Only the family is perceived as safe. Family members can express positive feelings towards one another, but repress negative or ambivalent feelings, resulting in warmth that can often feel false or superficial because the underlying conflict is never truly expressed or resolved. Positive feelings of love are acceptable, but anger is not tolerated. Members may feel that to be loved they must give up a large part of themselves. Dependency is encouraged.
Individualism is punished.
In the extreme, a rigidly centrifugal system trusts outsiders more than their own family members, dependency is perceived as weakness and so expressions of love and caring are repressed, while anger and even hostility are accepted modes of relating. There is a tendency to expel children before they reach adulthood, or for children to leave home prematurely. Independence is encouraged and precipitous, while dependency needs are sought elsewhere outside of the family. Centripetal force relates to warmth in a family and centrifugal relates to freedom or autonomy. In a positive light, we need an integration of the polarities of being connected and being free in order to grow into a solid and satisfying sense of who we are.