The PAN-Theory: Giving the Child Back Its Language
I ended up in a garage.
Not because I was dangerous, but because the violence around me had nowhere else to go.
They tested me when I was a child.
The results said I was slow, below average.
But the truth was simpler: I wasn’t safe enough to think.
Years later, I proved what so many children could prove if given safety. I graduated at the highest level of education, after a long road through classrooms and care institutions. I became a teacher, entered the care sector, and everywhere I saw the same silent pattern:
children labelled as problems, when they were only products of unsafe systems.
Three psychiatrists were once involved with the family.
Several social workers came and went.
No one ever saw how severe it really was.
Looking back, it could have been so simple.
Everything was visible, if only someone had asked one question deeper, looked one second longer.
Years later, I realised this wasn’t an isolated failure. It was systemic. The family doctor doesn’t see it.
The social worker sees symptoms, not origins.
The psychiatrist arrives too late, with labels that describe behaviour. Its labels, not causes. And by the time the system reacts, many children are already gone.
Some end up on the streets, in addiction, or in silence forever. Others carry labels instead of understanding.
That’s when I started asking myself: how could all of them miss what was so obvious from the inside?
Then I met a boy.
He had lived through what I once tried to forget, abuse behind closed doors. One day he asked me: “Would you ever write a book about this?”
I told him no. I had left it behind.
But his question stayed. It forced open the silence.
Slowly, fragments returned, metaphors I once imagined, patterns I’d seen but never named.
Pawns. Compasses. Boomerangs. They weren’t just ideas anymore; they were a language. The language I had needed as a child, and the one he needed now.
The PAN, Boomerang and Imaginary Army theories build on foundational work in developmental and clinical psychology, including classical psychoanalytic and developmental foundations, such as Sigmund Freud’s early structural concepts and Jean Piaget’s cognitive-developmental theory (Piaget, 1952), alongside Karpman’s Drama Triangle (Karpman, 1968) and Elkind’s Imaginary Audience (Elkind, 1967). Where these classical models described roles, stages or perceived evaluation, PAN reframes them through a preventive, child-centred lens. PAN advances this lineage by making the underlying mechanics structural and measurable: shame cycles, internalised threat, anticipatory fear, role pressure and repeated behavioural loops. This allows practitioners to recognise manipulation patterns, silence structures, role assignment and inherited trauma before these dynamics crystallise offering, for the first time, a framework that connects the child’s outer environment to the internal processes that drive long-term outcomes.
PAN carries a double meaning. Each letter stands for both the external system and the internal world of the child. P – Pawn and Prevention. P stands for Pawn: the smallest, most vulnerable unit in the family system. P also stands for Prevention: every effective intervention starts at the child. A – Abuse (bullying, neglict, psychological, physical, emotional, social exclusion) and Audience-Army shift safety. Many times unnoticed, emerging from external pressure, roles, pressure and harmful dynamics around the child. The army operates as an internalised crowd of voices, shame and anticipated judgment. Attachment Style: the early loops of safety, fear, splitting and borrowed identity that shape how the child navigates the system. Network and Navigation: the system around the child, and the internal network they build within themselves. Two Networks: Outer and Inner. A child lives in two networks at the same time. The outer Network. The abusive or unstable environment: roles, alliances, silence, pressure, triangulation and repeated patterns. The Inner Network. The Imaginary Army: internalised voices, fear, shame and evaluation that stay with the child even when no one is speaking. These two layers reinforce each other. Every external boomerang becomes an internal voice. Every internal voice prepares the child for the next external boomerang. Children do not simply react, they adapt structurally.
PAN-Theory identifies three ways a child can be positioned in the system: Direct Pawns. Actively pulled into adult conflicts and emotional load. Indirect Pawns
Not targeted directly, but shaped by tension, instability and silent pressure. Imagined Pawns. The moment the entire outer system has moved inside. The child, adelescent carries the Imaginary Army internally. This mapping connects the external family system to the child’s internal logic. The Boomerang: The Measurable Loop. The Boomerang Theory makes feedback cycles visible, trackable and predictable. A boomerang consists of:
the throw – projection, blame, emotional pressure
the flight – escalation and distortion
the return – the reaction that comes back
the count – the frequency of the loops
Boomerangs create shame loops and pattern loops. They show structure, not opinion. That makes prevention possible. The Child Compass is the way out. The Child Compass is the exit from the system. It gives children: direction, choice, autonomy, emotional distance, orientation. The Compass shifts the child from being moved to choosing direction. It can be used in: classrooms, guidance sessions, therapeutic play, early intervention. The Compass gives both children and professionals a shared language. PAN connects the full trajectory: the position of the child (Pawn, Prevention) the pattern (Boomerang loops) the internalisation (Imaginary Army) the exit strategy (Child Compass) It transforms invisible dynamics into visible, measurable structures. And it finally provides children and professionals with the tools to detect abuse long before escalation. A child/ adolescent stands between two networks: the world around them, and the army inside them. PAN makes both visible.
