Their initial sessions together frustrate the psychiatrist because of Conrad’s inability to express his feelings. Berger, because he feels the “air is full of flying glass” and wants to feel in control. Conrad eventually contacts a psychiatrist, Dr. Yet, there is not one problem in this family but two – Conrad’s suicide and the death by drowning of Conrad’s older brother, Buck. They do not discuss a problem in the face of the problem. His family, after all, “are people of good taste. A return to normalcy, school and home-life, appear to be more than Conrad can handle.Ĭhalk-faced, hair-hacked Conrad seems bent on perpetuating the family myth that all is well in the world.
Though a successful tax attorney, he is jumpy around Conrad, and, according to his wife, drinks too many martinis. Jared’s father, raised in an orphanage, seems anxious to please everyone, a commonplace reaction of individuals who, as children, experienced parental indifference or inconsistency. She does all the right things attending to Jared’s physical needs, keeping a spotless home, plays golf, and bridge with other women in her social circle, but, in her own words “is an emotional cripple”. His mother is a meticulously orderly person who, Jared, through projection, despises. The book opens with seventeen-year-old Conrad, son of upper middle-class Beth and Calvin Jarrett, home after eight months in a psychiatric hospital, there because he had attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. an unconscious process whereby reality is distorted to reduce or prevent anxiety.
Ordinary People by Judith Guest is the story of a dysfunctional family who relates to one another through a series of extensive defense mechanisms, i.e.
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