Wisdom Notes on Psychology

Childhood Difficulties

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My approach is to set short-term theory within a much larger, more general theory. This combination works well for me.  There are several general frameworks to choose from: agnostic, atheistic, spiritual, religious. The specific framework may be, for example, Freudian, Rogerian, behaviourist, cognitive. Basically, we adopt a combined framework which works for us. Whether that combination is true is another matter. 

The combination I use is that of psycho-analytic and Rogerian ideas placed within a general scenario of reincarnation. The advantages of using reincarnation is that we can set each human life within the process of evolution, so that each human being lives a multitude of lives on planet Earth for the purpose of evolving his or her consciousness. This assumption allows us to understand why humans show widely divergent forms of development and consciousness, ranging from an aborigine in a rain forest to a Western intellectual or artist to an Indian spiritual master.

I understand reincarnation theory to be a theory of the development of both character and mental/artistic abilities. Character and abilities evolve by trial and error over many lifetimes; hence we can also see reincarnation theory as a theory of learning. So, for instance, a person who is comparatively highly developed has reincarnated more times on planet Earth, and learned more, than someone who is less developed.

In my understanding of life, the new-born infant has no conscious mind, since it possesses no memories and no language. Instead it is functioning at the subconscious level of mind. The first task that the infant has to do is to create a conscious mind so that it can form an ego. The ego is not created from nothing; the ego is created from the egos of previous lives on Earth. These previous egos are part of the existing subconscious mind, and act as a kind of “template” for the ego that is to be created.[¹]

Character Change is Rare

Why are the previous egos within the subconscious mind?  I assume this fact in order to explain a problem that Indian thinkers avoided when they produced their ideas on reincarnation. We have to explain why a person can only change significantly by reincarnating many times. Once a person has lived past his 20s, his character rarely changes in any significant way, no matter how long he lives. All significant change almost always occurs in the early part of a life. Only extreme distress can change a person in his mature years. His character and his psychological limitations both seem fixed in stone. A person can evolve his character faster by living, say, half a dozen short lives than by living one life of a thousand years: his psychological limitations that he has acquired by his 20s will still be approximately the same when he is a thousand years old. A man who is a thousand years old will know an enormous amount of knowledge compared to a 20-year old person, but his psychological limitations will still be fairly primitive; this is because he only develops his conscious mind, and not his subconscious mind.

For some people, a deep psycho-analysis can change them significantly, but such deep analysis is not for everyone. For evolution of character to work for everyone, the limitations and inadequacies of the fixed mature mind have to be bypassed in some fashion. This is accomplished by making the mind subconscious at the next rebirth on Earth. In this way, the subconscious mind can influence the new ego, but not determine it.

As I understand the spectacle of human life, at death of the body on Earth, the ego sojourns on higher worlds till it is time to return to Earth. To enable evolution to occur, the ego is made subconscious at birth on Earth, thereby requiring a new ego to be created. Thus the new ego can be different from past egos, whilst nevertheless retaining in the subconscious mind the various skills learned in previous lives.

The fact that it does not have a conscious mind exposes the infant to psychological problems in the first few years of its life. The new ego has to grow up within a family situation. Psychological problems within the family may cause problems with the child’s mental and emotional development, especially if the child has excessive sensitivity. Often what happens is that the psychological problems that the parents have are “handed down” to the young impressionable child.

Overview of Bonding

The universal procedure that the young infant uses to handle its emotional contact with the parents and other significant adults is that of the bonding process, which occurs automatically and subconsciously. Bonding has three stages, those of imprinting, transference, and identification. The emotion that maintains each stage of bonding is always jealousy.

Imprinting begins the attachment of an infant to a significant adult, such as a parent or uncle or aunt. The mother is usually the first adult that the infant becomes attached to, and she imprints aspects of her consciousness onto the infant. What the infant needs is love, and this provides the binding that creates attachment. The mother gives the infant love, though the love is the love mode of jealousy, and the infant absorbs the love when its mood is that of jealousy (in self-pity mode).[²]. The self-pity mode of jealousy has the effect that the child or adult clings emotionally to another person. This is an ideal depiction. If the mother shows no love to the child, then imprinting becomes faulty.

