Diagnosis...

Came to think about diagnosis, and was curious on what the Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch has written about this in her book "Rediscovering The True Self", so I looked in it (the revised version). Want to make a first posting about this, maybe catching this up with more postings.

But for the first she writes:

“We are adults with a divided consciousness. We don't have a child living inside us that can be healed, loved, reassured etc. We can only heal the effects of the past by allowing ourselves to feel the old pain while we are aware of the present reality.

Conceiving ourselves as being divided into 'me and my child' stimulates disintegration, instead of leading to the integration necessary to heal.

Moreover loving, reassuring, listening to and respecting etc. our 'inner-child' just fuels our False Hope [i.e. fuels a defense that we can get something today we needed then but didn't get then, something that was so painful then that we had to defend ourselves against and deny to survive] (page 242-243).”

In Swedish:

“Vi är vuxna med delade medvetanden. Vi har inget barn som lever inuti oss som kan helas, älskas, lugnas osv. Vi kan bara hela effekterna av det förflutna genom att tillåta oss att känna den gamla smärtan medan vi är medvetna om den nuvarande verkligheten.

Att tänka, föreställa oss som delade i 'jag och mitt barn' stimulerar motsatsen till integrering , istället för att leda till den integration [förening till ett helt] som är nödvändig för att helas [enligt bland andra Bosch].

Dessutom, att älska, lugna, lyssna till och respektera osv. vårt 'inre barn' understödjer bara vårt falska hopp [dvs. ett försvar att vi ska få något vi inte fick då, som vi dock hade behövt då, men som var så smärtsamt att vi måste förneka det och försvara oss emot].”

Bosch writes about “Obsessive-compulsive disorders” (OCD):

“These disorders reveal a False Hope strategy: 'If only I can do this or that in such and such a way, I can ward off the danger'. Of course the danger could never be warded off, since what we are afraid of has already happened. We just haven't admitted it and felt the pain and fear.

Research shows that people who suffer from obsessive compulsive behavior, have the lowest rates of suicide when compared to those officially diagnosed as suffering from other 'mental diseases', especially depression.

This would be in line with the hypothesis that Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (a DSM-IV diagnostic label) is an extreme form of False Hope, which implies that it serves as a very efficient buffer against experiencing the Primary Defense.

The Primary Defense, as we have seen, can often be equated to what is called 'depression', which has the highest correlation rate to suicide (page 245-246).”

In Swedish on "Tvångssyndrom":

“Dessa störningar röjer en falskt hopp strategi 'Om jag bara kan göra det här eller det där på det eller det sättet kan jag hålla faran på avstånd.'

Naturligtvis kan faran aldrig hållas på avstånd, eftersom det vi är rädda för redan har hänt. Vi har bara inte erkänt den och känt smärtan och rädslan.

Forskning visar att människor som lider av tvångssyndrom har den lägsta frekvensen av självmord jämfört med dem som officiellt är diagnostiserade som lidande av andra 'mentala störningar', särskilt depression.

Detta skulle kunna vara i linje med hypotesen att tvångssyndrom (en DSM-IV diagnostisk beteckning) är en extrem form av falskt hopp, vilket betyder att den tjänar som en väldigt effektiv buffert mot att uppleva det ursprungliga försvaret [att klandra sig själv, kort uttryckt].”

Survival of the fittest, what persons deserve freedom, and what persons get it?

Is it true that it should be (are) the most adaptable (flexible) who survives best? And the less that have most problems surviving?

If we should examine people in higher positions, earning more money then the average, what would we find? That they are the most flexible or adaptable, more than most of those under them? Or can they be very inflexible, no especially adaptive, rigid, stiff? (Do many of them have more means hiding this too?)

But it’s not impossible that many of them want to believe that they are superior and deserve their position and wealth?

Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, is about blaming the one who is a failure, who don’t succeed! With your success or failure you have proved if you are as good as other people or less good! If you deserve a decent living or not!

Strikes me once again; empathy is said to be one of several risk factors for burnout according to science.

Thought about inconsequence (arrogance, cynicism) in rhetoric (in politics, on the net in debates there etc.), an inconsequence making you totally confused and thus unfortunately entirely mute. Who is the stupid here? It must be me (primary defense?).

Neoliberals have told me that if nobody wants my product: my piano-playing, piano teacher work, then those things has to die. If nobody is willing to pay me for those things, goodbye with it.

But if a neoliberal try to sell his products or services as an own manufacturer with little or no success, then the failing success has with something else to do then with the need for or quality of his product, something it had in my case though. It’s nothing wrong with their product or what they want to sell (compared with my “product”), but the fault lays somewhere else, on taxes, the society, the government.

How is it with the logical thinking?

When the power has succeeded to make us, the grassroots, fight they have succeeded! People won’t see the ruling class or what they are doing if the grassroots are fighting between themselves. Forces try to make us believe that we have the same chance as those wealthy. Playing on the false hope defense.

The “weak” can die or something? Who are loyal with them? Loyal with the losers?

The wealthiest, richest and with most power join in groups of lots a different kinds to support each other (and most of those are men too), they organize themselves in closed and (often) secret groups. Loyal to each other?

