What's going wrong?

When parents have to serve as scapegoats

Helicopter parents prepare children poorly for life and then end up being blamed for having done too much or too little, Dr. Schmidbauer is annoyed.(Bild: Lustre Art Group - stock.adobe.com)

Parents are increasingly denounced by their adult children in psychotherapy sessions. The renowned German psychoanalyst Wolfgang Schmidbauer even speaks of a "demonization of parents as a mass sport". Which, in his opinion, is going wrong.

We encounter psychology as the science of our experience and behavior everywhere in everyday life. However, the language of therapy is used excessively today. If your partner doesn't do the dishes, you feel "triggered". However, "being triggered" actually means that after a traumatic experience, people feel transported back to the terrible emotional state by a trigger. Friends say they are "traumatized" or stuck in "toxic relationships". If you follow social media, every second person seems to be narcissistic or "neurodivergent".