No one ever recovers from the sadomasochism of their childhood.

We may not want to think of the relations between parents and children as power relations.

Indeed, it may sound like a perversion of parenting to do so,

and we don't want to think of parents and children being in any way sexually gratified

by their status in relation to each other.

But, to put it as cutely as possible,

feeling big always depends on someone else being made to feel small. When your child zooms around the

house saying he's a superhero, you can either remind him that he's actually a little boy,

or you can indicate one way or another that you're impressed. When your child falls over, you can get crossed with her

for not looking at where she's going, or you can comfort her in an affectionate way. These aren't

pictures of the bad and good parents so much as responses or states of mind that every parent is

capable of. In identifying with the child, in imagining his strength and vulnerability, we join him in something.

In disidentifying, we separate him out. If you feel for your child when she falls over, you feel it in your body.

If you scold her, you're exempt. One is the sadomasochistic solution, the pleasure, the excitement is in correcting the child, and one is not.

One response assumes a likeness between you and the child, the other asserts a difference, an innate superiority.

One has to do with solidarity, the other is punishing.

It's the difference between wanting to be right, wanting to win an argument,

and wanting to be kind. Or the difference between two types of authority. One is in essence

humiliating and breeds resentment, one is reassuring and makes a bond. Is there a solution then a way to

stop people wanting to humiliate each other?

We know that some people's psychic survival, everybody's psychic survival some of the time,

depends on their capacity to humiliate others, to make others experience what they have suffered,

...