Identified Patient

Identified patient (IP) (or designated patient) is a clinical term often used in family therapy discussion. It describes one family member in a dysfunctional family who is used as an expression of the family's authentic inner conflicts. As a family system is dynamic, the overt symptoms of an identified patient draw attention away from the "elephants in the living room" no one can talk about which need to be discussed. If covert abuse occurs between family members, the overt symptoms can draw attention away from the perpetrators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identified_patient

• The identified patient is a kind of diversion and a kind of scapegoat. Often a child, this is "the split-off false carrier of a breakdown in the entire family system," which may be a transgenerational disturbance or trauma.[1] While the concept has evolved beyond Jung's original interpretation, some modern authors still use the term to describe a family member who is blamed for the family's problems, even though all members experience mental illness, rather than the one officially labeled as mentally ill – positing that the IP may actually be the least troubled member of a dysfunctional family nexus.
• The term emerged from the work of the Bateson Project on family homeostasis, as a way of identifying a largely unconscious pattern of behavior whereby an excess of painful feelings in a family lead to one member being identified as the cause of all the difficulties – a scapegoating of the IP.
• *Virginia Satir, the wellspring of family systems theory, who knew Bateson, viewed the identified patient as a way of both concealing and revealing a family's secret agendas.

The Bateson Project (1953-1963) was the name given to a ground-breaking collaboration organized by Gregory Bateson which was responsible for some of the most important papers and innovations in communication and psychotherapy in the 1950s and early 1960s. Its other members were Donald deAvila Jackson, Jay Haley, John Weakland, and Bill Fry. Perhaps their most famous and influential publication was Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia (1956),[1] which introduced the concept of the Double Bind, and helped found Family Therapy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bateson_Project