But who are loyal to us. How do we, the grassroots, deal with this? By trying to be awaken to things, not let the power divide and rule! Who are going to protect the weak groups in society? (who are the weak and where does he weakness comes from?).

From where comes limitless needs? Can those ever become filled?

In the blogposting “Political mathematics” you can read that demands on cars, TVs and cell phones have decreased in the global financial crisis paths. The need for school education, glaucoma and cataract surgery and changing diapers are on the other hand unchanged from losses of demands on the market. But the government doesn’t think it can afford looking so those needs are covered- we have a crisis for God’s sake! The message from the secretary in charge is that we have to prioritize.

But the truth is that the government has prioritized differently for how the money shall become spent. New and more an more gloomy prognoses are published almost weekly about how drastic the cuts that will become forced on the general welfare. The needed money is almost exactly the money the tax cuts are for work! This means that 30 000 people will lose their jobs. 30 000 persons whose jobs are needed everyday, everywhere in the country. They are at risk of losing their jobs because the government doesn’t think if can afford them!

The Left party, as the envious bores they are (as the blog owner calls herself and her friends), has initiated an investigation how the tax cuts for work are divided among people in different income groups. Just to check if it really is the low and middle wage earners who are the most benefited by those tax cuts.

If it is like that, something the government readily claims, there is some sort of demand stimulus in the reform that at least isn’t totally crazy in a recession.

But it isn’t like this.

As a matter of fact more than 52 percent of the tax cuts for work go to the highest paid third part. They don’t need to increase their consumption. They will in all likelihood not do this to any significant degree. People on these income levels save the money they get over and the money neither lead to jobs nor to tax revenues.

The lowest paid on the contrary are made do with 8 percent of the tax cuts total value.

The 15 billion Swedish Crowns it’s about here could have become used better. A billion could have one to the lowest paid. While 14 billions needed for keeping the staff in the health care, child care and school could have gone exactly to those things.

It should, in contrast to using them to even more increase the already highly paid peoples’ space for savings, have become used to keeping the unemployment down and the employment up – something that actually should have been highly prioritized given the general state on the labor market.

This would in turn have held 30 000 publicly employed peoples’ consumption up and kept the economy going. Instead they are at risk of becoming thrown out into the low income slough on a really lousy dole or being forced to change account from the municipality town’s wage office to the social welfare office.

And the needs for the tasks the employed in the municipality are doing won’t disappear as said before.

So it will probably become the fired assistant nurses, children’s nurses, the teachers and home helps that have to step in and take care of their old tasks unemployed when the local governments service can’t afford it or haven’t time for it.

Why is the government doing this bizarre prioritizing? Have they misjudged the situation? Have they failed?

Hardly. This IS the bourgeoisie policy. This thesis the blog owner has developed together with another woman in an article linked here.

This is what Naomi Klein calls the prerequisites for Shock therapy?? A real or an caused crisis, where people in shock have nothing to put against.

But information is shock resistant as Klein also writes.

From another article "Bourgeoisie strategy": The refusal to intervene from the right government’s side isn’t due to lack of wisdom, but a logical consequence of the bourgeoisie political agenda.

The support for a commonly financed welfare is strong in the Swedish people. Too strong for the bourgeoisie parties to win sympathies on open talk of cuts and privatizations. But the right’s political agenda, that more and more of social security, nursing and care shall become financed privately hasn’t changed, only its rhetoric.

The bourgeoisie government has already made deteriorations in unemployment, health care and parental benefits.

At the same time many of the authorities which are the citizens’ immediate meeting with the welfare systems, as the employment offices and the regional social insurance office have gotten powerfully reduced subsidies and become reorganized from the bottom. The new, harder rules to get those benefits are hard to understand both for the citizens and the employed, people have to wait unreasonably long for payments and the staff is pressed to their utmost.

It’s natural that such a development leads to an increase in dissatisfaction and distrust against the common welfare systems. The ones that have opportunities will seek themselves to supplementing, private insurances to compensate for the deficiencies in the common systems. This is encouraged by the right government. The strategy is to create support for a gradually liquidation of the loyal, tax financed welfare systems through sabotaging them.

Warning bells are working full steam about an approaching welfare crisis and economists as well as local politicians are appealing to the government to intervene. But the secretary in charge says the municipalities have to prioritize. En clair this means that the government encourage to cuts in the school, child care, health care and geriatric care. At the same time as the safety systems and the authorities administering them are undermined; the government intend to let the school and health care collapse.

That the right government uses the economical crisis with the aim of carrying through a fervently coveted system shift becomes more and more obvious.

Local politicians, no matter what party, have the ungrateful job to cut the already hardly harassed welfare sector.

The government wash their hands and instead concentrates on creating laws and decrees favoring private alternatives for all our welfare. Thus the ring is raked for private health care companies and insurance companies taking over where the public have “failed.”

Instead of trying to get support for its privatization politics, through arguing, the government is prepared to sacrifice not only citizens health care but also the possibility for the staff in the welfare sector to carry their work through.

The government’s passivity under the ongoing recession isn’t about ignorance about what to do. What sort of visions does a government have that cut the taxes with 100 billion Swedish Crowns and encourages the local politicians to prioritize among sick, old and children? In fact it’s high time that the right government tells the Swedish people what it wants to carry through and they should become forced to argue for this.

So true!

