Oliver James in "They F*** You Up: How to Survive Family Life" argues that our experiences in childhood at the hands of our parents/other relatives have a major effect on how we turn out. Anybody interested in finding out more about this topic is well advised to read that book, and some extracts from other writers follow. (Note: it is best to see the extracts as suggestions that one of a number of factors might result in the problems described. Also, please bear in mind that the major reason for publishing these 'connections' is that it is hoped that it will be helpful/useful for the reader. If there is anything distressing or offensive - apologies! Readers are encouraged to email any comments, or possible contributors, to the debate.)
Left hand column is related to possible cause, right to how somebody turns
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| Professing to have very strong moral values |
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| Type A personality |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' say that .. Examination of the history of type As indicate that as children the love they received was not unconditional. Typically, it was highly contingent on living up to the standards set by a demanding, aggressive mother in the absence of an effective or supportive father figure. In many instances, there seems to have been a failure to acknowledge the child as an autonomous individual. |
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| Violent behaviour |
| Violent behaviour - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" writes about the effects of abuse - 'For abused men it is more common to turn the tables by becoming an abuser. This expresses the profound rage that they feel, whilst also having a different outcome from the childhood one because it is not they who are left filled with rage, despair and humiliation. They are able to project the badness out of themselves and into someone else. .. Almost invariably, if a convicted violent man is asked about his childhood he will describe an astonishing catalogue of abuse. If he is then asked to give an account of the crimes he has committed against strangers, the displacement of his rage towards his parents will be demonstrated in the detail of what he did to his victims, with precise re-enactment of some of the things that were done to him. There is a close relationship between depression and aggression, homicide and suicide.' Further reading: "Criminal Shadows" by David Canter (especially offering insights into the attempts to control the victim, and the lack of empathy felt by the perpetrator.) |
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| Fetishism / bondage / domination / sado-masochism |
| Mark Ramsden in his book 'Radical Desire' comments at one point .. - 'Many otherwise liberal people still confuse S/M play with abuse. It is actually a reaction to abuse, an attempt to heal a deep wound.' |
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| Arson and setting fires |
| Carol Anne Davis in 'Children who kill: profiles of teen and pre-teen killers' in a discussion about arsonists, says - 'Some arsonists fall into distinct groups. That is, they set fires for a revenge motive or because of some pathological compulsion (a form of mental illness) or because they are fire fetishists so it excites them sexually. B. could claim all all three motives. Fire had become all things to this alienated boy. It rid him of his enemies, it calmed the restlessness in his psyche and it gave him sexual pleasure. ... B. had the typical background of a pyromaniac. That it, he was abused during his childhood and was poorly parented. He also showed the common pyromaniac traits of sexual sadism and paranoia. |
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| You are frightened of the expression of anger |
| Dorothy Rowe in 'Beyond Fear' describes the general feelings of people who had gone on a workshop relating to anger - "My workshop participants showed very clearly that the two parental styles of dealing with anger had been a poor preparation for their future life. Both groups were frightened of anger. Those who had grown up in a family where anger was unrestrainedly expressed were frightened of anger because they saw it as unpredictable, dangerous and destructive. Those who had grown up in a family which pretended that they did not feel anger were frightened of anger because it was a silent, unpredictable, hidden danger. Being frightened of anger for whatever reason prevents a person from developing flexible and adaptive ways of dealing with it. Some people deny that they ever get angry, but they find themselves plagues with inexplicable fears and with headaches or stomach and bowel disorders. Other people are aware that they are angry but they are so frightened of their anger and feel so guilty about being angry that they cannot express their anger in any effective way. If we cannot deal sensibly with anger we have difficulty in all our relationships, and if we see anger as always being wicked and unworthy we condemn ourselves as being wicked instead of understanding how anger is a necessary defense which can hold us together when events and other people threaten to annihilate us as a person. |
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| Serial murderer (Ian Brady) |
| Carol Anne Davis, in 'Couples who kill - profiles of deviant duos' describes the childhood of the infamous 'Moors murderer' Ian Brady.. Ian was born on 2nd January 1938 to Margaret Stewart, an unmarried waitress. She lived in the Gorbals, a slum area of Glasgow, Scotland, and had to work nights to support herself and newborn baby Ian, so he was frequently left alone. Babies who aren't cared for in their first few months of life often become psychopaths as the neural pathways which ensure that they bond with other people remain unstimulated. Brady would later show classic psychopathic traits. |
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| You don't like people leaving you |
| You don't like people leaving you - The mirroring of events between a child's opposite sex parent and their (heterosexual) partners later in life can also be seen in relation to bereavement. A girl who suffers a loss of, say, her father, might find that as an adult she is excessively upset, in her relations with the opposite sex, to times when her partner goes away, or when the relationship breaks up. The book "The Father-Daughter Dance", by Barbara Goulter and Joan Minninger explores some of these issues further. |
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| Over identification of a female with maleness |
| In "Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity", Rekers, George Alan (1982) says 'Some female transsexuals, as children, viewed their mothers as having low status and consequently took on a masculine, protective role toward their mothers. Or, that the girl viewed her mother as being emotionally disturbed and needing protection from their fathers.' . 'The fathers of female transsexuals were much more physically abusive, overly masculine, alcoholic, or otherwise emotionally disturbed than is usual.' . 'Fathers are often distant. They may be openly rejecting or abusive toward their daughters and wives.' |
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| Transexualism (female identification with maleness) |
| Transexualism (female identification with maleness), - In "Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity", George Alan Rekers says 'Some female transsexuals, as children, viewed their mothers as having low status and consequently took on a masculine, protective role toward their mothers. Or, that the girl viewed her mother as being emotionally disturbed and needing protection from their fathers.' Other extracts are that - 'The fathers of female transsexuals were much more physically abusive, overly masculine, alcoholic, or otherwise emotionally disturbed than is usual.' and - 'Fathers are often distant. They may be openly rejecting or abusive toward their daughters and wives.' |
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| Extreme political views (leftwing) |
| Extreme political views (leftwing) - Robert writes, (from his own experience): Just after I failed my degree course, my politics took a violent swing to the left. But I came to realise that this was not because of any intrinsic value in left wing idealogy - it was just me feeling hurt, especially to established society. Over time, I have come to realise that people often follow a process whereby they try to mend wounds from an earlier time in their life. Typically, he/she tries to change the present world in certain ways, which if somebody else had been successful in carrying out in the past, in the family background that the person had lived in, then that child would have had a lot better time of it. For instance, a child in a situation of violence might well grow up to be sensitive to situations where there is bullying, and to react in a strong way to someone who is doing this. They might take up political causes which fight against cruelty in the world. They might react angrily when they see a larger country 'bullying' a smaller one. This, I believe, is the real reason why people have views on the left side of the political spectrum - but that the human mind being what it is, it then finds apparently logical and reasonable reasons to justify those feelings. Further reading on the suggestion that there is a relation between extreme political views and psychological health can be found in the writings of Wilhelm Reich, and in "Life and how to survive it" by Robin Skynner and John Cleese. Also, in: "The Way Men Think" by Liam Hudson and Bernadine Jacot, which explores the additional challenge that males have to females, in breaking the closeness that they have with their mother and then taking on male values. |
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| Homosexuality (factors not relevant) |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' put forward a case as to what factors have very little to do with the emergence of homosexuality in adulthood. .. Weak or absent fathers, emotionally demanding mothers, being an only child and subject to parental pampering, have all been blamed by psychotherapists of different schools, but carefully controlled studies of homosexual and heterosexual men and women, together with their family histories, have failed to substantiate there contentions. Neither paternal not maternal personality traits or parental relationships, sibling constellations or early experiences of many kinds have been shown to be significantly different between the two groups. Virtually the only significant predictor of later homosexual preference was gender nonconformity in childhood, namely effeminacy in boys and tom boyishness in girls. |
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| Impulsive / manipulative / antisocial behaviour |
| Impulsive / manipulative / antisocial behaviour - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" identifies a type of person who has what is called a weak conscience - 'Weak consciences can be the result of a lack of identification with either parent, or identification with loving parents who themselves possess weak or defective ones. But at least as important as identification is the method by which the child is disciplined. .. In families which create a weak conscience, coercion is much more common. The parents are bad models for how to behave, creating aggressive, instinct-dominated children. Gradually the aggression escalates, until the family seems to be permanently on a war footing. Whereas the average five-year-old child does something its parents regard as naughty every three minutes, children from these families do so twice as often and are twice as likely to persist in naughtiness after being admonished. .. Fully two-thirds of attacks in such families are not the result of any discernible provocation from the victim, demonstrating that they are frequently responses to parental mood rather than attempts to inculcate discipline. If the child becomes a paranoid and violent adult who commits assaults on strangers, it is not surprising. Having been raised in a chaotic home, there is every reason for them to expect physical attacks and humiliation from nowhere; that is why the most common remark preceding city-centre assaults is "What are you looking at?" In most c ases, the object of the question was not 'looking' at anything. The assault was the wholly unprovoked act of a paranoid person, just as it was in the abuse-dressed-up-as-punishment which they suffered as a child. |
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| Fetishes, sexual perversions, obsessions |
| Alice Miller, in The Drama of Being a Child, gives us a glimpse of what can happen if a child has to become different to their true self in order to please one or more parents ..As the child grows up, he cannot cease living his own truth and expressing it somewhere, perhaps in complete secrecy. In this way a person can have adapted completely to the demands of his surroundings and can have developed a false self, but in his perversion of his obsessions, he still allows a portion of his true self to survive - in torment. And so the true self lives on, but underground, in the same conditions as the child once did with his disgusted mother whose memory in the meantime he has repressed. In his perversion and obsessions he constantly reenacts the same drama: A horrified mother is necessary before sexual satisfaction is possible; orgasm (for instance, with a fetish) can be achieved only in a climate of self-contempt; criticism can be expressed only in (seemingly) absurd, unaccountable, and frightening obsessive fantasies. Nothing will better serve to acquaint us with the hidden tragedy of certain unconscious mother-child relationships than witnessing the destructive power of the compulsion to repeat, and that compulsion's dumb, unconscious communication in the shaping of its drama. |
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| Superficial charm / people-pleasing / manipulativeness |
| Superficial charm / people-pleasing / manipulativeness - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" argues that a child can be harmed if a working mother leaves him/her in day care at a very early age - 'It is worth noting that security of attachment [poor security of attachment might be indicated if you shy away from intimacy altogether, or you become clingy and frightened if a relationship becomes intimate, or you just never feel sure about your partners] is not the only characteristic affected by day care. It is now clear that, overall, more than ten hours a week of day care in early infancy predicts a significantly greater likelihood that the child will be aggressive at the age of four, as reported by teachers as well as mothers. This is not just a matter of being more assertive: the child fights more, is more bullying and gets angrier when frustrated. There may be other more subtle consequences, some positive, some less so, and only some of which have so far been measured. One that has been is indiscriminate friendliness as a way of coping, which has been identified in children who have multiple, changing substitute carers from a young age. Although attempts have been made to put a positive gloss on this, as showing greater sociability, in later life these children run the risk of being unable to form deep, stable, lasting friendships and loves, and of early sexual promiscuity, teenage pregnancy and juvenile crime. As adults they are more likely to have traits such as superficial charm, people pleasing and manipulativeness.' |
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| Children behaving badly |
