In such families, all needs must be fulfilled
within the family.
Family members may view other families and people as
threatening or dangerous, and therefore the family limits outside
contacts. Thus, a child who has been invited to spend the night
at a schoolmate’s home may be discouraged from doing that, or
may be allowed only reluctantly and after being presented with
a long string of precautions.
Or parents may view other families as useless or boring.
Consequently, the children in these families will tend to see the
world outside as threatening or uninteresting and so remain,
whenever possible, within the walls of their family. These
families will remain isolated from other families, and therefore
will hamper their members’ chances to integrate in other
environments.

7 VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 3 |2018
Boundaries between the cult and the outer world. Isolation
is also a fundamental dynamic of cults. Without it, a cult leader
fears the outside world may give information to individuals he
wants to control that causes them to question his control, or it
may provide the lure of relationships that are more appealing
than those within the controlled environment. The outside
world may offer a beckoning freedom to members that opens
up possibilities of personal growth not permitted within the
controlled environment. It is no wonder, then, that former
cult members often describe their groups as us-versus-them
environments.
Rules
Previously, I stated that both dysfunctional families and cults
lack healthy boundaries between their members, and yet they
have strict ones between members and the external world. I have
observed that, similar to the damage inconsistent and arbitrary
boundaries can cause, rigid rules that dysfunctional families and
cults establish can leave individual members disconnected within
themselves from their own inner world.
Rules in families. Every organization has rules, and a family is no
exception. Rules determine what may be said and what may not
what may be felt and what may not what behavior is allowed and
what is not. In families, rules are often implicit, but that doesn’t
mean they do not exist and are not carefully observed. Families
encourage their members to conform to both stated and implied
rules from birth. Family rules may be beneficial, providing a moral
compass and security to family members. Important criteria of
effective rules are whether or not they encourage one’s growth
and health. However, in dysfunctional families, the rules may
also be enforced for the sake of control and without regard for a
person’s individuality.
As an example of the potential impact of such a rule on family
members, I have been working with a 35-year-old married
woman who, since the sudden death of her dad 10 years ago, has
been suffering chronic anxiety and regular outbursts of crying
that have overwhelmed her wherever she might be. That there
was a trauma was clear from the beginning, but the nature of
the trauma has become clearer to both of us as we have worked
through it.
This woman’s mother has always been psychologically frail, so
when her father died, my client was the one who had to give the
news to her grandparents of their son’s death. From the moment
she saw her father dead to the moment she informed her
grandparents, she couldn’t experience the grief of the event. She
didn’t allow herself to do so. She was complying with a family rule
that said “Emotions are dangerous. You cannot express them. You
cannot experience them.” She firmly believed that if she appeared
too distressed in giving the news to her grandparents, they
would not be able to stand the experience—they might even die.
So she complied with her family rule. She accomplished the task
of showing no emotions so well that she didn’t even experience
the feelings herself. She used the word petrified to describe how
she felt.
The rule my client was obeying had not encouraged her to be
healthy. She was facing her dead father, and yet she couldn’t
express any emotion because that is what she believed her family
required of her. She paid the cost of carrying out this rule for 10
years without therapy, she would have had to pay even longer.
In therapy she has been able to experience the emotional impact
of losing her father. By working to overcome her family rule, she
has enabled herself to experience the grief of the event for the
first time.
Unhealthy families often have rules related to talking about
feelings, especially uncomfortable feelings. For instance, a child
may grow up feeling that it is shameful to display weakness or
show confusion. These unspoken restrictions prevent family
members from talking about problems, or even recognizing their
existence, let alone taking steps to improve the situation. Robin
Norwood (1986) described this situation in her book The Women
Who Loved Too Much:
It is important to understand … that what all unhealthy
families have in common is their inability to discuss
their problems. It is the degree of secrecy—the inability
to talk about the problems—rather than their severity,
that defines both how dysfunctional a family becomes
and how severely its members are damaged. (pp. 6–7)
Rules in cults. In cults there are tight rules too—sometimes
explicit, but often conveyed through rewards and punishments—
about what you can express or not, about what you can feel
or not. And as in many dysfunctional families, these rules are
enforced as a way of controlling followers.
As Fleur Brown (2018) puts it in her blog Medium,
Another characteristic of cult life is the absence of
authentic self-expression. Cults have a powerful
unifying mono ‘cult-ure.’ In ours, the members were
magnetically friendly.” Ms. Brown refers to what might
be understood as a rule in the group she was in as
“Niceness is next to godliness.
In both dysfunctional families and cults, the definition of who
you are depends on whether you behave or feel according to
the rules. Because the definition of who you are comes from
the group and not from within you, you have to conform to the
group not only to be accepted by them, but also to be accepted
by yourself. Your identity is always at stake. The price you pay
may be to disconnect from your inner being, where the feelings
that are deemed bad by the group occur. To be accepted by
the group, you must alienate from yourself. Both members of a
dysfunctional family and members of a cult dissociate themselves
in order to cope with the contradiction between the information
that arrives from outside and from within. As a result, both family
members and members of cults develop a basic insecurity that
causes them to become very vulnerable.
Roles
Roles in families. We all have roles in our families, which are
often assigned according to our gender, age, and position. For
example, girls are often expected to be caregivers, and boys