Who would study psychology if they didn't have some kind of problem?

Chapter 547 Childhood Trauma
The psychoanalytic school is the first systematic and theoretically supported school of thought in modern psychological counseling and psychotherapy.

Many of the theories and techniques of this school of thought have been dismantled and reassembled into familiar frameworks in psychological counseling, or even things that are considered "common sense".

This creates a sense of disconnect.

When learners discuss techniques from the psychoanalytic school, they often talk about things like transference analysis, in-depth defense mechanisms, and reconstruction of past experiences—things that seem very basic and don't require much systematic learning; most people who have studied counseling already know some of these.
Or it could be some kind of profound and somewhat mysterious advanced technique like hypnosis, dream interpretation, or subconscious dialogue.

During the consultation just now, Nan Zhuren asked the client to relax and freely imagine the first event that came to mind related to their parents. This was done using the free association technique from psychoanalysis.

A technique from a seemingly very basic school of psychoanalysis.
The Free Association Technique is a core and iconic technique of psychoanalysis. This technique requires the client to relax their conscious control as much as possible, expressing without selection, judgment, or embellishment any thoughts, feelings, images, bodily sensations, memories, or fragments of words that come to mind.

No matter how irrelevant, absurd, embarrassing, painful, or illogical these contents may seem.

Simply put, it means letting visitors "say whatever comes to mind".

It sounds simple, but its deeper function is to understand the structure and dynamics of the subconscious by listening to the client's free associations and looking for fixed patterns, recurring themes, contradictions, emotional changes, pauses, slips of the tongue, etc. in the client's speech.

In practice, this also requires certain skills from the counselor: First, the counselor must help the client relax completely and bypass their defense mechanisms, while paying full attention to the information expressed by the client, including their speaking speed, voice, tone, and emotional expression.

This is both a foundation in consultation and a sophisticated technique.

Right now, the first thing the visitor can freely associate with is their recent dream.

His narrative highlights many key elements, including his father, the kitchen knife, the pot, and the red background.

The intense unease displayed by the visitor during this narration is also a key point worth noting.

Nan Zhuren's gaze swept over every detail of the visitor.

……

The visitor frowned deeply and continued, "In this dream, I was constantly running, and my father was chasing me."

He still uses the title "father," employing this detached term to reduce his emotional involvement.

This can be seen as the visitor's defense mechanism being activated.

This "defense" mechanism has been present in his previous statements.

“I remember I was running really fast at first, and my father couldn’t catch me, but then…” the visitor’s eyes wrinkled, “he just threw the knife at me, and it flew right at my back.”

"Just as the knife was about to strike my back, the scene suddenly blurred again, and everything disappeared."

"Then, it was like a cycle again. I reappeared at the starting point. I ran, he chased; he threw his knife, and everything disappeared before it hit my back..."

Although the visitor was recounting their dream, perhaps because of the passage of time, the details of the dream were typified and simplified.

At the same time, the dream elements provided by the visitors were quite straightforward, with almost no particularly abstract or special imagery.

Therefore, the dream interpretation technique is not needed for the time being.

This recollection of a dream is more like using the technique of "free association" to get the visitor into a state of mind, laying the groundwork for the subsequent narrative.

After recounting his dream, before Nan Zhuren could speak, the visitor opened his eyes and stared at Nan Zhuren.

He forced a stiff smile with the lower half of his face: "Uh... Teacher Nan, I think this dream might be related to some of my past experiences... from my childhood..."

Hearing the visitor's speech become irregular and hesitant, Nan Zhuren nodded and guided the conversation with a question: "Is it also an experience related to your parents? Would you mind telling me about it?"

The visitor already had a desire to confide, but the type of topic and their emotions triggered a bit of "defense."

Guided by Nan Zhuren's supportive remark, the visitor quickly nodded.

—He nodded several times.

It's as if this action is used to repeatedly affirm a certain part of oneself, as if encouraging oneself.

Then I saw the visitor let out a long sigh of relief, his entire back and neck leaning into the sofa.

There are... two things.

The visitor said, “The first thing is when I was very young. It should be in elementary school, but I forget which grade exactly. I think it should be second or third grade, or maybe even earlier. Anyway, it was when I could remember things, but I wasn’t very old.”

The visitor's tone became melancholy: "It must have been some kind of festival at the time. Anyway, there were relatives at home, and we were all eating together."

“In my rural area, there is a tradition of gathering everyone together during festivals or on the birthdays of the elderly. To put it nicely, it’s called ‘holding a banquet’.”

“That time it was my family’s banquet, and we borrowed a big red round table from my uncle’s house and invited about ten close relatives to come and eat.”

The visitor pursed his lips: "It was supposed to be a pleasant evening."

At this point, the visitor sighed deeply again, then pursed his lips more forcefully, lifting his cheeks to force a stiff smile.

It seems that the body instinctively tries to use facial expressions to dilute the inner emotions.

"But I must have been naughty that day. Maybe I made some unreasonable request, or maybe I was just fooling around and got scolded... I can't remember the specific reason."

The visitor's gaze became distant, as if trying to see something that wasn't in front of him: "Anyway, I was scolded by my family, and then I cried, and I kept crying and crying, I couldn't stop crying."

“My father hates it when I cry. It gets him upset when I cry. So usually when I cry, he scolds me and threatens to hit me if I cry again. I’m very afraid of pain, so usually at this time, I will cover my mouth and then gradually stop crying.”

"But that day, well, that day, I cried so hard. No matter how much my father scolded me, I couldn't stop crying. There were so many relatives in the family, so he couldn't hit me. He would pinch me a couple of times or slap me a couple of times, but I just cried even harder."