| Robin Skynner in 'Family Matters - a guide to healthier and happier relationships' comments .. 'When I began experimenting with interviews with whole families, I was quickly struck by the passivity of fathers in those families where children were referred for behaviour disorders. They frequently seemed to leave responsibility for discipline to the mother and let her suffer the subsequent unpopularity while they remained 'Mr Nice Guy'. And I repeatedly found that, if a father could be activated to take more responsibility for limit-setting, the behaviour problems quickly diminished. This connection was more true of children with phobias and obsessional disorders and improvement was usually even more rapid. . In more normal families, children probably know well that if they don't do what they are told they will get a good smack and/or be sent to bed with no supper, so they stop their nonsense. |
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| Excessive use of drugs or alcohol |
| Alice Miller, in The Drama of Being a Child has an interesting slant on why this might be, although this quote starts with a 'dig' at education .. It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its natural functions by artificial means. Thus we suppress the child's curiosity, for example (there are questions one should not ask), and then when he lacks a natural interest in learning we offer him special coaching for his scholastic difficulties. We find a similar example in the behavior of addicts. People who as children successfully repressed their intense feelings often try to regain - at least for a short time - their lost intensity of experience with the help of drugs or alcohol. (Further info: Miller, Alice - 'For your own good: The roots of violence in child-rearing'.) |
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| Excessive identification of a male with femaleness |
| In "Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity", Rekers, George Alan (1982) argues that an absent father, and/or closeness of the mother with the son are important factors. The mothers tended to be domineering and overprotective. But in contrast with homosexuals, the mothers of transsexual sons were particularly competitive with males during their own childhood and early adolescence. The mothers of transsexuals were also more likely to encourage a 'blissful closeness' with their sons than were the mothers of male homosexuals. Although the mother-father relationship was unhappy and strained, divorce was uncommon for parents of transsexual sons. |
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| Transexualism (male identifying with femaleness) |
| Transexualism (male identifying with femaleness) - In "Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity", George Alan Rekers argues that an absent father, and/or closeness of the mother with the son are important factors. The mothers tended to be domineering and overprotective. But in contrast with homosexuals, the mothers of transsexual sons were particularly competitive with males during their own childhood and early adolescence. The mothers of transsexuals were also more likely to encourage a 'blissful closeness' with their sons than were the mothers of male homosexuals. Although the mother-father relationship was unhappy and strained, divorce was uncommon for parents of transsexual sons. |
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| Procrastination |
| Procrastination - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you 'can't get started', find yourself making extensive daily lists of things you 'should' do - and then seem unable to get around to doing them- feel too exhausted to do even things you like to do and end up daydreaming about them, then consider the possibility that your 'inner child of the past' is continuing the pattern with which you reacted to the coercive directions of your parents. |
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| Excitement from bondage / domination |
| Carol Anne Davis, in 'Children who kill - profiles of teen and pre-teenage killers' writes of one man when he was an adult.. - The marriage looked contented enough to outsiders but G. wanted more. He began to visit prostitutes and urged them to tie him up and to be rough with his penis. (Men with cold or dominant mothers often ask for such treatment from their sex partners as a way of turning an abusive experience into an ultimately orgasmic one.) |
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| You hate it when there's conflict |
| You hate it when there's conflict - Robert (from his own experience) suggests that: A sensitive child reared in a family where there is a lot of conflict (either openly or covertly expressed) might well become distressed about the upset that is associated with the fighting that is going on, and he/she might try to keep the parents together, or at least to not be fighting so much. In extreme situations the child might exhibit disturbed or deviant behaviour in order to have the parents have something to worry about, and to distract them from their problems together. Jay Haley, in "Leaving Home. The Therapy of Disturbed Young People" puts forward the suggestion that sometimes an adolescent can behave in a mad way in order to help/save the parent's relationship. Alternatively, the child may become a kind of a scapegoat, and through his/her actions takes on blame, (and anxiety), that is more to do with the parents that him/her. Where there are other children, one child can even become a scapegoat for the whole family. The scapegoating can be in terms of behaviour, which is then blamed, or in terms of illness, which can then be worried about. Jay Haley, in "Problem-Solving Therapy. New Strategies for Effective Family Therapy" writes informatively about the dynamics that can go on in families, and he makes the illuminative statement - 'look for the function that the symptom serves in the family'. A child in such a marriage may find that they carry on this unconscious role in later life, and might take on a career where they try to reduce conflict between opposing camps, i.e. an industrial relations negotiator, or a referee, etc.. |
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| Being strongly ideological |
| Alice Miller, in The Drama of Being a Child looks at those people who are strongly 'political' .. Even alert parents cannot always understand their children, but they will respect their children's feelings even when they cannot understand them. Where there is no such respect, their children seek refuge from a painful truth in ideologies. Nationalism, racism, and fascism are in fact nothing other than ideological guises of the flight from painful, unconscious memories of endured contempt into the dangerous, destructive disrespect for human life, glorified as a political program. The formerly hidden cruelty that was exercised upon the powerless child now becomes only too apparent in the violence of such 'political' groups. Its origins in childhood, in the total disregard of the former child, however, remain concealed or absolutely denied, not only by the members of these groups but by society as a whole. |
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| Narcissistic disorders |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' believe that .. Narcissistic disorders arise from damage to the emerging self-image at .. early stages of development. Parents can, for example, reflect to their children an inflated view of their beauty and accomplishments with the results that their self-esteem receives a series of blows when tested in the harsh market place of peer relations. Damaged individuals compensate by trying to maintain self-esteem through fantasies of power and success while trying to hold in check their feelings of inferiority. Driven by the desire for status and approval, they entertain the painful expectation that others will humiliate rather than praise them, because they do not possess the qualities that other value. |
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| Phobias |
| Phobias - Anthony Stevens, in "The Two Million-Year-Old Self" argues that phobias can be seen as chronic anxiety focused on one specific situation. It is as if we have a number of 'ancient response programmes', existing from our evolutionary past, where we are aware of dangers that might come from the dark, from spiders and other creepy crawlies, from being isolated etc.. and a person's anxiety becomes expressed through one of those programmes. Often there is a symbolic connection between the form of phobia that somebody has and early childhood events in that person's life. For example, claustrophobia, the fear of being trapped in an enclosed area, commonly occurs in people who experienced home as suffocating and their parents as oppressors. |
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| Severe psychological disturbance |
| Severe psychological disturbance - In an ideal world the growing child would have all reasonable demands met, i.e. for food, warmth, and being cared for. In the early days his/her needs are fairly simple, but if they are not adequately met it can be devastating to emotional health, for example, a lack of cuddling, and associated love, can be particularly crippling. Such deprivation can lead to severe mental illness, and such problems are graphically described in "Life and how to survive it" by Robin Skynner and John Cleese. |
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| Type A personality |
| P Gilbert, in "Human Nature and Suffering" argues that the Type A personality seems quite similar in many ways to the Narcissistic one. (Quoting a book by V.A. Price (1982) - "Type A Behaviour Pattern: A model for research and practice.") On p304, he says - 'Type A's tend to have less disturbed family backgrounds. Usually, competitive behaviour has been positively reinforced or the individual is attempting to outcompete a sibling or parent. Those with narcissistic personalities on the other hand often show serious disturbances in their early life, often from broken homes and a lack of empathic and emotionally caring parents. Type A's usually suggest their parents were caring to some degree. |
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| Homosexuality (Joe Orton) |
| Joe Orton was said to be quite promiscuous,even though he had a steady live in partner for most of his life. In Modern Dramatists: Joe Orton, Maurice Charney describes Orton's mother as being: 'apparently an irritating, domineering, capricious little woman who made life miserable for all of her children.' and that one of Orton's characters was like Orton's real father: - 'with the meaningless and depersonalized life of Buchanan, who, like his father, William Orton, was a colorless, anonymous, friendless and almost unknown victim of the industrial system. |
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| Self-punishing behaviour |
| Self-punishing behaviour - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you frequently feel you are 'no good' or 'bad' and find you are punishing yourself-or being punished by others, if you tend to seek work that requires a capacity to 'take it', and you are often filled with hateful desires to 'get even', you have strong indications that your 'inner child of the past' lived in a strict, harshly punitive atmosphere. This stern punishing attitude accounts for much of the guilt felt by adults about their leisure and pleasure, the guilt being the continuing reaction of the child who expects to be punished if he casually enjoys himself. Similarly , much of the bitter, generalised desire to 'get back at the world' can be traced back to excessive parental punitiveness and the child's desire for revenge. |
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| Lack of self esteem |
| Lack of self esteem - In "Creating Self-Esteem", Lynda Field says 'The critical labelling of children ensures continued generations of people who are confused and unsure of themselves. Invalidated children grow into adults who have not received emotional support and so do not know how to give it. In this way the patterns of learned negative behaviour are passed from generation to generation. Further reading: "A Soprano on Her Head" by Eloise Ristad, a book which is designed to help those who give artistic performances, but is also of much more general interest. Also: "The Inner Game of Tennis" and "The Inner Game of Golf" by W. Timothy Gallwey, for insights into how one can best learn to play these particular games, and to improve one's performance in virtually any situation requiring a skill. |
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| Extraverts and Introverts |
| Dorothy Rowe in 'Beyond Fear' sees this as being a major difference in the way people are. Picking up the discussion on p506, - 'For introverts, keeping your head in order - that is, thinking clearly and logically, though not necessarily sensibly - is the only way of keeping your external reality in order, which you must do, since an excess of stimulation is very painful and chaos is terrifying. There are three things which create chaos in external reality - objects, people and feelings. Introverts are very good at keeping objects in order, whether it is keeping the kitchen clean or developing a management system for a multinational company. Objects can be put in perfect order, but then along come human beings, and they ruin the system. So introverts try to deal with human beings by controlling them. Extraverts are keen on controlling others too, but the aim of their control is different. Extraverts want to control others so as to keep them in the extravert's group. Introverts want to control others so as to keep everything orderly.. However, as every extravert parent desperate to keep the children from leaving home finds, and every introvert dictator committed to creating the perfect society has found, human beings are very adept at slipping out of another person's control. .. Feelings, our own and other people's , make external reality very difficult to control, and that is why introverts are always very wary of feelings. Introverts are very skilled at separating feelings from thought, and then minimizing their experience of their feelings, or denying their feelings altogether. If you let go of your feelings you will stir up trouble for yourself in your external reality. .. Extraverts, especially the extraverts who resort to the desperate defense of phobias, fear getting overexcited and going completely out of control. Introverts, especially those introverts who resort to the desperate defense of obsessions and compulsions, fear losing touch with what goes on around them, finding it impossible to understand external reality in the ways that other people do, and being overwhelmed by chaos. Extraverts will hold on to their phobias to defend themselves against mania, and introverts will hold on to their obsessions and compulsions to defend themselves against the chaos of the psychosis called schizophrenia. |
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| You can distance yourself from traumatic events in the past |
| Dorothy Rowe in 'Beyond Fear' describes the defense of isolation - "With the defense of isolation the event is remembered but the event which went with the event is isolated and denied. Introverts favour this defense, and some introverts become extremely skilled at denying all emotion. They can describe quite calmly traumatic events which they have experienced and say, 'No, I was not upset.' Emotion is always troubling to introverts because it challenges control and threatens chaos. Introverts always have a theory about the way things ought to be, and they try to push everything into a pattern that will confirm their theory. Emotion, the person's own truth, can challenge the introvert's theory, and such challenges are always frightening. If you pride yourself on being calm and sensible in a crisis because your theory is that this is the way people ought to behave, getting upset damages your pride and ruins your theory. But emotion denied does not cease to exist. Unacknowledged, it can have a deleterious effect on the efficient functioning of the immune system, thus making the person vulnerable to physical disorders. Moreover, as truth will out, an incident of little apparent importance can trigger a catastrophic grief or anger reaction. |
