Foreword
Most of these distilled fragments were heard in therapy. Few are in the person’s exact words. They come from what I made of what was said. Several themes were heard repeatedly. Juxtaposing these pieces seemed to expose something of the potency in that role of father.
• • •
-A-
1 I am his daughter and still relying on daddy’s protection. Put to the test, expectations must prove wanting – yet that he is there for me remains a sustaining myth I don’t want exposed as self deception. | 2 I knew he was not up to much. He never took any stand against mother’s unfairness. How could I expect anything of him? It was more or less over to me. |
3 I used to be caught up with him in the lively every day. Now I look at him coldly and complain of his faults, having felt criticised all my years. | 4 I am his daughter and he has been felled, his manhood about to crumble. His devastation covers everything – so what can I do except be as he requires – untearful, as though she has not been killed. If we now solely depend on him. |
5 I remember an ease of breathing while I believed he was keeping us secure. When I saw how much was up to me and uncertain, it put in doubt whether all his promising was a lie. | 6 My difficulties turn on him. He was too weak. Would I have taken life in my stride, if I’d had a better example? |
7 I grew into a belief that he’d catch me if I slipped and lift me high, as he did at four. When I did fall it was too much for him. Far from striding up to make it right, he paced his room, incessantly, filling me with guilt. He failed to be that shining father of a child’s mind. Passed rage – love came again – for a fallible man. | 8 I am his daughter yet joined with her to despise the brute in all men. |
9 I carry the best of him from moments which buoyed me. He cut a hedge and I stood alongside, wanting it never to end. | 10 I am his daughter, I suppose, but that means nothing to me. He was ironed from my life three decades ago. I never think of him, and am thankful to have left behind that time before there was this choice. |
11 He was the one to whom I rushed, wide open with pleasure or woes, before I could see any point to restraint. | 12 Mother insists I am his daughter but he never agreed a child with a handicap could be his and would not claim me. I can only come to therapy if you swear never to look at me. It’s no longer just him who feels disgust – I’ve grown into the reject girl he could not bear to see. |
13 I am like him, not her. I have his temperament and connect more with him than anyone. Our bond is shaped from shared genes and his care. I’ll never see myself as detached. Why would I want to do so? | 14 I have only just begun to think about him. It always seemed to be my fault if he was nice to everyone else and only erupted at home. |
15 He died and left me the intricacies of his morning shave and that smell of his head. Why should such detail seem so rich? Yet I smile, still, recalling him in the mornings. | 16 I wish I’d been on tape record on waking. What fluency in my dawn harangue of him, which flowed unhindered by any embarrassment, or his reddening face. Yet by breakfast I could not find a single stone to fling. My outrage is not fair, but how can I abide his being so afraid of life? |
17 I cling, unable to entertain misgiving. Holding to an image, leaving no room for contradiction, or acknowledgement of hurt. Once life proved precarious I clutched at a straw man. | 18 I can’t forgive him being ordinary. If I am to be significant a giant father is required, and he had such proportions while I was his special child. |
19 I think of him only as “daddy” – though past fifty I still can’t consider him as a separate man. | 20 Since coming here I look at old photos. It’s astonishing how much more of him I see and now we talk of his interests. I’m grateful he lived long enough to escape being obscured by my narrow needs. |
21 While I was fully absorbed in being with him, he was a wonder. It’s hard to lose that with growing up. |
-B-
1 I don’t want generalities or Oedipal theories on fathers. How different he was with each of us, and that’s what I need to comprehend. What was it in me, his fourth daughter, he saw to dislike? | 2 I am his only daughter. I stake my claim to a place inside his importance. |
3 I may be his daughter but my older brothers were more important than he was. We mostly lived outside the house. He wanted no trouble and us subdued and didn’t think about children. Besides, his fathering was cut in ten. | 4 I live waiting to be admired, expecting to be saved, holding on to my due from him. |
5 Is it possible to forgive him the loss of interest? The lovely girl, whose face lit up to see him did not stay long; she fell and was badly scarred. He wasn’t cruel, just no longer captivated, and I didn’t want his pity. | 6 Visits grow easier. I put effort into making accounts of my triumphs – enticing him with buzz, drawing him in to admire. But this isn’t solid and rings hollow if I can’t be sure what he really thinks, when I’m not at work presenting myself. |
