I’m intersectional today: time, motivation, coffee and cigars intersected so that I am going to take some time and perform the tedious task of quoting a book at length.
Why? I think it’s useful. And the author deserves credit.
The book is “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents”, by Lindsay Gibson. I will note that I make no money from this blog, and that on balance if I have any effect, it will be to sell books for her.
Now, the book is not something that will ever be filed under “Classics”. It’s not Voltaire, or Thomas More, or Jean-Paul Sartre. But in some ways it may be more USEFUL.
Much philosophy, I am convinced, is just a beard for psychology. Principled are developed and articulated at length in complex systems, all to avoid dealing with the fact that your mother didn’t love you, or your father was harsh, or your mother was harsh and your father didn’t love you.
I remember writing down the quote from Moby Dick (the one and only time I read it, just after high school) that “when I hear a man give himself out as a philosopher I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old man, he has “broken his digester.'” That’s from memory, but close.
Much of life is very simple. It is avoiding the difficulties of that simplicity that gets us into trouble.
Here we are in 2022, and most people don’t have a fucking clue why they are on this planet, so they are grasping at straws. Existential crisis? I prescribe a double dose of global warming hysteria, and maybe a sex change for six months.
That’s not healthy. No serious person can argue it is healthy. It flies in the face of Liberalism, as a political creed founded specifically, if not explicitly, on the idea that our society was filled and would continue to be filled with responsible adults capable of independent rational thought.
Get rid of the adults and the rational thought, and Liberalism no longer makes sense practically or emotionally.
Anyway, in my own particular case, I got to thinking about Enmeshment, which I learned in this book was apparently a term developed by Murray Bowen in the 70’s. When I was still seeing therapists–when they still had something to say I had not heard, and before I had read most of the books on all their shelves–I was told my family was “enmeshed”, and I was the “Identified Patient”.
It is a particular and peculiar aspect of emotionally unhealthy systems that the most unhealthy people display few if any outward symptoms. The symptoms manifest in those unable to handle the contradictions without breaking down and falling out somehow. That person is called an Identified Patient. As I will argue, in Totalitarian systems, that person is called a dissident (or cockroach, rat, traitor, Jew, Fascist/Bolshevik, reactionary, right winger, White Supremacist). They are the ones shouting truth in a world of lies, and usually paying a severe price for it.
I will write out both her definition of maturity and the characteristics of immaturity, but right out of the gate read this and think of George Orwell:
If you were raised by an emotionally immature parent, you spent your early years tiptoeing around the anxieties of an emotionally phobic person. The enmeshed families created by such parents are a stronghold against their fear of individuality. A child’s individuality is seen as a threat to emotionally insecure and immature parents because it stirs up fears about possible rejection or abandonment. If you think independently you might criticize them or decide to leave. They feel much safer seeing family members as predictable fantasy characters rather than real individuals.
For parents who fear both real emotion and abandonment, authenticity in their children presents frightening evidence of the child’s individuality. These parents feel threatened when their children express genuine emotions because it makes interactions unpredictable and seems threatening to family ties. Therefore their children, in an attempt to prevent their parents from becoming anxious, often suppress any authentic thoughts, feelings, or desires that would disturb their parents sense of security.
Parents who need to keep strict control because of their anxieties often teach their children not only how they should do things, but also how they should feel and think. . .Such parents teach their children to be ashamed of any aspect of themselves that differs from their parents. In this way, children come to see their uniqueness and even their strengths, as odd and unlovable.
In such families, internalizing [I will offer her definition presently] children often learn to feel ashamed of the following normal behaviors: Enthusiasm; Spontaneity; Sadness and grief over hurt, loss or change; Uninhibited affection; saying what they really think and feel; expressing anger when they feel wronged or slighted.
On the other hand, they are taught that the following experiences and feelings are acceptable and even desirable: obedience and deference to authority; physical illness or injury that puts the parent in a position of strength and control; uncertainly and self doubt; liking the same things as the parent; guilt and shame over imperfections or being different; willingness to listen, especially to the parents distress and complaints. (page 159)
Pick your regime, pick your time and person. I think of Fidel Castro giving 6 hour harangues that were the same bullshit as the last one, but during which all listening were too scared to use the bathroom, lest they be pegged as a dissident and sent to jail to be tortured and “corrected”.
Think of any totalitarian regime: is this not a perfect description? Why do they care about your mind, if they have your body? Because they feel chronic uncontrolled anxiety, because they are adult children.