I dislike this government from deep, deep in my heart.

Summer reflections...

more pictures here.

Questioning and seeing things as wrong makes one less inclined to passing the same things forward. Realising that the treatment one received wasn’t deserved due to ones character.

A long time ago I had a piano-teacher who had severe problems with stage fright. So he started to study psychology on distance. He meant that bad self-confidence isn’t something inherited!

“I am that sort of person! That’s my character!”

The implications of that – which are they? There’s nothing I can do! I have to live with this! One push the responsibility away, doesn’t one? I can’t do anything! And adults between one perhaps can stand it? And help the other person overcoming this hopefully. But parent-child between how is this? Who has to take responsibility actually?

I am bad, wrong! I was and still am the guilty one for the bad treatment I received! I am to blame myself.

Oh, I get so tired.

What does this lead to??

There is a self-destructiveness I can get so furious at!!!

Totally paralyzed! Paralyzed by all guilt!

“To the ground bent!”

a mother used to say. The child(ren) felt extremely guilty!!?? Responsible! As if they should go in as counselors or therapists? And on top not add to that burdening!

I know of a girl, around 12 who had got measles. She got a slight ache in her joints (phalanxes) in connection with the disease. The girl was actually 13 because at this time we had switched from driving on the left side of the road to the right. Her mother should drive her to the nurse, and was so nervous so she almost drove in the ditch! So paralysed. So the child almost had to hold her mother’s hand, comforting and calming HER!!!

Addition in the evening: searching on the web I found this article “The Prize we pay for shaming little boys,” In this it stands for instance:

“Sulzer, in 1748, explains that humiliation of children is key to producing obedient citizens who are willing to submit to the laws and rules of reason once they are their own masters, since they are already accustomed not to act in accordance with their own will (Miller, 1990, p. 10). Dependence on authority plus the intense shaming of children produced the generation of Germans who obediently followed Hitler into the second World War and found their emotional release in carrying out its atrocities./…/

What surprised me most, though, was that the German people I have spoken with about this deliberate and immoral cruelty either do not know these facts or have only a hazy awareness of this period in German history. When I first attempted to discuss this with German colleagues and friends, I was bewildered by their reaction. These well educated and knowledgeable people knew nothing of these chapters in their own history. Generally, they expressed amazement, a hazy familiarity with the details or simply uncomfortable refusal to talk with me about what was clearly a forbidden subject./…/

The reluctance of Germans to ‘know about’ what was done to them after the fighting was over reminds me of those three little monkeys: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil. In my twenty years as a psychotherapist treating survivors of childhood trauma, I am familiar with this tendency of those who were once helpless to minimize the impact abuse has had on their lives. It is the same with my abused clients who trivialize the beatings of their childhood, saying they deserved to be hit, that they were very bad children. People who have been traumatized tend to normalize their traumatic situations.

It is hard for humans to accept that they were powerless to protect themselves from deliberate mistreatment. They are much more likely to take the blame for having been abused. For example, people who have been sexually abused as children tend to blame themselves, at least unconsciously, for somehow causing the abuse by being too sexy or too bad. Part of therapy is to help them realistically assess what was done to them and to what degree they are responsible for the shame they feel. (Of course, children bear no actual responsibility for being abused.) A first step in healing, then, is to accept that you were hurt by the trauma./…/

How, Gilligan asks, can a person who does not experience any feelings himself know that others have feelings or be moved by the feelings of others./…/

Fathers' contempt for their sons produces men who believe they are worthless, who are hyper-vigilant to signs of disdain, who are defensively ready to attribute negative intent to others, and who find a quick fix for making themselves worthwhile by degrading those less powerful than themselves, such as their wives. They believe they can make themselves feel some worth by making someone else lower than themselves.

In Bierman's programme, therapeutic procedures based on Eugene Gendlin's Focusing enable the participants to work through their own remembered physical or emotional abuse. The men are encouraged to let their feelings happen, to resist telling themselves what they should feel and to stop judging their feelings. They are taught to quietly put their attention into the part of their body where they usually have their feelings. They are instructed to let go controlling and to simply follow what is happening inside. For most of us the physical sensation connected to a feeling occurs as a tight knot in the stomach, a choking in the throat or a heaviness in the chest. Bierman trains the men to pay attention to these physical body signals which provide a way into unconscious knowing (Gendlin, 1996)./…/

In the methods of schwarze pedagogik, the child never experiences hatred for the father. When it is not possible to admit and express hatred for a parent, the rage gets projected onto others. As with Ralph Bierman's battering men, those who are weak and vulnerable (the way the batterer was as a child) become targets for this pent up rage. The adult who is filled with rage and shame becomes the perpetrator making others feel the way he felt when he was helpless.

This shame/violence cycle clearly played itself out when Germans who had been traumatized in childhood took out their rage on Jews and others who reminded them of themselves when they were helpless children. They projected onto others all their own ‘bad’ qualities which they had never been able to accept in themselves. Jews became dirty, greedy schemers, plotting to overthrow the rightful authorities. Concentration camp guards had the perfect opportunity to restage their own childhood traumas. Prisoners were helpless to defend themselves or to escape.

