in certain moods the founding principle
of modern psychotherapy
that it is all to do with one's
childhood can sound especially
irritating why should we be forever tied
to things that happened infinitely long
ago
one hardly ever sees one's mother now
and dad might have died 20 years ago and
anyway
aren't genetics more important
nevertheless the maddening idea refuses
to go away as we'd love it to
there is too much in the end that keeps
backing it up
our characters appear to be miserably
determined by dynamics that unfolded
within the family circle before our 15th
birthdays
we can accept well enough that we once
learnt to speak an entire language
around our families tens of thousands of
words hundreds of declensions and a host
of complex rules of syntax were all
picked up while we played in the garden
or drew sunflowers in the kitchen
it should by extension be no more
implausible that we simultaneously
learnt an entire emotional language
that is now as much part of our nature
as our native tongue
a language about how to express love
what we can expect of men and women
the declensions of desire and what the
rules are around happiness
we need to think about our families a
lot
not necessarily because we like or miss
them
it's the opposite
we need to reflect on them in order to
get over them
we should be unembarrassed about our
search for the details of how our
particular family like all families
was and has
rendered us mad
we may feel that it is a uniquely
western neuroses especially one
afflicting people who have spent too
long in therapy to go on about one's
parents and their contribution to one's
unhappiness
to be 25 or 62 and still turning over in
one's mind often while sobbing how mummy
or daddy have been responsible for
spoiling one's relationships or ruined
one's life
but lest we be overly struck or appalled
by this approach
we should keep in mind that every
society whatever its level of
development
appears to entertain extremely elaborate
ongoing thoughts about its ancestors and
their powerful impact on the lives of
the living
from cambodia to peru
papua new guinea to burkina faso
the patterns are the same
one's parents or relatives die
and one then has to handle their ghosts
or spirits with immense care
because the dead are known to have
powers to cause grave mischief
they may unleash guilt
they can destroy sex for us
they may put a curse on our ambitions at
work
they can cause us insomnia or chronic
stomach pains
much time and energy therefore has to be
spent managing their memories which
might involve bringing them presents
honoring them with cakes or songs
or if all else fails and their
characters are too mean and far gone
actively trying to drive them away into
the netherworld
in madagascar in the ceremony of
famadiana
every year the dead have to be unburied
and are invited to a big party in the
village where their relatives sacrifice
oxen and dance with their corpses above
their heads in the hope that these ever
more moldy cadavers will rest easily in
the months to come
quite what one might have to do to keep
an ancestor from ruining one's life may
change from society to society but the
underlying feeling that one must try
something is universal
one might have to listen to them or
treat them to a dance
or one might need to lie on a couch and
analyze their hold on one psyche through
free association
but the idea is fundamentally the same
the spirits of the past have the power
to throttle the present
the headaches or the impotence
the paranoia or the bad marriage have to
do with ghosts
mummy and daddy are everywhere doing
unholy things
and the wise pay them enough attention
to loosen their punitive grip and get on
with their lives
how to overcome your childhood is a book
that teaches us how character is
developed the concept of emotional
inheritance the formation of our
concepts of being good or bad
and the impact of parental styles of
love on the way we choose adult partners