An article in the Times, Monday 29th December by Polly Vernon asked "Are the Peaty-Ramsay and Beckham feuds the fault of ‘Generation Therapy'?". As a therapist myself, I baulk at this glib phrase but I also have to recognise that it embodies a
degree of truth. The last 70 years have seen a rise in the understanding of the importance of good parenting, sound attachments with a safe environment where a child’s needs for attention and protection are met. Sadly these requirements are often not met and the consequences are seen in mental health problems and distress.

Dr Alice Miller, a Swiss psychoanalyst wrote a huge bestseller in the 1980s called ‘The Drama of the Gifted Child’. She berated psychoanalysis, the most significant psychotherapeutic approach at the time, as protecting the parent. The traditional
Freudian belief that children are born with innate complexes such at the Oedipus complex or Death Instinct completely underestimated the importance of good child rearing. In fact, this approach was already being modified by the time Miller wrote her book with the work of analysts like Bowlby and Winnicott. However, blaming the parents for mental health issues became the norm. Dr. R. D. Laing even went so far as to blame mixed messaging from mothers as a root cause of schizophrenia.

However, the work of those challenging traditional Freudian therapy did make for changes in how we treat children in schools, hospitals. Brutal uncaring hospital care, boarding schools, bullying have all been identified as severely damaging to mental
health. The current anxiety about children’s vulnerability online acknowledges this reality.

So in our culture we do have an understanding of the importance of both the environment and family for the development of mental health. ‘Generation therapy’ offers a lens to make sense of much that happens in our society. Indeed some psychoanalytic concepts are still very useful in understanding some of the media coverage we see today. The social media coverage of the recent family feud in the Beckham family is a case in point. I find it helpful to think of the terms ‘splitting’ and ‘depressive position’ which were developed by the Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.

‘Splitting’ is seen as an early, primitive defence mechanism for difficult feelings. How
come the person I love is also making me unhappy at this moment? The good person and the bad person cannot be the same person. It is used to divide people and experiences into all good or all bad. This is a common stage of development in the
very young. The ‘depressive position’ occurs when the child gradually develops and begins to see that the loved person can be both loving and frustrating. Under stress we can all revert to the earlier defence of splitting as arguably it makes things appear simple. Phrases from childhood re-appear. We ‘take sides’. The. media is invested
in taking sides. It makes for good copy and sells newspapers as we see from the vast number of words written when family feuds erupt in the media. In therapy I have seen clients who have cut off contact with either one or both parents and I have had clients who have been ‘blocked’ by their own children. There is grief and loss in both situations. The pain can frequently be enormous and enduring. Each situation is individual, complex and needs understanding and care.

What it does not need is public viewing. The spectacle this week of Brooklyn Beckham revealing why he has cut off contact with his parents makes for sad reading. The media is flooded with information but little real understanding of the complexities involved. We think we know who are the ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ and there are PR Consultants who are paid well to control the narrative. But behind
these stories, are real people with real feelings and I think we are not served well when we are encouraged to lose sight of that.