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Points of View 59
between children and parents. Foremost among these, and the one about which A.T. complained the most during therapy, was her feeling of a lack of unconditional love and that parental love and attention were earned by intellectual performance. For the most part, this was fine with her, as she was innately bright and could readily win the affection of her parents by mental quickness. But the belief that self-worth is dependent upon intellectual performance was to cause her some grief later in life—and during treatment, when her intellectual performance wasn’t rewarded.
Doubting the existence of unconditional love, she developed a heightened need to control situations by means of her intellectual performance, to assure herself that she was loved. Intellectual control brought a sense of well-being.
Of course it is always nice to excel and feel in control, but A.T. needed this sense of control to a degree that limited her openness. Not to feel it meant experiencing the possibility of being unloved. In therapy, when her intellectual responses were not rewarded, she became threatened and tried to regain mastery by an exaggerated use of her intellect. She would overly explain and discuss to impress me or hide from feelings, and quickly forgot painful emotions from one session to another.
Also remarkable was her lack of memory for early childhood and adolescence. She wondered why she had less recall of these memories than did her peers, and began to see how she hid from her own feelings of anger and sexuality lest she feel out of intellectual control and hence experience awkwardness and vulnerability. But in defending against these feelings she kept herself distant from other important feelings as well—deep feelings of love for her parents and others, as well as deep spiritual impulses. Now she wanted to overcome these barriers and seemed willing to risk the pain to do so.
THE DREAM
A.T. had learned of Sai Baba from reading my first book, given to her by a friend prior to moving to San Diego. Even though we hadn’t discussed Sai Baba much, early in the treatment she expressed the wish that he would help her find deeper meaning in life. Soon after verbalizing this she had the following dream.


































































































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