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| Are you a control freak? |
| Are you a control freak? - These comments have been introduced in order to look at what happens in a general way when someone has been wounded in some way by their upbringing. For instance, you may have noticed that you like to control events or people, if at all possible. It's possible that this results from an insecurity about what will happen if things are left to themselves, and which itself, perhaps, results from uncertainties in how you would next be treated as a child. It's also possible that a lot of teachers have this trait, since awareness of control issues, and desire to control others would seem to be a large part of the job. Perhaps also police officers - see "Power and Innocence" by Rollo May for some suggestions about the motivations behind somebody taking up a career in the police. |
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| Can you argue black is white? |
| Can you argue black is white? - These comments have been introduced in order to look at what happens in a general way when someone has been wounded in some way by their upbringing. For instance, you may well develop habits of thought which are not strictly 'logical'. For instance, you may see the world in a very 'black and white' way, not allowing for 'shades of grey'. A tactic such as this is considered (by Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" ) to be .. 'a fundamental one for keeping reality at bay. The world is divided into good and black, expressing a crude psychology in which there is only us and them, for and against. Knowledge of different aspects of our experience is kept in separate compartments to avoid incoherence and provide certainities.' Further reading: "Treatment or Torture: The Philosophy, Techniques, and Future of Psychodynamics" by G. Seaborn-Jones. |
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| Do you feel very defended? |
| Do you feel very defended? - These comments have been introduced in order to look at what happens in a general way when someone has been wounded in some way by their upbringing. For instance, you may well develop defenses of some kind .. A number of these are discussed by Oliver James in "They F*** You Up", when he writes about those suffering from the so-called 'Personality Disorder' - Sustaining any sense of coherence is a problem for all Disordered people, and a fundamental tactic for keeping reality at bay is called 'splitting'. The world is divided into good and bad, black and white, expressing a crude psychology in which there is only us and them, for and against. Knowledge of different aspects of our experience is kept in separarate compartments to avoid incoherence and provide certainities. For example, a wife-beater may seem to his colleagues at work to be a mild, charming, generous fellow. Through splitting, the 'him' at work may be totally unaware of the 'him' that beats his wife. Deep down in many Disordered people lies a paranoid conviction that others are hostile and malicious. Yet this can be reversed at a moment's notice by engaging in 'idealization', a conviction that others are benign and wonderful regardless of the evidence. Such processes are found in all three-year olds, living as they do in a passionate world of extremes, but in adults they are perplexing. 'Denial' aids these mental operations, enabling the world to be cut up to suit inner reality. It is illustrated by the opening scene of the movie Big Deal at Dodge City. A woman is sitting on a bed doing a jigsaw when her husband comes in and notices that she has a pair of scissors. He asks what she is doing with them, and she replies that she is cutting the jigsaw pieces to make them fit. The Personality Disordered are constantly chopping up the noncompliant, complex and intolerably independent jigsaw of reality. It can be adapted to fit the needs of the moment but, like the woman using the scissors as a childish solution to her problem, in the end they are confronted with the incomplete puzzle of their lives. Another way of getting rid of unwanted experience is 'projection' - attributing our own feelings to others. This is easily done by a person who has weak boundaries between Me and Not-Me. Instead of experiencing our own expression or anger, we simply attribute it to someone else and say, 'Why are you so unhappy?' or 'What are you so angry about?' Equally, we can remove ourselves from the situation through 'dissociation'. At its most extreme, this is the strange sensation of being outside ourselves, looking in.' Further reading: "Changing with Families" by Bandler et. al. including descriptions of Virginia Satir's |
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| Do you suffer from bad general health |
| Do you suffer from bad general health - These comments have been introduced in order to look at what happens in a general way when someone has been wounded in some way by their upbringing. For instance, you may suffer from impaired physical health. Sometimes it seems as if the kinds of symptoms you suffer from are related to 'mental' issues or problems, or are rooted in a conflict that is going on at a 'mental' level. For instance, Alvin Maher, in 'New Approaches to Personality Classification' argues that a person who has had a severe lack of caring from his/her parents will have a tremendous amount of anger towards them. If he/she cannot let such anger out he/she might suffer from all kinds of 'head' behaviours, such as head bursting, numbness of the head, shooting head pains, blackouts, loss of consciousness, etc,. as well as persistent nightmares, signs of falling apart and deteriorating, severe anxiety, etc. Further reading: "Heal Your Body" by Louise L. Hay; "Your Body Speaks Your Mind: Understand how your thoughts and emotions affect your health" by Debbie Shapiro. |
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| Have you noticed that you seem to repeat certain scenarios in your life? |
| Have you noticed that you seem to repeat certain scenarios in your life? - These comments have been introduced in order to look at what happens in a general way when someone has been wounded in some way by their upbringing. For instance, you may have noticed that you often get into the same sort of situation during your life. For instance, Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" says that sometimes we try to get other people to play a role, or to replay childhood scenarios - 'It seems we actually manipulate those who are close to us to behave in the ways that we were used to as a child. So, if we found a parent domineering, we may actually cause a new person who resembles them to behave like that too, by baiting them or encouraging them to control us.' Other ways of behaving that probably have their origins in childhood hurt, are: being oversensitive to situations that remind us of something in childhood, e.g. if we were bullied excessively, then we react strongly when we ourselves are bullied, or we see somebody being bullied. Or, there is trying to change/cure people or institutions for the better, when it's probably the case that that particular 'wrong' was one that affected us as a child, and it's the 'back then' that we'd really like to change. It's possible that this is the motivation for a number of people who have taken up Social Work as a career. |
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| You feel anxious and irritable without knowing why |
| Dorothy Rowe in 'Beyond Fear' describes the defense of repression, which she feels is more commonly used by 'extroverts' - "With the defense of repression the memory is pushed into that part of the meaning structure which is unconscious. Extraverts favour this defense, and some extraverts become extremely skilled at repressing not simply traumatic events but any event that the person finds a challenge to how they wish to see themselves. However, while the event may not come back into consciousness, the emotion aroused by the event leaks out, and the person feels anxious and irritable without knowing why. Extraverts who rely heavily on the defense of repression are often 'nervy', impatient, unable to settle at anything for long, and unable to tolerate even the briefest period of being totally alone. Feeling the threat of annihilation, not understanding it, and not being aware of the source of the threat, they become very demanding of their docile family in order to keep them close. Some of these extraverts keep their family close by a clever use of guilt and an indifference to truth which means they can turn every situation to their advantage. If any member of their family rejects their manipulations they respond with total outrage, and, if that fails, they suddenly become very weak and pitiable, thus provoking guilt in the offending family member and forcing him to surrender. |
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| Genetic factors |
| Steven Pinker in 'The Blank Slate - the modern denial of human nature' believes that genetic factors make up 50% of how we are, with another 50% not really known, but it's not thought to be upbringing/family factors really. He believes that our peer group and/or society may contribute a lot to the missing 50%. |
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| Three laws |
| Judith Rich Harris in 'The Nurture Assumption' covers three 'laws' that govern how we become. The first is - All human behavioural traits are inherited', the second is - 'the effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of the genes', the third is - 'A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioural traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families'. |
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| Serial murderer (Dean Arnold Corll) |
| Carol Anne Davis, in 'Couples who kill - profiles of deviant duos' gives some insight into the life of this multiple killer who would torture, sexually and physically abuse, and kill young boys .. Dean was born on 24th December 1939 to Mary and Arnold Corll in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The couple's relationship had been stormy even when the were dating, and it worsened after the marriage. But they still brought a second child, Stanley, into the world. Arnold Corll was a strict disciplinarian who would make Dean and his brother sit for hours on a chair without moving as a punishment for being boisterous. He also refused to let them play outside. He told Mary that they should be whipped but she recognized their supposed bad behavior was just childish curiosity. When Dean was five his parents' marriage ended. Mary Corll now had to support the family alone and took a job, leaving her sons in the nursery or with various baby sitters. Stanley coped with the frequent changes of minder and went off to play with his friends but Dean stayed home and worried about everything, feeling responsible for his nuclear family. He took on a pseudo-parental role incredibly early and would fret if Mary or Stanley were a few minutes late in coming home. He developed rheumatic fever at age six and was sent home from school for a prolonged rest. For the next few months he stayed home with his mother. She took him to a school friend's party but when he appeared to get upset she decided that he wasn't enjoying himself and that she wouldn't take him to further social events. Her overprotectivity heightened when he was diagnosed as having a heart condition and she rarely let him out of her sight. Admittedly this suited little Dean as he was still worrying about her and Stanley, even exhorting her not to drive too fast. Some time after World War II ended, Mary remarried Arnold Corll and he subjected the children to increasingly harsh punishments. By now the family had moved to Houston, Texas, and were living in a trailer. All four Corlls co-existed in cramped misery. The second marriage soon went the way of the first with verbal fights and recriminations, though Arnold Corll always kept his family well provided for. He would go on to marry a third time and this marriage would be a successful one. Alternately ignored, shouted at or punished by his father and |
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| Obsessive orderliness / obstinacy / being tight with money |
| Obsessive orderliness / obstinacy / being tight with money - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" directs attention to the events in a child's life in their second year, when the mother/carer increasingly has to command the infant, and to inhibit most of the activities that they enjoy. - 'Freud called this the 'anal' stage, because toddlers are particular excited by the process of excretion and enjoy the results of this activity. How the mother goes about the curbing the child's messy pleasures affects his later attitude to his instincts. If her response is rigid, condemnatory and angry, the child develops an 'anal personality', comprising obsessive orderliness (from being made fearful of mess), obstinacy (still angry at being forced to excrete on demand) and parsimony, especially about money (it becomes equated with faeces and, in later life, being tight about money may symbolise holding faeces in).' |
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| Sexual sadism |
| Carol Anne Davis in 'Children who kill: profiles of teen and pre-teen killers' in a discussion of a boy who killed at an early age says - 'J.P. committed the early tortures and later torture-murders out of an overwhelming sense of bloodlust. Like many people from highly abusive backgrounds, he'd made a strong connection between sexual satisfaction and extreme sadism. These desires would remain throughout his life. J.'s strongest stimulus for years (though he'd hated such floggings at the time) had been as a victim of severe beatings accompanied by verbal taunting. Watching a boy writhe and squeal as he flogged him and threatened him was much more exciting than a lover's caress. Early criminologists suggested that J.'s crimes were merely acts of violence, that they weren't sex crimes because the victims weren't sexually assaulted or raped. This shows a misunderstanding of sexual sadism. In sadistic attacks, the orgasm isn't triggered by sexual intercourse but by inflicting pain on someone else. Indeed many sadists avoid coitus. If penis-based activity does take place it is often forced sodomy followed by forced oral sex, both of which further demean or hurt the victim. But as a callow youth J. P. many not have been aware of these optional extras. He orgasmed during the flagellation or the stabbing attacks, after which his sadistic urge was spent. J.'s attacks began at twelve, the age when his libido awoke. He was undoubtedly homosexual so chose males as his lust objects. He chose small boys rather than boys his own age as they were easier to lure away from safe locations. They were also easier to restrain and were soon completely in his increasingly murderous power. |
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| The teenage sex killer |
| Carol Anne Davis in 'Children who kill: profiles of teen and pre-teen killers' in a general discussion says - 'The teenage sex killer - like his adult contemporaries - has made a lethal connection between sexual pleasure and fatal levels of violence. He's often highly sadistic and may enjoy picquerism (cutting and stabbing), inflicting most of the wounds on the penis and the scrotum. Lust and rage have become so interlinked in his damaged psyche that he seeks to destroy the parts of the body which arouse him most. |
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| Cruising |
| Julian Clary in "A Young Man's Passage" makes a comment about 'cruising' .. Why is cruising such an important part of gay life? I was day-dreaming just now about sporting my new tan at 3 Faces [Melbourne nightclub] and even when I think about Josh coming to Melbourne or, in my more loyal moments, Hans coming to Sydney, a part of me feels deflated because 'it', that cruisy, hunting, ravenous twinkle, knows that it will not be able to come out and play. It's positively odd. That peculiar instinct is only ever happy and sated for about 20 minutes at a time, when contact has been made but the 'kill' not yet secured. It's a kind of hormonal surge. Similar to the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush. Its sexual identity coursing through the body, highlighting all innate powers of communication towards sex, sex, sex. |
