A physician’s conscience – more on the Nanny-pedagogy and demands on harder grips…

"In TV-programmes like 'The Supernanny' children are taught to do as the parents say – without understanding why. This sort of 'poisonous pedagogy' goes against an upbringing characterized by humanism."

[Slightly updated August 18]. Threats and punishments are not the recipe to get more order in the school and in the homes the physician Lars H. Gustafsson means. He is critical to the ”neoauthoritarian movement.” And says that he sees a trend where it is said that children shall learn to obey and follow the grown ups’ order.

He is worried for a return to old times where children and adolescents were taught to obey for to get away from punishment(s) (something they didn’t get away from how much they even tried I think).

This kind of treatment (with punishments) can lead to that we get “obedient soldiers” without personal responsibility to lean back on in difficult situations Gustafsson says. Blind obedience (and what has such obedience led to?).

My addition: and probably also people with a need for revenge and for to punish other, weaker, people!! And today the society approves of this too!!! Why do so many approve of this? And see what the American neurologist Jonathan H. Pincus writes in the chapter “Hitler and Hatred” in his book “Base Instinct – What Makes Killers Kill.”

Gustafsson (who has been working as child and school physician) says that it has become more and more common with being put in the corner. But today this is called something else: put on “timeout benches” or “rowdyism mats.” Benches and mats where kids have to sit for a couple of minutes (or more) if they have done something “wrong.” Nobody really asks (or dares to??) ask seriously why children are behaving as they are!! And call punishments as the right method in question!! If this maybe isn’t more of the same.

And in the British TV-programme ”Supernanny”, which is sent in Sweden too, the parents are taught to use a “naughty chair” where the kids are placed if they aren’t doing as the parents say.

People supporting methods like these are probably defending methods that once (severely) harmed themselves, but this is too painful to admit to. They had to believe this was done for their own good and thus they are probably the strongest advocates for methods like these, and this is really horrible and very tragic. And even more horrible when they get power positions, the higher the worse (as becoming ministers in governments, or leaders for schools etc.).

And why do they get those positions? Why don't more people oppose to this? Is it because so many have been badly treated as children in turn? And not only by grown ups around them, but not least at home? I think that IF we grew up under ideal circumstances we would be more immune (or even totally immune) to later bad treatment, or recover quicker from later bad treatment. But such ideal circumstances don't exist? But this is no excuse for not trying to improve our treatment of kids. With that ideal circumstances don't exist. And for anyone (therapist, psychologist even less) to say that "Each generation has to recapture its own." Because the recovery is so hard, so we should try to avoid as much as possible from the first beginning. Even though recovery is possible to that degree so you can live a decent life. But in too man cases with A LOT OF hard work! A work that COULD have been unneccesary. And should be unneccesary.

Instead of passing this forward those people should get help to call their own experiences in question by a society that started to talk much more openly than is the case about those things. And we ought to be a much more enlightened society today really. But it seems to be a backlash in the whole society (all over the world) not only in this respect, but when it comes to human rights and respect for each other in all.

Of course programmes of this kind influences the debate in Sweden and how grownups are behaving towards kids Gustafsson means (but why were they accepted from the first beginning I wonder???). The last years many licensed programs for education of parents with the roots in the same philosophy have become introduced in Sweden. They are building on the same thoughts on tighter reins and a firm discipline.

He refers to older times when corporal punishment strengthened the verbal imposing of shame. Children were also confined in the own room, in a basement storage space or a dark wardrobe to think over its sins!!! What ”sins” I wonder??

The child advocate Andrew Vachss thinks that

“...of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all.”

"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."

To avoid the pain of such bad treatment we tend to use defense strategies, for instance by blaming ourselves, and thinking it’s something wrong with us, instead of calling the received treatment in question. And by this we tend to reenact the same thing with those with less power than we have later, and think we are doing this “for their own good”!!

Gustafsson says further that the darkness in the wardrobe should remind us of how dark we were in our souls. And even in homes that were more humane there existed “whining-wardrobes.”

Gustafsson says that he becomes sad when he hears all the demands on more order in school and home, all the talk about rougher treatment and punishments as the solution to (all) problems. But this is something that permeates the whole society is my addition!!! To moralize and put yourself on high horses.

We are on our way to return hundred years back in time he thinks. I agree.

A personal conscience isn’t created through demands on order and discipline, through orders to feel more empathy and understanding for other people. Such things can only grow from inside! Yes, I agree, through genuinely respectful treatment of children from the first beginning of their lives. But you CAN recover later, if you meet people that are able to confirm you and show you what true, genuine respect and love is. And we CAN become more respectful in our way of meeting young people, but it’s probably a very painful work.

