channeling” someone else’s thoughts and feelings.

It is a full-time job to cope with alien elements from both interpersonal sources and societal influences.

To the extent that we retain the critical attitudes and destructive elements we have incorporated into our own personalities, we remain undifferentiated from our parents throughout our lifetime.

Without differentiating from parents or caretakers we may never succeed in living our own lives.

A destructive thought process exists within all of us, and we are plagued to varying degrees by an internal dialogue that is harmful, restrictive, and at its ultimate extreme, self-destructive.

Our real self is under siege by our anti-self.

In order for people to live their own lives and fulfill their destiny, they must differentiate themselves from destructive environmental influences.

We can best help our children not by sacrificing ourselves for them, but by trying to fulfill our own lives. When we are involved in an honest pursuit of our own goals, we serve as...

Differentiation is a universal struggle that all human beings face if they wish to fully develop themselves as individuals.

People must come to the understanding that they do not have a fixed identity. They have the power to identify and alter features of their personalities that they find negative or unpleasant.

We live in a largely addictive society that continues to reinforce the defenses we learned as children; this reinforcement comes in the form of a negative social pressure to soothe ourselves, to try to obtain...

Differentiating from parental introjects and psychological defences based on the emotional pain of childhood is essential not only for neurotic or seriously disturbed individuals; it is a central developmental issue in every person’s life.