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| Paedophilia |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' sum up the various theories: The most commonly accepted view is that adults who sexually abuse children were themselves sexually abused in childhood. .. However this [view] does not hold up when large numbers of cases are subjected to careful scrutiny. [Their general view is: ] We would entertain the hypothesis proposed separately by Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1990) and by Money (1990) that two innate biosocial propensities - care giving and sex-mating - have become fused in the course of ontogeny in those who display the paedophilic orientation. As Money states it: 'The pedophiles's attachment to a child represents a merger of parental and erotic love.' |
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| Sadomasochism |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' write extensively on this and similar 'disorders'. Here, firstly, their general comments are quoted .. The explanation that evolutionary theory has to offer to explain the behaviour of sadomasochists - the dominance and submission, the infliction and the suffering of injury, the respect and the humiliation, the freedom of the master and the bondage of the slave, all experienced in the interests of sexual stimulation - is that two ancient and closely linked phylotenetic systems, one concerned with reproduction, the other concerned with social rank, have become fused in the course of ontological development to form a new integrated behavioural system whose goal is no longer high social rank or reproductive success but sexual pleasure. .. How does a sadomasochistic orientation develop? Somehow, through the association of sexual excitement with the powerful emotions of guilt, shame, and lowered self-esteem, psychic pain is transformed into sexual pleasure. The ontological timing of this transformation must be important, for it usually occurs in relation to parental or pedagogical disciplinary procedures experienced in childhood. .. Some families, like some societies, are more agonistic than others; and some parents relate to their children more through power than love: they are more prone to dominate them and control them through threats and punishment, the induction of guilt and shame, and by assaults on their self-esteem. Clinical experience indicates that it is children with this kind of family background who are particularly prone to ameliorate their chronic feelings of humiliation by eroticising them. This can results in a lasting masochistic adjustment or, when they grow up, they themselves may become sadistically inclined. |
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| Homosexuality |
| Anthony Stevens, in 'Jung - A Very Short Introduction' summarises Jung's views on homosexuality .. Jung's views on same-sex love also drew on his anumus/anima concepts. The homosexual is one who, in the course of growing up, has identified more closely with the parent of the opposite sex while the same sex potential has remained relatively unconscious and unactualized. As a result, the essential polarity of sexual attraction, the desire for union with the 'unknown other', is experienced in relation to members of the same sex who appear to have those desirable qualities which are felt to be lacking. |
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| Antisocial behaviour / problems with authority figures |
| Antisocial behaviour / problems with authority figures - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" argues that an adults' conscience is moulded by parental attitudes and their style of exerting control and discipline. At one end of the spectrum is the punitive, coercive type of control (giving rise to the 'punitive' conscience), and at the other end a too-permissive style, although with punishment sometimes (perhaps more to express anger than something that the child has done), (giving rise to the 'weak' conscience). Oliver James goes on to say that there are three main areas where these kinds of conscience can be seen: sexuality, attitudes to authority, and how conscientious we are. Sexual problem behavior (promiscuity, early start to sexual activity, etc.) tends to be more dependant on how neglected a child was, and if there was sexual or physical abuse, and also the relationship that the girl, for instance, has with her father. More generally, Oliver James says - 'If we have a weak conscience we are liable to random promiscuity and unstable relationships. A symphony of antisocial behaviour, in which the instincts have all the best tunes, gets us into trouble from primary school onwards. Whether we end up in prison, we fight a lifelong battle with authority. Our career is likely to be erratic and unsuccessful, but in few cases the freedom from constraint gets translated into an exceptional ability, especially in careers that demand only short bursts of discipline and actively reward spontaneity - rock music, say, or certain sports. Weak consciences can be the result of a lack of identification with either parent, or identification with loving parents who themselves possess weak or defective ones. But at least as important as identification is the method by which the child is disciplined. .. In families which create a weak conscience, coercion is much more common. The parents are bad models for how to behave, creating aggressive, instinct-dominated children. Gradually the aggression escalates, until the family seems to be permanently on a war footing. |
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| 'The Clinger' (do you seek a lot of affection ..) |
| 'The Clinger' (do you seek a lot of affection, and commitment from a partner) - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" identifies a type of person who has trouble with intimate relationships with others, which he calls the Clinger. 'This is found in about one tenth of us. We want to be completely emotionally intimate, but no one is ever quite as close as we would like. We feel uncomfortable and lonely without intense involvement. Despite the fact that we constantly give of ourselves, the recipient of our emotional largess don't seem to value us as much as we value them. Our relationships are prone to highs and lows, to jealousy, conflict and dissatisfaction. We are liable to mother our partners, protecting, feeding , sympathising, smothering. We are looking for unqualified closeness, keen to move in with new partners and to share their life as soon as possible. We seek total commitment and constant affection. .. Clingers are also the opposite of Avoidants [see under spiky and stubborn, etc.] in bed, strongly preferring embraces, caresses and displays of affection to genitalia. Clinger women may get turned on by exhibitionism, voyeurism or bondage, whereas the men tend to be sexually reticent. Both sexes are liable not to have many different partners nor to be very highly sexed. .. The Clinger's work life is fraught with worries. We are terrified of losing our job and find the short-term contracts of the modern job market very unsettling. We prefer working with others to being alone, yet don't feel appreciated by bosses or valued by colleagues, constantly anticipating criticism for underperformance regardless of whether or not it is deserved. .. The parental cause that creates Clingers is inconsistent, unreliable care. Mothers of babies who are subsequently discovered to be Clingers are confusing. Our mother tried to engage with us by looking or touching, yet she did not respond if we tried to strike up a conversation, simply turning and looking but making no other reaction. For much of the time there was a strong sense that she was not very involved - not filled with passion for us. She initiated little and was a passive, emotionally absent presence. It may be that depression caused a flat, empty mood which even our beguiling infant smiles could not penetrate.' |
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| Bored, and not wanting to do anything |
| Bored, and not wanting to do anything - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you are generally bored and listless, unable to become interested enough in activities to participate in them, find yourself 'not wanting to do' what others find satisfying, notice you are always complaining, and cannot establish or move toward genuine goals but seem to drift and depend on others to provide for you, you should consider the possibility that your life is being dominated by an overly indulged 'inner child of the past'. (Note: oversubmission tends to result in an active, demanding child-adult, whereas overindulgence tends to create a bored, passive but discontented child-adult.) |
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| Depression |
| Alice Miller, in The Drama of Being a Child, gives us her insight as to what is the root cause of depression .. 'Depression consists of a denial of one's own emotional reactions. This denial begins in the service of an absolutely essential adaptation during childhood and indicates a very early injury. There are many children who have not been free, right from the beginning , to experience the very simplest of feelings, such as discontent, anger, rage, pain, even hunger - and, of course, enjoyment of their own bodies. |
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| Grandiosity |
| Alice Miller, in The Drama of Being a Child, describes a certain kind of person as follows: The person who is 'grandiose' is admired everywhere and needs this admiration; indeed, he cannot live without it. He must excel brilliantly in everything he undertakes, which he is surely capable of doing (otherwise he just does not attempt it). He, too, admires himself, for his qualities - his beauty, cleverness, talents - and for his success and achievements. Beware if one of these fails him, for then the catastrophe of a severe depression is imminent. .. Without therapy, it is impossible for the grandiose person to cut the tragic link between admiration and love. He seeks insatiably for admiration, of which he never gets enough because admiration is not the same thing as love. It is only a substitute gratification of the primary needs for respect, understanding , and being taken seriously - needs that have remained unconscious since early childhood. Often a whole life is devoted to this substitute. As long as the true need is not felt and understood, the struggle for the symbol of love will continue. |
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| Serial murderer (Leonard Lake) |
| Carol Anne Davis, in 'Couples who kill - profiles of deviant duos' gives some insight into the life of this multiple killer who together with another man (Charles Ng), would kidnap victims, (mostly women), rob them, and kill them in particularly horrible ways ..Leonard was born on 29th October 1945 to Gloria and Elgin Lake. His father was in the Navy and the family resided in San Francisco. Unfortunately it was a poor marriage during which Elgin Lake anaesthetized himself with drink. Five years after Leonard the Lakes had a daughter and a year after that they had another son. But the family remained in discord and shortly after the birth of this third child, Elgin left the marriage and Gloria understandably found it difficult to cope with three young children. The fatherless family now moved to the projects and were constantly hungry, frightened and cold. Leonard would later recall that he had no toys and would fantasize that he's been sent to an orphanage instead. When Leonard was six, his mother decided to follow her ex.-husband to Seattle and ask for a second chance. Leonard apparently said that he didn't want to go, and as he was settled at nursery school she decided to leave him with his grandparents. But at the railway station he changed his mind and clung hysterically to her skirt. She had only booked places for her other children so had to leave him - and he would never forgive her for this. .. In his teens, the boy who wanted revenge on his mother became erotically charged by John Fowles' classic book 'The Collector'. The novel explores the life of a dull man who kidnaps a girl for sexual pleasure. Fantasies in which young women were debased and kept captive began to dominate his masturbatory dreams. He hadn't been able to control the first woman in his life, but could endlessly control his fantasy lovers. They always did exactly what he said. Bored with living at his grandparents and already possessed of a prodigious sexual appetite, he joined the US Marine Corps on 27th January 1964. He was eighteen years old, six-foot tall and fighting fit, but his mental health was somewhat less robust than his physical health, something which became apparent as his love life and military life progressed .. |
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| Sensitive to unconscious signals of others |
| Alice Miller, in The Drama of Being a Child, describes a particular childhood history.. There was a mother who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child's behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from her child and from everyone else behind a hard, authoritarian, even totalitarian facade. This child had an amazing ability to perceive and respond intuitively, that is, unconsciously, to this need of the mother, or of both parents, for him to take on the role that had unconsciously been assigned to him. This role secured 'love' for the child - that is, his parents' exploitation. He could sense that he was needed, and this need guaranteed him a measure of existential security. This ability is then extended and perfected. Later, these children not only become mothers (confidantes, comforters, advisers, supporters) of their own mothers but also take over at least part of the responsibility for their siblings and eventually develop a special sensitivity to unconscious signals manifesting the needs of others. No wonder they often choose to become psychotherapist later on. Who else, without this previous history, would muster sufficient history to spend the whole day trying to discover what is happening in other people's unconscious? But the development and perfecting of this sensitivity - which once assisted the child in surviving and now enables the adult to pursue his strange profession - also contain the roots of his emotional disturbance: As long as the therapist is not aware of his repression, it can compel his to use his patients, who depend on him, to meet his unmet needs with substitutes. |
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| Hyperactivity (in children) |
| Hypochondriasis - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you cannot participate in activities because you do not feel well, are easily fatigued and are constantly 'doctoring' yourself even though your physician cannot find a basis for your complaints, and you connect your body's sensations and functions with the possibility of illness, you should strongly suspect that your 'inner child of the past' was subjected to parental hypochondriasis - a disabling preoccupation with aches, pains and disease. |
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| Autism |
| Autism - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, and for some of them a genetic contribution is thought to be a large factor in their causation. However nurture can still play a role, for example - Autism. 'For one thing, if parents are helped to provide specialized care early in life, the child has less severe symptoms than if the care starts later. For another, a study of children who had been put in an orphanage early in life found remarkably high rates of autism and autistic symptoms: 6 per cent had a full diagnosis (compared with 0.2 per cent among children in the general population) and a further 6 per cent had many symptoms. This strongly suggests that the autistic child's turning away from social contact towards the relative safety of self-generated compulsive rituals, like interminably running up and down a room, can be a response to severe emotional deprivation (a theory advanced long ago by psychoanalysts and scorned into obscurity by psychiatrists).' |