The examples on how bad things can turn with peoples’ consciences through an upbringing built on threats and punishments are in fact many. But we don’t really discuss them or talk about them!!!?? We still believe that some people are born evil (or at least with bad genes).

Right to the WWII the German school (and the treatment at home) was characterized by blind discipline (see about blind obedience and its consequences), where threats and punishments were pedagogical tools for creating obedient students. Those young people later defended their support and cooperation in the Holocaust with that they only obeyed order.

And their suppressed anger (from the early treatment) got an outlet in the annihilation of Jews etc.

The personal conscience can never become formed via threats and punishments. And therefore the blend of new and old views on the bringing up of children that is growing stronger and stronger in Sweden is unfortunate he thinks. I would say it’s horrible. What sort of human beings are created by this way of treating young people – and very small children??

We should instead settle account with our own individual and personal history to the degree that is possible, but yes, this work is a tough work for many, many because of the pain that such treatment caused in our early childhood. To recover from such treatment is a hard work in many cases. And isn't this a reason as good as any to treat kids better?

And that people became harmed has nothing to do with a special vulnerability, i.e. the roots don’t lie in some genes that makes us more sensitive than other people (and by the way; is sensitivity bad).

And what sort of problems, and to what degree we get problems later in life from those early experiences, has with how badly treated we were and if we had the luck or not to encounter one or more person that could help us realize on some level that we were bad and unfairly treated by people who in fact didn’t show love, and not with genes I think (but it's eaier to blame genes than our parents or their substitutes). But we had to believe that they (our early caregivers) loved us and did what they did for our own good.

And it’s awful when people act this out - in politics for instance, as I think happens today, with our current government and (too many of) its supporters...

Addition after lunch: see about Corporal Punishment in the United States of America; Number of Students Receiving Corporal Punishment, by State School Year: 2006-2007, and Number of Students Receiving Corporal Punishment, by State School Year: 2006-2007 (students with an without disabilities).

Addition August 18: And how is it with emotional punishment (and manipulation)? Why is manipulation needed?

See what Alice Miller writes about conscious and unconscious manipulation in therapy for instance.

And also see the interview "Violence Kills Love: Spanking, the Fourth Commandmentand the Suppression of Authentic Emotions."

Suppression and its effects, enlightened witnesses...

From ”The Truth Will Set You Free – Overcoming Emotional Blindness and Finding Your True Self.”

Page 19-21 about elderly people Miller has seen at the pharmacy collecting the pills and potions prescribed to them:

“Sometimes I persist and ask whether there is anyone at all they can talk to about their lives.

‘What are you driving at?’

they ask.

‘When I was younger I went out to work and had no time for talking. Now that I do have the time, who’d be interested in hearing the story of my life? When it comes down to it, you’re on your own.’

True, most of us are indeed on our own in that respect. But we would benefit tremendously from having someone to talk to about our childhoods, particularly when we are older. As our physical strength fades and we lose our youthful vigor, we are particularly susceptible [mottagliga, känsliga, ömtåliga] to flashbacks to a time when we were helpless children. And that may be what makes us cling to a bagful of tablets in much the same way as we clung to our mothers for the help we urgently needed. Perhaps this symbolic substitute really does help in some cases. But it can never be a replacement for the presence of someone truly interested in our personal history. That kind of interest does not take up anywhere near as much time as we might think./…/

How do we fend off [avvärjer] feelings? Frequently by resorting to measures that will silence the language we cannot comprehend, thus making ourselves feel powerful again instead of ineffectual.”

Page 42-43:

“Many therapists believe that exploring childhood is actively harmful because clients will then experience themselves as victims instead of responsible adults.

I, too, firmly believe that adults are responsible for their actions, and that only in childhood were they helpless victims. But I also believe that owning up to [erkänna, kännas vid] their early history can help them understand why they still feel and act as if they were helpless victims. Psychotherapy can give them an understanding of the processes involved, which in turn can help them abandon the victim posture [hållning, attityd]. There are said to be people whom behavior therapy has helped banish their anxieties. They are to be most warmly congratulated. Many others, however, are unable to profit from such an approach. They are also unable to free themselves from depression with the help of medication because their urge to find out who they are and why they have become the way they are might be stronger in them than the wish to be free of depression.”

Page 45:

“…some psychiatrists who specialize in treating people suffering from post traumatic disorders, people who experienced severe traumas in adulthood, don’t necessarily work with these patients on their childhood. Yet it is logical, and has been scientifically confirmed, that a person who grew up in a relatively healthy family will be more likely to overcome later psychic trauma (such as results from a plane accident or a physical assault) better than somebody who was mistreated in childhood. Working with that person on his whole history may thus lead t better results.”

