Laing and his colleagues suggested that a family nexus included both immediate family, and extra-familial people closely associated with the family and its world-view. Laing argued that a closed nexus would use its energy so as to unconsciously block out any threats to its identity, keeping all interchanges at a boring, repetitive level. Building on Kleinian accounts of social phantasy systems, and the sense of unquestioned reality they can generate, Laing argued that within such systems patterns of communication were multi-layered and deceptive.