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| Hyperactivity (in children) |
| Hyperactivity (in children) - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, for instance - hyperactivity. 'Intrusive and over stimulating care measured at six months predicts hyperactivity at the ages of both three and eleven. Having an insecure attachment pattern at one year old predicts subsequent hyperactivity. Adopted children who suffered maltreatment prior to adoption are more at risk. Children of single parents, often stressed by low income and lack of support, are three times more likely to suffer the illness than children with two parents. Children who have either had erratic discipline, between three and six, or were too heavily controlled and received punitive care, are also at risk. The style of some modern media, such as frantic computer games and manic TV programmes, may increase the risk of children with hyperactive potential expressing it.' |
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| Manic depression |
| Manic depression - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, and for some of them a genetic contribution is thought to be a large factor in their causation. However nurture can still play a role, for example - manic depression. 'Where this, the second most genetic illness [after autism], has an environmental original it probably dates back to very early infancy. An infant who suffers unempathic care responds in one of two main ways. He can develop a hyper mode, becoming permanently vigilant, unable to sleep, physically tense and frantically oversensitive to his environment, like a cornered animal. Or he can withdraw into a depressive, lethargic inactivity, focusing on his own body as the sole source of gratification, having given up hope that his care will satisfy him. In later childhood he may alternate between these modes; this state is the precursor of manic depression. Adult manic depressives who suffered childhood sexual or physical abuse develop the illness at a younger age, swing more rapidly between the two moods, and are more prone to suicide and to added problems like addictions, than adults who did not suffer in his way in childhood. That suggest that childcare can play a significant role, even if genes are also important. If the parenting is intrusive and badgering, the mania may be exaggerated; if the child is put down and belittled, the depression predominates. When the manic depression emerges as a recognizable mental illness, with days of frenetic delusions followed by weeks of total passivity, the weak sense of self set up in early infancy leaves the person at the mercy of what is possibly the most horrific mental state a human can endure.' |
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| Violence and criminality |
| Violence and criminality - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, for instance - violence and criminality - 'Lack of empathic care from birth to three years old creates angry, belligerent boys and predicts violence in later life. Subsequently, erratic, coercive care from three to six also strongly predicts violence, especially when combined with parental disharmony and an irritable - because depressed - mother. Early violence breeds later violence. Being physically abused creates depression, which men often 'medicate' with alcohol; this removes the man's inhibitions so that he attacks outwards. At the same time, the abusive childcare he received offers a model of violence as an acceptable means of expressing frustration and anger. Implicit encouragement of violence by society, such as through films, TV drama or permissive gun laws, increases the risk of vulnerable men using violence to deal with paranoid and depressed emotions. People who steal may never have been taught that it is wrong - or even that it is admirable. They are likely to have been emotionally deprived - one third of the prison population spent time in an orphanage at some point in their childhood, mostly put there because their parents had been maltreating them. Shoplifters may confuse money and the goods that they steal with love, unconsciously pilfering from strangers the care that they did not receive as children. Robberies or muggings may serve this purpose as well, but with displaced aggressive revenge on parents as an additional attraction. Advertisement exist to stimulate aspirations for consumer goods, which are unaffordable by many young people, and encourage those who are predisposed to steal by their upbringing to do so. When TV advertising was introduced in the USA, there was a 6 per cent increase in larceny.' |
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| Personality Disorder |
| Personality Disorder - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, for instance - Personality Disorder. 'Adults whose care before the age of two was unempathic are significantly more likely to have symptoms. If subsequent care is of the kind that creates a Wobbler pattern of attachment, Disorder is even more probable. The weak sense of self, combined with an incapacity to cope consistently with frustrations in relationships, puts the child at risk, in adulthood, of developing Disordered defences against depression (half suffer from this as well) or to evade psychotic fragmentation (Disorder is one step away from schizophrenia). Where there is physical or sexual abuse in later childhood, the vulnerable are liable to dissociate themselves and develop sub personalities. Adults who had empathic early care are protected by it from developing Disorder if they are subsequently abused. Cultural trends, like increased tolerance of exhibitionism, rudeness and selfishness, help Disordered potential to flourish. The many Disordered role models who populate television programmes, and admired figures such as pop stars, legitimize such behaviour.' |
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| Eating disorders |
| Eating disorders - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, for instance - eating disorders. 'Unempathic care in infancy includes not being fed when we are hungry and having food forced upon us when we are not. This can become a template for not eating at all, or for overeating. Self-starving or vomiting toddlers tend to have the insecure relationship patterns that are caused by unresponsive care from six months to three years. In later life, having a perfectionist mother predicts a greater likelihood of bulimia if the daughter has low self-esteem. others of bulimics are liable to be belittling and censorious, and since these are both significant causes of depression it is not surprising that bulimics are liable to suffer from it. By contrast, anorexics tend to have confusing mothers who give mixed messages, similar to the mystifying 'double-binds' in which parents of schizophrenics may place their children. Indeed, compared with bulimics anorexics are more liable to have delusions, which are a defining symptom of schizophrenia- most notably hallucinating an image of their body far larger than it actually is. Many anorexics probably have a weak sense of self and use not eating as a way of trying to be in control in a family where they feel they have none. Especially in teenage girls, the vulnerability to eating disorders created by parenting is more likely to be fulfilled in societies that present abnormal standards of thinness in advertising and show business models.' |
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| You and your partner are unhappy together, but something keeps you together |
| You and your partner are unhappy together, but something keeps you together - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" gives names for two 'types' of people, namely the 'Clinger', and the 'Avoidant' [see elsewhere for more details on these]. He says - 'In later life, insecurely attached adults are attracted by the insecure, Avoidants and Clingers being especially likely to team up. The insecure tend not to feel comfortable with a secure partner or friend, whose trustworthiness, supportiveness and warmth seem unnatural and confusing. Instead, they gravitate towards people who are self-fulfilling prophecies of rejection and abandonment. Coupled with their own unreliability in relationships, it makes for a stormy love life and rocky friendships. That the insecure choose each other partly explains why they are twice as likely to divorce and why their relationships are shorter-lived than those of secure people. The cycle of mistrust and rejection confirms the expectation of being let down, leaving them in the state of lonely depletion which they assume to be the inevitable consequence of emotional contact with others. To top it all, they don't find solace in their professional lives. The negative, disruptive assumptions about relationships make colleagues react to them with the negativity that the insecure 'already knew' was bound to happen But our pattern of attachment is not set in stone .. ' [Oliver James then points out that change is possible, saying - 'if a responsive and nurturing alternative to parents was provided in early childhood or if several years of therapy provided one, the course of the journey could be radically changed. Armed with these good experiences, the women were able to seek out more positive environments for themselves and to relate to others in ways that did not simply confirm a negative view of relationships.'] |
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| Depression |
| Anthony Stevens, in 'The Two Million-Year-Old Self' argues that depression seems to be mainly linked with loss or deprivation. It is hard to see how such a condition could help an animal survive, but in all mammals, if a young one is separated from its mother it will eventually settle down to being quiet and still. This would be to conserve energy and to avoid the attention of predators. Again, the question is what has happened in someone's life for them to suffer depression persistently. Often the depressed person has suffered some form of parental loss, rejection, or neglect in childhood. Typically, as adults, the depression strikes when they encounter some sort of loss that is reminiscent of the loss they suffered in childhood. However there is another way that depression is thought to arise, which is from a loss of status. In the animal world, such a reaction enables, (or 'forces'), the submissive animal to adapt passively to that role, thus avoiding dangerous attack from the more powerful individual. Here, then, depression is linked with submission, so that a person who suffers long lasting depression in adult life might well cast an eye at their partner. That person may be an excessively dominating type, and the only way for such a relationship to last for a long time is for the other person to be excessively submissive. Some other ideas about how depression originates are: Anger which is turned inwards / A long lasting sense of hopelessness / A lack of sufficient care and attention when an infant. |
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| Over-masculine men |
| In "Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity", Rekers, George Alan (1982) argues that 'Excessive aggression and exaggerated masculine behaviour are also evidence of an inadequate masculine role development.' The loss of a father figure, after the age of about 5, is thought to be significant. |
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| Schizoid personality |
| Anthony Stevens in "Private myths, Dreams and dreaming" says in relation to Descartes that - 'Little is known about Descartes' personal life, but from what has been established it is clear that, like many people who have had the misfortune to lose or be separated from their mothers in early life, he had a schizoid personality. That is to say, he was a socially isolated, deeply introverted man, who appeared cold and affectless to his contemporaries, and lived in a private world of the intellect and the imagination, while eschewing all intimate relationships. |
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| A sense of not-belonging |
| The lost father and his yearning daughter - The book "The Father-Daughter Dance", by Barbara Goulter and Joan Minninger explores a number of father-daughter scenarios - for the daughter who experiences a loss of her father, either through bereavement or the break-up of the parental relationship, it is as if she says "I'm not loveable. I'd better choose unavailable men who will never get to know me." She will usually lack confidence in herself as a person and a woman, and fail to get rewarded in proportion to her abilities. Also, she may have a far greater-than-average craving for male attention and affection. Because she loves her father, and yearns for what he never gave her, she will tend to choose similar men: that is, men who are less attentive and affectionate than average. The result is a vicious circle in which she keeps craving more and more and getting less and less and having her confidence undermined at every turn. |
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| Promiscuity / disturbed sexuality / early pregnancy |
| A sense of not-belonging - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you have difficulty in feeling close to others and in 'belonging' to a group, drift in and out of relationships casually because people do not seem to mean much to you, if you feel you lack an identity of your own, suffer intensely from anxiety and loneliness and yet keep people at a distance, you should suspect neglect as the troublemaking pathogenic factor in your childhood. An additional clue suggesting neglect: prolonged separation from your parents, particularly your mother, by death, divorce, hospitalisation or because of parental activities and interests. Note: this can also be the situation if you felt that one or both parents was not 'there for you'. |
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| Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' sum up psychoanalytic thinking about the cause of these disorders as follows .. Psychoanalytic discussion of these disorders has focused on the struggle for control so evident in anorexic and bulimic patients, the adolescent's need to achieve a valid sense of identity, and to experience feelings of competence and effectiveness. The families of anorexics, it is argued, have failed to give their child a sense of her own autonomy, competence and self-value. Typically, parents are over-controlling, seeking always to impose their own wishes, thus impairing their daughter's capacity to know and respond to her own judgement and desires. The anorexic strategy is designed to escape from an ineffectual role and to establish a subjective sense of power and authority. Her whole self-worth then becomes identified with the idea of thinness. It has also been suggested that those anorexics who have ground up in homes with excessively controlling parents are provided with a parental model for the exercise of control. By usurping this controlling function and applying it to their own bodies they fashion an effective weapon for subverting parental authority, thus satisfying the desire evident in many over-controlled children to rebel and take the law into their own hands. Another theoretical approach that has proved influential is that of Crisp (1967), who maintains that anorexia nervosa represents a retreat from the overwhelming problems of adolescence and a psychobiological regression to childhood. Through systematic self-starvation, a girl keeps herself physically and psychologically in the pre-pubertal state. Hence the typical absence of secondary sexual characteristics (well-formed breasts, buttocks, and hips), the amenorrhoea, and the 24-hour LH/FSH secretion pattern, which resembles that of girls who have not yet reached puberty. |
