Anodyne
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
 
More shock-of-recognition, this time via Marya Hornbacher's splendid memoir Wasted:

"In the therapy charts, my parents are quoted as saying that they felt a need to 'scale down my expectations.' They apparently mentioned, not once but four times in a single session, plans I made when I was three for a birthday party that was, admittedly, a bit elaborate. Their 'scaling down' of my expectations, which seemed too me more like an abiding doubt in my ability to do so much as blow my nose properly, would continue from early childhood until, oh, last year. It had an interesting effect: My behavior became even more grandiose, while I myself became progressively less certain that I could accomplish even simple tasks, let alone achieve significant success. My parents, I sense, thought I was a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Who knows? Maybe they were right. They say, in the charts, fears, nightmares, too much fantasy."
- posted by cjb @ 9:43 AM


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