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Consider a story from famous author Franz Kafka in Letter to His Father. One evening, when he was a young boy, he kept crying for water, partially due to thirst but equally a bid for comfort. His father grew so angry with him that he yanked him out of bed, carried him onto the balcony and shut the door leaving him in his nightshirt.
"I was quite obedient afterwards at that period, but it did me inner harm. That senseless asking for water, and the extraordinary terror of being carried outside were two things that I could never properly connect with each other. Even years afterwards I suffered from the tormenting fancy that the huge man, my father, the ultimate authority, would come almost for no reason at all and take me out of bed in the night and carry me out onto the balcony, and that meant I was a mere nothing for him."
In the absence of abuse or abandonment, many people dismiss the ways early experiences affect them. Kafka’s words show the profound impact this memory had on him for a lifetime.
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