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| Promiscuity / disturbed sexuality / early pregnancy |
| Promiscuity / disturbed sexuality / early pregnancy - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" says - 'Of course, neglect is not the only determinant of weak sexual conscience. Sexual abuse or inappropriate sexual interest from parent to child also have a profound impact. In summary, the host of studies show that the amount of harm caused by sexual abuse is greater the earlier it begins; the longer it goes on; the more it entails penetrative sexual acts; and the more that force, or the threat of it, are employed. It is also more damaging if the perpetrator is our biological parent rather than a step-, foster- or adoptive parent. .. One of the most extraordinary features of abuse is the tendency for abused to become abuser. Common sense might lead us to suppose that if we have been horribly maltreated we would not want to inflict it on someone else, especially not our own children, yet the great majority of physical abusers were themselves abused, as were at least half of sexual abusers. What seems to happen is that, unable to get over it, the abused replay the experience in their minds with the repetition containing a hope that this time it will have a different outcome. The rerun can take the form of putting themselves in the position of the victim again, so that abused women are particulary prone to pairing up with abusive partners, or even to becoming prostitutes, in the secret hope that this time they will be able to change the abuser - a 'happy ending'.' |
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| A 'psychopath' |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' argue that genetic factors are involved, and also that -. .In terms of psychodynamics, it is evident that psychopaths have failed to form a competent superego. Superego formation is dependent on early childhood experience of growing up in a warm, intimate , and lasting relationship with parental figures who are reasonably consistent and reliable in their conduct and who share the moral standards of their community. The majority of psychopaths, however, give a history of parental disharmony, separation and loss. Many have suffered physical or sexual abuse as children and have been brought up in various institutions and foster homes. Whatever bonds they may have formed with parental figures have often been broken, with the result that they have developed a detached, 'affectionless' type of character. |
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| Perfectionism |
| Impulsiveness - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you have a tendency to fly into temper outbursts, if you like to drive fast and do impulsive things on the 'spur of the moment', if you find making persistent efforts at work and other activities 'not worthwhile', and feel unloved if people don't give in to you, you are probably still reacting to the oversubmissiveness of your parents. (Note: if one parent is oversubmissive, whilst the other is overcoercive, then this and the tendency to procrastinate can coexist in the same person.) |
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| Obsessive behaviour |
| Perfectionism - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. The adult who suffers from the results of perfectionism in his childhood is apt to be intelligent, well educated and economically better off than most people. Belittling his own accomplishments, he drives himself with ever stiffer demands to 'do better'. If these words describe you, consider the possibility that your 'inner child of the past' is still striving for parental acceptance - which was withheld in the past, because of the ever present parental pressures to 'do better'. |
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| Emotional Isolation |
| Alice Miller, in The Drama of Being a Child, describes the following 'problem': The difficulties inherent in experiencing and developing one's own emotions lead to mutual dependency, which prevents individuation. Both parties [parents and child] have an interest in bond permanence. The parents have found in their child's false self the confirmation they were looking for, a substitute for their own missing security; the child, who has been unable to build up his own sense of security, is first consciously and then unconsciously dependent on his parents. He cannot rely on his own emotions, has not come to experience them through trial and error, has no sense of his own real needs, and is alienated from himself to the highest degree. Under these circumstances he cannot separate from his parents, and even as an adult he is still dependent on affirmation from his partner, from groups, and especially from his own children. The legacy of the parents is yet another generation condemned to hide from the true self while operating unconsciously under the influence of repressed memories. Unless the heir casts off his 'inheritance' by becoming fully conscious of his true past, and thus of his true nature, loneliness in the parental home will necessarily be followed by an adulthood lived in emotional isolation. |
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| Hypochondriasis |
| Obsessive behaviour - Anthony Stevens, in "The Two Million-Year-Old Self" argues that obsessive behaviour is a product of the need to control potentially dangerous events, objects, people, thoughts, feelings, impulses, or situations. It is commonly associated with powerful emotions, particularly fear, anger, and guilt. Guilt evolved as an adaptive device designed to maintain social order and homogeneity. In other words, if an animal broke the rules of the group/tribe/community of which it was a member of, it felt guilty, so that there was pressure to conform. Why might somebody feel guilty to an excessive degree? Typically, somebody showing excessive guilt and/or obsessive behaviour has been brought up in a household where there was a parent or parents who exercised authority through fear. In reaction the oppressed person may be 'subconsciously' rebellious, so that there is a conflict within them between a desire to defy and a need to conform. If a person has been excessively oppressed, then the desire to defy may involve powerful feelings of wanting to hurt, to destroy the original oppressor. But such thoughts couldn't be acted upon, at the time - really, they couldn't even be thought, so conscious awareness of them was repressed. But this repressed part tries to express itself, so that such individuals have a 'subconscious' terror that this 'murderous' part will find its expression. They are thus driven by a compulsion to control events and people. What is intolerable is anything spontaneous, fortuitous, or unpredictable. They fight a battle out there in the world, when it is a part of themselves within that they are desperately trying to control, in a constant attempt to keep caged up the avenging demon inside. |
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| Children who murder their own families |
| Anthropologist Elliot Leyton in his book "Sole Survivor" explores the lives of children who murder their own families. He found that 'familicide is more likely to occur in ambitious, even prosperous families', and that the parents who were murdered by their offspring tended to be very ambitious and over controlling, to the extent that the child felt that they could do nothing right. These parents chose their child's hobbies, school curriculum and sometimes even their friends. Eventually , the child felt that he or she was little more than a robot to be programmed and would often retreat into depression and consider suicide. |
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| Children stealing |
| Robin Skynner in 'Family Matters - a guide to healthier and happier relationships' comments .. ..'And it was not long before I noticed that the stealing stopped not so much when the child became happier, or when the parents showed any marked improvement in affection, as (to my surprise) when there was a different kind of change in the parents: when they stopped worrying so much about whether or not they were doing a good parenting job. Naturally, this startling observation led to much discussion with the families to try to understand it. And what we repeatedly found was that the parents had themselves suffered emotional deprivation in their childhoods, but had denied, and buried, the consequent feelings of rejection and loss - often because expressing these would have threatened the image their own parents had of themselves - and as a result had ended up with powerful unsatisfied needs they were unable to admit to. No longer capable of feeling this emotional hunger in themselves, they experience it when their own children arrive as if it is in the children. And if they are half-way decent people trying to be good parents, as most of them are (you get different kinds of problem if parents are really malevolent), they try to satisfy these needs where they perceive them to be. Unfortunately, it can't work, as I have explained before. It is bad enough to be deprived without having to try to give to someone else what you have never received in the first place. At best it is a formula for strain and disappointment, and at worst for envy that you have been obliged to give to others what you want so much for yourself, even leading to an impulse to spoil it. Inevitably, the children don't get a relaxed, warm sense of being accepted and enjoyed for what they are. Instead, they pick up two contradictory messages at an emotional level: first, that the parents desperately want them to confirm that they are doing a wonderful parenting job; and second, that the parents know they are not in fact giving them enough and feel they should be giving more. Small wonder that the children take this as a cue for them to help balance the books and put things right, by taking an extra helping of something else the parents regard as valuable and actually have available to give - the money in mother's handbag. |
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| Dependent Personality Disorder |
| Anthony Stevens and John Price in 'Evolutionary Psychiatry' argue that this can occur as a result of a number of different kinds of 'pathogenic parenting'. |
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| The 'Authoritarian Personality' |
| The 'Authoritarian Personality' (Extreme political views (rightwing) - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" identifies a type of person which he calls the Authoritarian Personality. - 'If we have this personality, we are hostile to 'legitimate' social targets - minorities such as Jews, blacks or homosexuals. We are submissive to strong leaders, glorifying them. We avoid introspection, preferring toughness and cynicism, and regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. We are heavily preoccupied with others' supposed sexual improprieties, so that a sexually arousing scene in a film or a provocatively clad passer-by may trigger an outburst of condemnation because we are disposing of feelings that were impermissible in our childhood on to others, in particular despised groups. .. The Authoritarian Personality results from rigid and punitive parenting, in which sexual and aggressive childhood impulses were not tolerated. If we grew up in this background we have no alternative but to ban such wishes from our consciousness, to become unaware that we had them and anxious if they threatened to erupt, requiring heavy defences. Because our parents were so frightening, using beatings or ridicule to obliterate the slightest sign of sexuality or aggression, we dared not acknowledge that we felt rage as well as fear at such maltreatment. Instead we put our parents on a pedestal, idealized them as wonderful, and all our rage became directed against those social groups regarded as despicable. Raging against the objects of our parents prejudices, neatly helps to conceal the true target of our fury - the very parents whose cause is now championed. Further reading: The writings of Wilhelm Reich, and "Life and how to survive it" by Robin Skynner and John Cleese. |
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| Erotomania, or stalking |
| Robert Winston in 'The Human Mind, and how to make the best of it' comments as follows: Erotomaniacs, or stalkers, are a risk to themselves and a risk to the people they pursue. They generally have a shaky sense of personal identity, they are given to sudden, violent outbursts, and they are very sensitive to real or imagined rejection. Some stalkers are prone to having brief, turbulent love affairs and often have quite frequent periods of intense depression. Erotomaniacs may have eating disorders, are prone to drug abuse and often show other self-destructive tendencies. Very little solid work has been done to understand the underlying causes but erotomania is possibly the result of a problem with brain chemistry. The evidence is poor, but in some cases erotomania is preceded by an injury to the brain, or by epilepsy - suggesting that is has a neurological origin, perhaps within the temporal lobes. Another view is that it is a variety of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Certainly a key feature of OCDs is what psychiatrists call 'intrusive thinking' - in other words, the sensation of being unable to stop having certain thoughts. In the case of erotomanic people, of course, the thoughts are centered around the person with whom they believe they are in love. |
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| 'The Avoidant' (spiky and stubborn / domineering and intrusive) |
| 'The Avoidant' (spiky and stubborn / domineering and intrusive) - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" identifies a type of person who has trouble being intimately involved with others, which he calls the Avoidant pattern - 'One fifth of us have this allergy to intense involvement with others, wanting self-sufficiency, neither to depend nor to be depended upon. The Avoidant assumes that others will be hostile and rejecting. Anticipating this, we get our retaliation in first by being spiky and stubborn, and if we are none the less forced to become involved we employ a domineering, intrusive style. Sexually, the female Avoidant does not tend to have many partners whereas the male may be more active. He has a penchant for one-night stands, sex without love and with partners who are already spoken for (similar to those with punitive consciences). Both sexes report disliking the lovey-dovey side of sex, such as caressing, embracing, kissing or gazing into a partner's eyes. They favor oral or masturbatory practices - ones that involve less emotional contact. .. Work is a constant source of annoyance because our fellow workers are so incompetent and noncompliant. Highly critical of them (again, we share this with the punitive conscience), we prefer to work alone and to concentrate on solitary processes, like computing, which protect us from the stress of having to deal with infuriating peers. We work long hours that leave little time for a social life and take the minimum of holidays, which we don't enjoy. .. We have, like our view of what God might be like, an image of our mother as rejecting, controlling and negative - an image which developed because, on the whole, that is what she was actually like.' |
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| Homosexuality (female) |
| In 'Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity', Rekers, George Alan (1982) argues that the father is the parent who is more actively involved in the sex-typing of his children, and that for instance, the father appears to be closely related to the development of abnormal tomboyism. Also that disordered family relationships play a part, and that the parents of such a child are more likely than most parents to have obtained a divorce before their daughters reach the age of ten years. The fathers of lesbians are often reported as being detached and the father-daughter relations are usually distant and lacking in affection. Also such fathers are more likely to be alcoholic and physically abusive and their daughters often fear them. |
