The Re-Past

I feel like I've been living my whole life in a regressive direction, playing the role of Leonard Shengold's boy-with-the-squashed-fruit. Playing the role to great acclaim, I might add. My whole "campaign" is a fuss over a triviality: a fuss over nothing. Yet, I can't give it up. I revel in my "life at the dinner table." That dinner is repeated again and again, with endless variations; my life at the dinner table is quite literally a "re-past."

Let me clarify the butter.

Leonard Shengold speaks of a male patient who described the following as a "typical event": The father (whom Shengold characterizes as "a domestic Hitler") entered the dining room where the table was set for the family meal. Beside each plate was a fresh piece of fruit--the dessert. The man made a complete round of the table, stopping at every chair to reach out and squeeze to a pulp every piece of fruit except his own. The older children and the intimidated mother, used to such happenings, said nothing. But the youngest, a five-year-old boy, cried when he saw the mangled banana at his plate. The father then turned on him viciously, demanding that he be quiet--how dare he make such a fuss about a banana?

Why did the boy make such a fuss about the banana? Why do I make such a fuss about a job termination? Maybe because it is for me what Dr. Shengold would call a "prototypal instance." I see reflected in this employment situation a repetition of my childhood and its internalized consequences.