Imprinting works mainly with emotion. The two other stages of bonding work mainly with beliefs. Transference is the transfer of the beliefs and values of a parent to the child, so that the child absorbs those beliefs and values as the basis of its view of the world. Identification with a parent or other significant adult means that the child takes that person as a role model. If transference between child and parent has been faulty, then once the child becomes an adult it may take a media star as a role model (the stage of identification) and absorb some degree of that person’s values (the stage of transference).

Parents usually treat their children in the same way that they themselves have been treated by their parents (the grandparents). So, starting for convenience with the great-grandparents, we get the process of belief transfer. Great-grandparents transfer beliefs to the grandparents, who transfer beliefs to the parents, who transfer beliefs to the children. Some character traits are handed down in a similar fashion.

Some character traits are admirable and therefore when they pass from one generation to the next, we do not complain. For example, my father had nobility of character, and this is a trait that I admire and wish that I had more of it. However, some traits are the result of psychological confusion, and it is these ones that confuse us. These are the ones that we want to get rid of.

Overall, the combination of transference and identification means that as children get older they usually absorb the moral and immoral standards and values of the parents. And the children usually learn to handle situations and relationships in the same way that the parents do. So if the adults are immoral, it is highly likely that the children will be too. Bonding is a process of psychological inheritance and is completely different from genetic inheritance. In my view, genetics applies only to the physical body, with its mechanisms and functions, and has no influence at all on psychological inheritance.

What these ideas imply is that the strengths and limitations of the parents are usually handed down to the children by means of the bonding process. Identification with a parent blurs the psychological boundaries of the child, so once he has grown into an adult his sense of identity is a confused mixture of his own values plus values he absorbed from the parents. Then when he eventually becomes a parent himself, he may find himself acting towards his children in similar ways that his parents acted towards him. This poses problems when he has character limitations. If he had a controlling father, then when later he is a father himself he is likely to be controlling towards his children. In effect the child, once it has become an adult, does to others what was done to it. This trap can play out in subtle ways that are not readily obvious. For example, the father may have a dream of a suitable good life for his child, but the child has a different dream. So the father ends up disapproving of the child’s lifestyle once it has become a teenager. A degree of control can be accepted by the child. What usually upsets the child is when the control is unfair.

Fragility

The major problem of childhood is that the immature infant has to learn to relate to parents and significant adults. Its circumstances are difficult. It has to interpret the emotional situations that it is involved in, and it has to do this before it has learned language and before it has acquired any form of emotional maturity. Some of the situations will cause it happiness, and some will cause it distress. I focus on explaining the effects of the distressful episodes.

The ability of the child to handle distress is inversely related to its existing degree of sensitivity (a product of previous lives on Earth). The more sensitive it is, the less able is it to handle well any distress, and so the more distressed it will be by unpleasant situations. If the level of distress is within its comfort zone, no permanent harm is done. Its comfort zone is the psychological boundaries of the fledging ego, the ego that is being created. Our psychological boundaries are all the ways we can engage in relationships without being damaged by them.

If we go beyond our boundaries, then we go beyond our capabilities to handle in adequate ways the stress of relationships. Then the relationship we are currently experiencing will damage us, by causing us to feel guilt, shame, regret, anger, hatred, etc. An adult can seek consolation when he gets damaged, but a child cannot. If a child is pushed beyond its boundaries, it will experience psychological trauma. The intensity of trauma can vary from mild to severe, and hence the long-term effects will likewise vary from mild to severe. Trauma that occurs to a child comes under the heading of abuse: the abuse can be intentional, though I think most abuse is unintentional. Unintentional abuse happens when the parents or other adults do not understand the effects on the child of the ways in which they treat it.