Their captors, urged on by the state, indulged in humiliating defenseless Jews. In fact, every German's repetition compulsion seems to have found a place in the hierarchy of terror which characterized the Nazi period. Men who had once been shamed as children now had the opportunity to demand from others, the cadaver-like obedience their fathers had exacted. They, in turn, gave automatic, unthinking obedience to their masters in The Third Reich's hierarchy of terror./…/

This paper deals with shaming in the childhood of Germans. But this is not specifically a German problem. It is a problem throughout the world. It is my hope that once we better understand the underlying causes of violence, we will be able to find some solutions.

How do we protect little boys from being shamed and abused by their fathers? This is a generational problem. It is self-perpetuating. Men who have been abused and shamed by their fathers tend to shame and abuse their small boys. As a society, we must find ways of cutting into this cycle of abuse where fathers humiliate their boys and passive mothers stand by without interfering on behalf of the children. But before we will be able to do this, we will have to accept whatever we ourselves experienced as children, as well as the ways in which we act out of our own traumatic experience.”

See this with “Evilness and responsibility…”; how badly we even became treated this is no excuse for what we do, how we behave, “Evilness and violence…” and “Anger, outbursts…” And postings on the label manipulation.

More on responsibility…

a young Ingmar Bergman in the archipelago of Stockholm.

Madeleine Åsbrink writes in her book (see earlier postings, here and here) how she made her and her husband move from Stockholm (a small town compared to the really big cities in the world! :-)) to a part of Sweden where it was cheaper living, where they maybe could experience some calm and peace - at the country-side. She was a high-achieving individual, had worked for many years already as engineer (college, a 4-year education?). More or less aware of it she wanted to change her life. She had already started seeking, by reading books on "spiritual" topics.

But her husband wasn’t satisfied in their new home (he hadn't communicated this either?), their relation slowly got worse. She writes that there was no safety, tenderness or nearness in their relation. She didn’t question it but continued struggling. Later she understood that she hadn’t experienced much of this in the family where she grew up, so she had no frames of reference and nothing to compare with in this respect. She, as we say “gillade läget” or “approved of, or ‘liked’, her position,” and continued struggling.

She thinks she had no good model for how a family-life or relation should (or could) be, even though she felt somewhere that this was wrong. She started to think on divorce.

One night when she laid their cogitating (grubblande) over her relation she got a thought and without reflecting over it and its meaning she suddenly heard herself saying:

“You behave like an egoistic pig, one could believe you have another (woman)!”

Her husband didn’t say a word. She got silent too. And the world stopped. Then all of a sudden she realized the truth there in the bed. She was right. Her husband had an affair with another woman.

She writes that at that moment she lost herself. She let herself down. She let her son down. She wasn’t armed for this quite simply. She had an enormous outer strength, but not the inner which had been needed to handle this message better than she did.

She thought it was her fault that her husband had got in love with another woman (and also followed that feeling by having a love-affair with her) and let both her and their son down. She shut her feelings off and now her life became about unraveling what SHE had done. Her husband blamed her and they found a lousy therapist taking side with her husband and saying that it wasn’t strange her husband had got tired on her and all her nagging, as if that should justify treachery (svek) and unfaithfulness (infidelity) she writes.

When she calls her mom to tell her what had happened she starts by saying that now her mother will be disappointed with her. Afterwards she wonders how her mom could become disappointed on her for something her husband had done! At that point she hadn’t realized yet that it’s impossible to take responsibility for another human being (and her/his actions, what/she says and does?), that the only real responsibility as each of us have is for ourself. And now she thought that it was this sole responsibility she didn’t take then.

To unravel what she had done they decided to move back to Stockholm.

In parallel with full time work and now two kids she started to retrain herself to Rosen therapist (writing this I have to add that by mentioning it I don't advocate Rosen-therapy though; can't this therapy be manipulative too, depending on who's performing it? There are reasons being careful when one seeks help! How attractive the therapy even looks or sounds).

She clenches her teeth and works on. Of course she ends up in a breakdown, with a total exhaustion. And has to work herself up from the bottom really.

She blamed herself. Her husband blamed her. And their therapist blamed her.

On my bike ride yesterday afternoon I came to think of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman who has written in one of his books that when he saw his pregnant wife and her eyes filled with sorrow and despair (pregnant with their fourth child, or third and fourth child, a twin-couple?) there in their double-bed when he had come home an evening or night telling her that he had a new woman, he decided to skip all guilt feelings. They were so (too) painful?? And Ingmar Bergman wanted to have his women for himself, not share them with any kids, neither own nor his women’s… His mother had held her kids very tight, instilling guilt and shame in them I get the impression after having read her diary and what others have narrated. As their father, the Lutheran priest did (see earlier postings on Ingmar Bergman here and here), who also beat his kids bloody and threatened them with the hell (and probably was burn-out a couple of times, he in turn with extremely high demands on himself, not being good enough to his parents in law either. Phew!!).

I have grown up with a mom thinking our female way of reacting, (over)sensitively, is worse than men’s power and capacity (in general) to let things run off them (as water on a goose) as we say. But if we as girls/women behaved in this way, how would that have been met? Would the environment have seen through their fingers with that? Men/boys were (and still are?) allowed this to many parents and grown ups between too? So we are taught very early to be overly responsible or the opposite? Or the latter adult reacts against those high demands (as Bergman did)? And it is true that men also take too much responsibility generally or in some circumstances! But when a woman does we are not allowing it in the same manner?