These theories give language to what children cannot yet explain. They turn confusion into clarity.
They help a child say: “I’m not the problem here.”
That’s how the PAN-Theory began, not as an academic pursuit, but as a survival map written backwards.
What is often called the abuse cycle is, in “some cases”, an inverted peekaboo rhythm. The core problem is not the cycle itself, but the absence of a stable self and the lack of a preventive framework capable of interrupting it. Prevention begins with language: what is not resolved at the source is passed on to the next generation.
The so-called abuse cycle: love bombing, devaluation, discard, return (honeymoon, tension building, explosion, reconciliation. Repeat.) is not a mystery; It is an inverted child peek-a-boo rhythm. This inversion of the peek-a-boo rhythm may disrupt early affective synchrony, potentially influencing later empathic development. It’s not: you disappear and return. But: out of abandonment fear. I disappear and return to check if I still exist. Now you carry the fear. From that superego-driven, parentified position, the drama triangle as described by Stephen Karpman (rescuer, persecutor, victim) may follow mechanically. Separation–individuation with the primary caregiver never fully occurred. The conflict with the caregiver remains unresolved, making genuine differentiation impossible. As a result, this unresolved developmental conflict is re-enacted across all subsequent relationships. When the superego dominates, morality collapses into a top-down ranking system where judgment is less about values and more about hierarchical position. The audience and the army function as anchoring reference points through fantasy defense, allowing the personal fable to be defended and reset in whatever form restores perceived superiority.
Origins: Chapter 3 as the Structural Blueprint
The structural core of the PAN-Theory emerged during adolescence (ages 11–18), the period in which internal coherence must consolidate while external instability is highest. What would later become the pawn, compass, boomerang, and imaginary audience/army were not theoretical interventions. They were functional survival tools, developed while writing the book, using a set of symbols: the pawn, boomerang, compass, the Source and the Voice/Oracle that provoces reaction, along with additional elements to understand human conflict and bullying dynamics. In the family system, shame was absolute, conflict occurred entirely behind closed doors, the outside world (“the third eye”) perceived a functioning family, and internal collapse remained completely invisible.
From my own experience, and what others have described to me the ”third eye” never disappeared, even when people live remotely and there were no neighbours who could possibly hear anything. The instruction be quiet, others can hear you repeated itself automatically during conflict, despite the fact that no one was there. Silence was enforced not by reality, but by an internalised fear of being seen. The outside observer had become permanent. What once referred to neighbours or the outside world no longer required their physical presence. The monitoring continued on its own, long after isolation made it objectively unnecessary.
In this environment everyone existed inside the Army: family, peers, teachers, imagined observers. This lived experience mirrors Elkind’s Imaginary Audience, but under threat and behind closed doors it evolves into the Imaginary Army, a multi-voiced, punitive evaluative system. Within this dynamic, many of the people involved: family members, peers, authority figures function as indirect, direct, or imaginal pawns. Not necessarily out of malice, but because they themselves lack a stable self and operate fully within the Audience-Army dynamic.
Through them, pressure is externalised and multiplied. Messages such as they think this about you too are conveyed in the language of humiliation, minimisation, and degradation. What appears as many voices is in fact one system speaking through multiple carriers. The result is isolation. Any possibility of speaking outward, especially vulnerably is systematically blocked. The environment is organised to silence, suppress, and contain, until the child no longer needs to be actively restrained. The belief that I am the problem installs itself from the inside.
Chapter 3 demonstrates the defining principle of PAN: violence behind closed doors is invisible because it becomes internalized as invisible violence inside the child’s mind. That invisibility is what drives the global scale of the problem.
Developmental Foundations (Ages 0–3): The Distorted Peekaboo Rhythm
Early social development is shaped by repeated cycles of presence and absence between infant and caregiver. Everyday interactional games such as peek-a-boo illustrate a foundational relational pattern: disappear – wait – return. Through repeated exposure to this rhythm, the child gradually develops what Jean Piaget described as object permanence, the understanding that the caregiver continues to exist even when temporarily out of sight. When caregiving is sufficiently consistent, this rhythm becomes internalized as a stable expectation of return and safety. The infant learns that absence is temporary, that connection can survive interruption, and that distress does not automatically mean abandonment. In this way, early repetition lays the groundwork for trust, emotional continuity, and the capacity to tolerate separation.
