I just finished reading The Art of Mending by Elizabeth Berg. I find that novels often tell the truth in a way that textbooks can’t. What I liked about this story was the way it demonstrated the fact that no two of us are raised in the same family–even siblings. Ms. Berg’s novel centers around the vastly different perspectives that a brother and two sisters have on the atmosphere of their childhood home. The book takes the reader down an uncertain path, a guessing game of which sibling is telling the truth, to the final pages of, not just a revelation, but a healing and cleansing. I am deliberately vague here, because I encourage those who are drawn to stories of family dynamics to read this novel without any spoilers.

The novel recalled for me the concept of “the looking-glass self,” a term coined by social psychologist Charles Horton Cooley in 1902. The theory proposes that we shape our self-concepts based on how we think we are perceived by others–especially family members. If we are labeled (especially by a parent) as “the shy one,” “the fussy one,” “the brainy one,” “the plump one,”  “the athletic one,” the pretty one”, then our role in the family is far different from that of our siblings, and, therefore, our family experience is different. Worse, we are likely to buy into those labels and put ourselves in boxes for years. But only if we allow that to happen.

It is exciting to see clients who had come into my office with such low opinions of themselves that they couldn’t even look me in the eye begin to build positive self-images, to discover gifts and talents and psychological muscle. It is not an easy process, or a quick one, but step by step the client grows toward the sun. Like the recluse who became a social leader, the frightened abuse survivor who became a spokeswoman, the slow learner who enrolled in college, the addict who earned a graduate degree. Everyone of these and many more came into the office with a negative label. Everyone of them found the courage to toss it away.