7 What does he think of me? Not as clever, not as pretty as he wished? How can I be “just myself”, as he advises, if my eye is fixed on his judgement and I am driven to prove I’m worthy? | 8 His high hopes for his darling could hardly be fulfilled. There is, inevitably, disappointment. |
9 I am his daughter who learned his lesson too well – I am the one who treads carefully, with a cover of manners, and never dares show herself – for that will be judged and rejected again and again. “Found faulty” is the fixed pattern set down for me by him. | 10 I am his daughter and drop back into that – for his approval awaits, like an old coat, to wear against chill indifference. Draping him over one shoulder, I can step out with an antidote to unravelling in self doubt. Mother’s legacy is a totally different and undermining matter. |
11 He is there to blame, the one I accuse when I have to recognise that even here in therapy, I seek good marks, though I am forty-five. | 12 I haven’t come here to speak of him. I see no point. He did not once speak straight, and after I realised he was incapable of it, why would I want more lies? |
13 I am glad you are not a man. I’m sure I’d come each week and protest that you were useless. Father was ineffectual everywhere and a nasty bully at home. | 14 Unfortunately I am his offspring. There is nothing more to say. He produced the genes and remains an object of contempt. |
15 I have nothing of him. It’s obvious I belong with Mother’s lot; you’re the only one to suggest there might be any scrap of that man in me | 16 I am his rightful inheritor. Those that followed are usurpers. I am his genetically, and a new wife won’t ever share inherited tastes and history: those remain with me. |
17 I have one photo where he looks unharassed, solid, in good shoes and a hat. And the baby hand, they say is mine, reaches out, caught by the camera touching the knot of his tie. He holds me wrapped in blanket. They also say I called out for him, from my cot, but for me there is no memory of the slightest connection. | 18 I am his daughter and he is mine in the closed circuit of what I say he means to me. To keep my picture intact, I restrict his access, and shed whatever fails to fit the image of a special man who provides that barricade against my being ordinary. |
-C-
1 He was the picture on our mantelpiece. With him away I had an ideal – until his return – then I hated and still find adult men repulsive. The ethereal, young and pretty male images appeal, but full blooded flesh, back after war and intruding into the set and gentle ways of women, was massive disruption. Mother seemed horrified to be plucked from her fearful care of girls by a demanding husband. She was petite while he seemed huge, and a beast. Sure he’d crush her one night, we crept to look through the key hole at that bed, which had been ours throughout his years of absence. | 2 He’d returned battered from the horrors of killing, though couldn’t speak of that in decent family circles. When it erupted, despite his efforts, we had to see the animal in grown men. It left me wary of sex, till I was nearly forty. |
3 He is an unreliable creep, often violent. As a child I was Mummy’s girl determined to hold out against him. My role as hers was absolute, though she confused by calling a truce with him some days, and kept producing children. | 4 I am his and he beat me. Did his power and domination, my submission connect with sex for him? Convention allowed imposing his will and physical strength as ‘good for the girl’. Did he have any idea my notion of making love would be stuck on tender reconciliation after force? |
5 He is a bully. And I, stubbornly, become a solid resistance: a wall of flesh blocking his intrusion. | 6 I always took my place as mother’s chief supporter and was inseparable from her. His sexuality, which was there for his wife, felt a threat. If she and I were one, how could it not, also, be for me? |
7 I shudder whenever I think of him. It’s my bare flesh exposed to his hand or belt I can’t forgive. She says, “it’s just the way it was back then, it wasn’t personal.” Yet it came so close to the bone – was hideously intimate. Worse – it plays on and on – it’s hard to escape boringly predictable pornography in my head during sex. | 8 I am locked in the darkest dungeon with him. It’s too intense – I am desperate to shut him out. |
9 I am his daughter but does that mean I invite him to the wedding? I want it quiet, a registry affair, but my partner keeps arguing for celebration and a church. I’ve never set myself up to be admired and can’t do that as a bride. I believed, aged eleven, it was my fault – – that skipping proudly in new petticoats invited trouble. Father’s touching started then. My family don’t understand why I can’t face him at the wedding. | 10 Even after he was widowed, we continued half naked around the house and sunbathed without clothes, as if he was entirely safe and neutered. Only recently he admitted that was hard for him. |
11 I am his daughter and he revolts me. He liked to catch us on camera in states of undress, made sexual comments about my unwelcome flesh, and walked in if we were bathing. Even now, when he visits and attempts a photograph, I can’t bear it. | 12 I wanted to be like him, out there, not messing around and emotional at home. I’d never want to give up work. But I’m shocked to find I’ve left it too late for a child. |