Abuse comes into three categories: physical, emotional, and sexual. Physical abuse is caused by excessive punishment. Emotional abuse is caused either by emotional neglect or verbal disparagement. These are the two categories I focus on in this book, since I experienced both from my parents. I did not experience sexual abuse from them, so I do not analyse it.

The long-term effect of abuse is to make the child psychologically fragile in some aspect of its consciousness. The fragility is related to the situation that caused the trauma. For example, consider a boy. Suppose that the boy is verbally abused by its mother. This will have the effect that the boy will become wary in its relationship to the mother, but its relationship to the father is unaffected. When it has become an adult, then in its relationships with mature women it will be wary of receiving verbal abuse. Any verbal abuse it receives from a woman will activate the subconscious memories of its childhood abuse and it will immediately find itself outside its comfort zone. Now its relationship to that woman will become dysfunctional to some degree – the man will find it difficult to have an harmonious relationship with that woman. The relationship stays fine so long as the woman does not criticise the man; when she does criticise him, the man switches into negative moods. The man becomes fragile to a varying extent because he feels that criticism is just a form of verbal abuse. The intensity of dysfunction will vary from mild to severe, depending on the intensity of the original trauma.

Trauma generates fear and self-pity, and these emotions often remain influential with the child for the rest of its life. The fear prevents trust in other people when the relationship with others mirrors the relationship with its parent. And the self-pity causes the sense of fragility in the child’s ego.

Overall, the three main factors in childhood that lead to difficulty in adult life are sensitivity, fear, and self-pity.

Parenting Problems

When we first begin to analyse and assess our childhood, we naturally look at it only from our point of view. What a psycho-analysis can do is to show us that some of the problems we have are the same as some of the problems the parents have. In some ways we are different from our parents, whilst in other ways we are the same. Our parents set up the emotional framework within which we now experience life. This is neither good nor bad. It simply helps to shape and determine what we will experience in life. Taking the long view of evolution, if that emotional framework was bad, it will propel us in one direction in life. If the framework was good, we will go in a different direction. Either way, we experience success and failure in whichever direction we go. As we progress on our journey of evolution, we will confront not only the mire of failure but also the glamour of success. This spiritual viewpoint is the only view of life that can explain why bad things happen to good people.

The parents, by producing the emotional framework of our childhood, set up our agenda on our journey through life. The child’s relationships with adults will be mirrored, once it becomes an adult, in its relationships with other people.

The joys and the difficulties that we experience as a child in our relationships with parents and other adults have long-term effects on our development. The joys will make it easy for us to relate to others, whereas the difficulties result in our character being limited in various ways, especially in the ways that we (now we are adults) relate to other adults. Most children are insensitive (“thick-skinned”) and so can often rise above the long-term difficulties that trauma produces. It is sensitive children who suffer most from trauma, and it is their problems that I focus on.

Many adults believe that they have been good parents to their children. And this may be true from the adult’s perspective. However, to understand the problems of childhood we have to see it from the child’s perspective. It is the child’s interpretations of relationships that will determine whether it feels they are good or bad for it. Parents may be very nice people, but the sad fact is that most of them do not understand the issues involved in bringing up children. In the best scenario, children can be attached to their parents, growing up happy and self-confident. When they eventually leave home they are emotionally independent of their parents. However, my view is that even the best of parents are not perfect, and hence the child will still be affected to some degree by trauma.

The critical time for the child is the first three or four years of its life. During this period the child needs a lot of good quality emotional care. When this care is lacking, it produces negative effects on the child which can last for a lifetime. This is the period when trauma is most likely to happen. However, it may be difficult to detect that a young child has experienced some form of emotional trauma. A sad fact of societies throughout time is that they have never understood how to care for young children. It is not considered necessary to teach new parents how to care for their children. So the mother learns by trial and error, in the same way that her mother learned. There is not much to recommend about this process; it is all trial and error. And what does trial and error mean?
The mother gets the trial and the baby gets the error.