Men are a (the) superior sex, that's what I grew up with (or both looked up AND down on to be honest)? Women and girls are less worth as human beings (in all however). No wonder all ones struggles? And believes one isn't worth a nickel... (hopefully this is A LITTLE better). Having to work much too hard to earn the right living and existing, having food on the table, somewhere to live, an own car etc. etc. Yes, there ARE grains of truth in these feelings, that I feel so is no joke honestly (and maybe sad to say)! Striving to be good enough.

The Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch talks about a defence she calls the Primary defence, which is about blaming oneself. She thinks we all use this, but all don’t admit to it, neither to themselves nor to the environment (some are more in denial about this? Some deny they have any such feelings both to themselves AND to the environment). Women tend to be more prone admitting to it, men less.

Bosch writes somewhere that this tendency in some, more or less obvious can be very convenient for the environment. If someone is prone to blaming her/himself. And the environment can at the same time react with contempt over this person:

“Do you always have to…!!!”

When we react in that way we don’t want to admit to ourselves our own low self esteem? How we are blaming ourselves? We don’t want to admit to our own vulnerability? Don’t want to get in touch with feelings of powerlessness and helplessness underneath? Not get in touch with suppressed feelings from early, when we WERE power and helpless?

To come back to Åsbrink above. Her decision to go to technical college wasn’t her wish, but her father’s she realized. But she was very clever and efficient in that work and very much appreciated in her work. Earned A LOT OF money.

But she paid a high price for her struggles to live up to demands and get loved.

Her husband wanted to develop to, and also entered therapy of some kind, and with a ot of struggles and efforts they managed staying married in a much better marriage. But the path there was hard and tough she writes. Very, very tough in fact.

Hmmm, men are often (or was even more before) treated as they were kids and not grown up men? With no capacity taking responsibility??

“You know how he is…!! But he loves you anyway!”

Oh yeah, that’s what “love” is??? A pure lie? Even though the mom was "convinced" there was "love"? What she in turn had learned about love and had to believe in? Passing these confused and confusing ideas further to her kids (and probably not begrudging her kids other experiences either to be honest).

No wonder kids grow up confused about what love and this and that is (quite ironically)…

The responsibility lies entirely on ones shoulders? Don’t both (and all) parts have responsibility? And the same responsibility too? Shouldn’t both?

But if nothing (or very little) happens, shall one continue beating ones head bloody? In a false hope changing something tat isn’t possible to change? Re-enacting something that wasn’t possible to achieve then – the too painful realization that love didn’t exist (or the degree to what it didn’t exist)?

On my other blog I have blogged about "Charity and gratitude..." (in Swedish). Yes, what one grew up with? Being grateful, bowing ones head, being ashamed, feeling lousy etc.?

Corporal punishment and more about the Wall of Silence…

Primula Veris or gullviva.

Miller writes about a new law passed by the German parliament in July 2000 prohibiting (förbjudande) corporal punishment, as another decisive (avgörande) step toward the humanization of our personal relations and the removal of barriers in the mind at page 131-132 in her book “The Truth Will Set You Free…”:

“Significantly, it [the law prohibiting corporal punishment] owes its existence to politicians and lawyers, most of them women. Psychotherapists and psychologists (male and female) have been notably less committed in this respect, although they are confronted every day with the consequences of childhood traumas. Twenty years ago Sweden’s therapists actually campaigned against such an initiative, contending that a ban would so antagonize parents that they would take it out on their children in other ways. As I demonstrated in The Drama of the Gifted Child, the career of a psychologist begins in childhood with the desperate attempt to understand the parents without judging them. We should not remain bogged down in the fears of our childhood. As adults we must summon up the courage to judge, to call evil by its name and not tolerate it.

The much-needed change in our mentality will take place in stages. Children today who are never beaten will think and feel differently in twenty years from the way we think and feel today. This is my firm conviction. They will have eyes and ears for the suffering of their own children, and this will do more to effect change than statistical surveys ever could. My optimism is based on the principle of prevention, of forestalling violence in childhood by means of legislation and parent education.

I am often asked what we can do to help those people already seriously harmed by the processes I have been describing. Do they all have to undergo lengthy courses of therapy? The quality of therapy has nothing to do with the time it takes. I know people who have spent decades going to psychoanalysts and are still ignorant of what went on in their childhood because the analysts themselves are reluctant to venture onto that terrain in search of their own childhood realities.”

A friend mentioned another expression of surrounding a person with the Wall of Silence, namely something called “shunning”:

“Shunning is the act of deliberately avoiding association with, and habitually keeping away from an individual or group. It is a sanction against association often associated with religious groups and other tightly-knit organisations and communities. Targets of shunning can include, but are not limited to apostates, whistleblowers, dissidents, people classified as ‘sinners’ or ‘traitors’ and other people who defy or who fail to comply with the standards established by the shunning group(s). Shunning has a long history as a means of organisational influence and control.”

