Daniel O'Beeve was a victim of childhood developmental trauma, before anybody had even thought to conceive such a concept. He was a victim of abuse and neglect long before anybody gave a damn about the emotional welfare of children. Daniel's parents were both born into highly dysfunctional families; poor rural families that lived from hand to mouth; families who had been trained by the priests to "beat the fear of God" into their children. Daniel's parents did not love each other. They had an arranged marriage, and never learned to even like each other. When Daniel was just eighteen months old, his father lost his farm and had to move to Dublin city, to eke out an existence as a gardener. Daniel was born into this mess. Unloved and unloving; beaten and emotionally abused; he grew up with very low emotional intelligence; no capacity to make contact with another human being; and a fear of everything that moved suddenly or rapidly.

He was then thrown into a city school at the age of four years, into a playground in which he was the only "culchie" (or hill billy) - in a sea of "city slickers" - and there was dreadful antipathy between the Dublin and rural cultures in general. In ten years of public schooling, he did not make a single friend. With no map of healthy human love, or workable human relations, he entered the world of work at the age of fourteen, like a drunk thrown out of a pub, late at night, in total darkness, mind reeling, and feelings jangled; and from this point forward he has to try to make sense of life; to make some kind of life for himself. Can he learn to think and feel normally? Can he find happiness and love? The cards are stacked against him like a fool in a nasty casino! If he is not very careful, he will not live long.