Society for Personality Assessment,Incorporated Minutes of the Board of Trustees Meeting

When the record of both parents is considered together, we see a constellation in which the parental figures are each struggling to achieve gratification for strong dependency needs with the mother being the stronger and better integrated person but with exhibitionistic trends which may appear seductive to the child. Thus, for a male child who has the constellation of a weak dependent father and a somewhat disturbed exhibitionistic mother with unresolved dependency, the boy's identification as a male will have many vicissitudes. It is likely that, in many ways, he will be caught not only in the individual needs of these parents but in their difficult symbiotic relationship.