"We always talk about ... my parents ... or our parents. And it's actually a very difficult thing to work out what our fantasies are here about the sense in which we think we possess our parents, because one of the most traumatic and evident things about being a child is that we don't possess our parents. They are not yours. They seem to go off into all sorts of other things and they belong to each other. And they belong to their own parents. [...] So you 've never actually owned your parents. You never possessed them but you may have needed the illusion that you did in order to get yourself to the point of being able to bear the fact that you don't."

from:
Adam Phillips - On losing and being lost again
   • Adam Phillips - On Losing And Being L...  

#snippet