Page 70 about a program in Canada where fathers who had sexually abused their daughters:

“Encouraged to talk about their own childhoods with people they had learned to trust, they came to understand hat they had been passing on something that they themselves had experienced very early n their lives.

We are accustomed to keeping silent about childhood suffering, and because of this silence we often do things blindly. Talking liberates prisoners from their blindness, giving them at access to awareness and protecting them from mindless acting out.”

This is true for all kind of abuse…

Page 97:

“Small children cannot survive the truth; for purely biological reasons they have no choice but to repress what they know. But this repression, this refusal to recognize one’s own origins, has a destructive effect. To offset that effect we need enlightened witnesses – therapists, counsellors, and teachers who do not regard the emotions of and adult as haphazard [som händer av en slump eller tillfällighet] but see them as the logical fruits, sometimes poisonous fruits, of a misguided process of insemination./…/

If someone is present to help us recognize the behavior patterns of our parents in the context of our own childhoods, then we will no longer be forced to perpetuate these patterns blindly.”

Page 124-125:

“Merely [blott och bart] forgetting early traumas and early neglect is no solution. The past always catches up with us, in our relationships with other people and especially with our children.

What can we do about this? We can try to become aware of what we ourselves suffered, of the beliefs we adopted in childhood as gospel truth [dagsens sanning], and then confront these beliefs with what we know today. This will help us to see and feel things to which we have closed out minds, for in the absence of an enlightened witness who can empathize with us and genuinely listen to us, we have no other way of protecting ourselves from the searing force of pain. With the help of an enlightened witness, our early emotions will stand revealed, take on meaning for us, and hence be available for us to work on.

But without such empathy, without any understanding f the context of a traumatic childhood, our emotions will remain in a chaotic state and will continue to cause us profound, instinctive alarm./…/

…barriers [are both a protection but also] our enemies, as they cause emotional blindness and urge us to do harm to ourselves and others.

In a bid to blot out the fear and pain of our abused younger self, we erase what we know can help us, fall prey to the seductiveness of sects and cults, fail to see through all kinds of lies.”

Page 133-135:

“For me, enlightened witnesses are therapists with the courage to face up to their own history and thereby to gain their autonomy rather than seeking to offset heir own repressed feelings of ineffectuality by exercising power over their patients./…/

…needs to be able to identify all those points in everyday life where traces of his infant reality rise to the surface, to learn to recognize them, for what they are and not to act out blindly. He needs assistance in coping emotionally with present situations as an adult while at the same time maintaining contact with the suffering and knowing child he once was, the child he could not muster the courage to listen to for so long but now, with help, can finally heed./…/

Unfortunately, it is rare for therapists to have enjoyed such company in their own training. I am only too well aware of the various forms of anxiety assailing therapists, their fear of hurting their parents if they dare to face their own childhood distress head on and without embellishment, at the resultant reluctance to support their patients fully in heir search. But the more we write and talk on the subject, the sooner this state of affairs will change and the anxieties lose some of their power over us. In a society with a receptive attitude toward the distress of children, none of us will be alone with our history. Therapists will be more inclined to forsake Freud’s principle of neutrality and to take the side of the children their clients once were. This will give those clients the perspective they need to confront their own histories.”

Page 151-152:

“Once the child [or rather the grown up, because I don’t think we have a child inside, thinking like this leads to alienation rather than integration?? And can lead to a false hope that we can give a child inside something it didn’t get then. Which we can’t, because we are no longer those children, and what’s done is done, we ought to feel the pain in this truth instead and all we have missed because of this?] has shaken off its chains, been allowed to see and to judge what it sees, it can walk out of its prison on its own. The fear is gone because it as recognized the manipulations for what they are. It is not afraid of to see because it is not reduced to silence, because it can say what it sees, because it is not alone with what it has seen but has its perceptions confirmed by an enlightened witness. That witness has at last given the child what its parents withheld: the confirmation tat its perceptions are right, that cruelty and manipulation are precisely that and nothing else, that the child need no longer deceive itself into seeing them as a form of loving care that this knowledge is necessary in order for the child to be genuine and capable of love, and that the fruit from the tree of knowledge is there to be eaten.”

Cinderella…

the fairy godmother

I go on writing…

Miller writes in her book “The Truth Will Set You Free” about a woman, Katya...

I grew up as the oldest of six children coming close… I have three sisters and two brothers.

