The Burden of Proof

[Our] decisions have respected the private realm of family life which the state cannot enter.

Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158, 166 (1944), an opinion of the United States Supreme Court I once undertook to improve the marriage relations of a very intelligent man… He continually occupied himself with the thought of a separation, which he repeatedly rejected because he dearly loved his two small children…

One day, the man related to me a slight occurrence which had extremely frightened him. He was sporting with the older child, by far his favorite. He tossed it high in the air and repeated this tossing until finally he thrust it so high that its head almost struck the massive gas chandelier… [The child] became dizzy with fright… The particular facility of this careless movement… suggested to me to look upon this accident as a symbolic action…

There was indeed a powerful determinant in a memory from the patient's childhood: it referred to the death of a little brother, which the mother laid to the father's negligence, and which led to serious quarrels with threats of separation between the parents. The continued course of my patient's life, as well as the therapeutic success, confirmed my analysis.

SIGMUND FREUD, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life