Her: “Yes, cool! I’ve seen your stuff on Facebook. So what exactly is a Black Sheep again?”
I put my kiwis in my cart. And she and I had a lovely chat where I explained more about who I work with. And what exactly I consider a “Black Sheep” to be.
I told her, that, while the term “Black Sheep” perfectly encapsulates who I work with, clinically speaking and interchangeably from a terminology perspective, the folks I do my best work with see themselves as the “Identified Patients” of their family system.
Identified Patients are considered to be/consider themselves to be the “other” in their family system.
Identified Patients are often the first people in the room to nod their heads when the term Black Sheep is said.
You say Scapegoat, they say YES.
Identified Patients disproportionately identify with, say, The Orphan Child archetype.
They know what it is to feel lonely, unsupported, and possibly alone.
Identified Patients can come from abusive, dysfunctional, and chaotic family backgrounds where early childhood adversity was the major theme.
And Identified Patients can also come from families that weren’t so outwardly dysfunctional.
In today’s post, I want to share a little more with you (like I shared with the lovely woman at The Berkeley Bowl) about what the term Identified Patient actually means, why this phenomenon happens in family systems, and what your choices are to take care of yourself if you see yourself in this description.
What does it mean to be the identified patient in a family?
“The identified patient sacrifices himself to maintain the sacred illusion that what the parent says makes sense”, and that “the identified patient exhibits behavior which is almost a caricature of that loss of identity which is characteristic of all the family members”. – Gregory Bateson
The term “Black Sheep” isn’t a clinical term you’re going to find in the DSM or a counseling psychology textbook. But Identified Patient is a clinical term and one you’re apt to hear.
Identified Patient is a term that emerged from the work of famed polymathic thinker, Gregory Bateson, in his 1972 work on family homeostasis – The Bateson Project.
In the field of family therapy, the term Identified Patient is used to describe what we might call the “symptom bearer” of the family system.
What’s a symptom bearer?
Someone who, because of a variety of variables, expresses the unresolved and unmanaged psychodramas and strong (often dysfunctional) emotions of the group.
