Diagnoses and interpretations may serve as the most aggressive way to limit or eliminate choice in others and in ourselves. These practices form an essential therefore in some way invisible meaning perspective we use all the time. Internally, we find the results of diagnoses and interpretations represented by the "I am" statements we discussed early on in this writing. In that section, we discussed how we come to create the internal "I am" statements, but these statements, these existential statements about the nature of our being, come from others as well.
In the process of creating a structure of belief, families adopt myths that define that nature of their relationships and how the family relates to the outside world. The nature of who all the members of a family "be," form the essential structure of these family myths. They define the true nature of each member. This generally happens quite early to children, and this comes to the child as a diagnosis and an interpretation. No one who perpetrates a myth, brings a myth into being, feels aware of that process,[135] but it actually comes as more vital to the child involved then the more conscious decision parental figures make about what to name a child. Myths often become meaning perspectives, and those perspectives can define the life of the child about whom the myth is told even into adulthood.
Some action on the part of the child will seem to motivate the inception of a family myth about a child. There seems an almost Jungian collective unconscious set of archetypes about these myths. Generally, a family will have a child who is the "intelligent one." They will have another who is the "sensitive one." We can take some serious note of the word "one." It ain't kidding. In most instances, a family will create only one child myth of a certain kind within that family. The family generally won't support two of the same archetypes in the same family group. That makes birth order all the more important. When the first child born receives that myth of "smart," none that follow will receive that myth.
Going back to the child with the toy of too many pieces, a child may become the "smart one' if the child uses these pieces in a way that indicates "smart" to the adults involved. That requires an interpretation of the act and a diagnosis of that observed act. This first child lines up all the pieces out of wanting something to do with no plan in mind. Perhaps she/he will put all the similar colors together. What the child actually does matters little. The matter of the situation falls into the hands and words of a parental or other adult figure. That figure will observe that child's actions and state, pontifically no doubt, "Look at that! That's a smart thing to do, lining them up and putting the colors together. That's a smart child." Thus we arrive at a family myth, the child is the "smart one." The second child inherits the same toy, and does more or less the same thing with the pieces, and some adult, maybe the same one, will speak pontifically again: "Look how incredibly neat that child is! That's a fussy child." Thus we have a second family myth about the "fussiness" of child two. The actions are very much the same, but the family myth structure only allows for one child per category. The adult interprets her/his observation and diagnoses the cause of that observed behavior and makes it the myth. Whatever happens in reality to these children as they grow, child one chooses a fussy way of life and child two chooses an intellectual one, these myths will hang on and hector these two people all their lives. It happens when someone in the family actually regrets that people in the family have not shown themselves true to the family myth assigned to that person: "I always thought you would be the athlete in the family."