THE LAST TIME Jennifer Freyd saw her parents was in December 1990.
At 33, Jennifer was a tenured professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and the mother of two young boys. Her folks, Peter and Pamela Freyd, were coming for a visit over Christmas. In years past, Jennifer’s sister, Gwen, would have been there too. But that fall, a few months before their parents were scheduled to arrive, Gwen had called Jennifer to say she wouldn’t be coming. Something, she said, was deeply wrong with their family. ¶ By then, Peter Freyd, a renowned mathematician, had been through rehab at Silver Hill, an elite psychiatric hospital in Connecticut favored by the famous and the wealthy. Still, Peter’s years of heavy drinking weighed especially on Gwen, who is six…