13 I am his daughter and there is no way out of that, I guess, though I saw myself as just hers. I stood with her against his manhood and fought off, with disgust, any hint of sex. As her protector from him, I stayed on guard, though at five I was not up to any man. She regularly slipped behind enemy lines, out of my bed into his. | 14 I still resent his power. He ruled us as bigger forms of the toy soldiers he regulated as a boy. He liked us to be ordered and we had rules. Obedience was basic, with set formal punishments. |
15 He gave love wings – he went off to work and I flew out to him. He couldn’t swallow me, as she did. It seemed safe to let rip giving my heart to him, who was mostly absent, but it wasn’t. Now I’m trapped with wanting only lovers who are not present. | 16 I am his daughter and his eye was on young girls. That he didn’t choose me is assumed to be grounds for gratitude, but as he seduced my friends, I was sure I wasn’t, yet, good enough for him. |
-D-
1 Living with him was an emotional minefield, with his uncontrollable moods. We could make no sense of what engulfed us until, coming here, I filled in his never mentioned history, as a child in the Holocaust. | 2 He couldn’t be there for me when darkness swamped him. I grew furious. I wanted help to negotiate the hard things, which flattened him. We couldn’t all take to our beds with anti depressants. |
3 He is an improvement on his staggeringly self centred father. He manages, in fits and starts, to give others attention. No sooner am I hooked again, he has slipped back to where only he exists, with others just there to serve him. | 4 Our role was to give him gentleness at home. After the grim realities of his working day we had to put toys, as well as fights, away for smiles, and brushed hair, and ease over sherry. |
5 He takes too much space. Like water down a plug hole he draws all concern to himself. Provided I can be an adornment for him, I am much admired. | 6 I am as proudly independent as he wanted. But my emotionally exacting sister has him hurrying to placate her. He never makes a fuss over me. |
7 He couldn’t bear to see me hurt. Any wounding and he felt stricken – as if my misery floods direct to him. When I take a leap he holds his breath. For himself he accepts the inevitability of pain and sorrow, but his urge to protect me is as strong as if I were newborn. What strain on him that I should be driven to take high risks. | 8 I wanted to find a wider space than the confines of being his child and moved away to a different life. He did his best to comprehend, though it challenged his settled ways. |
9 He values loyalty, and is quite floored. Belatedly, I’ve set off on my own, which goes against the grain. He seems not to have thought his children might leave the unit he forged. Fiercely stalwart, he rallied us but I was not a natural for the team. It took too long for me to see my path can’t just be reciprocal loyalty to him. | 10 I hate the size of his anxiety. I, too, could only become another object of his worry. |
11 We were to achieve more than he managed. I used to be grateful he’d encourage and say I could succeed at anything. Now I recognise weakness in such certainties. When I try to hold up and do as much as expected, my back gives out again. | 12 He thought it was over to him to work out whatever was good for me. He failed to grasp how much was not for him to manage. He is super efficient and reduces everyone to whatever can be sorted. He got me a bargain car I don’t much want, and a complicated mortgage, but the force of my desires and artistic life eludes him entirely. He came to my show and barely looked at the walls. |
13 His is the central scene, all revolves round him. Mine is a major role, as the beloved to whom he gave so much. He can’t conceive of giving me entitlement to a different script than his; one that might feel like my own. | 14 There was no drama in his daily decency. People are only interested in the bleak and dark. How do you honour what is given in unremarkable fatherhood? |
15 I am his daughter and resent the fact. If he never grew up and cannot be self-effacing, how am I supposed to do it? | 16 I am so often terrified. His earthquakes fill all the breathing space at home. I live in expectation of being overwhelmed. After each explosive tempest, the sun comes out for him and he wants smiles all round. That I continue to cower, fills him with disgust. He never feels shame for his own eruptions but gets furious with my reaction. |
17 He drew us in, then spat out whatever proved more awkward than he wanted. There was only his way and if you didn’t join him, or belong in his game, there was critical fury and shut down. | 18 I hate him, for his violence and rage. I am his daughter and scared, because it was often said I inherited that temper. |
19 He is a typical, cut-off, public school man. You can’t talk emotion. To him all is rational. Effort at presenting ourselves was what mattered. | 20 Some say he is neglectful. He gets on with what is important for him and leaves me to do the same. He wouldn’t dream of being intrusive, or burdening me with his emotionality. |
