Sublime

the unconscious passing on to us of our parents’ or caregivers’ unintegrated emotional condition. By the time we reach seven years of age, we are emotionally picking up where they left off.

product of their traumatic or neglectful histories,

relationship-driven.

“Nor have I ever allowed others to unburden themselves to me—I was unwilling to incur the debt of reciprocation. I avoided all this—until the day, of course”—he turned to face Breuer—“that I shook your hand and agreed to our strange contract.

There are stages of recognition, adjustment, and adaptation to an illness, and each family travels through the stages in its own time and its own fashion. When the symptoms are mild and interspersed with periods of good functioning, it is not difficult to attribute them to events such as a death in the family, a divorce, or a temperament that is mo

our minds “play” us the way a puppeteer strings his puppets or a master director manipulates his actors.

As you can see, working with early attachment issues is very delicate business, and clearly not every therapist or form of therapy is suited to it.

“The patient told me with certainty that the infantile sexual scene which analysis had apparently uncovered was pure fantasy and had never really happened to him.”

Sybil,