A child is inevitably dependent as it needs other people to grow. Its vital needs are food, hygiene, education, protection and safety. But above all it needs love, recognition, care, respect and the liberty to speak and act freely.

Instead, it often receives restrictions, reprimands, insults, verbal and physical violence, condemnation and disrespect from the adults around it. This deprives the child of its vital needs and causes pain, sadness and injuries.

A child suffering from the injustice, power and fear imposed by adults will always develop anger. As a consequence of its status as a child, its weakness and vulnerability, the smallness of its physical body and its inferiority it will not be able to express its anger, though. It will suppress it, alongside its other emotions, in order not to be rejected.

This is to say that it will prostitute, submit itself and fulfil the needs of others in order to compensate its own deprivation. It will become what the others expect it to be: ‘perfect’, kind, amiable, helpful and polite. Alternatively, it will act out of protest and make the others pay for the injustice by being ‘imperfect’, violent, mean, hateful and angry.

As grown-ups, these people will have to traverse, drop and transform all their defence mechanisms in order to free themselves from the negative childhood experiences that now affect and perturb their lives as adults.