From the author: Source of publication: Psychological well-being of a modern family: materials of an interregional scientific and practical conference with international participation / ed. Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Professor N.V. Nizhegorodtseva. – Yaroslavl: RIO YAGPU, 2016, pp. 81 - 83 Becoming adults and independent, a person gains the opportunity to choose. We are free to do as we see fit, all roads are open. We can admire our parents and strive to be worthy of them, or we can refuse to step on the path on which they have trampled and stumbled all their lives. And taking a deep breath of the heady air of freedom, we set off on our unique, magical journey. This is the beginning. The discovery comes unexpectedly: we find ourselves knee-deep in mud exactly at the point we swore off approaching. How did we get there? “It has been established that about 60 percent of the daughters of alcoholics marry men who are either already sick or who will become ill with alcoholism. The trend does not break even if the mother divorced her daughter’s father” (Moskalenko, 2009). This fact does not have the slightest rational explanation. After all, the daughter of a person addicted to alcohol, like no one else, knows the hardships and hopelessness of the struggle. She knows better than anyone about the pain and hopelessness that children experience in such a family. There is not a single reason to believe that her life will turn out differently, but she believes. As a rule, in childhood this woman desperately lacked love and care. Mom was busy with dad and had no time for her daughter. Perhaps the parents were harsh and critical, perhaps indifferent and distant. No matter how hard her daughter tried, no matter how well she studied, no matter how much she helped, she could not achieve praise. Both parents turned out to be emotionally unavailable to her: dad because he drank, and mom put all her spiritual strength into dad. In addition, the girl played the role of a peacekeeping contingent in the conflicts that inevitably broke out between her parents. She had to be on her guard all the time. She entered the world with extremely low self-esteem, vigilance, anxiety, hypercontrol and an unquenchable thirst for love. She vows to herself and others that this nightmare will not happen again in her own family. Despite the negative nature of attachment, she remained not free from the script of the parental family, she has every chance to reproduce it. As a child, the girl found herself powerless against her father’s drunkenness, now she is strong, energetic, mature, and she will be able to prove to the whole world, and especially to her mother, that a fairy tale is possible, that love and devotion work wonders. This is her chance to gain self-respect, become the hero of her own novel and relieve herself of responsibility for her own life (Moskalenko, 2009). Incomplete separation gives rise to the transfer of unfinished processes in the parental family to one’s own family. This doesn't just apply to alcoholic families. According to Murray Bowen's theory, unprocessed, unreacted conflicts that have developed in the parental family are reproduced in relationships with one's own spouse. The duration of the conflict does not matter (Cleaver, 2015). A situation is possible when a mother and daughter, between whom there was a conflict, have not communicated for many years. However, the conflict is repeated in the relationship with her husband. The death of a mother does not destroy the stereotype, but, on the contrary, strengthens it. Now he, in the apt expression of A. Varga, is “carved on tablets” (Varga, 2001). The parental family provides us with all the components of the family system: interaction stereotypes, family rules, family myths, stabilizers, history and boundaries. Interaction stereotypes are “stable ways of behavior of family members, their actions and messages that are often repeated” (Malkina-Pykh, 2007). For example, in some families it is customary to address each other as “you”, in others they usually make fun of each other, etc. Family rules “establish the distribution of family roles and functions, certainplaces in the family hierarchy, what is generally allowed and what is not, what is good and what is bad” (Varga, 2001). The internal content of family rules is not so significant; the decisive factor in determining the functionality or dysfunctionality of the rules is their flexibility, the ability to change in accordance with the requirements of life circumstances. As an example of conflicting family rules borrowed by spouses from the parental family, one can cite different ideas regarding the distribution of the family budget. A wife who grew up in a family where it is customary to spend money on entertainment: theaters, clubs, restaurants, without denying herself pleasure, will be dissatisfied with her husband, who borrowed from his parents’ family the rule of saving money for a rainy day, darning socks and buying new things only when the old ones will turn into rags. In such a situation, the husband will consider the wife a spender, and the husband’s wife greedy. A conflict will arise. Family rules form the basis of family myths. Myth is complex family knowledge, which is, as it were, a continuation of the following sentence: “We are...” (Varga, 2001). There are such myths as “We are a very friendly family”, “We are a family of heroes”, “We are bearers of European values”, “We are free artists”, etc. The coincidence of family myths is one of the most important foundations of family well-being. It is unlikely that a man from a family with the myth “We are free artists” will find happiness with a woman from a “close-knit family.” These myths are mutually exclusive, since the supposed rules of a “close-knit family” are: “The teacher (boss) is always right,” “Everything must be decent,” etc. fundamentally contradicts the rules adopted among “free artists”. We also inherit ideas regarding the next parameter of the family system - family boundaries - from our parents. It will be difficult to find mutual understanding between a husband from a family where guests came occasionally, on special occasions and by special invitation, and a wife who grew up in a house whose doors are always open to neighbors, friends and relatives. The next parameter of the family system is family stabilizers. It is extremely common for children to become family stabilizers. Parents are absorbed in raising their children, which allows them to ignore the problems of marital relationships. It is not for nothing that so many conversations and theories are built around the “empty nest” situation. In fact, this is a situation where spouses are forced to face the problems that have accumulated in their relationship. In such families, vertical coalitions are formed that are dysfunctional in nature. Parents, out of fear of being left alone with their problems, may try not to let their child go into independent life, keeping him in the family. Separation in such a situation is very difficult to implement. The most important parameter that most clearly illustrates the sequence and interconnection of behavior in a family over many generations is family history. It can be traced using a genogram (family diagram). The genogram reveals patterns of behavior that are repeated from generation to generation (Bowen, 2015; Varga, 2001). Working with the family system is complicated by the fact that the listed parameters are not realized by the participants in the relationship. It is not easy to put the vague feeling of dissatisfaction into words. “A troubled family experiencing anxiety usually appears to the therapist in its most subjective form... Clients actively blame each other and themselves. Each family member strives to make the therapist their ally, or is afraid that the therapist will become an ally of someone else" (Bowen, 2015). At the end of the excursion into the history of the relationship, in a series of repeating scenarios, it seems that the future is predetermined, that fate is written for us to the decimal point by our ancestors, and our contribution is limited only to passing the baton to children. But this is not true at all. As adults, conscious and responsible people, we can get rid of dysfunctional coalitions, abandon outdated myths and stories, and set our own boundaries and rules that are acceptable in our environment..