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Counteridentification is an important term in psychological theory and in the literature on psychotherapy. It is also implicated in numerous problems that many adults experience. It refers to the common unconscious motivation in pre-adolescence and adolescence for the child to seek to be different from, and often opposed to, caregivers — usually the parents. How the child seeks to be different from the parent may cover a range of qualities and characteristics, be it some aspect of the parent’s personality, intellectual pursuits, behavior tendencies, social, political or cultural beliefs, even hobbies. A more global form of counteridentification is “counterwill,” which numerous theorists conceptualize as the natural tendency to oppose anything or any person that makes demands on us, especially those demands that compromise our own uniqueness or individuality.

At any rate, counteridentification in child development can take both adaptive and maladaptive forms. If it is healthy and adaptive, the growing child showcases being different from father and/or mother in order to proclaim the child’s emerging individuality and uniqueness, specifically the child’s uniqueness in relation to Mom or Dad. If, for example, the child’s mother likes the piano, the child may quietly then more directly resist the piano, opting instead for another instrument or perhaps not even an instrument at all but, rather, an athletic or other extracurricular activity quite different from music. The empathic and patient parent will, of course, support the child’s diverging interests because the parent does not harbor a dysfunctional, narcissistic investment in needing the child to be some version of him- or herself. What usually evolves over time, in this healthy scenario, is the gradual dwindling of the child’s need to counteridentify with the parent. Because the parent did not oppose the child’s distinguishing him- or herself, the child has nothing to react to. Consequently, as the child moves into late adolescence and early adulthood, the child tolerates the anxiety associated with discovering who he or she really is and begins to gravitate toward authentic interests, activities, and belief systems that are authentic to his or her identity, whether they happen to be or happen not to be what the child’s parental figures may also endorse. The child is free to formulate an identity that is not crafted in reaction to or against any other identity.

In contrast, the maladaptive form of counteridentification typically result in a range of problematic consequences, yielding an inadequately developed sense of self that many individuals often carry into and throughout adulthood. In non-ideal circumstances, what typically occurs is that the child’s naturally emerging unconscious need to counteridentity with the parental figure is interrupted or never even gets going. That is, the child has the suspicion, often rightfully so, that if he or she begins to resist or oppose some aspect of mother’s or father’s identity, this resistance will not go over well. Often in parent-child relationships in which the parent is highly narcissistically invested in the child and, in addition, rigid, strict, unyielding, authoritative, and perhaps even emotionally or physically abusive, the child’s organic impulse to disentangle from the parent and begin to individuate is thwarted. In these kinds of parent-child relationships, instead of healthy counteridentification the child typically moves down one of two dysfunctional pathways.

In the first, the child’s motivation to counteridentity shuts down completely, leaving the child with no psychological recourse but to fully identify with the parental figure. In this scenario, the child essentially forecloses on his or her own unique identity development — allowing it to be highjacked by the intrusion of the parental identity which the child now mimics, models, and defers to. Too difficult to continue down the path of divergence from a difficult, intimidating parent, the child emulates what will undoubtedly be reinforced and supported: becoming like the parent. This often results in a child who grows up to become what theorists call a “false self” in which one’s true/authentic identity has been subverted.

In the second possible pathway, again occurring when natural healthy counteridentification from the parent is not allowed, the child may seek to counteridentity at all costs, and with great intensity and conviction, exhibiting in a sense a strong and powerful opposition to the demands of the parent. For example, a son who begins to counteridentity with his conservative, “macho,” bullying, and highly opinionated father may begin to engage in activities that are not in accordance with male gender stereotypes, i.e., the son may begin to engage in dance, ballet, theatre or gymnastics. This type of counteridentification, while in part potentially reflecting an actual emerging interest on the part of the child, is chosen largely to poke back at the unrelenting parent, really “sticking it” to the parent in order to proclaim that even though you raised me, you cannot be me. The problem with this scenario, of course, is that often the counteridentification is merely a means to an ends, an act of rebellion against the parent, which typically only results in further activating the parent’s desire to clamp down even more on the child and extinguish any and all actions or gestures that symbolize the child’s independence and individuation. The feature films Dead Poets Society (1989) and Billy Elliot (2000) come to mind as examples of counteridentification attempts with unyielding parental figures and suggest how important it is for the benign, healthy parent to tolerate the child’s emerging claims of differentiation and view them as appropriate efforts toward the formation of psychological and emotional autonomy.

A final point should be made about counteridentification. In situations where normal health counteridentifications were not tolerated and a false self emerged, the individual now as an adult may consciously realize he or she must re-engage the process of differentiation from his or her parental figure that was foreclosed on years or even decades before. The problem is that the individual’s personality has been organized entirely in subjugation to the parent’s. This is akin to a person who has finally escaped a cult; that is, the cult survivor may be free, but the process of finding out who he or she is and what he or she actually believes is daunting. For many, finally being released in adulthood from the metaphorically cultish childhood experience with his or her parent does not necessarily yield a psychic and emotional freedom. Finally dis-embedding oneself from the insidious ties with parental figures is a central focus of many of the best psychotherapies.