21 He was closed in and unresponsive. It left me forever pulling at him. Even last week when we went, together, to get mother’s present, he expected to wait outside, leaving me to shop alone. I’d hoped to engage him and share the pleasure of choosing. | 22 He felt like a fault line under foot. I’m in therapy because I continue to expect detonation and can’t put softer ground underneath myself. Not even protective things, like saving, or a pension. I carry on in permanent, impending doom. |
23 To this day I can’t argue properly with him. His having been my life support, and his approval of me basic, I fear he might strip all that from me, if we fought openly. I slip away instead of challenging. | 24 I prefer to keep silent about him. My tussles with Mother are endless but I barely speak of the father, who gave much and asked so little, as if not to breathe too hard on that web he wove for us. |
25 He was up on our roof, which wasn’t safe for girls. He painted protection for us and our roof was brightest red. He worked hard but I failed to see, then, how he escaped, unavailable to hectic family life with that brush in his hand. It took me long years to find escapes of my own. | 26 He was the child who wouldn’t grow up. He was a shaky authority not up to the job of keeping bills paid or our home secure. Mother took control and he, like us, learnt all the tricks of evasion. |
27 I am locked in reaction to his idea of order. Family life became another valued investment to be run efficiently. What stupid things I’ve done with my life just to thwart his excess control. | 28 He was super efficient, while she stayed a sulky child being managed. He organised everything for us “his girls” but could not deal with Mother’s emotional blackmail. |
29 If he is on his knees over my dead sister, where does that leave me? I live shut in belief that life is more than I can possibly manage. How could I cope, if the adults were so defeated. | 30 He was not at ease over here. He was constantly judging, to keep us to the old ways. He couldn’t trust us to find an honourable way through being immigrants. My head is filled with his relentless criticism. |
31 He left me with a theme tune to replay – I gave love and wanted him but that was never valued. I dream of him and the Mayans. He is to be sacrificed – his beating heart removed. I say in my sleep, “I’ll need the opera glasses.” And as I wake I think, “A heart for a heart seems fair enough to me.” |
-E-
1 I am his daughter so how could I not feel it was also me he divorced. I share much of mother’s temperament and have a look of her. When he was clearly irritated, then left, I felt sure he must find equal fault with me. | 2 I can’t accept my dramas will not alter the fact of his second family and wife. If I refuse to look, that new daughter is rendered non-existent. |
3 I used to say, at least he was there making trouble, the illegitimates next door had no dad at all. Mother protected us, more or less, during his rampages but could not do the same for her crystal and fine china. Once we were down to plastic and Woolworths plates, she threw him out. After that I never saw him sober. | 4 Though he was an alcoholic, that he loved me is a treasure. He became wrecked by drink, leaving her as cold organiser, of us, the house and money, providing a solidity I cannot value. But he made emotional connection. I felt seen by him and keep hold of that much. |
5 I have no idea what they saw in each other. They were at such variance and broke apart to go contrasting ways. It’s hard to see where they ever met but, as a genetic combination of their unamalgamating, where does that leave us? | 6 He was disinclined to take on care for anyone and had other children. Don’t rely on me was his message. “Don’t pin me down,” he seemed to say; “I am one who has moved on before and am bound to disappoint.” |
7 What little there was of him crumpled, when she ran off with a neighbour. It was the end of anything to rely on. She left and he could see only his own need to stagger on at work. | 8 He just left and I hate to see little girls with their daddies. She knew what was going on but they both agreed we were best protected. So the only sense we made of desertion was that it must be “our fault” – we weren’t enough to keep him. If I had to manage with no Dad, why can’t those precious wimps cope alone? |
9 It never occurred to me to wonder how it was for him; thinking myself in his shoes was not what I could do. She had a lover, and wouldn’t have father in her bed. I was badly hurt but he tried for a year, then could not stay with such a deep chasm between them. | 10 I am his daughter, but illegitimate, and he slid out of responsibility. At sixteen I finally rang, and he pretended not to know me. Insisting I had the wrong number, he hung up on me, though I recognised his voice as the “uncle” who used to visit. |
