I've had several patients bring up stories of their parents not admitting/denying that something had happened. One remembers a night his dad came home, put his foot though his video game console, and choked him ("like Homer chokes Bart in The Simpsons"). On his own, the patient linked his histrionic relation to feelings to his father's denial of the truth of that nights events.
Another patient brought up how she fell off a swing set and sat down at dinner knowing something was wrong. She pleaded with her mother to take her to the hospital but her mother told her that it wasn't that serious and that she would be fine. She eventually got her to listen and found out she had a broken collar bone. The patient was able to quickly avow that in other major relationships she was treated like what she felt or wanted wasn't true/right and others tried to control how she felt.
I'm sure that I'm not the first one to hear the importance of these stories in patients. If anyone has a article or book to direct me to, please do.
Trying to place it in my frames of reference, I think of Freud talking about how the Ratman doubts himself and that comes from doubting his ability to love.
At the phallic-oedipal, love can be lost in regression for an egoist, where for an altruist it is often assertion. Phallic-oedipal love can downgrade to anal sado-masochistic love, down to the extreme possessiveness of the volar stage, and disappear at the auto-erotic. Phallic love isn't without it's ambivalence. The beloved's relation to reputation and Prestige is obviously important. Assertion in an altruist can similarly regress.
What promise did the egoist break, how did he lose some sense of integrity, what betrayal in love did he suffer?
For the altruist, what parental substitute undermined their reality, how did he sin against love, loyalty, and devotion?
There are more injuries than this, but I think.
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