Coming REALLY late to the party! I've watched this episode online several times, as well as at the time, and love it! I need to comment on the abused child thing: you can be badly abused (and I mean BADLY, but not incest) and still be "hard-wired" to your abuser emotionally (a psychiatrist explained this to me). Small children have had mothers put their hands in hot frying pans, and they still want to live with Mama. Anyway, in that era, as in this one, there were/are plenty of children abused by one parent while the other is in deep denial. When my father died, I had spent years hating him, but also loving him, and feeling horribly confused, never having confronted him about what he put me through. (I'm younger than HL) But I miss him. Your father is still your father, even if, in House's case, his father was not his biological father, and your parents live inside of you for better or for worse after they are gone. I wonder, does House have a whopping case of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? That would help explain the self-medication, besides the pain.