Family Background 家庭背景 In order to gain some purchase on this question, we shall return to the origins of Ellen's family and try to trace some of the elements in her background and development. The family was by origin and conviction Irish and Catholic—with strong adherence to both elements in its origins. Both parents had been born and raised in the old country. Ellen's mother was the third of four sisters. Her mother had died when she was quite young. Her father died when she was only fourteen. He had been a horse trainer and the family fortunes had never risen very high. After his death the sisters were without financial support, and they decided that they would come to America to find work. They came together in 1924; Ellen's mother was fifteen years old. 为了对这个问题有所了解，我们将回到埃伦家族的起源，并试图追溯她的背景和发展中的一些元素。这个家庭的起源和信仰是爱尔兰人和天主教徒——对在其起源上这两种因素都有强烈的坚持。父母都是在原来的国家出生和长大的。埃伦的母亲是四姐妹中的老三。她母亲在她很小的时候就去世了。她父亲在她十四岁时去世了。他曾经是一名驯马师，家里的财富从来没有涨得很高。他死后，姐妹俩没有经济上的支持，她们决定到美国来找工作。1924年他们一起来了美国;埃伦的母亲当时十五岁。[这段是讲埃伦的外公外婆的] On her arrival, her mother's relatives were able to find employment for her as a maid in the house of a well-known and aristocratic New England Yankee family. Mrs.E. always spoke of this experience warmly and enthusiastically. She never described her position as that of a servant or maid, but regarded herself as one of the family. She seemed to feel that she somehow shared in the elegance and sophistication of her employers by way of her contact with them. They were socially involved with the foremost families of New England, and Mrs.E. would speak familiarly about these people as though they were her friends and acquaintances as well. She felt that she had acquired the taste and good breeding that she witnessed in her employment. She would comment, "When you work with people with blue blood, it stays in your own blood." One can note that the phrase is "work with"rather than"work for." Mrs.E. fantasized herself as the equal of heremployers, and seems to have ambitioned and coveted their way of life as her own. She worked in this capacity for about five years. 她一到美国，她母亲的亲戚们就为她在新英格兰一个著名的贵族北方人家庭里找到了一份女佣的工作。E太太总是热情洋溢地谈论这段经历[注意：埃伦她们一家姓E。E太太是指埃伦的母亲，美国人女人跟丈夫姓。]。她从来没有把自己的地位描述为一个仆人或女仆，而是把自己视为家庭中的一员。她似乎觉得，通过与雇主的接触，她在某种程度上分享了他们的优雅和老练。他们与新英格兰最重要的家庭来往，E太太会亲切地谈论这些人，仿佛他们也是她的朋友和熟人。她觉得自己已经具备了她在工作中所看到的品味和良好的教养。她会说，“当你和有贵族血统的人一起工作时，它会留在你自己的血液里。” 你可以注意到这个短语是“和…一起工作”而不是“为…工作”。E太太幻想自己与雇主平等，似乎对他们的生活方式充满了野心和渴望。她在这个岗位上工作了大约五年。 About this time she met Mr.E. He was described as a big man, quiet, patient, gentle, and easygoing. He was working at the time as the streetcar conductor. These were the depression years. He had come to this country to find work in his early twenties, and before prohibition had worked in several speakeasies. After the repeal of prohibition and during the depression, he returned to the liquor business and was fairly successful. He and Ellen's mother were married in 1930—he was just twenty-eight and she was only twenty. 大约在这个时候，她遇见了E先生。她把他描述成一个高大的男人，安静，耐心，温柔，随和。当时他在做电车售票员。那是大萧条时期。他在二十岁出头的时候来到这个国家找工作，在禁酒令之前在几个地下酒吧工作。在经济大萧条时期，禁酒令被废除，他重返酒业，并取得了相当的成功。他和埃伦的母亲在1930年结婚——当时他只有28岁，而她只有20岁。 