There’s a school of psychology that says the people we become in life are made by the impressions left on us as children. That certainly seems to be the case of a British boy named Al. You see, Al had some trauma in his formative years that stayed with him for the rest of his life. And it’s not that we all don’t have issues as adults due to some experiences we underwent during childhood, but Al’s traumas later revealed themselves in interesting ways.

But Al’s upbringing was surprisingly middle-class. His father was a grocer when Al was born in the summer of 1899, the youngest of three. The grocery (and, later, a restaurant) business was good, and the family could afford to send young Al to private schools for most of his life. But the trauma began one day when Al’s father handed him a folded note and asked him to take the note to the local police station in East London where the family lived. The boy, only five years old at the time, had the reputation for being a good kid. And that reputation must have worried Al’s father, because, when the policeman at the desk of the station read the note, he locked Al in a cell for several minutes. Apparently, the note asked the policeman to teach young Al a lesson, because, as he was being locked up, the policeman told Al, “This is what happens to bad boys.” The experience instilled such a fear of being caught in Al, such a fear of being enclosed and imprisoned, that he never liked policemen after that. As an adult, he refused to get a driver’s license because of his fear of being arrested unjustly. Before the experience, Al said he was like a spotless lamb, but, afterward, he became suspicious and untrusting.

The next “lesson” Al learned was fear-related as well. In Catholic schools, Al became incredibly afraid of impending punishment of the nuns who were often the teachers of his classes. The fear came to Al because the nuns would usually not tell the students if they were to receive smacks across their hands with a flat piece of wood until the end of the day. Thus, the students had to sit and wait to see if the punishment would be coming until the late afternoon. The suspense, the buildup to the possible hand-hitting at day’s end, provided Al with a fear that he remembered for the rest of his life. The fear, he said later, was often greater than the punishment itself. He became able as an adult to successfully convey that ability to build up fear and suspense to others.

But school also brought with it the passion that Al would retain his entire life–geography and travel. Specifically, the boy loved to travel by train and see the changing terrain fly by. He would keep that love of travel and especially train travel with him forever, too, even though it was not a traumatic memory for him. But, in his life’s work, he would often employ or use trains as a way to convey his other fears and traumas as they expressed themselves in what would become the artform Al became internationally know for.

In 1919, having worked a desk job in the army during World War I, Al answered an ad in the newspaper for an opening as a writer and production assistant in a new venture that had been brought to London. Soon, he became a director in the venture because of his ability to organize and to convey his vision to those around him. And that’s how you know Al, and that’s how you know the traumas of his youth, because you’ve experienced them along with him through his art.

Yes, even today, decades after his death, audiences are still indirectly traumatized by the experiences of the boy who became the acclaimed film director Alfred Hitchcock.