11 I felt proud of him and thought that was love. He provided reflected glory and I had a hoard of pride to keep, when he went abroad with his new wife. | 12 I believed myself safe enough between those two, who gave life to me. After such basic fabric tore – then split – why would I trust again? |
-F-
1 How has it come to this, that there are no adults ahead and we are “it” – the end of the line. | 2 He is not dead to me. His love is drawn on, whether or not he lives. My reaching out for him – a child who wrapped herself around his limbs – continues on. |
3 He is my father, though he dropped into an early grave, to shatter any illusion of his possible protection. All we could do was keep a grip on her. His legacy was fear as we barely survived his abrupt departure. | 4 My basic plot of dying dramatically and young, like mother, took a paradigm shift and I got a pension, after I saw old age might be for me, if I followed him. |
5 Finally, he cannot come at me. A battle ends as he lies, formally dressed, in a cheaper coffin than he’d expect. With him dead (and I have carefully checked) there will be no more panic at his voice on the phone, or his writing on an envelope. | 6 He was the centre of family life. When he dropped with an aneurysm, some force sent us spiralling apart, left to watch her desperate loss, unable to make it right. We were to carry on for her, behaving as if it hadn’t also happened to us. Father wasn’t there to help. |
7 What can be said on the matter, now he is dead? He was there and in my genes before I had any words. They told me the first thing I said was “dadda”. | 8 He is dead, his grave dug straight and deep, dug for him who worked hard on his garden and that less regular hole, where he intended to enjoy the frog spawn. We gathered at his grave, and then around the pond he warned “might kill him”. Marvelling at the energy “for his age”, afraid of its depletion from our lives; fearful, also, of that coffin left deep in soil. |
9 I don’t have much respect for men. He was mild and decent but mother remained the force to reckon with. Trying to keep her content was his goal and, finally, he succeeded by leaving her an unchecked widow with a tidy version of all-loving husband. | 10 I weep for him, though he was weak and his grip on life gave out too soon. I cry over his dying, which crushed that tiny space he made for me outside her deadly control and beliefs. After his death there could only be tight allegiance to her. |
11 I am his daughter and, though past fifty, still say I won’t survive his dying. My sense of myself is locked into being that child he must come back to adore and rescue. | 12 What he was slips from me like silken petticoats. It’s harder to catch than a vivid dream in the bright light of morning. I can’t quite believe it can so readily vanish, and have no idea what to say at his memorial. |
13 With him I was never flesh to flesh. I only expect intermittent, brief bursts of connection to him, dead or alive. It never occurred to me there could be more. It’s with mother I hunger and feel whatever there is, is insufficient. | 14 I readily claim “he was there for me,” though suspect that’s shadow play. It still feels the same, though he’s dead, as when I’d say “my dad is there when I need him”. Not that he’d listen carefully, or make much of my concerns, or that I’d have wanted him looking too closely. |
15 While other deaths recede with time, his remains one I cannot stomach. Perhaps too many expectations were gone with him. The fact that it was a faulty heart and we hadn’t known made it likely my place in it was also broken. There seemed to be just questions, where there’d been an unpuzzling dad. | 16 In twenty years since his death I see something of what he held for me. After my place as his child began to unravel there was a gentle liberation. His death loosened threads, invisible till then. |
17 I have to watch him dying too slowly. With his old life gone, he’s quite undermined, with no appetite for making any effort. His hopelessness at growing old, as if he didn’t deserve it, sucks me in and I’m unsure whether I’ll sink with him. | 18 I am his daughter and have no idea what that might mean. He took me on outings and after he died his friends said he adored me. He did not deliberately hang lead curtains in my head. I stopped eating and felt bewildered but could make little of his early death. He didn’t expect to be wiped out. I live ever ready for it. |
19 The mysterious shape of what might be me was attached to his endurance. I wonder if it was weak to have relied on his rocky surface. He is dead and I now flounder in uncertainties. | 20 He was the ocean I swam in. When he died, I tried to grasp at him, as if I might be washed away, all at sea without some idea of him to hold. Then I gradually moved out of the state I was in beside him, and find it hard now to believe those who have much to say about fathers. |
21 He has become like the local ruin, with uneven stone, open to clear sky, yet sufficient remains to dignify a past. Now he is fixed and can no longer surprise, his function reduced to formal grandeur. | 22 We were a secret before that funeral. I never minded till mother did; it was as if he came back, like a travelling salesman, for celebration on Monday and Tuesday. I drew pictures, mother picked flowers and there was buoyancy. She had the best – a delighted lover – his wife had tired, bourgeois claims. Then it changed – the buzz of attraction shrank after my brother’s difficult birth. Mother grew jealous, wanting more from him. By the time his heart gave out no one was satisfied. |