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| Homosexuality (female) |
| Homosexuality (female) - In "Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity", George Alan Rekers argues that the father is the parent who is more actively involved in the sex-typing of his children, and that for instance, the father appears to be closely related to the development of abnormal tomboyism. Also that disordered family relationships play a part, and that the parents of such a child are more likely than most parents to have obtained a divorce before their daughters reach the age of ten years. The fathers of lesbians are often reported as being detached and the father-daughter relations are usually distant and lacking in affection. Also such fathers are more likely to be alcoholic and physically abusive and their daughters often fear them. |
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| You have a lot of sexual fantasies, and/or are unable to be intimate |
| You have a lot of sexual fantasies, and/or are unable to be intimate - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you tend to emphasise the physical aspects of sexual activities, cannot form or maintain a loving sexual relationship, are often preoccupied with sexual fantasies, and generally feel your intimacies are unrewarding, unsatisfying and tending toward the impersonal, you should examine the role your parents' attitudes played in the stimulation and development of the sexual feelings of your 'inner child of the past'. Such stimulation may have taken the form of complete prohibition, which results in excessive sexual fantasies, or it may have been frankly or unwittingly seductive. |
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| Withdrawal inside |
| Withdrawal inside - Anthony Stevens, in "The Two Million-Year-Old Self" argues that this can be a response to disappointment of basic social needs or it can be related to an innate tendency to be introverted. If this response is extreme, then such a person opts out from people and retreats into himself; from social life to a self-absorbed, state of introversion. In medical terms the sufferer is said to have a 'schizoid personality'. But like all defences, there are parts that strive for expression, to escape from the cage. Sometimes these are in the form of voices, which because the sufferer can't acknowledge that they come from inside himself are heard as if other people are saying those things. (People who hear voices, etc. as well as being withdrawn are often diagnosed with the label 'schizophrenics'). The tendency for such a withdrawn person to be self-conscious can also be projected outside, i.e. he thinks that other people are watching and studying him intently, in other words, showing paranoid tendencies. Some people retreat to an extreme degree to the world of the intellect. Here they can live in an ordered world, where those 'dangerous', illogical emotions can be kept in their place - locked up! Some emotions may be more locked away than others, for instance, those related to intimacy, and hurt, whereas other emotions such as anger or resentment may be readily available, in fact, perhaps more so. It is useful to imagine a cut-off part existing in the psyche of such a person. In the face of trauma or hurt, especially rejection from one or both parents, it is as if a part of the child splits off from the rest of the personality, and it no longer continues to grow as the rest of the child does. It is as if there is a hurt child within, who has become frozen in time. When the child grows older, this part will continue to try to be loved, to be cared for, and all with the attitudes characteristic of the child at that time. |
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| You feel like a kind of 'lone wolf', often hostile to others |
| You feel like a kind of 'lone wolf', often hostile to others - W. Hugh Missildine describes, in his book "Your Inner Child of the Past", a number of differing environments in the families that a child might be brought up in, and his experience of what kind of result this can have in the adult the child grows into. If you do not feel accepted by anybody, including yourself, consider yourself a kind of lone wolf or outlaw, are at times accused by friends of being self-centered, often distort the attitudes of those close to you and flare into hostility against them, suffer from anxiety, bitter self-deprecation and low spirits, you should suspect that your 'inner child of the past' is still suffering from parental rejection. |
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| Are you excessively concerned with cleanliness and tidiness? |
| Are you excessively concerned with cleanliness and tidiness? - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" argues that an adults' conscience is moulded by parental attitudes and their style of exerting control and discipline. At one end of the spectrum is the punitive, coercive type of control (giving rise to the 'punitive' conscience), and at the other end a too-permissive style, although with punishment sometimes (perhaps more to express anger than something that the child has done), (giving rise to the 'weak' conscience). Oliver James goes on to say that there are three main areas where these kinds of conscience can be seen: sexuality, attitudes to authority, and how conscientious we are. So, for instance, somebody with a punitive conscience might show attributes as follows - 'We fear authority. We are likely to be fastidious and excessively concerned with cleanliness and tidiness. We may find it hard to sort our thoughts out, because we are liable to be obsessive, as well as prone to other symptoms of neurosis such as hysteria (most common in women), phobias and panic attacks. We are easily and frequently afflicted by a guilt which may amount to depression. Damning judgmentalism is never far from our mind, whether it be ourselves or others whom we are censuring. We are liable to think, 'I'm fat' or 'I'm stupid' or 'I'm lazy' when we are not, or to condemn others who we deem to have these problems. Our righteous indignation may be attached to a passionately felt ideology, often political or religious, determined to coerce or manipulate everyone else to behave in the 'right' way.' |
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| Sexually inhibited / find 'illicit' sex exciting |
| Are you sexually inhibited / find 'illicit' sex exciting - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" argues that an adults' conscience is moulded by parental attitudes and their style of exerting control and discipline. At one end of the spectrum is the punitive, coercive type of control (giving rise to the 'punitive' conscience), and at the other end a too-permissive style, although with punishment sometimes (perhaps more to express anger than something that the child has done), (giving rise to the 'weak' conscience). Oliver James goes on to say that there are three main areas where these kinds of conscience can be seen: sexuality, attitudes to authority, and how conscientious we are. So, for instance, in the sexual sphere, he describes how somebody who is 'punitive' might be as follows - 'If we are punitive we are liable to associate sex with forbidden fruit, feeling it to be wrong and become inhibited as a result. Our partners are particularly likely to be someone who closely resembles, or has a similar personality to, opposite-sexed parents or siblings, because repression of our childhood sexuality was fierce. We choose them quite unconsciously. But familiarity subsequently breeds contempt, at least partly because the chosen mate's actual similarity to forbidden figures from the past becomes more conscious and undeniable when we get to know them well, reactivating the fiercely imposed incest taboo. Now we find ourselves strangely diffident about, or even disgusted by, the same body and person whom, not long ago, we desired passionately. We may find 'naughty', illicit sex especially exciting, whereas love is a turn-off because it is too close to home (our original, family one). Forbidden sexual targets may be irresistible: uniformed nurses or schoolgirls for men, for instance and for women unsuitable charmers or rotters. |
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| The 'Authoritarian Personality' (Extreme political views (right wing)) |
| Excessive anxiety - Anthony Stevens, in "The Two Million-Year-Old Self" argues that anxiety is a form of vigilance. An animal has to be alert to danger in the environment, and prepared to meet whatever emergencies may arise. Vigilance to danger shifts into anxiety when a possible threat of danger has been perceived. The symptoms of anxiety are those of the 'fight or flight' response, for instance, the heart rate increases, adrenaline is secreted, blood is redistributed to the muscles and the brain, etc.. So, in the past life of our species, vigilance and anxiety were crucial to survival. In the modern world, a 'normal' person can have these patterns triggered from time to time when there is some perceived possibility of danger. However many people in our so-called civilised society are experiencing anxiety persistently. It may be experienced inappropriately, or in an exaggerated, life-limiting way. Why could this be? There could have been a separation from or loss of a parent. The growing child could have felt in danger in some way, for instance from an alcoholic and violent parent. Whatever it was, (or combination of factors), the adult is still reacting in the present to the dangers he perceived as a child. |
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| 'The Wobbler' |
| 'The Wobbler' (violent with family or children / criminal behaviour) - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" identifies a type of person who has trouble with intimate relationships with others, which he calls the Wobbler (found in one fifth of us). - 'The Wobbler can be a puzzling mixture of the Clinger and the Avoidant patterns. We may worry that we will be hurt if we allow ourselves to become too close, and then start to wobble when things get serious. In adolescence we are prone to dissociation, feeling very 'out of it'. We are likely to say that we sometimes step outside ourselves and that, speaking of ourselves, we feel we are in the presence of someone who is not physically there. To our friends we are something of a mystery. Nothing we could do would be surprising - apart, that is, from behaving in a normal fashion for an extended period. As an adult, we are more likely than other patterns to suffer from mental illness and to commit crime. We are more liable to be involved in violent relationships with our partner or children, making us a frightening parent. .. The cause of Wobbling is clear-cut: fully 85 per cent of children have this pattern if they suffered severe abuse or neglect. It is the response to extremely disturbing care, with our parents more liable than those of children with other patterns to have been alcoholic or drug abusers, violent or mentally ill. Our mother was also more likely to have suffered a recent bereavement or a serious trauma, such as a frightening accident, and our parents relationship to have been disharmonious. These adversities create scary parents. We are torn between the desire to seek our mother out as a safe haven, and fear of the maltreatment that we have learnt will result from contact with her. Such childcare is paradoxical: our mother is the vital source of comfort from distress, yet her frighteningly abusive and neglectful behaviour is its main cause.' |
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| Neuroses |
| Neuroses - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, for instance - neuroses. 'Insecurely attached children and adults are more prone to neuroses such as phobias and obsessions. General anxiety is much commoner in children whose parents are strict or over controlling. Frightening parents make for frightened children. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) - irrational, repetitive thoughts or behaviour - is far commoner in children whose parents were aggressive, chaotic or intrusive. It can develop as a way of creating reliable order, the repetition of a ritual becoming the one safe feature of an otherwise scary world. OCD is also often a way of regaining control in the face of over controlling, perfectionist parents.' |
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| Serial murderer (Alton Coleman) |
| Carol Anne Davis, in 'Couples who kill - profiles of deviant duos' describes the childhood circumstances of a number of people, and who murdered others when they came to their adulthood .. Alton was born in 1956, the third child of an alcoholic prostitute who would go on to have another two children. She alternated between rejecting him and having sex with clients when he was in the same room. Worse, she insisted he cater to those of her clients who preferred boys. .. [He, and Debra Denise Brown, started to murder people after they had met] ..They quickly moved in together and he introduced her to his increasingly violent brand of sex. She remained devoted to him even though he was often cruel to her, and she tolerated his need to dress in women's clothing: men who've survived life with an abusive mother often feel the need to cross dress. But even having this willing sex slave wasn't enough for Coleman - he wanted to hurt and humiliate men, women and children just as he'd been hurt and humiliated himself. |
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| Homosexuality (development in utero?) |
| Glenn Wilson in "The Great Sex Divide: A Study of Male-Female Differences" concludes that sex orientations is fixed relatively early in pregnancy (during the third and fourth months) whereas sex-role behaviours are determined later (during the fifth and sixth months). The influence of genetic factors in triggering hormonal changes during these critical phases of foetal development has yet to be worked out, but it is known that both endogenous and exogenous hormonal fluctuations can be decisive at these times. Exposure of the mother to stress, for example, can interfere with testosterone production in the male foetus, while the use of drugs which block or augment the effects of androgens can also be decisive in the development of male and female babies. |
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| Neuroses |
| You are attracted to men/women who are 'wrong' for you - Robin Norwood, in "Women who love too much", has written extensively on this subject, especially in the way women choose men. For instance, one of the couple wants to change and improve some character trait in the other - but this tends to not work out very well and is another instance of wanting to change somebody in the present, but really wanting to change circumstances that existed when you were a child. Alternatively, each one of the couple find something in the other that is lacking in themselves, and they function well together, but badly separately. If such a couple are together a long time, they can end up existing together in a rather hostile and negative way, but at the same time being afraid to part. Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" argues that we tend to feel more favourable towards strangers who resemble loved parents or siblings. 'We expect strangers who remind us of past figures to react to us in the same way as our relatives once did, and these expectations in turn feed back into how we feel. For example, if a person resembles our brother or sister, beside whom we always felt inadequate, being in this person's company may make us feel that way. .. it seems we actually manipulate those who are close to us to behave in the ways that we were used to as a child. So, if we found a parent domineering, we may actually cause a new person who resembles them to behave like that too, by baiting them or encouraging them to control us.' (In another chapter, Oliver James points out that people often marry a partner who has many similar attributes to their opposite sexed parent - 'In choosing partners we are also influenced by a plain and simple affection for loved parents and siblings. If we got on well with one of them, this is likely to make us favourably disposed to people who remind of them.') |