We read 1984, and wonder at the evil and wrong of it, but how often do you wonder about how the principle perpetrators, like O’Brien, became that way? What did the family system of Vladimir Ulyanov look like? Adolph Hitler? Joseph Jughashvili? Nguyen Sinh Cung?
Politics is an arena not that unlike family dynamics, and it is not a stretch to suppose that political leaders recreate, both consciously and more likely mostly unconsciously, dynamics with which they are familiar.
This means, in turn, that there is most likely a Liberal type of family (note, I am using the word Liberal as it was used before it was bastardized and coopted by authoritarians). That family would be one characterized by emotional maturity and health. Liberalism depends on an emotionally healthy and engaged populace. It invokes and depends on the wisdom of the community. It facilitates freedom, because freedom is what is healthy for healthy people. Freedom is useless to the sick and morally and mentally infirm.
Logically, any aspiring Authoritarian, then, would want to infantilize their target population, making them unsure of themselves, weak, greedy, and all the rest.
Here is a definition of healthy maturity:
‘Emotional maturity’ means a person is capable of thinking objectively and conceptually while sustaining deep emotional connection to others. People who are emotionally mature can function independently while also having deep emotional attachments, smoothly incorporating both into their daily life. They are direct about pursuing what they want, yet do so without exploiting other people. They’ve differentiated from their original family relationships sufficiently to build a life of their own. They have a well developed sense of self and identity and treasure their closest relationships.
Emotionally mature people are comfortable and honest about their own feelings and get along well with other people, thanks to their well developed empathy, impulse control, and emotional intelligence. They’re interested in other people’s inner lives and enjoy opening up and sharing with others in an emotionally intimate way. When there’s a problem, they deal with others directly to smooth out differences.
Emotionally mature people cope with stress in a realistic, forward looking way, while consciously processing their thoughts and feelings. They can control their emotions when necessary, anticipate the future, adapt to reality, and use empathy and humor to ease difficult situations and strengthen bonds with others. They enjoy being objective and know themselves well enough to admit their weaknesses. (page 28)
So what is immaturity? Well, the opposite. I will offer some snippets. See if you recognize any of this in our current political and social (can we any longer differentiate them) climate.
Traits associated with emotional immaturity:
They are rigid and single minded. As long as there’s a clear path to follow, emotionally immature people can do very well, sometimes reaching high levels of success and prestige. But when it comes to relationships or emotional decisions, their immaturity becomes evident. They are either rigid or impulsive, and try to cope with reality by narrowing it down to something manageable. Once they form an opinion, their minds are closed. There’s one right answer, and they can become very defensive and humorless when people have other ideas.
They have low stress tolerance. Emotionally immature people don’t deal with stress well. Their responses are reactive and stereotyped. Instead of assessing the situation and anticipating the future, they use coping mechanisms that deny, distort, or replace reality. They have trouble admitting mistakes and instead discount the facts and blame others. Regulating emotions is difficult for them, and they often overreact. Once they get upset, it’s hard for them to calm down, and they expect other people to soothe them by doing what they want. They often seek comfort in intoxicants or medication.
They do what feels best. Young children are ruled by feelings, whereas adults consider possible consequences. As we mature, we learn that what feels good isn’t always the best thing to do. Among emotionally immature people, however, the childhood instinct to do what feels good never really changes. They make decisions on the basis of what feels best in the moment and often follow the path of least resistance.
They are subjective, not objective. Emotionally immature people assess situations in a subjective way, not objectively. They don’t do much dispassionate analysis. When they interpret situations, how they are feeling is more important than what is actually happening. What is true doesn’t matter nearly as much as what feels true. Trying to get a subjectively oriented person to be objective about anything is an exercise in futility. Facts, logic, history–all fall on deaf ears where the emotionally immature are concerned.
They have little respect for difference. Emotionally immature people are annoyed by other people’s differing thoughts and opinions, believing everyone should see things their way. The idea that other people are entitled to their own point of view is beyond them. . .They are only comfortable in role-defined relationships where everyone holds the same beliefs. The quieter, nicer ones are the same, but in a quieter, nicer way.
