The emotion can be all-consuming and destructive, as therapists see only too often. But learning from your mistakes has the power to improve the future
There was once a banker in his 50s who had worked seven days a week for 25 years and become a very wealthy man. Then, at the apex of his career, he looked around him and realised that he had entirely neglected his family; as a result, his family had rejected him. The regret was overwhelming, and came out in panic attacks every Sunday. Would this man be able to find a way out of this cruel place he had created for himself?
This man was a patient of the psychoanalyst David Morgan, of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, who spent several years helping him explore what had compelled him to work so hard and to ignore his children (he has been anonymised and gave Morgan permission to use his case). It became clear that this need to become richer than everyone else had roots in his very early childhood, when he watched his parents nearly starve to death during the 1980s miners’ strike. He had, unconsciously, repeated this by impoverishing his children by not being there for them, in turn impoverishing himself of these loving relationships, in his efforts to overcome the traumatic poverty of his childhood.
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