Miller writes that a woman (man) can reject accusations from grown up children only if she (he) in her (his) youth wasn’t subjected to [utsatt för] extreme corporal punishment [extrem kroppslig bestraffning] and was allowed to make mistakes. She writes that there are also many mothers who were punished for every little thing by their own parents (by both the mom and the dad) and go on blaming themselves or allow themselves to be blamed. They behave like small children trying to be good so as to earn the love of their parents and not be alone.

My comment: and today there is knowledge they too could benefit from… They could also search for information and knowledge and wanting to know. But all don’t want. Why not? Because somewhere they sense that the truth would be too painful? All these things have caused? For themselves, their lives, their relations and for their children and grandchildren in turn and maybe even great grand children? Unable to stop this vicious circle.

They use to say that people survive heart-diseases if they have close relations or close family ties, these have better chances of recovery (Miller mentions Dean Ornish).

But Miller writes that she has found that many patients cling to the very attachments that have played a strong causative role in their illness (they wouldn’t even have became sick if they had lived in better relations?).

And she writes that some of them manage to free themselves from their illness if they have the good fortune (yes, one needs some or a lot of good fortune for this?) to encounter enlightened (truly enlightened) witnesses who can help them dig down and find their own personal truth.

By the way, the Swedish physician Christina Doctare writes about two elderly people (a woman and a man), if I remember right, in her book “Hjärnstress” (“Brainstress”) and the fatal effects their relations had, especially when these persons retired from work and didn’t have work-contacts as moderating factors. In the end leading to death she thinks.

Back to Katya: it was Katya’s job to look after her two younger sisters. And if they failed to live up to their mother’s standards Katya was blamed for this. Miller sees parallels to the tale of Cinderella (Askungen). She thinks that the dynamics of this fairy tale occur more frequently than we might expect in real life.

Miller wonders how Katya was able to develop an average intelligence. How did she contrive [finna medel till, lyckas] to satisfy her mother’s demands (explicit and implicit, outspoken and not outspoken)? At least to the extent of being able to survive and not turn to crime later in life. Who was helping witness in Katya’s case? Hardly her father Miller thinks.

Katya was unable to remember herself.

But when Kaya was about fifty she suddenly met a former playmate from the neighbourhood who told Katya that she admired her so. And reminded Katya about another family's maid, Nicole, who had been very fond of Katya and spoilt her when her mother wasn’t present, because Nicole was afraid of her mother (what about the child then? In my case people had a deep respect for my parents, who had a lot of integrity??).

Thanks to this maid Katya grew into a strong and lovable person. Noone else in her childhood supported her and showed her respect and affection for the person she was except this Nicole.

As an adult Katya was good at her job, but her private life was a succession of mishaps. She was drawn to the wrong men, abusing her trust and at last Katya married a man she didn’t love.

She wanted children but couldn’t love her children as she would have wished. Intent of being different from her own mother in every possible way, she never beat her children, but she was incapable of protecting them from his cruel father. From the outset her relationship to her daughters and sons, the fist born three months after her marriage (three weeks before she was expected to come), was marked by the experiences she had been through. As her own feelings were alien to her, because she had no knowledge of what a child feels, she was unable to relate to her children’s feelings and maybe even less to the first.

In her own life, including her marriage and her relationship with her son, Katya was dogged [jagad, följd i hälarna] by guilt.

Just as she had been blamed for every misfortune [olycka] that befell [hände, skedde] her mother, father, sisters and brothers, she blamed herself for the suffering of her husband and children. Her husband were adept [skicklig i] at exploiting her attitude to delegate [delegera] to her the feelings he had split off from himself – helplessness, anxiety, powerlessness – and thus avoid living with them himself.

Katya was like a sponge [tvättsvamp], she absorbed all those feelings without realizing that it was not in her power to work out other people’s feelings for them. Only her husband could have understood and come to terms with his own emotions. But instead of refusing to take over the feelings he cast upon her, she accepted them without protest because emotionally she was still the little girl who felt responsible for her parents suffering.

This could be a mix of me, my mom – and my dad?? And sisters and brothers? A thought once again; who have own families in this sibling’s crowd? And why? Were they allowed a greater freedom? Allowed to free themselves? Allowed to see through to a higher degree? Or allowed not to idealize as much as other siblings? And what about self-esteem, valuing oneself? What has one been living for? The only option for some of these siblings, because they had no other value, than doing a good job, being good workers, but doing it very modestly, not thinking they were anyone? God forbid.

At last Katya realized and admitted to that she had married a man who strongly resembled [liknade] her mother, a man without the slightest interest in thinking about his own behavior and profoundly incapable [djupt, grundligen oförmögen] of relating to others.

