To lessen bad feelings

TO LESSEN "BAD" FEELINGS stored up from TIMES PAST reminisce and BRING THEM OUT NOW.

The most important part of this whole matter of helping present-tense feelings hitch up with past grievances is to get the focus off substitute oppressors back onto the original oppressors--namely, us.

Ted's mother listened to Ted's complaints about his teacher. "You make her sound as bad as you used to think me."

This started the ball in her own direction and put the focus back onto her.

Molly's mother noticed that Molly had been irritable and irritated with the housekeeper. And so while she and Molly were doing the mending together one day she remarked, "You get as mad at Maggie as you used to at me."

Molly jumped in, "That's right, Ma, let's face it. You're getting less fussy in your old age, but you used to be an awful bag." And Molly ranted on.

"I didn't push or insist," Molly's mother said in recounting the incident. "I just offered Molly the opportunity. I thought if she did happen to feel that I was the villain behind the scenes it would give her a chance to pick it up . . . After she yipped at me she seemed to see Maggie in truer perspective. She stopped splashing her feelings from me onto her."

Both Ted's and Molly's mothers were helping their youngsters direct their feelings back onto the targets from which they had been displaced.