"And that only made him more annoyed."

The visitor's gaze was fixed on something ahead, where he was not making eye contact with Nan Zhuren, as if he had seen something: "I remember everyone was gathered around the round table, and my relatives were joking with me, probably trying to cheer me up. But I kept crying, so my father's face got worse and worse."

"He first cursed at me a few more times, then suddenly said to me, 'Why are you crying? Today is a good day, who are you crying for?'"

The visitor is recounting someone else's words, but his tone is very flat, as if he is reading a story or telling someone else's experience.

“I kept crying.” “Then my father said, ‘Why are you crying so hard? Has someone in your family died? Stop crying!’”

"I kept crying, and even cried harder."

At this point, the visitor paused, then gritted his teeth.

"Then, my father seemed to have finally had enough and said to me, 'Fine, since you're going to act like this at a funeral, then let someone in the family really die today.'"

"He ran to the kitchen, pulled out a cleaver, and charged at me."

The visitor closed his eyes, frowned deeply, and pulled his cheeks up again.

Then he opened his eyes again, as if he had been startled awake: "Then that day there were a lot of people in my family, and all the relatives rushed up to stop him, um."

He snapped out of his reverie and even joked with Nan Zhuren, "Of course he was stopped, otherwise I wouldn't be sitting here today."

Nan Zhuren did not smile, but instead frowned, lowered his eyes, and nodded gently.

"He was stopped, but he kept struggling to break free from his relatives, and kept waving the kitchen knife at me, as if he wouldn't give up until he got what he wanted..."

The visitor continued, "Looking back now, I don't think my father really intended to do anything to me. After all, with so many relatives in the family, he must have known that others would stop him. It's more likely that I embarrassed him, and he wanted to scare me into stopping me from crying."

“But… um.” The visitor cleared his throat and adjusted his posture. “I just can’t forget this, I can’t forget this scene, and… that kitchen knife.”

……

There was a moment of silence in the consultation room.

There was no more sound.

Clearly, the visitor has completed a partial narrative of the stage.

Nan Zhuren did not speak rashly.

He waited for a couple of breaths without responding, to see if the visitor had anything else to say.

“That’s the first thing,” the visitor quickly added, “and there’s a second thing.”

"The second thing was when I was a little older—but not too much older, probably around the third grade of elementary school."

"I remember that my mother gave me a dollar that day."

The visitor explained, “My family wasn’t well-off when I was a child, so I didn’t have any pocket money. But that day, I don’t know what happened to my mother, she suddenly gave me a dollar, but I can’t remember the details.”

"Anyway, later my mother went out and my father came in. He suddenly found this dollar on me. Then he snatched the dollar and, in that kind of way..." the visitor gestured, "like he was teasing a child by lifting it up high, and asked me where this dollar came from, where I found it."

“But I didn’t cooperate with him. I was probably angry at the time. I didn’t say anything and kept trying to grab that dollar.”

“My father was smiling at first, but after I silently snatched it for a while, he suddenly got angry.”

“There’s a river behind my house. At that time, my father suddenly grabbed my leg with one hand and lifted me up, like this…” The visitor then gestured a gesture, “hanging me upside down over that river.”

"He asked me where that dollar came from, and whether I stole it. He told me to tell him quickly, or he would throw me into the river."

The visitor forced a smile again: "But at that time, I was so scared that I couldn't speak. I was hanging upside down over the river, looking at the dirty water, and everyone in my eyes was upside down."

"I started crying again, and I kept crying without answering his questions."

“Children love to cry, at least I do. I cried so loudly that it attracted people from both sides of the strait, and later it even attracted my mother.”

My mother gave me a dollar, which my father misunderstood as stolen. Now that my mother has arrived, the misunderstanding should theoretically be cleared up.

However, the story doesn't seem to unfold in such a straightforward manner.

“My mother explained to my father, but he still wouldn’t let me down. He was still very angry. He questioned me, asking why I hadn’t explained it to him clearly when I hadn’t stolen it.”

“I couldn’t speak, I just cried. My mother first tried to persuade my father, but when she found that she couldn’t persuade him, she also started to get angry and said to me, ‘Zhihao, don’t be afraid, you can swim anyway, it’s okay if you fall into the river.’”

……

The visitor suddenly laughed again, this time not a forced laugh, but a genuine "pfft" laugh.

The visitor covered his forehead and said, "But back then I only learned to swim a little bit. I could only splash around in the water with a water ladle or a plastic bucket. In fact, I still haven't learned to swim, and I've even forgotten how to splash around."

That concludes my recollection of the second experience.

The visitor said, "Didn't I mention before that I had gone for psychological counseling? I also told my counselor about these two things."

The visitor gently shook his head: "He told me that these complaints about my parents are just because I'm not old enough. When I'm older and become a parent myself, I'll let go of them. As for now, I can only let time heal the wounds."

"If I really want to feel better and achieve emotional reconciliation, he recommended that I talk to my parents and tell them my thoughts."

Nan Zhuren waited for a while, and saw that the visitor suddenly shut his mouth and did not continue speaking.

So he tried to guide the conversation: "Did you talk to your parents?"

The visitor did not react immediately.

After waiting for two breaths, he suddenly chuckled, then forced a smile by lifting his cheeks.

Then he chuckled, as if he had thought of something very interesting.

He stared intently at the coffee table in front of him, nodding slowly and repeatedly.

“I told them.”

"Then... they told me that this never happened, or maybe I remembered it wrong."

(End of this chapter)