What I thought was most interesting about Corbett's analysis was his case study about his patient Josh, and how Josh was eight years younger than his older brother Jed. Josh had a "rigid script" of how the older brother and younger brother should act. But time and time again, he scripted that loss should befall upon the younger brother. When Corbett won a board game, Josh called him a fag, and as Corbett delved deeper he found out that Josh's older brother calls Josh a fag sometimes and that makes him mad. What Josh actually wants is to be big and win like his older brother and his father, because he needs that validation in order to have a positive self-esteem and get over the anxiety of trying to always be "big".
The same worries Corbett saw in Josh, I see in the relationship between my younger brother and my dad. My brother is 13 year old and my father, similar to Josh's dad, is gone most of the time due to work. However, when my father is home, I feel like everything between him and my brother is a competition. A simple game of catch becomes a game of my brother policing every move my dad makes to try to catch him "cheating" or doing anything else that would rob him of the possibility of winning a game. I think their relationship is unhealthy and they constantly fight, but my mother and I believe that its just an outcry from my brother to have my dad pay attention to him if he wins. Perhaps my brother thinks that if he wins, my dad will be proud because winning is equated to being masculine and big and he tries to emulate my dad, but doesn't always receive the attention he wants.
Thanks for the very interesting personal anecdote. The "cheating" metaphor, your verb choice, is very telling when we consider the necessary triangularity of the situation: your brother, the father and the mother somewhere.
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