Translated to Swedish it would be (my amateur translation):

“Undvikande/hålla sig undan är den handling för att avsiktligt undvika sammankoppling med och att vanemässigt hålla sig undan en individ eller grupp. Det är en sanktion för att undvika sammanlänkning/sammankoppling ofta associerad med religiösa grupper och andra tätt sammanslutna organisationer och gemenskaper. Föremålen för undvikande kan inkludera, men är inte begränsade till avfällingar, visselblåsare, dissidenter, människor klassificerade som ’syndare’ och ’förrädare’ och andra människor som trotsar/utmanar eller som misslyckas med att åtlyda etablerade normer hos den grupp (de grupper) som undviker. Undvikande har en lång historia som ett sätt att organiserat påverka och kontrollera.”

This is what occur in many families to make a child comply, become obedient?

Jenson writes about how this may feel in the child, being isolated, lonely, having nobody in the world.

At pages 61-62 in the Swedish edition of her book, she writes that the child feels (and shall feel) that her/his family doesn’t want to have with it to do, thus the child feels that no one else will have with it to do, isolated, lonely and that it will remain so the rest of its life, unless... A state that will last for ever.

If her/family doesn’t like her/him, no one will like her/him ever.

If her/his family doesn’t want to know of the child, no one will want to know of it ever, not outside the family either. The child will not be wished by anyone ever.

If its family is critical towards it, it isn’t just so that ‘all’ dislike you but they will always do.

So this way of punishing (manipulating) a child is extremely effective.

If one has these experiences with oneself up into adulthood one will probably be vulnerable to similar treatment later. Vulnerable in relation to how one was treated early, and to what degree one got the opportunity and help processing it.

And to survive mistreatment the first way of protecting oneself as a (small) child is to blame oneself, use a defence Bosch calls the Primary Defence, which lies under all other defences she says.

I think I will blog more about "The Truth Will Set You Free -Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Adult Self" later.

See earlier posting on "Seeing, speaking or hearing no evil..."

Also see the article “You Carry the Cure in Your Heart” by Andrew Vachss, where it stands in the beginning of this article:

“Emotional abuse of children can lead, in adulthood, to addiction, rage, a severely damaged sense of self and an inability to truly bond with others. But—if it happened to you—there is a way out.”

Proportions…

Hermann Hesse.

Things triggered the following words, words which I threw down on a paper before my first pupil came: What is sin, shame? What is downright criminal?

What does Miller write about this? (I thought that somewhere she does, but where? About a talented boy growing up in a religious home).

And what does Jenson write about shame?

How is it with proportions here?

Yes, Jean Jenson writes at page 150-151 in the Swedish edition of “Rediscovering the True Self…” that shame is a feeling which is caused because we were treated as if we were bad, mean and evil when we were children. She thinks this has to do with that parents are learned to believe that human beings have an innate tendency to be evil, and Jenson adds that this doesn’t mean there aren’t evil grown ups.

We accept with a childish confidence without further notice that we have a malignant, malevolent nature which has to be controlled and if we don’t succeed doing this we ought to be ashamed.

“You ought to be ashamed!!”

Jenson is convinced that the feeling of shame is created when one is badly treated during childhood. And I think she is right. To survive this, the child blames itself.

Yes, Miller writes about that with proportions in “The Drama of the Gifted Child” in the chapter about contempt, the part about Hermann Hesse, at pages 130-136 in the Swedish paperback edition in the chapter “Det ‘fördärvade’ i Hermann Hesses barndomsvärld som exempel på det konkreta ‘onda’.” Translated it is something in the style “The ‘depraved’ in the childhood world of Hermann Hesse as example on the concrete ‘evil’.”

Hesse was left alone in a home impressed by goodness and purity; there was no room for anything else. Quite hypocritical. The boy was left alone with his sin and feels awful. Miller thinks Hesse reveals quite peculiar ideas in his (autobiographical?) book “Damian.” “The depraved” (?fördärvade) is quite harmless actually. Like stealing a fig in his beloved father’s room to have something that had been close to his father (so he didn’t even eat it either, did he)!!! Plagued after this with feelings of guilt, fear and despair in his loneliness. Followed by the deepest humiliation and shame when “the evil deed” is discovered. Steeling a whole fig – how awful!!

I think this can be applied to other things today too to small children. We who are much younger than Hesse have experienced similar things and maybe (or probably) felt awful shame over “deeds” and “crimes” that were quite harmless in fact, compared to other crimes. So ashamed, so in the worse cases we hardly didn’t want to live further. It was absolutely forbidden doing things (anything) wrong (at least in the small child’s world, with a more or less insensitive environment). Forbidden doing in fact quite harmless things wrong. Forced doing things right and perfectly. Or at least the child put these high demands on her/him?

And some people have the ability to infuse this feeling in us later on, even as grown ups, probably because THEIR problems with these things?

Struck me in the car to work about the topic file sharing which has caused a hot debate here; common among young people, for whom this is nothing which bother them. They do it gladly and a lot I can imagine.

And some can’t even steal a cake…

Many years ago I used to watch “Summer-morning” at Swedish TV. A programme for children with summer vacation. It was so nice creeping into bed again after breakfast watching this. I slept in a cottage at my parents’ and there was a TV on a lower cupboard so I could lie in m bed watching.

But there was something I reacted on in the young programme leaders (early twenties); how they reacted over a person’s behavior or what he/she/they said. I don’t remember the details now, but I remember their and my reaction. This got stuck obviously! Their shame on behalf of other people. And I reacted on behalf of those they got ashamed over!

