From Egan's book, we learn about the way family life tangles up our independent struggle for balance and sanity. Part of this problem is fixable in therapy—by talking through her problems, Sasha gains clarity and focus in her pursuit of mental health, but even she ends up admitting that having the correct insight is only part of the answer. There are other important steps that she must execute if she wishes to be at peace.
Look at Bennie's example. He has a sense of shame about his past, and through therapy, perhaps he could gain a sense of mastery at least in understanding himself and his emotional pain. His middle-age existential crisis is a moment when he has to look backward and assess the true value of his past, and it leaves him feeling disappointed. Therapy can unveil this to him if he is hiding it from himself, but in order to become happy and healthy, he will have to face his shame and accept himself, flaws included, learning to celebrate who he is, instead of hating himself for not having been someone else.
Without accepting themselves, they find their struggle toward balance to be incredibly painful and frustrating, but if the reader takes a closer look at their behavior, it is clear from the details where the pain is actually coming from. The pain comes from the waywardness of their strategies—without a clear sense for order and meaning in their lives, they constantly find themselves behaving according to motives that, if you asked them to their face, they would deny, but which is plain in their behavior.
The most clear example of this dysfunction is that they manipulate themselves and each other. Bennie was a punk rebel turned office assistant. What happened to him? He accepted responsibility, but when he is full of desire and nostalgia, he finds it difficult to remember the value of responsibility and stability, and he feels that perhaps he has betrayed himself. However, that pain leaves him vulnerable to fate, because it leaves him with a completely egocentric perception of the world.
