To be on the safe side, I’m going to go home tonight and drink martinis until I fall asleep on the couch – for the kids.

After the death of Eddie, Lincoln tells his law partner that he is running for congress because it hurts to bad to go home and walk through the same rooms. He tells and audience that if they don’t elect him it won’t hurt so bad because he know worse pain. The theory is that death of a child is almost liberating in some perverted way because nothing can hurt worse and so fear of losing and other pride factors are nullified. Amazing stuff.

And thanks for the Upstairs site. Fun stuff.

I assume the theme to which you refer is “……….childhood family dysfunctions, are what fuel the power drives of children when they become adults………..”.

Why I used this phrase were my memories of the many books I’ve read of the lives of famous people, most of whom had to battle adversities while growing up, and somehow were able to transcend them.

Many famous people had to deal with the deaths of siblings – a not unusual happening until relatively recently. It doesn’t require too much imagination to see how traumatic the death of a sibling must be to a sensitive surviving sibling.

A quite recent president who had to deal emotionally with the deaths of siblings was Richard Nixon, who lost two brothers before he was 21.

George W Bush had a younger sister die, which supposedly was the genesis of many of his psychological problems, particularly his sadism.

Ronald Reagan’s father was an alcoholic.

As for novelists, Scott Fitzgerald was an alcoholic, a syndrome associated with many writers.

Ernest Hemingway, also a heavy drinker, committed suicide by shooting himself, the result of severe depression. Hemingway’s father also committed suicide by shooting himself. And Hemingway had two siblings who committed suicide. Talk about a dysfunctional family.

Beethoven’s father was an alcoholic, and his mother died of TB when Ludwig was 16.

Study the lives of anyone who has become famous, and it seems, for all intents and purposes, they all had difficult childhoods to a greater or lesser extent.

Some psychologists, notably John Bradshaw, concentrate on the family as a unit, rather than the individual, since our family is the most important influence in who we become.

Bradshaw used the term “homeostasis” to describe how a family achieves balance. Most families achieve it neurotically, through its individual members assuming the roles in it, which, ideally, they should not assume. eg a child or mother becoming the role of father. A son becoming the husband (metaphorically of course).

Bradshaw also noted in many families, one of the children is an especially high achiever, to balance the family, all of whose other members are psychological basket cases. Thus homeostasis is achieved.

For what it’s worth, I’ve known people who were outstanding achievers, but whose parents and siblings were all alcoholics, or chronic welfare cases.

Concerning the movers and shakers in our world, what roles did they play in the families they grew up in? Were they predominantly the sons or daughters who, through their abnormal drive for excellence, enabled their families to achieve homeostasis?

The same might go also for all the great artists, poets, novelists, composers, and anyone who has left large footprints in history.

Are there any of them, whether famous presidents or great artists, who had wondrously happy and secure childhoods, bathed unceasingly in love by uxorious mothers and fathers?

Freud said, in so many words, that Civilization was the sum total of its discontents – meaning, I suppose, its neuroses. So, would anything marvellous ever have been done, or created, if everyone was always happy, happy,happy?