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"You should be ashamed to do a trick like this to Tom and me after all we have
done for you all these years." I asked my friend what she had done to bring
down this torrent of wrath. She told me "What I have done is not to invite
Tom and his wife to stay with us for Christmas which we have always done for
the last 26 years. We have good reasons for wishing to be a little quieter this
Christmas and I cannot do with visitors. For years Tom and his wife have come
at Christmas time; the length of their stay has increased each year until it is
now always between three weeks and a month. They close their house and
come to stay with us; they accept our hospitality and never contribute a thing
in return; they even criticise the food we provide and the quality of the occasional
bottle of sherry in the sideboard. Now because we do not invite them this
year I get this torrent of abuse."
I thought for a minute about this situation. Here was a couple who for
26 years had accepted hospitality every Christmas; they must have saved many
pounds each year in housekeeping expenses. I knew my friend provided
generous fare. Why was it then that, instead of gratitude for all that had been
done, Tom's wife felt the very reverse and sent a stinging letter deliberately
intended to hurt. The real truth, which I explained to my friend, was that
Tom's wife felt the bitter pangs caused by rejection from the social group which
she and Tom always found pleasant and stimulating—the people coming to
the brother's house—and whose company they valued and enjoyed. We all
feel deeply hurt when, either in reality or in imagination, we feel rejected by
any social group, be it only one or two persons, and more especially and deeply
when the rejection comes from loved ones.
Neurotic Behaviour.
Yet Tom's wife was behaving unrealistically. She had really no right to
expect to be invited every Christmas. The adult attitude would be one of
gratitude and pleasure and even surprise at having had the invitation continued
so long; she could not expect it to go on for ever. Yet she was behaving as a
toddler behaves when it is thwarted of its desires—by rage, temper, screaming
and sadistic injury to a loved one. The anxiety engendered by the fancied
rejection made her act with neurotic conduct. Why this was so I could not say;
but it was no doubt due to experiences in her earlier life. All of us are what we
are today mainly by reason of what we were and what our experiences were in
the past. The explanation of our conduct may even be traced to babyhood.
The Rejected Child.
I have before me the file of a child who has come to the notice of the health
department because of special conduct difficulties—one of many such; she is
Marjory Stoll (this is not her real name), aged seven. At the time of her birth
her mother was an unmarried girl of 17 and her father a middle-aged married
man. The man left his wife and family, proceeded to set up a second home as
best he could and took in the girl and her baby to live with him. This arrangement
proved to be hopeless; they were wholly unsuited to each other, of widely
separated ages, of quite different tastes and interests; from a situation of mutual
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