For twenty years she hoped that with kindness and understanding (False hope) she might be able to change things for the better, but the nicer and kinder she was to him, the more aggressive he became (and contemptuous towards such a weakness and lack of strength, the one he had?), because above all he envied [avundades] her for her kindness.

After years spent soliticing [enträget beende om, bjudande ut sig åt, tiggande om], she developed severe internal bleeding. Her uterus was removed.

Katya was blind to the fact that as an adult she had ways of escaping her dilemma, that she could have separated from her husband. Instead she sought ways of living with him without incurring [ådra sig, utsätta sig för] outbursts of anger.

She also taught her children, especially the daughters (and maybe most f all one of them?), being kind and nice, to avoid being badly treated, incurring outbursts of anger (the victim's fault how it is/was treated effectively inoculated, implanted from early childhood).

“One doesn’t have to be aggressive!!”

Do her children have tendencies to that? And who actually have those tendencies (if any of them have)??

She tried to understand how she could live in peace with her husband; the very sight of her appeared to provoke a towering rage [uppstickande vrede?], so there must be something wrong with her of course.

But what she needed would have been help to be the woman she was and to find the courage to live with the truth, her truth. But her feelings of guilt prevented her from setting herself free. She was within herself still the small child who took all the blame for the bad moods and the failures of the people around her in herself.

And never the two meet.

As she had learned as a child from her own mother, the adult Katya forced herself every day to believe what she was told and not to see what she saw. Although this compulsion as a source of immense suffering [ofantligt lidande], she was unable to rid herself of it and desperately sought a solution (in what manners?), yet she still refused to perceive the roots to her troubles in the relationship with her mother, whom she idealized despite this woman was dead since long and despite she in many ways could criticize her.

Katya’s unfulfilled desire for an emotional and intellectual exchange with her parents, sisters, brothers, and schoolmates had survived for so long in an illusory form.

She had turned to perfectionist, unable to forgive herself for her failings.

To confront these questions seriously, Katya should have had to face up to her earliest childhood, when her mother used physical force (for instance by pulling her children’s hair) to make her a good girl deeply ashamed of everything she did wrong and felt and said and thought, and living in a state of constant guilt (for being badly treated).

The lessons she learned retained [behöll] their impact throughout her life. Katya’s potential fort guilt was unlimited, an innate trait, her nature she thought very convinced.

She was able to develop her creativity and establish relationships. And in her work she was able to help others. Some thought this was because her teachers had been strict at school, as her parents had educated her strictly too.

But all her life she was incapable of ridding herself of the guilt her mother had implanted in her at such an early age. The seed thus sown [fröet som såtts på detta sätt] grew into a tall tree and effectively obscured [fördunklade] a view of the facts. And what was the price, not only for her?

All her life Katya had submitted [underkastade sig] herself to well-established [väletablerade] guidelines [förhållningsregler] (following written and unwritten “hand-books” eager to do the right thing and blaming herself harshly if she didn’t do right, but wrong, for being a lousy mother, lousy wife etc.). She had accepted all kinds of laws that played a major role in dictating her behavior. But doing it so intelligently that she fooled both herself and people in the environment?

"We who grew up learning good behaviour, in a fine family!"

the headmaster's wife (who could have been her mum) at the agricultural school the young couple moved to as newly married said to the young wife one of the first years as married. The truth was that she wasn't raised in a "fine family", on the contrary. She grew up in a working-class family. At the bottom of society really (though socially adapted). And was the only one of four siblings who studied further.

As daughter to this mother one can survive by creating a life where the rules aren’t so strict? Where you can be “spontaneous”? Where you can break rules? Live a bit outside the "norms"? And in that way adopt the father’s way of behaving, but in a more “female way”? Not being quite as bulldozer-like as he? Not quite as insensitive?

Unable to question the code of morals her parents had lived under really. Still correcting her children/grandchildren, but in a “kind” way. Actually using manipulation, but in subtle forms? And not noticing it herself?

I have changed some facts in the original story about Katya…

No, now a bike ride before my niece comes here after her dancing-lesson. She wanted help with two melodies she is going to record at school! She hasn't taken any playing-lessons, so...

Respekt...

”Emil och Alfred tar ett kvällsdopp i Katthultsjön efter en sommardag full av lek och hyss. Solen börjar sänka sig över skogarna när Emil säger till Alfred:

– Du och jag, Alfred.

– Ja, du och jag Emil, svarar Alfred.”

About Emil at Wikipedia. And earlier postings about integrity violations and effects of integrity violations.