They are egocentric. Normal children are egocentric as youngsters, but the self involvement of emotionally immature adults is more childish than childlike. [emphasis in original].Unlike children, their egocentrism lacks joy and openness. Emotionally immature people are self preoccupied in an obsessed way, not with the innocence of a child. Young children are self-centered because they’re still commanded by pure instinct, but emotionally immature adults are commanded by anxiety and insecurity, like wounded people who must keep checking their intactness. They live in a perpetual state of insecurity, fearing that they’ll be exposed as bad, inadequate, or unlovable [such as by not wearing a mask; my comment, obviously]. They keep their defenses high so other people can’t get close enough to threaten their shaky sense of self worth.
Before you start feeling too sorry for them, keep in mind that their defenses work seamlessly to keep these underlying anxieties below the level of awareness. They would never see themselves as being insecure or defensive.
They are self preoccupied and self involved. Anxious self preoccupation is a quality all emotionally immature people share. They’re constantly monitoring whether their needs are being met or whether someone has offended them.
They are self referential, not self reflective. Emotionally immature people are highly self referential, meaning that in any interaction, all roads lead back to them. However, they aren’t self reflective. Their focus on themselves isn’t about gaining insight or self understanding; it’s about being the center of attention.
They have low empathy and are emotionally insensitive. Impaired empathy is a central characteristic of emotionally immature people, as is avoidance of emotional sharing and intimacy. Being out of touch with their own deeper feelings, they’re strikingly blind to how they make other people feel. (pages 29-35)
She goes on in this vein, but this should suffice to make the point. The whole chapter is worth reading, as is much of the book, particularly for anyone who can relate to any of this in their own lives.
I will ask an open question to anyone reading this who has spent any significant amount of time interacting with the Left: does this not all sound VERY familiar?
And here is the kicker: a Leftist could read all this, recognize none of it as applying to them, then cut and paste it as applying to conservatives without batting an eye. Since they lack any real emotional depth or intellectual creativity, I noticed long ago that they just take the valid complaints we make about them, then more or less literally say “I know you are, but what am I?” by literally taking the same words and simply reversing the direction. They may do that with what I just wrote. Childish, yes. That is the argument I am making here: it IS childish, and not in a fun way.
So what does this add up to? A huge problem, no?
But is the first step in solving any problem not identifying and describing it? Applying mature reality testing?
In my own mind, I have a certain metaphor, that may not be a metaphor, that I like to use, and which I find comforting in a strange way.
I like to think that before I was born my assigned task was to parachute into the darkest place I could find, far from comfort and the Home of Light that is where we all truly belong, and to do so without a map, without a guide, and find my way back through every possible emotional shitstorm imaginable. I have actually had the good fortune to get to know a few real commandos reasonably well, who I have used as models to help me.
That is what I like to think of myself as doing here. We are fighting a battle for adulthood as a species, as Humankind, writ large. The battle is being fought in emotional terrain. My job is to map that out, to make what was hidden visible, to describe what is being done, how, and where, so that any remaining sane, well meaning people out there can begin to act more intelligently, with more purpose, and with more effectiveness in helping lead humanity to a future characterized by dignity, personal freedom, emotional growth, spirituality, and sustained prosperity within the bounds of respecting the life of this planet.
I am an environmentalist too, but I think we need to focus on real problems, not made up ones.
Imagine, for example, we were spending as much money preventing plastics from entering our oceans–and pulling out those already there–as we are on the ludicrous notion of Global Warming. Imagine we were taking sane and practical steps to reduce plastic use, rather than pretending to recycle plastics, then shipping them to Asia, where they get released into the oceans.
Or, alternatively, I suspect that if we took the money being spent on global warming in, say, Holland alone, we could stop the need for poor Brazilians to burn rainforest.
But we aren’t. We are dealing with emotionally immature, rigid people with completely perverted reality testing. They can’t get the attention they crave with practical measures to solve real problems. They need crises that they claim only they can solve; and so they CREATE them, never mind who they hurt. Those people are invisible to them.
It’s an odd thing, but the stress of watching a President and Congress destroy our country–while a corrupted Supreme Court does something close to nothing to prevent it–seems to be a sort of tonic to me. Stress is tension, and tension CAN be a solvent, if you allow it.
Think about massage: you put pressure on your muscles, then release it. Tight muscles loosen through temporarily increased tension. This is the whole premise of Kum Nye, except that you are using body positions to place stress on patterns of muscular and energetic tension. Can Life itself not also be used this way? Can difficulty and stress not be used this way, if we feel them, then learn to loosen up within them? I believe so.