As was the fashion in those days, they had a fairly large family. The first child, a boy, was born in about ten or 11 months. They had seven children in all, the oldest boy being followed by a sequence of four girls. Ellen was the youngest of these, and she was followed in two years by another boy, who was followed in turn in the following year by still another boy. This left Ellen with an older brother—older by about eight years—and two younger brothers and three older sisters. Mrs.E. reports that all of the deliveries were without difficulty or complications, except for the first. She decribes this labor as long and difficult and the delivery as very painful. It is interesting that this oldest boy became her favorite and was the fair-haired boy of the family. This was resented by the other siblings—particularly by Ellen. After the father's death the oldest brother took over the responsibility for Ellen's care. This, of course, only served to intensify and confirm Ellen's resentment. 正如当时流行的那样，他们有一个相当大的家庭。第一个孩子时男孩，在大约10或11个月后出生。他们共有7个孩子，最大的男孩后面跟着4个女孩。埃伦是其中最小的一个，两年后又有一个男孩出生，下一年又有一个男孩。这让埃伦有了一个哥哥——大了大约8岁——还有两个弟弟和三个姐姐。E太太称，除了第一次，所有的分娩都没有困难或并发症。她说第一次分娩时间长，难度大，分娩过程也很痛苦。有趣的是，这个大男孩成了她最喜欢的孩子，也是家里的金发男孩。这引起了其他兄弟姐妹的怨恨，尤其是爱伦。父亲死后，长兄接管了照顾埃伦的责任。这当然只会加深和证实爱伦的怨恨。 Mrs.E. took great pride in her children and their success. They had all done relatively well with the exception of Ellen. All were married and had families, and all but the youngest boy had completed their college education. Mrs.E. would say, "My children are my whole life. Feeding them and seeing what they will become is my whole life. " The view that she presented of life in the family was at once sanguine and idyllic. Everyone was happy and all the children were healthy and well cared for. Everyone was kind and helpful and loving. There were no financial problems. The children were always polite and clean and well-mannered. Mrs.E. recounted the good behavior of her children with pride and related it to her own experience of living with true "blue blood." She is continually anxious to emphasize and direct attention to the success that her children have had in life. When asked specifically about Ellen, Mrs.E. spoke sadly of her as "the crippled bird who just can't leave the nest." When pushed for specifics about her children, she was able to give only the vaguest of impressions. One had the distinct notion that her children were somehow perceived as extensions of herself, without clear differentiation or distinct personalities of their own—at least in her eyes. E太太为她的孩子和他们的成功感到骄傲。除了埃伦，他们都做得相对不错。他们都结婚成家，除了最小的男孩外，所有人都完成了大学教育。E太太会说:“我的孩子就是我的整个生命。喂养它们，看看它们会变成什么样子，这就是我的全部生活。她对家庭生活的看法既是乐观的，又是田园诗般的。每个人都很开心，所有的孩子都很健康，受到很好的照顾。每个人都很善良，乐于助人，充满爱心。没有财务问题。孩子们总是彬彬有礼，干净整洁，举止良好。E太太自豪地讲述了孩子们的好行为，并将其与自己与真正的“贵族”一起生活的经历联系起来。她总是急于强调和直接关注孩子们在生活中取得的成功。当被问到关于埃伦的具体情况时，E太太悲伤地说她是“一只断了翅的鸟，就是不能离开鸟巢。” 当被问及孩子的具体情况时，她只能给出最模糊的印象。她有一种独特的观念，她的孩子在某种程度上被看作是她自己的延伸，没有明显的区别，也没有他们自己独特的个性——至少在她眼中是这样。 