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| Depression |
| Depression - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different 'mental illnesses', for instance the lack of well-being called 'Minor depression'. 'Unempathic care in infancy and being rejected or abandoned between six months and three years creates a predisposition to dejection in later life: adults with insecure attachment patterns are more at risk of depression. Whether this potentiality is fulfilled may depend on later care as well. In later childhood, those who were belittled, abused, over controlled or neglected are more at risk. Having an unwanted status or being made to feel insignificant and inadequate in comparison to siblings or peers creates low self-esteem. Parents who make their love conditional on performance, such as in exams, are liable to depress the child's mood. Perfectionist parents create highly self-critical offspring. Depression from over-punitive consciences is caused if parents demand impossibly high moral or other standards, where the child's best is never good enough. Warring couples are more likely to have depressed children, whether or not they stay together. Children who suffer loss and disruption caused by divorcing or separating parents are twice as likely to be depressed in later life; those who had disharmonious parents when they were aged five are four times as likely to suffer the illness in adulthood.' Oliver James goes on to summarise his beliefs about the causation of illness called 'Major Depression' where genes are thought to make more of a contribution to its causation. 'Again, genes can sometimes be the sole cause, since half of the siblings of depressives who have an identical twin also have the illness. But this also proves that the illness can be solely caused by parenting - if one of a pair with identical genes has the illness but not the other, only the environment can explain it. Unempathic care in early infancy can result in depressive withdrawal from the world. This may be the foundation of the lonely, bereft kind of depression, in which there is a constant feeling of being let down and unloved, or it may create the potential for this, which may then be exacerbated by subsequent care. If this kind of care gives toddlers insecure attachment patterns then that increases the risk, as does parental disharmony. Unempathic care in infancy can also lay the foundation of the |
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| Addictions |
| Addictions - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, for instance - Addictions. 'The notion that there is an addictive personality, for whom alcohol can be substituted for cocaine or sex or shopaholia, may have some truth to it, but it does not appear to have a strong genetic basis. The impulsivity and sensation-seeking of the addict can be a manifestation of the hyper mode in an infant who is enduring unempathic care. This kind of infancy is extremely common in adoptees and may be a core reason why they form a significant proportion of drug addicts; often, they are trying to dull the depression which frequently coexists with addiction. Much addiction reflects insecure relationship patterns, created in infancy and between the ages of six months and three years. The compulsion becomes a substitute for the safety and satiety that come from intimacy. Addiction can be a way of structuring an otherwise chaotic existence, created by erratic, coercive care from three to six years old. Children who were abused are far more likely to become addicts, sometimes as an expression of self-hatred, nearly always because they feel their well-being does not matter. Drug abuse and out-of-control behaviour are no longer curbed by traditional, collectivist restraints in today's more individualist society. People made vulnerable to addictive behaviour by their childhood care are put at greater risk by advertisements designed to stimulate demand for consumer goods.' |
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| Criminality and having little conscience? |
| Are you prone to criminality and have little conscience? - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" describes a type of person who earns their living through criminal deception - 'This is the Machiavellian, 'false self' type - the psychopathic conman who assumes identities in order, for instance, to sell old ladies false insurance policies. Psychopaths are impulsive, greedy for sensation, prone to criminality and breaking norms of decent behavior, and have a weak conscience. If we are psychopathic our emotions are not deeply felt. We do not experience guilt, remorse or empathy. Towards others we are promiscuous, manipulative, grandiose, egocentric, forceful and cold. In the popular imagination all psychopaths are drooling maniacs or cold killers, but in reality this is just the tiny minority who become serial killers or sexual criminals, some of whom are masters of disguise and take great pleasure in game of evading detection. The great majority of the 2 - 4 per cent of Britons who are full psychopaths are not behind bars, and some of them occupy the most powerful positions in our society. For, although most Personality Disordered people have severe conflicts with authority figures at school and work, and personally unsatisfying professional and personal lives, the peculiar mix of traits involved means that a proportion are extremely successful.' |
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| Schizophrenia |
| Schizophrenia - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" summarises his beliefs on the causes of different mental illnesses, and for some of them a genetic contribution is thought to be a large factor in their causation. However nurture can still play a role, for example, in Schizophrenia - 'If half of cases are caused partly or completely by genetics, the other half are not. Unempathic early care may create the potential for the illness. Dissociation and the development of sub personalities are more common in adults who suffered disrupted care before the age of two than afterwards. The illness is more common if there is less than two years between siblings, the small gap increasing pressures on mothers and the likelihood of unempathic care. If a parent is schizophrenic, a child is twice as likely to have the illness if it is the mother (usually the main carer) and a schizophrenic mother is liable to be unempathic. Nearly all schizophrenics smoke, and smoking is linked to orality (a predilection for oral stimulation), which is linked to infantile deprivation. Stressful subsequent environments greatly increase the likelihood of schizophrenic potential being expressed, whether it exists for genetic reasons or because of the kind of care provided in infancy. Britons of West Indian heritage are many times more likely to develop the illness than relatives who did not emigrate. The severity and duration of sufferers is greater in developed, rather than developing, nations. Whereas over half of sufferers relapse if they are returned from mental hospital to parents who are negative, only 16 per cent do so if the home environment is more positive. The illness is more common among adults who suffered abuse as a child. above all, where adopted children have a biological parent with the illness they are at greater risk of developing it themselves if the care they receive in their adopted home is negative or confusing.' Oliver James goes on to argue that a number of research studies offer support for the controversial theories of R.D.Laing. - 'They suggest that schizophrenia can be the result of being treated in totally confusing ways by parents. In a famous example, a mother visited her schizophrenic son in hospital. As they approached each other, the son made as if to kiss her on the cheek. But the mother froze and turned her head away, so he backed off. She then said, "Darling, don't you want to show that you're glad to see your mother by giving her a kiss?" Laing |
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| Schizophrenia |
| Homosexuality (male) - In "Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity", by Rekers, George Alan it is suggested that an absent father and/or a tendency for the mother to be domineering and overprotective are important factors. He goes on to remark 'in addition, the mothers and sons developed an excessively close relationship, which could not be corrected by the father because the father was either absent or very remote from family life.' Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" writes - "Gay men are twice as likely as heterosexuals to come from a distinctive family constellation, half of them painting the following picture of their boyhood: the mother likes to be the centre of his attention and they are unusually close; she regards the rough-and-tumble play enjoyed by most boys as dangerous, and is excessively anxious about his health and safety; this inhibits his aggression, and he is clinging and highly anxious at being separated from her; in early adolescence she may be flirtatious with him and she is a dominant, powerful woman who is uncomfortable with masculinity - emasculating even; she takes the famly decisions more than the father, and is the stronger personality; the father is rejecting or withdrawn or weak or absent - emotionally, literally or a combination of these - and the marital relationship is disharmonious. Further reading/theories: "Why men don't listen and Women can't read maps", by Allan & Barbara Pease - (offering the theory that there was excessive stress that affected the mother when the foetus was still in the womb). |
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| Serial murderer (Trevor Hardy) |
| Carol Anne Davis, in 'Couples who kill - profiles of deviant duos' gives some insight into the life of a man who killed three times .. Trevor Hardy's family life was unstable so he was familiar with violence from an early age. By eight he'd become a bully and eventually ended up in the approved school system. He regularly ran away from its brutal regimes, only to be sentenced to further punishment. He took to hanging about with much younger children as this made him feel important, the leader of an undemanding pack. Whilst still in his teens, Hardy took to burglary. He was caught and, age fifteen, sent to an adult prison. Doubtless this showed him an even less palatable side of the world. He liked to dress up in women's clothes - and men who have come from cold, unloving backgrounds are more likely than others to have this particular fetish. But others described his relationship with his mother as abnormally close. His relationship with his siblings wasn't close, for they feared his temper. He was habitually drunk and full of rage. |
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| A feeling of unreality and being 'unable to be myself' |
| Do you feel unreal and 'unable to be myself' - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" writes about one of the ways in which our minds try to heal ourselves, or at least try to avoid hurt and pain. - 'Equally, we can remove ourselves from the situation through 'dissociation'. At its most extreme, this is the strange sensation of being outside ourselves, looking in. It is often found in Wobblers [see elsewhere], a pattern of insecurity very common in Personality Disordered people [see elsewhere]. For such a fluid psyche or mind, the adoption of multiple personalities is easy. If reality is unbearable, a fine way to evade it is to be someone else. We often feel unreal and 'unable to be myself', uncertain as we are of who that is. Paradoxically, we may feel most real when pretending to be someone else, and even if we don't gravitate towards acting as an actual profession we still make a good actor. We live our lives as if playing ourselves, rather than really feeling that is who we are. We recognize our passport photograph or face in a mirror as belonging to the person named on our birth certificate or passport, but for much of the time that person is someone we are pretending to be. This can make us a very adept mimic, able to switch identities with remarkable fluidity, just as small children can flit between one fantasy game and another. Often witty and charming when we first meet someone, afterwards we leave an indefinable sense of something being not quite right. We are an imposter impersonating ourselves, expecting someone to tap us on the shoulder and expose us as the fraud we feel ourselves to be.' |
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| Emotionally erratic / capricious / impulsive |
| 'Personality Disorder' (Are you emotionally erratic / capricious / impulsive) - Oliver James in "They F*** You Up" belives that people who as children experience extremely unempathic and unresponsive care often turn out in a way that can be described as having a Personality Disorder - 'Narcissism and omnipetence are usually present if we suffer from one of the commonest kinds of Personality Disorder, the borderline. We have a pervasive instability and ambivalence in the stream of our everyday life. Emotionally erratic, capricious, impulsive and often explosive, we make a very awkward, manipulative companion. Relatives and acquaintances are put on edge by sullen displays and hurt looks or by obstinate nastiness, eliciting rejection rather than the nurture that is desperately needed. Ever since we learned depressive and hyper moods in earliest infancy, our mood has shifted between extended periods of dejection and apathy and frantic spells of anger, anxiety or excitement. Our despair is genuine but it is also a means of expressing hostility, a covert way of frustrating and retaliating. Angered by the failure of others to nurture us, we use moods and threats to 'get back' and 'teach a lesson'. By exaggerating our plight and acting in a miserable fashion we avoid responsibilities and place added burdens on others. Cold and stubborn silences are punitive blackmail, a threat of trouble to come. Easily offended by trifling matters, we are readily provoked to contrariness if things do not go our way. .. Not surprisingly, sustaining stable personal relationships is difficult. A study comparing borderline women seen in a marriage guidance clinic with non-borderlines found the borderlines to be filled with self-deceit. They had greater sexual dissatisfaction and depression about their sex lives, yet thought of themselves as highly desirable. They reported more problems in their relationships, greater sexual boredom, difficulties in achieving orgasm and proneness to affairs, yet they invariably identified their partner as the one with the sexual problem. The borderlines also were more likely to report lesbian desires, and half had suffered sexual or physical abuse as children. .. Intimate contact with others leaves us feeling battered because our omnipotent and narcissistic fantasies are constantly banging against the ceiling of reality. It also |
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| Children who commit violent crimes |
| Carol Anne Davis in 'Children who kill: profiles of teen and pre-teen killers' says - 'Moreover, the children who commit violent crimes have invariably been victimised by violent adults. A recent study of 200 serious juvenile offenders found that over 90% of them had suffered childhood trauma. 74% of the total sample had been physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused and over 30% had lost a significant person in their life to whom they were emotionally attached. |