ABSTRACT
Parents who fear danger in irrational ways combine many of the distortions described in previous chapters and add to them one crucial transformation. Because they rely on erroneous information generated during exposure to danger (usually in early childhood), these parents are confused about the current presence and source of danger. Because the threat is not real, it cannot be disarmed; consequently, the parents’ efforts to protect themselves and their children cannot relieve their perception of threat. Such parents take repeated extreme and irrational protective measures, (e.g., repetitive actions, excessive cleansing, bizarre forms of punishment) on behalf of themselves and their children. These procedures and the images that often elicit them operate outside conscious and reflective awareness. In many cases, the parents’ self-protective response is so primed that it occurs in widely disparate situations. The semantic basis for these procedural actions is often erroneous belief in either the parents’ inherently bad (or evil) nature or their continuing vulnerability to others’ vengefulness. Although these beliefs are irrational, in childhood they may have created the perception, however slim, that the procedures could control the danger.
