Abuse and disrespect are inflicted on us as children almost ubiquitously on subtle, chronic levels by those with the greatest emotional power to mould them

Abuse and disrespect are inflicted on us as children almost ubiquitously on subtle, chronic levels by those with the greatest emotional power to mould them – our parents. Our running traumas occur whenever a child’s true self is not witnessed in full. If a child were witnessed in full, he would have no need to develop an unconscious mind to protect himself from the knowledge of the horror he has experienced. We who have suffered mistakenly view ourselves as being outside the cycle of victim and perpetrator. This lack of insight into ourselves is at the root of why we have so little understanding of the mindset and motivation of the perpetrator.


Parents who are not fully conscious – that is, parents in denial of any degree of their own buried, unresolved traumas – inevitably traumatise their children without even realising they are doing it, and thus can take no responsibility for it. Even in the mildest cases this is emotionally devastating for children, but because so few witness what is really going on and thus call it by its rightful name it goes unacknowledged, and thus is considered normal.


We understand why the Vietnam combat vet drinks himself into oblivion, but do we understand why the child in the normal family compulsively overeats or wets the bed or sucks his thumb or hates his younger brother? We understand why the rape victim later becomes phobic of sex with her consensual partners, but can we fathom the normal mother’s twisted motives for having children? We understand why the Holocaust survivor has persistent, horrible nightmares about Auschwitz, but do we put the correct face on the bogeyman in the dreams of the normal, middle-class child?

The norm is still very, very sick.