However, when caregiving is inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, intrusive, or unpredictable, this rhythm may become distorted. Instead of internalizing absence as tolerable and temporary, the child may begin to experience it as uncertain and threatening. The implicit developmental rule shifts. Rather than assuming, you return even when I cannot see you, the child may implicitly learn:
“If I do not provoke your response, I may disappear.”
The present framework refers to this inversion as the Peekaboo Reflex. Within this model, connection is no longer passively trusted but actively tested. The child begins to rely on small signals, disruptions, or emotional probes to confirm that the attachment figure is still psychologically present. What should have become a stable rhythm of return is replaced by vigilance toward rupture.
Across later development, this may appear as subtle contact-testing behaviors: tone shifts, temporary withdrawal, micro-disruptions, misplaced objects, probing conflicts, or sudden minor crises. Over time, the child gradually develops an expanding repertoire of strategies aimed at re-securing attention and restoring relational confirmation/ control. These behaviors are often misunderstood as manipulation, or attention-seeking later in life. Within the present framework, however, they can be understood more accurately as attempts to restore a broken rhythm of recognition and return. They are not primarily bids for dominance in the beginning, but relational checks organized around a basic question: Are you still there?
This developmental formulation converges with several established relational perspectives. Donald Winnicott emphasized the importance of a reliable holding environment in which the child gradually develops a stable sense of self through repeated experiences of being emotionally held in mind. Margaret Mahler’s theory of separation–individuation likewise highlights the developmental necessity of safely moving away from and back toward the caregiver without losing emotional continuity. Heinz Kohut, in turn, stressed the role of mirroring in the formation and cohesion of the self, suggesting that the child requires sufficient recognition in order to consolidate a stable internal structure.
The child first attempts external regulation through contact-tests. When these fail to stabilize the relationship, regulation may gradually shift inward toward compensatory fantasy. At this point, imagination can take on a defensive role. In Winnicott terms, fantasy normally belongs to a healthy intermediate space between inner and outer reality, a space of play, symbolization, and creative development. Yet when the external environment is not reliable enough, this same imaginative capacity may gradually become a protective refuge. What begins as play can harden into defensive fantasy.
Within this child-protective framework, fantasy defense is not understood as mere grandiosity or false self-inflation, but as an adaptive inner solution to relational inconsistency. The child turns inward to create what the environment did not reliably provide: continuity, recognition, predictabillity, or symbolic safety. In other words, when the caregiver cannot be counted on to return psychologically, the mind begins to construct its own substitute forms of presence.
From this perspective, later relational patterns may follow a recognizable developmental sequence: first the disruption of the basic rhythm of safety, then the emergence of contact-testing behaviors, and eventually the growing reliance on internal fantasy structures as compensatory regulation. The person is no longer simply waiting to be seen; they are attempting to secure psychic continuity by any means available, externally through contact-tests, and internally through imagination.
The developmental signal underneath this entire sequence remains simple: “See me, so I do not disappear.” Fantasy, in this model, is not the origin of the problem but the child’s solution to unreliable return. Fantasy and reality may partially intertwine in social perception. Repeated cycles of approach, shame-collision, and withdrawal may train a relational rhythm in which the individual increasingly approaches others from a defensive superego stance. What appears as later grandiosity or entitlement can therefore be understood as the behavioral residue of a repeatedly rehearsed attachment collision cycle. When negative interpretations dominate, shame responses emerge, and interpersonal behavior may shift between the regulatory roles described in the drama triangle.
Ages 7–8: First Pattern Awareness. Children begin recognizing: relational structure, inconsistency, emotional directionality, fairness vs. unfairness. Here the proto-Army forms: not voices yet, but templates of evaluators. Adequate mirroring keeps the self-flexible; failed mirroring hardens the Army architecture. Ages 11–13: Ego Structuring and Army Consolidation. This is the highest-impact developmental window. Meta-cognition accelerates. Children become hyper-aware of themselves through imagined observers. Elkind identified ages 11–13 as the peak of the Imaginary Audience, the sense of being constantly watched and judged. In stable environments this distortion fades. In shame-driven or unstable environments, it intensifies, hardens, and becomes the Imaginary Army. This same window also exposes externalized shame: conflict testing, triangulation, multi-pawn recruitment, rhythmic provocation.