Mrs.E. was an extremely neat and orderly housekeeper. She worked very hard to keep things in the best possible order, but she would become very upset and furious when the children would disturb things. She was the acting disciplinarian of the family. She would slap the children or beat them with a leather strap she kept for the purpose. She would fly into a rage easily and often over small matters, and have what are described as "temper tantrums." She would scream at the children and throw pots and dishes around during these eruptions. The family agreed that she had a violent and poorly controlled temper. The conflict, outbursts of temper, and angry confrontations between mother and children were fairly frequent. The father, for the most part, kept aside from all this. He managed to be out of the house most of the time. He worked long hours, laboring seven days a week, and would only return home late in the evening. He was a strong, quiet and easygoing man, but he could not tolerate the fighting at home. When he was home he played the role of peacemaker, but he was not often around to perform that function. His major tactic in dealing with the hostility in the family was to escape. E太太是一个极其整洁有序的管家。她非常努力地把东西保持在最好的状态，但是当孩子们打扰她的时候，她会变得非常沮丧和愤怒。她是家里的行为纪律严明的人。她会扇孩子们耳光，或者用她特意保留的皮带抽打他们。她很容易就会为一些小事情大发雷霆，而且常常是“大发脾气”。在火山爆发期间，她会对孩子们大喊大叫，把锅碗瓢盆扔得到处都是。家里人都认为她脾气暴躁，控制得不好。母亲和孩子之间的冲突、发脾气和愤怒的对抗相当频繁。父亲在很大程度上对这一切置若罔闻。他大部分时间都设法不在家。他每天工作很长时间，一周工作七天，晚上很晚才回家。他是一个坚强、安静、随和的人，但他不能忍受家里的争斗。当他在家的时候，他扮演着和平缔造者的角色，但他并不经常在周围履行这一职能。他对付家里的敌意的主要策略是逃跑。 Along with this atmosphere of conflict and constant argument, there was little in the way of closeness and confiding. There was never any physical affection shown between either parent and any of the children. Nor was there ever any physical affection shown between the parents. There was litle affection or sense of sharing between any of the siblings. Mrs.E. was described by the children as being like a Jewish mother. She was overly protective and intrusive. She was extremely sensitive to any negative response or rejection—real or imagined—from the children. If they did not submit to and accept her caring, she was hurt and offended. We shall have occasion to note this maternal solicitude—and its inherent destructiveness—for we shall meet it elsewhere in this study in various guises. From about the time of Ellen's first hospitalization, and particularly after her husband's death, Mrs.E. had considerable psychological difficulty. She had been chronically depressed. It had been necessary to hospitalize her on several occasions. In the subsequent years she received well over a hundred ECT treatments for her recurrent depressions. Ellen's mother emerges from this account as a rather obsessive woman who was highly conflicted over the issues of aggression and self-esteem—and who poured a considerable amount of her narcissistic investment into her mothering and housekeeping roles. Anything that reflected on her adequacy in these functions would trigger intense outbursts of poorly controlled rage. It seems that this aspect of her mother's own pathology had a considerable influence on the development of Ellen's own psychic troubles. 伴随着这种冲突的气氛和不断的争论，几乎没有什么亲密和信任的方式。父母和孩子之间从来没有任何身体上的亲密接触。父母之间也没有任何身体上的亲昵。兄弟姐妹之间很少有感情或分享的感觉。E太太被孩子们描述成一个像犹太母亲。她过分的保护和干涉。她对孩子们的任何负面反应或拒绝都非常敏感——无论是真实的还是想象的。如果他们不服从和接受她的关心，她就会受到伤害和冒犯。我们将有机会注意到这种母亲的焦虑关怀及其固有的破坏性，因为我们将在本研究的其他地方以各种形式遇到这种关怀。从埃伦第一次住院开始，尤其是在她丈夫死后[指E太太的丈夫，埃伦的爸爸]，E太太有相当大的心理困难。她长期患有抑郁症。有几次她不得不住院治疗。在随后的几年里，她接受了100多次ECT治疗[电击疗法，经由电击脑部的方式来诱发痉挛]，治疗她反复发作的抑郁症。埃伦的母亲从这个故事中显露出来，她是一个相当执着的女人，在攻击性和自尊的问题上有着高度的矛盾——她在养育孩子和做家务上投入了大量的自恋投资。任何对她在这些事务上胜任性的质疑都会引发失控的愤怒的强烈爆发。看来她母亲的这种病态对埃伦自己的精神问题的发展有相当大的影响。