Treatment of the abusive family includes all attempts to modify the family unit's way of operating, whether these attempts derive from specialized professionals or self-help support groups. Common elements in otherwise diverse abusive family constellations are parental emotional unavailability, merging between family members, intrusions into the privacy of other family members, intergenerational abuse, indiscriminate sexuality, family boundary alterations, parent-child role change, hierarchy alterations, marital dysfunction, and the presence of maladaptive family viewpoints or myths. The foundation for all treatment planning is a thorough assessment of the family unit and its individual members. The treatment process is a three-stage developmental sequence: acknowledgment of the abuse, increasing parental sensitivity and emotional availability to the child, and resolution of the dysfunction. The difficult or untreatable family has parents that are sadistic, mentally handicapped, psychotic and borderline psychotic, alcohol and substance abusers, violent and aggressive psychopaths, and involved in prior violent deaths due to child abuse. 44 references.