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Good Reading : August 2009
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s BOOKBITE death by teenager In this amusing extract the author asks us to consider what came first: the parent power trip or the teen petulance? by Sonia Neale A ccording to Therapy World, there’s a phenomenon called Transference. This is where you relate to other people, especially therapists, through the murky distorted lens of repressed childhood experience. That is, psychologists believe that current events in your life are hard-driven by how your parents dragged you up, kicking and screaming from the womb to the tomb. There’s negative, positive, idealising and devaluing transference, and, if you stay in therapy long enough, you not only get to experience them all – sometimes in one session – but you can also end up with more issues with your therapist than you do with your parents. Being an adult guest in my parents’ home evokes all sorts of transferences. A year or so ago I stayed overnight with them. In the morning I decided to boil an egg for breakfast, whereby my father subsequently knocked over expensive antique furniture, in his paternal fervour to inform my inadequate self that I was doing it all wrong. I needed to do it the right way. His way. Apparently I can’t cook an egg to save my life. I can whip up a three-course gourmet dinner for ten, but boiling something that comes from a chook’s bum requires the exasperated intervention of Dear Old Dad. No wonder therapy appears the fastest growing profession in the Yellow Pages. I stayed overnight again when I dropped the boys off for the last week of the school holidays. We went for a walk to the local shops and I informed Dad I wanted to buy some ice-cream. He told me I couldn’t have any. According to Dad I’m never too old be under his calloused parental thumb. I told him that, given my age, he had no control over whether I bought ice-cream, be it banana ripple or bubblegum flavoured – even if it was minus five degrees outside and several brass monkeys were in severe distress. I think I may even have stamped my foot for emphasis. Later, as I served up my illicit bounty, he retaliated in an immature way by putting the needle on Dean Martin’s Greatest Hits at full volume, rather like the way I disturb my children’s sensibilities by blasting out Suzi Quatro’s or The Sweet’s greatest hits (they run out of the room, ears bleeding, screaming in agony. I often wonder what they will be telling their therapist in ten years’ time). You can choose your therapist, but you can’t choose your family. Sonia Neale is 47, lives in an ordinary street in a ordinary suburb, with an extraordinary family. She has two cats, one dog, one husband and three children. She attends university part-time, studying psychology. This, along with reading books, is her passion. She alternates between wishing her kids would leave home and hoping they will stay with her forever. Her role model is her therapist, who led her through both post-natal and garden-variety depression. Death by Teenager by Sonia Neale is published by ABC Books, rrp $24.95. Meet Davitt Award-winning KATHRYN FOX Tracy Chevalier, snake stones and devil’s toenails Smallpox, Syphillus and Salvation Our Canadian author series begins A life in stanzas: Tasmanian poet Karen Knight on sale 26 August ORDER YOUR COPY NOW! NEXT ISSUE
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