Leaders and child abuse…

people lived here 6000 years ago (stone age).

From Bob Scarf’s essay “Leaders”:

"This is consonant with the idea that ‘leadership’ is composed of the most backwards psychoclasses.

Question: Why is that? That is, why is ‘leadership’ composed of the most backwards psychoclasses? /…/

I have written elsewhere (and in previous posts) on the origins of political power [and why are some given power? Why does the people give certain people power, even the highest power in a society, whether formal or informal, on different levels? What do those have in their early history?].

In the gynarchy (female subculture) women restaged their abuse and warded off their annihilation anxiety by emulating their abusive mothers.

In the androcracy (male subculture) men, who did not become mothers, had to restage and combat their annihilation anxiety in other ways. One of the ways they did so was by developing politics and political power [or in anger]. So power is pathological. If you want to avoid using medical terms; power is a defense. It follows then that the people who are more defended (in certain ways) are more attracted to political power.

[and power in general in the society!? I think the ones that would become the best leaders, for instance on workplaces, don’t seek those jobs, because they realize the problems with being a leader. The researchers Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter thought the workplaces and companies were at risk of becoming drained on their best work labor, because either they would become burnout or try to leave and start their own businesses, with all the troubles connected to this and what this would cost for the companies, workplaces, the democracy the society, the societal economy. And so far I have had the incomes so I can buy and read a lot of books. More privileged than many in this world, even though I only have middle-incomes! Grew up and still belong to the middle class, maybe grew up in the somewhat upper middle class].”

See what Alice Miller writes in her book "The Body Never Lies" and what's written about its content (the second half of this posting) concerning child abuse and the society.

I thought further on my maternal grandparents and how they survived the pressure on them (in the working class. Addition: I think I belong to the “working” class too!).

We live in much more complicated societies than our first ancestors lived, in societies with the potential to really destroy everything on this earth; the nature, all human beings.

My great grandparents and their generation, and in the generations before them, didn’t really have those means.

I also came to think how does the history look when it comes power-mad? To money and property mad (having limitless needs, needs that can never become filled, the person never becomes satisfied, is about persons trying to fill needs they can never fill afterwards, because that time has passed, but what does this cause other people, if not the whole society, but the persons nearest to them)?

And societies with many disturbed because of the ways that were in fashion raising children (as for instance in Germany decades before WWII, and probably also occurring in societies in wars and lots of conflicts today too)?

That our grandparents (in my generation), being under and standing with their caps in their hands, bowing for their employers managed their lives (in greater poverty than almost all people today?) how did they? Were they stronger, or what? The illnesses came late in life for them. See about the ACE-study. I think Miller wonders if Hitler had needed his leader role (that much) if he had a lot of children, and been able to abreact the horrible abuse he endured during his childhood on them.

Did they because they could abreact their frustrations on their kids, it was your duty to educate your children, and the method was spanking them and making so they didn’t think they were anybody (by using emotional and verbal violence)?

Men abreacted on their wives and kids if they weren’t in a power position (then they probably mistreated the persons standing them nearest in different ways, more or less subtle), and women in turn on their kids (if they couldn’t react at their husbands, on whom they were dependent)?

Women abreacted the abuse they had endured during their childhood (and their under order in the whole society) and their fear of becoming annihilated by copying their mothers (and/or fathers). Men sought power in the society, and if this wasn’t possible they abreacted their early experiences and latter humiliation they experienced in the society, at work etc. too on their kids (and wives. But women have been abusive too at not only their kids!). As was the case when I grew up.

In this way they survived, didn’t become sick in the first place, and had a feeling of some sort of power and control (the therapists Ingeborg Bosch and Jean Jenson, maybe among others, think you get a feeling of power and control through anger and/or denial of needs) ?

Also came to think: Owe Wikström realized when his heart all of a sudden stopped and during the recovery after this, how totally being at the mercy and dependent he was on his caregivers, and the care and good will he got from them [my addition: that they didn't abuse his situation]. See what his reflections in his book “Sonias goodness”.

