But even if our parents were warm and full of praise, there might still be a problem. It might be that it was the buffeting and indifference of the wider world (starting with the schoolyard) that was intolerable after all the early years of adulation at home. One might have emerged from familial warmth and been mortally hurt that strangers were not as kind and understanding as one had come to expect. The crushing experience of humiliation might even have been vicarious: one’s mother being rudely dismissed by a waiter; one’s father standing awkwardly alone.
