Okay, more background is probably a good idea. I guess nobody has any chance of knowing who I am in RL so I might as well explain. Sorry if I seemed obtuse, I was just hypersensitive about keeping this private.
The person in question is my mother. She has recently been diagnosed with advanced cancer, and she is - understandably - not coping well. Now I don't expect anybody with cancer to feel anything less than bloody terrified, but it is more the fact that she refuses to admit that she is suffering psychologically and therefore refusing treatment for it - eg she has finally been to see a counsellor, but insists it is unnecessary, and will probably offer little to said counsellor, making it very difficult for this woman to effectively help her.
My suspicion is that she has repressed something, which makes her afraid of being psychoanalysed, because she is frightened of these repressed memories being unearthed.
It's very hard to watch someone you love deeply suffer so horribly and feel that you cannot help. I have watched her suffer for years though, with her nightmares and insomnia and eating problems. So this to me is just a natural extension of the personality I have always known. I tried to help her years ago but she is so bloody stubborn, she denies that she has any problems at all even though it is plain as the light of day that she is just so, so sad. I always wondered where it came from, as in her baby pictures she is such a happy little creature, and she was in a family that is full of love and confidence. Only she and her elder sister seem to have had psychological disturbances (the elder sister had eating issues too, and married an emotionally abusive man, and attempted suicide once) but the youngest sister has never had any problems - probably is one of the most confident, self-assured people I have ever met, just like my grandmother and her sister, so I have come to regard these disturbances as coming from some event rather than a genetic predisposition.
Regarding someone else being targeted, that is not possible. She once made a remark to me, when i was about 13, that she would not trust my older cousin (who was like a big brother) in a bed with me. I thought that was a really odd comment to make and wondered where she had got such a level of mistrust as nothing like that had ever occurred to me. She did also once say to me that if my father ever touched me she would always believe me, again, something I thought odd, as she loves him very much and he is a wonderful, decent, gentle man. The person who I suspect may have abused her was her grandfather and he died long ago so I have no fears about anyone else being targeted, except for her elder sister, as previously mentioned.
I don't want to violate her boundaries by asking questions she is uncomfortable with. I don't know how I would even begin to broach the subject with her, I don't think I ever could. Or maybe I could, I don't know. At the very least I wanted to know if this is a feasible theory, then I can have an idea perhaps of what to do next.
Sorry if this is rambling. I had hoped to avoid spilling out this huge cascade of words in the initial post but i think I went too far the other way instead!