I also wondered: real equality, real freedom, (that all people have the same say, are equally worth, get the same respect as everybody else) in the society and the world is that the real prerequisites? How do we create this? The best and probably only method is changing childrearing methods even more than we have already done? There’s still quit a lot to do there I would say.

Interview with the author Henning Mankell.

Men’s and women’s different reactions…

Görel Wentz and Ulf Lundberg.

Struck me this morning that it stands somewhere that men and women react differently to stress, and searched for this in two books I have. One was Peter Währborg’s “Stress och den nya ohälsan” (“Stress and the new ill health”) and the other “Stessad hjärna, stressad kropp – om sambanden mellan psykisk stress och kroppslig ohälsa” (”Stressed brain, stressed body – about the connections between psychic stress and bodily ill-health”) by the professor at the Institution of Psychology and the Centre for Health Equity Studies (CHESS) at the university of Stockholm Ulf Lundberg and his co author Görel Wentz, journalist.

Währborg writes in his book on page 78 in the chapter “Differences between men and women” that Christina Maslach establishes that burnout looks different in men and women, even if this condition is as common in women as in men. In women the emotional exhaustion (the emptiness feeling) is more intensive and more usual. Men react with depersonalization and frigidity (känslokyla).

Lundberg and Wentz write at page 179 in their book in the chapter “Psychological differences” that in the stress research, as in so many other research areas, most studies are performed on men, For a long time one hasn’t been aware that men and women react differently to stress.

And they also write that it is rather psychological factors and sex role patterns (könsrollsmönster) which are decisive for the differences between the sex’s manners in reacting to stress.

Yes, we are raised and met differently from the beginning, because we are seen differently and the demands are put differently on us? But don't small children, no matter what sex (or for that matter what individual the small child is) , have the same needs, and maybe exactly the same needs (is it true that different individuals has different needs? Or can belief/idea be about the parents needs, a projection of their totally unconscious needs? And IF different individuals should have different needs: are they SO different? And IF children have different needs, can it be that they entered this world in different ways? Things we grown ups aren't sensitive to maybe at all or very little? Because we in turn had to make ourselves insensitive to survive?)?

And later we take our early unfulfilled needs out in different ways and on different persons, in different circumstances, some have more power than others and others less, so the effects of this are more or less large and directed on different targets (the more power a person has the more damage his/her unprocessed has?).

And that we take our unfulfilled needs out in different ways always causes problems, bigger or smaller, and misinterpretations and misunderstandings? Bigger or smaller wars?

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And there was a small article in the local newspaper about the incest man in Austria, where it stood that he was a classical tyrant... He was big and strong? And had much more physical strength and power than, at least, his wife and daughters? Which he didn't hesitate to use at all.

And it already stands about this case in wikipedia!

And which are the consequences of child abuse - on the political level? For who we vote on in elections? If we vote at all? If we want a savior, maybe even a "strong leader" solving all our problems and keeping things in order by punishing those who don't live in a certain way, and how the leader sees criminals (criminals need hard punishments for instance) etc. etc.? If we believe we have influence on things on different levels (in our private life, at the work place, in the society, in the world) or if we don't think we have? If we are still paralyzed with unprocessed helplessness or not? Because we were so badly treated, and had no protector?

And if we fight for things so they don't harm ourselves either...

And our (really lousy) current government uses the classical tool with scapegoats! Gathering people in chasing certain groups like those on sick pay. I am rally horrified over many of our politicians, whom are younger than me many of them, over the views the have and give expression to. Really horrified.

And I have thought for long that it is opportune to chase the ones on sick pay for instance, because most of those on sick pay are women. At least here. I have thought for myself that if it had been more men on sick pay the politicians would have taken steps in preventing illness due to stress and work place conditions/work environment (psychosocial not least).

Playing on many people’s tendencies to contempt for weakness? Beating their breasts!