Ghosts in the nursery paper copy.pdf

8/10/2019 Ghosts in the nursery paper copy.pdf

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Selma raibrrg et al

tionship to th e the rap is t. s he co uld no longer inflict this pain uponhe.... child. Mrs . March could remember rejection. desertion. inces-tuous experience in childhood. What s he c ou ld not remember wasoverwhelming anxiety. shame. and worthlessness which had accom -panied each o f these violations of a child. When a nx ie ty. g ri ef .sha me . self-abasement were recovered and rccx pcricnrcd in t her-apy. Mr. :\Iarch no lo nger needed to inf lirt her own pain and herchildhood sins upon her child. With the reexperiencing of child-hood suffel in g along with t lu- memories. each of these youngmothers \\ as ahk - to say. I would never want that to happen to mychild.

These w or ds s tr ik e a familiar note, There are many parents whohan themselves lived tormented childhoods \ \ 110 do no t inflicttheir pain upon their children. These are th e parents who say

explicitly. or in cffert. I remember wha: it was like I rc -member ho w afraid I was when my father exploded I re -member ho w I cried when they took me and my sister away to livein that home, . I would never let my child go through what Iwent through .

For t he se p ar el li s. the pain and suffering have not undergonet o t a] I epn , ssioll. In remembering. Ihey are saved from the hlindrepetition of that morbid past. Through remembering they iden-tify with a n i nju re d child (the childhood se lf ). whi le the parent whodocs not remember ma v find himself in an unconscious allianceand identification with ihe fearsome figures o f that past. In thisway. th e parental past is inflicted upon the child .,j T h e key to our g ho st s to ry appears to lie in the fate of affects inchildhood . O ur hypothesis is that ra in becomesa parentini{ : while repres-sion and isolat.iu lL...oL_paiulul affect provide the psychologicalrequirements ill: icknl ifi i u l l \ \ l I h :-Ilk 1)etrayers and the aggres-sors. ) ) le unsolved mystt... f , is wh)) under conditions of extremity.in early c hi ld ho od . s om e c hi ld re n who later become parents keeppain alive; they do not make the fateful alliance with t he aggresso rwhich-de fends the child s ego against intolerable d an ge r a nd oblit-erates the conscious ex pcrience of anxiet y. \ \ e hope to explorethese problems in fur ther study.

The theory posit ed here. however inrom pletc , ha s pract ical im-plir.u ions for psychotherapy with parents and children in thosefamilies w here the ghosts of th e p ar en ta l past h av e t ak en up resi-dence in t he n ur se ry. In each case. when our therapy ha s broughtthe parent to remember and reexperieucc his c hi ld ho od a nx ie t yand suffering. the. ghosts depart . and the afflicted parents become


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osts in the Nursery 421

the protectors of their children against the repetition of their ow nconflicted past.

REFERI :N

Ghosts in the nursery paper copy.pdf

Documents

Transcript of Ghosts in the nursery paper copy.pdf