In the case of the type of childhood you mention in your question, what one is learning is that their own true nature stretches far beyond the scope of the experiences of childhood. In other words, it would seem that if the modeling for love is absent, the recipient child has nowhere to learn of Love. The complications of childhood can be profoundly significant in the spiritual journey. However, it must be realized that as an adult, one's spiritual experiences are not necessarily limited to the replication of the childhood patterns, even though that is what many people use their energies to create (or shall we say, "re-create".) When love is limited in childhood, the projecting mind will try to demonstrate over and over that such is just the way life is - there is simply not enough love to go around Creation.

It is a huge step to discover freedom from the patterns of youth - a step which requires seeing beyond the obvious and touching something deeper than the patterned response. This is the stuff of a lot of psychological self-help books, as well as a lot of clinical research. Indeed, most feel that the most basic of human needs is the need to be loved. However, I would offer here a differing opinion: that the most basic of human needs is the need to love. If love was not modeled to you as a child, you may find that much of your adult life centers around teaching yourself to love. While this may sound like an unfair or overly demanding assignment, the truth is that there is no better way to spend a life than in learning how to love. The irony is that while there are those who come from unloving homes and ultimately become very loving, there are also those who come from very loving homes who turn out to be quite unloving and unlovely. Thus, we must say that something more than the modeling is involved here.

What you are really wrestling with is the discovery of your true nature. That, I can assure you, in infinitely loving, for it can be no other way. You may struggle with feeling a direct experience of love (and indeed your capacity to recognize it in terms of the feeling) may be compromised. However, you can still accomplish feats of love by being compassionate - with yourself as well as with others. You see, the recognition of an impaired ability to feel and experience love can invite deep compassion for what it is to be human. You can look around the world and see all manner of human manifestations that demonstrate the absence of love, both from a felt perspective and from a demonstrated perspective. But the truth of the matter is that you, as an individual, are not destined to replicate unloving acts. You can find wholeness in love whether you ever feel it or not.

I know this may sound a bit radical, but what I am here challenging you to do is to step outside the limited boundaries of the childhood story. Without denying it, go beyond it. I say this to you because I can see that in your case, such is a very real possibility. As you struggle with your true identity (e.g.: "Am I the child of my history or am I someone much vaster?"), you will discover that your true nature simply cannot be compromised. Indeed it may appear to be compromised, but compromise can happen only at the egoic level. Your true nature never changes. You, as everyone else, came forth of a ray or beam of goodness and wisdom, and no matter what the childhood circumstances, nothing can change that fact. The only thing you really have to wrestle with is how the mind tries to cloud your perception of your true nature. Such is the stuff of real spiritual growth, and while it approaches everyone a bit differently, the task is to rise above the mind's projection of who you are. The ego mind projects a sense of self based in the field of energy in which you came as a child. However, the ego mind is limited, and will ultimately dissolve into the profound Love you now seek to know.

Indeed, you do know Love - how could you not, when It is the source from which you sprang? But like so many other wonderful people, you might not know (cognitively) what you Know as an eternal soul-being. Thus you have the remarkable journey in this life to discover all that you Know. Celebrate the journey by just looking for Love in all your relationships and in Nature. You do not need to see it unequivocally in any one point to be successful in the search. All you have to recognize is that it is in every living being to know some dimension of Love. Flowers bloom from the force of Love in them; the stars hang in the velvety blackness of the night sky from the force of Love that supports them; the orbital patterns of electrons around the nucleus of an atom are viable because of the force of Love that creates the bonded energy exchanges among those tiny particles; and most importantly, you exist because you are an expression of Love. No force in the Universe can change that wonderful fact. All you have to do is discover it.