Would anyone be ashamed over the things they became ashamed of if there wasn’t something in their background I thought already then. Would these things bother a mature human being? I don’t think it would!

But I think many reacts as these programme leaders did…

I don’t say I am free from this though… Hopefully I am much less today. The blood sugar low here, I hope one doesn't see it in the text! I just need to get something in my stomach and want to post this item nevertheless.

And at last, I also found these words at page 113 in “The Drama…” My amateur translation:

“The contempt is the weapon of the weak and his protection against feelings bringing the old life-history to life.”

“Föraktet är den svages vapen och hans skydd mot känslor som väcker liv i den egna livshistorien.”

Addition May 2: Compared to crimes committed in this world… Real atrocities. Homicides even. Serial murders. Soul murder. Terror attacks. Economical crimes. Real abusers. And other sort of crimes of different sizes...

Getting blushing red over what? How are the proportions? Do all these criminals get blushing red? Do they regret what they have done? Do they feel guilt or shame?

And are the worst criminals always punished?

All of a sudden I came to think of a friend who was son to a high boss in an old, venerable company where I live. In the news one evening they said that xx had died, and nothing more. Later they revealed he had committed suicide. He had taken a gun and shot himself in the mouth. This felt so awful. At this time I was round 24 or maybe a little older I think. My friend six years younger, and he was his parents youngest child.

This high boss was about to get fired from his job. And later it was revealed that his wife had had an affair with another man, and I don't know wanted to leave the marriage. This was too much? The shame too big? So he saw no way out but to end his life? He drove out to the country-side and shot himself if I remember right.

His life was less worth than the "honour"?

Who are silenced and who not?

Emotional abuse...

I got this tip from a friend “You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart” (my italics):

“Emotional abuse of children can lead, in adulthood, to addiction, rage, a severely damaged sense of self and an inability to truly bond with others. But—if it happened to you—there is a way out./…/

Emotional abuse is the systematic diminishment of another. It may be intentional or subconscious (or both), but it is always a course of conduct, not a single event.

It is designed to reduce a child's self-concept to the point where the victim considers himself unworthy—unworthy of respect, unworthy of friendship, unworthy of the natural birthright of all children: love and protection.
Emotional abuse can be as deliberate as a gunshot:

'You're fat. You're stupid. You're ugly.'

Emotional abuse can be as random as the fallout from a nuclear explosion. In matrimonial battles, for example, the children all too often become the battlefield. I remember a young boy, barely into his teens, absently rubbing the fresh scars on his wrists.

'It was the only way to make them all happy,'

he said. His mother and father were locked in a bitter divorce battle, and each was demanding total loyalty and commitment from the child.

Emotional abuse can be active. Vicious belittling: '

You'll never be the success your brother was.'

Deliberate humiliation:

'You're so stupid. I'm ashamed you're my son.'

It also can be passive, the emotional equivalent of child neglect—a sin of omission, true, but one no less destructive.

And it may be a combination of the two, which increases the negative effects geometrically.

Emotional abuse can be verbal or behavioral, active or passive, frequent or occasional. Regardless, it is often as painful as physical assault. And, with rare exceptions, the pain lasts much longer. A parent's love is so important to a child that withholding it can cause a 'failure to thrive condition similar to that of children who have been denied adequate nutrition.

Even the natural solace of siblings is denied to those victims of emotional abuse who have been designated as the family's 'target child. [scapegoat in the family] The other children are quick to imitate their parents. Instead of learning the qualities every child will need as an adult—empathy, nurturing and protectiveness—they learn the viciousness of a pecking order. And so the cycle continues.

But whether as a deliberate target or an innocent bystander, the emotionally abused child inevitably struggles to 'explain' the conduct of his abusers—and ends up struggling for survival in a quicksand of self-blame.

Emotional abuse is both the most pervasive and the least understood form of child maltreatment. Its victims are often dismissed simply because their wounds are not visible. In an era in which fresh disclosures of unspeakable child abuse are everyday fare, the pain and torment of those who experience 'only' emotional abuse is often trivialized. We understand and accept that victims of physical or sexual abuse need both time and specialized treatment to heal. But when it comes to emotional abuse, we are more likely to believe the victims will 'just get over it' when they become adults.

That assumption is dangerously wrong. Emotional abuse scars the heart and damages the soul. Like cancer, it does its most deadly work internally. And, like cancer, it can metastasize if untreated.

When it comes to damage, there is no real difference between physical, sexual and emotional abuse. All that distinguishes one from the other is the abuser's choice of weapons. I remember a woman, a grandmother whose abusers had long since died, telling me that time had not conquered her pain.

'It wasn't just the incest,'

she said quietly.

'It was that he didn't love me. If he loved me, he couldn't have done that to me.'

But emotional abuse is unique because it is designed to make the victim feel guilty.

Emotional abuse is repetitive and eventually cumulative behavior—very easy to imitate—and some victims later perpetuate the cycle with their own children.

Although most victims courageously reject that response, their lives often are marked by a deep, pervasive sadness, a severely damaged self-concept and an inability to truly engage and bond with others."

