The Psychodynamics and Psychogenesis of Parentification

Why do some of us grow up too soon and spend a lifetime caring for others at the cost of ourselves? In this deeply humane study, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Mark Kinet explores parentification: the invisible role reversal in which children become their parents' caretakers, confidants, or even partners. Blending vivid clinical portraits, psychoanalytic depth and literary sensibility, Kinet traces how early caregiving shapes our psychic architecture, how it builds resilience but also leaves enduring fractures. Drawing on Freud, Ferenczi, Balint, Klein, Winnicott, Bion, Kernberg, Kohut, Bowlby, Fonagy, and Lacan, as well as infant research and contemporary neuropsychoanalysis, he reconstructs the unconscious history of the 'wise baby,' the 'wounded healer,' and the adult child who cannot stop repairing others. Across richly textured chapters and cinematic intermezzos, Kinet interweaves theory and therapy, empathy and analysis. He demonstrates how psychoanalytic work can transform the 'inherited' burden of parentification into creative care. Written with clarity and compassion, The Psychodynamics and Psychogenesis of Parentification is both a clinical study and a meditation on the human need to give and be given to. It speaks to therapists, scholars, and all readers seeking to understand the paradox of 'loving' too much and too early.

Mark Kinet is a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst based in Belgium. He is the author of The Spirit of the Drive in Neuropsychoanalysis (2023), Psychoanalytic Principles in Psychiatric Practice: A Remedy by Truth (2024), Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in Psychiatric Practice: Premises and Clinical Portraits (2025) and Patient Testimonies of Psychodynamic Psychotherapy: Reported and Recorded (2025).

1. Prelude 2. Overture - Charles 3. Parentification Introduced: History and Concept 4. Intermezzo I 5. Parentification in Various Forms 6. Intermezzo II 7. Twist in My Sobriety: Parentification and Alcohol 8. Intermezzo III 9. Psychoanalytic and Systemic Approaches 10. Intermezzo IV 11. Curiously Called: To Cure, To Care: On Calling, Vocation, Profession and Parentification 12. Intermezzo V 13. The Psychodynamics and Psychogenesis of Parentification 14. Intermezzo VI 15. Finale - Fatefully Yours! 16. References