Difficulties with the Parents

The mother may not be able to show enough love and emotional warmth to the child. Then once the child grows up he will often not be able to show much emotional warmth to other women. A significant difficulty that a lack of emotional warmth in childhood produces is that of touch deprivation. The child is not touched and cuddled enough by the parent. Then the child finds, once he is an adult, that he is awkward and self-conscious if he has to touch and caress another woman or a child. It is easy enough to touch someone sexually, but to touch in a caring way is very different. The adult has difficulty showing tenderness and intimacy, since he is afraid of making a fool of himself if he is rebuffed.

Another difficulty produced by a lack of love in childhood is that once the child grows up it becomes an adult who clings emotionally to other people. The opposite effect is just as possible: the child will feel that adults do not support it and it has to look after itself, and so it will grow into a lonely adult who cannot share emotional feelings with others.

Many parents treat their children in ways that are completely acceptable to society, but which nevertheless can harm the child. One of the common ways that harms a young child is the application to it of a stern and narrow morality by the parent. Parents who are strong-willed and/or strongly moralistic pose severe problems for the young and sensitive child.

My mother was pleasure-loving at times, but she had a dominant will and a narrow sense of morality. My father had fine leadership qualities of character. I related more to my mother than to my father. Alas, what I most needed as a child – love and affection – was usually absent or in short supply. What I mostly remember about my childhood was mother’s lack of sympathy and her fault-finding. This may be termed the Spartan view of child-rearing: the parent is unable to offer much emotional support to the child, and expects it to become self-reliant and learn to find its own way in life. The mother rationalises her lack of warmth by believing she is not making the child dependent on her.

Until recent years, a loving relationship between parent and child was not considered to be important – in fact, a Spartan relationship was thought to be a good way to make a child more resilient and self-reliant. Unfortunately, this kind of upbringing causes big problems for the child, once it has become an adult. If a child finds emotional issues difficult, then the same issues will become even more difficult once adulthood is reached. A child creates its beliefs and values from its experiences of life. If the child does not receive an adequately-positive emotional upbringing from the parents, then it becomes sensitive to the negative aspects of life. It learns to pay more attention to difficulties and failures than to successes. Hence the development of social skills is frustrated and slowed-down.

The Spartan upbringing may be fine for a child who wants to develop dominant willpower, but is a disaster for a sensitive child who orientates on emotion. Such an upbringing generates fear and self-pity in the child. However, this fear is often masked by a less dominant, though more visible, influence of guilt.

In more general terms, suppose that a mother brings up a child in a strictly moral fashion. Being moralistic she cannot freely give affection to the child (she prefers to function on will rather than on emotion). She rationalises this lack of emotional support as being helpful for the child to acquire his own sense of independence. Since she does not tie the child to her in an emotional way so he usually develops strong will power in order to hide his emotional emptiness.

However, if the child chooses not to absorb the mother’s moralistic framework, another reaction can happen. Now he centres on the lack of emotional closeness to the mother. The development of will power is no substitute for emotional harmony. So once the child becomes an adult he seeks ways of experiencing emotional fulfilment rather than ways of expressing his will power.

How are we to explain the situation where the parents have been good to their children, and yet some of the children have developed intense attachment in the bonding stages? I bring in my ideas on reincarnation. In my view, the child experienced trauma in its previous life on Earth, and the influences of that trauma have carried through to its present childhood. No purpose is achieved by blaming parents. A much better outlook is to teach children psychology and social skills in school, so once they become adults they have the potential to be better parents than those of previous generations. In school, psychology should have the same importance as science and art and culture.

[¹]. I explain my view of reincarnation in the article Pychological Mechanics of Reincarnation, on the spiritual section of this site. [1]

[²]. I have three articles on Emotion on the Home page. [2]
I also have a chart detailing the flow of love between man and woman in the Glossary. Just replace "man" by "child".

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