My books have always dealt with the relationship between the child or adolescent and the adult or adults who live in and dominate the young person's portrait of self. In later years that child, become an adult, may be able to see that the first portrait was as much created by the prejudices, fears, anxieties and desires within the adult as within the child. But at the time the portrait was being painted—"You're lazy, you're stupid, you're untidy, you start well but you never finish, you're too …" (you can add anything to that)—they became the strong first strokes that created a self-image that the child will never wholly lose. He may use it intelligently, he may battle against it, he may suffer from self hatred, he may accept it and withdraw, he may reject it and fight the world—but it's there, like the monster over...