Good Guy, Bad Guy

Fifteen years after I left America, I am still upset about my life back there. Americans think they are wonderful, when they are not.

And that begins with the way they treat their children. Psychologists have coined a label for it - the Dysfunctional Family. And every therapist spends his life helping his clients with this.

The best of them, will make this explicit - and carefully explain what this amounts to, and what they are trying to do. But it doesn't take long for them to realize how difficult this is - and how difficult it is for people to change.

Usually, they just want their symptoms cured, without solving the problems that caused them. Because everyone assures them - this is impossible, and even undesirable. They will have to accept the way things are, and learn to live with them - whether these things are good, or not.

There is some truth in this - the world is too big for us to change it very much, and we will have to learn which parts of it we can change, and be satisfied with that. Without forgetting that we were forced to make this choice.

This forgetting can lead to many problems, that cannot be predicted. Bizarre behavior can result, that no one can understand - because the reasons for this behavior have been forgotten.

Before we are born, we are aware of what our mother thinks of us - whether she likes us, or not. And we decide what we are going to do about this - abort, or tough it out. As adults, we are still living with this choice - and it is the job of the therapist to make this choice conscious.

Which most of them do not.