It's all good.

Go ahead.

So I think that the frightened child is the child that feels... that it's because of them.

Because when parents are aggressive, A, the child on their own thinks that I made my parents so angry.

And sometimes parents also blame them.

In Zoe's story in Come Closer, the first chapter, it's clear that her mother is telling her again and again, why are you making him so angry? Why are you making him so angry? So we see how the mother and the father work as a system.

And that system prioritizes the family.

I relate to both deeply.

That

we think we're too much, we're too loud, too intense, too needy.

And that things happen because of us.

And that's where you were talking about the fervor.

It could be, and often it is a defense against helplessness or chaos or a way to manage some family dysfunction.

And for the guilty child...

The guilty child, a lot of their dynamic is that they can't hold two people in mind often.

Right.

Like, o- once we've got a sense of who's, uh, often subconsciously grabbing the steering wheel or grabbing the mic in our mind, um, how do we manage this inner child?

So you see, what I'm saying in the book is that each child has its unique things.

Like for example, right, the, the work with, of the frightened child, not every child, I mean, every child needs safety, right? That's obvious.

But I think that the, the frightened child as an adult needs to feel safe and struggles with not feeling safe.

And so, for example, the frightened child is more ambivalent about closeness.

Uh, because if I look at infant research and we see those infants, especially those who are afraid of the parents, right, not necessarily the emotional inheritance piece, those are infants that in infant observation you see them running towards and away, towards and away, and they are very a afraid of ambivalent, you know.

And what you see later in life is that these children become threatened by closeness, but also upset by distance.

You're-- so you're no longer at war with reality, and then you can change." But it's a little bit of a paradox until you, like, a-accept yourself as you are, then, uh, th-then you can't change.

Um, this is j- this is real stuff, and I wonder if you could define that just a little bit more for us as we, as, before we splice it out.

Yeah.

So the wounded child represents a real psychological, we call it in psychoanalysis, self-state.

So it's a part of us that was injured early in life, and it, the self is not one unitary self, and it's exactly what we're gonna talk about.

It's, it's multiple.

We are different selves, and we're different w- with every different person.

I'm different with my children.

Mm-hmm

Mm-hmm

... on the therapeutic, uh, chair as the therapist, and get into my head when I sit with patients, become the patients as well, identify with what's happening in the room, and be part of that really, honestly very, very precious process of unpacking our lives and ourselves.

So the way I decided to do it is really take six different childhood wounds that I identify in my practice and, and, and tell people's stories in a very...

You know, I disguise the people.

I, I fictionalize some of it, and of course with the patient's permission, and my patients read these stories and sometimes help me even disguise their stories.

But the, the, I [laughs] you saw that, that I was saying that in the...

They help me, they help me give them the pseudonym.

Sure.

But give our listeners a little idea of what this approach is about, because I think it's very much a part of the book and this and examining things in this way.

Right, I think that in general psychoanalysis and especially contemporary psychoanalysis looks at everything that is under the surface, the unconscious.

So for example, I think a lot of what we see when we interact with people in the world is not actually how they feel but how they defend themselves from that feeling.

So for a few examples that I could give, right? It's like if you, people who are afraid, I have the frightened child in the book.

The frightened child doesn't walk in the world feeling conscious fear.

they might be more angry or they might be more avoidant or they would do anything that is either a defense or an adaptation to the underneath fear.

So what I'm looking for as an analyst is to get in touch with the fear.

Can you share a little bit about that story? It was so

But the question that I always ask, I like to ask is what, to the degree you can understand your motivations, motivated the writing? of this book?

You know, I think it's almost like going back home because as you mentioned, the Enigma of Desire, those are the topics that I started writing about probably 25 years ago, slowly publishing articles.

And I have to tell you, I think that asking myself, why did I write about sexuality? I realized that when I moved to New York, I started writing in English.

And my parents do not read English.

And it gave me so much freedom.

I felt like I could be anything I want.

I can write about anything I want, especially where I grew up.

And I'm wondering, could you say like- This is a book about that you're, you've,

Yeah

... right? So there is something very painful for the ashamed child, because the ashamed child is deeply, deeply afraid of rejection, right? Because deep inside, we feel we're not worthy, and the ashamed child, also another characteristic of the ashamed child that I, that I describe, uh, in that chapter of David, that David is looking for w- what we call the one, right? The best person, the person that is, like, amazing, right? And of course, very, and, and f- one, in some ways, the, the emotional dynamic underneath is that in attempts to feel worthy, by associating yourself with someone who you perceive as special.

[laughs]

Uh, which is a [laughs]...

Here we go, and tell me if you identify with that.

The chosen child is, uh, enmeshed when one, with one parent.

It's, as you said, it's the child who people say, "What, what, you have such a, your mother loves you so much." And that's true.

Your mother or your father, it's not gendered.

Yeah

... expectation that when they grow up and in the transition from being a boy to being a man, y- And for some people it's even when they're boys they get this message that you should- Because you're a boy, you're supposed to be a certain way.

And but definitely as you grow up, you're supposed to adopt those, uh, gender roles that are really traumatic and also e- really erase men, you know? And I f- I see that-

Mm-hmm.

And I think that is the essence of safety, when one does not look at the other and say, "You did that to me.

I'm like that because you just, just touched me that way, or you just did that way." Right? So the ownership of our own wounds is, in my mind, the first step in s- in taking the other off the hook and helping the other be the good object.

... your children and to other generations after?

You know, I'm thinking about that.

There are two ways of transmitting trauma.

One of them I call the not enoughness, which is what we said before.

The, the secrets, the, the silences which we don't talk about, and that was part of our legacy, right, of the history, uh, the Holocaust.

And in the book, I call that the ghosts, the gap that are left in our psyche by the secrets of others.

And then there is another form, which I term the too muchness.

But, but what else?