ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the role of personal development, as experienced on a person-centred training course, as a way in which complex emotional effects of perceived parental rejection might be processed. Perceived parental rejection in childhood is a topic of interest to the author based on personal experience. In contrast, perceived maternal rejection, whereby the mother is experienced as a hostile force in the environment, can have devastating effects on the child’s emotional development. Specifically, perceived parental rejection in childhood is acknowledged as a causal factor of adolescent and adult aggression, hostility, dependent-type behaviour, diminished self-esteem and self-adequacy, heightened feelings of anxiety and insecurity and difficulties in relation to self and others, manifesting in feelings that are “intensely painful”. Rejected children can be extremely wary of forming relationships with others. Erikson ascribes the ability to trust and form relationships, to the successful meeting of a child’s needs in infancy.