Internalized shame: hyperventilation, somatic overload, dizziness, trembling, panic in social spaces, inability to speak core shame-beliefs (“I am ugly,” “I am disgusting,” “I will fail,” “Everyone sees me”) Both patterns emerge from the same vulnerability: an ego not yet capable of self-stabilization. Attempts at self-reassurance fail because the Army has higher emotional authority than the ego. A triggering cue, a glance, silence, memory, comparison reactivates the Army instantly. Elkind’s Personal Fable (“I am special”) normally buffers insecurity. In PAN environments, the system collapses under the Army, which overrides the ego, and explains the 0–100 aggression, forcibly defends the personal fable by restoring a perceived position of superiority. For internalizers, the Personal Fable collapses in waves, leading to shame-based withdrawal and self-correction. For externalizers, the Personal Fable does not collapse; it hardens and is defended through projection, control, or aggression.
Critical Note: Repairability. Even adolescents who externalize shame may remain repairable during this window. The ego is still soft enough for corrective mirroring. PAN does not prescribe intervention methods that belongs to clinical expertise. PAN only identifies the developmental window in which repair is most plausible.
Ages 18+: Entrenchment, Collapse, and Reactivation. Beyond adolescence, the Imaginary Army becomes: autonomous, self-referential, punitive. Adults re-experience early states through: trauma dreams, nocturnal panic, sweating, sleeping problems, learning problems, shouting at internal evaluators, somatic distress (sensory cue, e.g. smell, limbic memory) and episodic flashbacks triggered by everyday cues. Superego attacks reactivate whenever the original Army-template is triggered. Yet these armies often remain invisible for years because adults maintain stability through coping mechanisms: emotional numbing, dissociation, intellectualization, overwork, compulsive achievement, substance use, repeating familiar relational patterns, choosing partners who recreate Army dynamics. These strategies suppress the Army without dissolving it. Collapse occurs only when accumulated stress exceeds coping capacity, exposing the unresolved developmental architecture.
Structural Bridge: From Collapse to Architecture. To understand why collapse follows such predictable patterns, PAN must be read not only developmentally but structurally. The same mechanisms that destabilize adolescents, externalized evaluators, absent internal mirrors, systemic triangulation remain active in adulthood. What appears clinically as panic or relational chaos is the late-life expression of an architecture built much earlier. This transition makes it necessary to examine PAN through psychodynamic and object-relational models.
Psychodynamic Architecture Freud: Id, Ego, Superego in PAN Systems. Shame-driven or unsafe environments produce: Id – panic during emotional absence. Superego – harsh, externalized evaluator. Ego – failure to integrate contradictory signals. The Imaginary Army is the fusion of: a fragmented Ego, a punitive Superego, an abandoned, overstimulated Id. Object Relations: The Distributed Self. When internal regulation fails, identity becomes externally distributed: others’ reactions, triangulated alliances, real or imagined observers conflict rhythms. Triangulation is not manipulation. It is survival through borrowed structure, scaffolding for an ego that cannot yet stand alone. Beyond the Drama Triangle: The Multi-Pawn Army Triangle. Karpman’s Drama Triangle is too narrow. In PAN systems: roles multiply, roles shift across the family and online network, self-stabilization requires many pawns. The Imaginary Army is the internal continuation of this network. Addictions, avoidance, rage cycles, compulsive rescuing, and chaotic relational patterns all follow one rule: “I stabilize myself through others.” Reflex Architecture: Peekaboo, Boomerang. Peekaboo Reflex: presence – disappearance – tension – return – relief. Distorted early, lifelong contact-testing. Boomerang Reflex fear projected outward – reaction elicited – temporary stabilization – return. Every conflict loop in Chapter 3 follows this rhythm. Together they form the emotional engine of PAN systems.
Clinical pattern recognition across the lifespan. Adults may show trauma dreams, nocturnal panic, sweating, shaking, irritability, shouting at internal evaluators, loss of internal continuity, and rapid reactivation through everyday cues. Yet these patterns can remain invisible for years. Many adults maintain apparent stability through coping strategies such as emotional numbing, dissociation, intellectualization, overwork, compulsive achievement, substance use, sarcasm, chronic joking, avoidance, and repeatedly choosing relational partners who recreate familiar Army dynamics. These strategies suppress the Army without dissolving it, allowing significant distress to remain undetected in clinical and social settings.
Adolescents may present with hyperventilation, dizziness, chest pain, trembling, cognitive learning disruptions, somatic overload, panic in socially evaluative situations, and an inability to voice core shame-beliefs. In many cases, these symptoms coexist with high-functioning external behavior: humor, deflection, withdrawal, or “the class clown” persona that hides internal collapse from peers and teachers. Symptoms collapse only when another person names the unspeakable shame. Visibility dissolves the Army. Educational Note. Because these patterns often remain hidden behind coping styles, age-appropriate lessons in primary and secondary school, using simple PAN metaphors such as the Boomerang and Child Compass can give students a shared vocabulary for discomfort, relational tension, and early distress signals. Such collective language increases cohesion, reduces secrecy, and allows peers and teachers to detect early signs long before clinical symptoms consolidate.
