Dear Pete -

I'm sorry for having been out of touch for the last few days. I cannot begin to express my sorrow over your family situation, first and foremost.

Somewhere along the line, we all commit errors of judgment that will give others the opportunity to be angry if they so choose. And that's where group psychopathology can kick in.

Everyone conspires to work out their own frustrations with life (or in some situations the oppressive rules of a society) by designating someone as the scapegoat, typically someone who at one time flouted a social convention of some sort, and they are "it."

There's a reason that, world-wide, capital punishment is typically found in regions with the heaviest burden repression on individual freedom: people resolve their anger in living under all those rules by taking it out on someone who broke a bunch of them.

Then too, sometimes, even in individual families, there is such a need for a scapegoat to carry away the collected sins/pain, that someone will be randomly chosen if a volunteer doesn't step forward. Anyone remember Shirley Jachson's short story The Lottery, from 9th grade or so? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery For a great reading of it online from the New Yorker, where it was first published in 1948, see http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008...on_audio_homes

That of course is little burden when you're the person everyone is raining on.

Hang in there.

Mike