See this posting (in Swedish) "Våld mot kvinnor är våld mot kvinnor är våld mot kvinnor."

Also read about the psychiatrist and psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton and his research on cults.

The problems with defences…

pictures from today's walk.

Spontaneously: A lot of thoughts (and emotions) on the walk I have just returned from. Eskil is still peeing blood… It is not fun mildly said. And maybe this is also triggering things… Experiences?

Addition in the evening: Chose the title to this posting very quickly... Maybe I should have chosen another? But there is so much in my head and mind now...

I also came to think of people denying their needs, thoughts triggered by a posting I did on my other blog this morning. Also a posting I have thought of writing a long time. Having everything in check and control, and maybe also looking down on other people, “weak”, dependent ones… There is a psychiatrist here David Eberhard whom has written a book “In the safety addictions-land”. He means that it can be too much safety and security! Till it becomes an addiction!

These denying their needs are often (but not all??) resonating in terms of:

“I can manage! (why can’t you then too?) What weakling are you!”

And this is plainly said contempt for weakness?? Contempt for the small child one was once?? See Bosch on the Primary Defence. And on the False Power Denial of Needs, False Power Anger – and False Power Hope…

Women often resort to False Power Hope Defence and adds it with False Power Denial of Needs Defence she means… They (we) think they (we) can change the state affairs and this can be added (and is often added) with denial of needs, we think the more we can deny our needs the better, the we will get love. The less needy they (we) are the more respected they (we) become – they (we) think at least!?? In general. But she underlines that this is a generalization and that there are (a lot of) exceptions.

And men generally combine Denial of Needs with False Power Anger, which gives them a (false) sense of strength, a strength they don’t need in the present situation (most often), but needed to defend themselves with as small boys to survive (and not experience how vulnerable and power and helpless they were then, denying this fact with a belief of, false, power, a power the small boy actually didn't have, but as he grown up man now most often have).

But denial of needs doesn’t mean one doesn’t have any needs and what's more important that the person doesn’t act on his/her needs? Trying to fill them in different ways, but maybe this is more or less hidden or visible/invisible both to themselves but also to others?

Unfulfilled needs which have become, what Stettbacher calls them, perverted?

And filling these perverted needs are always (more or less) harmful? And the ones that are denying them the most are causing most harm?? The less aware are causing most harm? The ones most in Denial causes most harm? Or the ones most in denial and with most power cause most denial? And maybe these persons also need power the most to defend themselves? And need exercising power most, need having power the most to hold the truth away?

Yes, psychohistorians are right about backward psychoclasses here?

And the ones admitting to their needs or who got their needs filled the most as children, or wo have been able or got help processing their early history the most and best, are causing less harm and don’t have to fill their needs through other people?

The worse is though when one tries to fill ones early unmet and denied needs through children (ones own or other people’s) and the ones under in power or less strong. Compared to filling them through other grown up people equal to oneself...

See earlier postings on authoritarianism.one of my favourites, picture taken 4 hours ago.

Civil courage...

taking a nap!!

I read something in "Rediscovering the True Self" by Ingeborg Bosch at page 143-144.

I think it was the physician Christina Doctare who pointed out in her book "Brain Stress" (came 1999, and I have a book with a dedication from her, but I didn't get it in person) from where "civil courage" origins? "Courage" comes from the French "coeur" which means "heart"... So civil courage to her means the heart or feelings are involved. About her at Wikipedia (only in Swedish).

Bosch writes Chapter 5, "Taking responsibility for our feelings":

"We usually live more or less impulsively [not an excuse for everything??], and when things go wrong we blame the other person, the world, fate or ultimately God [or ourselves].

Research by Jones and Nisbett has shown how we are all prone to this basic attitude. Actors tend to attribute their actions to external factors, whereas observers tend to attribute the same actions to personal dispositions of the actor. /.../

[An] example is the Watergate scandal. '...Many of the participants in that affair maintained that they were simply following executive orders, while 'higher-ups' argued that they had acted out of a concern for national security. All the actors in short made external attributions. But by the summer of 1974, a majority of citizens - observers via the press - saw the participants as corrupt, power-hungry, and paranoid. The observers made internal attributions.' This is called the actor-observer effect."

At this site it stands about their ideas:

"Jones and Nisbett's (1971) proposition that actors favor environmental attribution and observers personal attribution was investigated. Subjects attributed causality from two perspectives (observer versus role-playing actor) for verbally-described behaviors which varied in desirability (low versus moderate versus high). The results suggested that motivational considerations mediated actor-observer attributional differences. While observers attributed more personal cause than did actors at all levels of desirability, this actor-observer difference was attenuated as behavioral desirability increased. Actor-observer differences were not evidenced on environmental attribution, suggesting that perspective differences represent a differential salience of personal causes for actors and observers."

It also struck me: what do our behaviours towards animals reflect? I could write a separate posting about this, as I grew up with animal and saw things (and probably didn't see things too) and have people in my family of origin working with animals (so I think I know them as persons too, but maybe I don't? I wonder if they are different when family-members aren't present??)... My dad and the two siblings coming after me (a brother and a sister) were/are agronomists with domestic animals as Major (huvudämne in Swedish).

And I wish I could relax as the dog Eskil!! (the dog and cat on the picture are not mine! :-))