23 He left a life to celebrate, after a treasured goodbye. He died before indignity overcame him and I long to bequeath the same for my children. | 24 He was kept busy with mother’s every worry. His task was taking care of whatever upset her. His anger was stirred if we didn’t do as she wanted. Now he has failed utterly to spare her and us. He is the cause of the trouble, as he slowly dies in hospital, with Mother crying she will not be able to bear it. |
25 How can I go back to truly recall that earlier incomprehension, which brought me in to therapy. When I could not suffer his total defeat, but held myself tight with indignation, that my father should die like the dog I’d seen hit by a car. | 26 He much preferred young boy scouts to any girl or his wife. He was active outside our house but as tense indoors as I remain. Though seeking ease, now he is dead, I can’t find peace with myself or him. |
27 She kept centre stage and left him in the wings. She spoke for him. Home and children were her show. He even died right out of sight. She carries on much as before, a confident intermediary, speaking in his name while he remains a blur to me. | 28 He betrayed the care he promised. Driven by demons of his own and the need for drink, he was inappropriate, inconsistent and set on self destruction. Fully destroyed he could become fixed as the one I loved and clung to. |
29 It seemed my nest relied on him for its sturdy tree. I was terrified he might die through both my pregnancies. He did soon after my second child arrived, and it was surprising to realise that whatever held up my life continued to do so. | 30 When I dropped into this cruel, strange world, he caught me up to hold me away from the worst, keeping it from view. Then he was the one to show there is no escaping it. He screamed for his mother as he died. |
• • •
Afterword
The range of things said shows the particularity of tangles these women found themselves in, though we are all subject to a prevailing culture.
In our practice we attend to the specificity of what is said, and how and when it is said. We make sense by taking into account the full context from which the speaker comes, including the family, social and racial context. [D9], [D10] and [D30] are all daughters of immigrant fathers, and many women included here are the first generation in Britain. It also became noticeable how many of the women who were most emphatic, either in their claims and disappointments, or in finding their fathers too much, were the eldest in the family.
Although I have seen in therapy a number of women who were raised as illegitimate and more who were adopted, so far I have not worked with girls raised by same sex couples, or from anonymous sperm donors.
This compilation does not reflect the shift in understanding which happens during the process of meeting regularly over time. Some women arrived with a fixed, closed account [A10] [B15]. Others did not recognise the contradictions in what they were saying. Once their words are being heard and called into question the women who come to therapy begin listening more carefully to themselves. [A18] and [B11] risked saying something aloud, then could give it more consideration.
These vignettes don’t show the atmosphere in the room, or the difficulty of facing what was once expected or wanted, or women find themselves still demanding, as their due from fathers. (If facing things was easy, few would pay to come to a therapist.)
Language gives us many tricks to play to avoid accepting the way things are [E2], especially the difficult things, which include the inevitability of disillusionment [B18] and of being an ordinary mortal who must die [A18]. Most of us keep some childhood expectations of fathers [F11], while also growing into more sophisticated ideas. It is necessarily an emotional matter and there is pain involved in letting go an illusion that once felt necessary.
Even harsh pictures of themselves or their fathers may be an attempt at protection from what is feared, whether panic that life will be too much [D29] or trepidation that any close attention must confirm a conviction of being unlovable [E1].
Many expectations are replayed in the consulting room. [A12] was sure she would be rejected, [A14] often dreamt of my throwing her out because she wasn’t worth any attention, [D30] was certain I must be criticising her no matter what I said, and [F5] was in despair that I would take her over, as there was no hope of space for mutual exchange.
Others idealised the therapist out of longing for a loving understanding they felt to be lacking but believed must be somewhere.
Each one of these women struggled to make more sense of false pictures they came with, as they tried to see themselves more clearly and to accept the pain of what had already been their lot, long before they came to therapy.
• • •