Salvador Minuchin introduced the concept of enmeshment to describe families where personal boundaries were diffuse, sub-systems undifferentiated, and over-concern for others led to a loss of autonomous development. Enmeshed in parental needs, trapped in a discrepant role function, a child may lose his or her capacity for self-direction;, his/her own distinctiveness, under the weight of psychic incest; and, if family pressures increase, may end up becoming the identified patient or family scapegoat.Enmeshment was also used by John Bradshaw to describe a state of cross-generational bonding within a family, whereby a child (normally of the opposite sex) becomes a surrogate spouse for their mother or father.The term is sometimes applied to engulfing codependent relationships where an unhealthy symbiosis is in existence.For the toxically enmeshed child, the adult's carried feelings may be the only ones they know, outweighing and eclipsing their own.