ABSTRACT

This chapter describes how another misunderstanding of psychoanalysis in relation to child rearing is manifested by parents who "interpret" instead of reacting normally to their children. It addresses a moving and profound way many of the issues that torment and confuse the contemporary parent. The chapter discusses how that attitude, on the contrary, leads to an increase in guilt, confusion, and low self-esteem in children, and he advocated instead the principle of "limits being love." Consequence of this kind of misunderstanding is to be seen in the deformities of conscience that children develop who were brought up by excessively permissive nonauthoritarian parents. The chapter also describes how the excessively permissive parent does not realize thatone of the most important aspects of maturing, in fact one of the most crucial signs of being an adult, is the capacity to bear tension, to be able to wait or postpone.