There is always one child who can describe what is happening, if given symbolic language. PAN provides that language. PAN and DSM-5: Parallel Systems, Not Competing Systems. PAN does not challenge DSM-5; it precedes it. Without a pre-diagnostic framework: shame seals the system, secrecy persists, early reflexes remain invisible, triangulation is misinterpreted, the imaginary becomes pathology, symptoms appear only after damage. With PAN: early signs become visible, interpretations remain provisional, hypotheses can shift, relational patterns can be corrected, GPs understand somatic distress developmentally, teachers and professionals can intervene without labeling.
PAN provides only the structural vocabulary. Intervention methods belong to clinical experts. Closing Statement. The PAN-Theory integrates developmental psychology, psychodynamics, systems theory, and clinical observation into one coherent preventive framework. It explains: why internal violence is invisible, why shame seals families, why triangulation multiplies, why the Imaginary Army forms, why conflict becomes proximity, why somatic symptoms appear without medical cause, why simple symbols unlock complex truths.
But most importantly: When boomerangs are thrown endlessly inside a home, or repeatedly in a classroom during bullying, that rhythmic return is the first structural warning sign. A child knows instinctively that a boomerang hurts, that every word or action returns, and that recognition alone reveals that something behind closed doors is not as it should be. When the boomerang theory is introduced in an educational context, conflict becomes legible as a structured process: action, reaction, consequence, and choice. In combination with the compass theory, normative rhythm within social interaction can be identified, as well as systematic deviations from that rhythm. Processes that typically remain implicit, such as audience formation, audience to army shifts, and projection become observable phenomena rather than subjective impressions. Externalizing behavior, including belittling, degrading, and triangulation through third parties, can then be analyzed as patterned interaction rather than as individual pathology.
This structural recognition enables children to infer that certain relational dynamics, whether in domestic environments or peer groups, deviate from normative functioning. Such recognition reduces shame and increases psychological safety for disclosure. Adolescents who acquire this framework are able to identify the transition from a neutral or supportive audience to a threatening collective, and to understand the escalation pathways that may culminate in avoidance behaviors. Because these dynamics are rarely articulated explicitly, they frequently persist below the threshold of awareness. Once structurally named, however, measurable behavioral shifts occur. When children are introduced to the boomerang theory at an early age, the same interpretive framework applies to all participants. If, within that shared structure, attachment related behavior consistently deviates and fails to recalibrate over time, this signals a dysfunction rather than a situational conflict. Through rhythm and repetition, children learn not only how conflicts unfold, but how healthy regulation and repair are supposed to occur.
I have countless examples of bullied children who are not operating within an imaginary audience alone, but within an imaginary army. Their behavior is organized around anticipated collective violence: avoiding school, taking multi-kilometer detours, or not leaving home at all. Threat perception generalizes from specific peers to entire environments, sometimes even to the village as a whole. This reflects not adolescent self-consciousness, but a fear system structured around expected coordinated aggression. Although this audience–army shift is often assumed to be purely negative, the same mechanism can also be deliberately redirected and used constructively within the classroom.
A classroom-based illustration clarifies this mechanism. Consider a small subset of persistently disruptive students, sometimes characterized by insecurity and adverse home environments. Conventional interventions emphasize exclusion, such as temporary removal from the classroom. When, instead the educater suspend direct engagement, pausing instruction without disciplinary escalation, the interactional focus shifts. Various tactics can be employed instead: the teacher might use verbal or non-verbal cues to signal, “figure it out yourselves; you don’t want to learn anyway,” addressing the whole group. Because the message applies to everyone, the focus of the class shifts entirely. The peers do not need to intervene or say anything, yet the disruptive students feel observed and experience a sense of guilt. Over repeated cycles, the audience reorganizes into a regulating collective. Behavioral recalibration emerges not through punitive measures, but through sustained visibility within the group context. This phenomenon can be described as an audience-army shift. Additional empirical illustrations are derived from later applied work and qualitative interviews.
When functioning is dominated by a superego position, external validation replaces internal regulation, while a rigidified ego, ”sometimes” shaped by early splitting in infancy (as described by Otto Kernberg)… becomes increasingly reinforced through repeated audience-army shame dynamics. Over time, regulation depends ”almost entirely” on external alignment, with accumulated tension displaced onto proximal relations such as partners or children.
PAN turns invisible dynamics into visible structures.
And visibility is the beginning of safety.
(Holmes, R., framework, 2025)