Guilt – part one…

I got interested in the book ”Normality” and started to read some words here and there. In the first chapter he (Jesper Holst) writes about the history of the social-pedagogy. He writes about the middle-age and feudalism and later early capitalism, as he thinks started in the 14^th century. He wrote something about that during middle age it was Gods will that ruled. The churches and monasteries administered things: who was sinful etc. (I read this very fast, and this is probably very simplified from my part).

After the feudalism the early capitalism came, the relation between country-side and town was changed. The urbanization started. Now when the amount of poor and without work increased you had to put the blame step by step on each specific individual for their poorness. Earlier it was Gods will as mentioned above everything you met in life (fatalism!!?? You had to meet this to learn!? There was something you had to and should learn). Now one started to blame the ones without work or being unwilling to work.

This made me come back to the issue religion and guilt, a topic the Dutch therapist Ingeborg Bosch has written about. She has done this in the chapter about the primary defence. Which is about blaming oneself: I’m just no good. It’s my entire fault!! I can’t do it! I’m bad!!

Different people have different access to these feelings; they are lying more or less on the surface for different people. Generally women have more access to these, and therefore are more prone admitting them Bosch means. Men are hiding them more, both to themselves and to others. But we all have them more or less, because we all have experiences which have forced us to rely on this defence. Experiences we have had to suppress.

Holt wants to critically analyze the normality-concept. And it is interesting (and quite important in fact to get the perspective that knowledge about the history gives I suddenly feel from the little I have read now. That it doesn’t have to be as it is now, and how it is is made by man, by human beings, and thus also able to do something about – if we want!!! What sort of society- and world- do we choose??

The basic primary defense belief is, according to Bosch, that

“there is something wrong with me”

most often showing up as thoughts of either

“I’m bad” or “I’ m guilty.”

And the child used this to protect itself against the truth. Grown ups go on using it, despite they don’t need to use this defense against the truth any more. It is possible to survive but is probably so painful so it isn’t strange we still avoid it, avoid the truth. Probably nothing to blame anyone for!!??

Bosch writes (at page 68 and forward in her book) that

“Traditional religion legitimizes and enforces the primary defence. Many religions consist of a core conviction that we humans are basically sinful, unworthy creatures, and only by following the religion’s rules and rituals there might be hope for us. Can you see the destructive effect this can have on someone’s self-perception? In other words, these religions ideas about our ‘true nature’ can feed right into the primary defence, leading to intense suffering caused by negative thoughts and feelings about ourselves [and other people can use these tendencies in other people, play on them, and misuse them more or less seriously]. At the same time an almost insurmountable fort of self-protection has been erected.

A clients example: ‘You could say it was offered to me on a silver platter. What else could I do? I couldn’t do anything but accept, I couldn’t do anything but envelop myself in feelings of guilt. In this way I dind’t have to feel anything else. I didn’t have to feel how terribly, terribl alone I was. I only had to feel guilt. The church obliged me to feel guilt. Didn’t that come in handy, my rescue. I flee in feelings of guilt. I can handle those, because the church tells me they are good. Not knowing what I’m doing to myself. With this I kill every other feeling inside me and with that I kill every bit of life in me. Then I stop being alive. Only in that way can I continue, can I survive. There is no other way. There was just one feeling that I was allowed and that was guilt, I even was forced to feel it. And with that I condemn myself, so mercilessly hard, but with that I am also able to save myself.’

This woman was raised in a strict Christian tradition. A strict Christian religion which teaches its followers that mankind is sinful from the moment they are conceived; that although mankind does not deserve to live because of his sinful nature, people are alive and so must do penance daily; that it is vital to acknowledge, just how sinful mankind is; that man should live in a continuous fear of God, that Jesus died for mankind’s sins, etc. Although not all Christian traditions preach such severe concepts, the idea of being guilty by nature is a basic premise in Christianity.”

This has legitimized – what through history?? To beat the devil out of the child!!?? To humiliate he child in a lot of ways. And not only that, but also influenced political “interventions” of all kinds!!??? Legitimized things that should have been questioned!! Led to moralising!! The child should obey… You can draw a lot of connections… To phenomena…

In the middle of writing I am making jam of 4 kilos of lingon- (or cow-) berries!!! It smells delicious I think!! I am a bit hungry I think!! Think I am going to make pancakes and eat them with my warm jam!! And a big glass of milk to!!

Yes, what is actually “normal”??

Now I am going to take a break in writing and make those pancakes!!! :-)

Side-track: googled on a Suzuki-teacher in US, violin-teacher, and found a/the site for the Suzuki association in America. I am going to put it in my link-list to the left I think!!

Eagerly and impatiently writing!!! So this is more like an open diary!! Need to pour things out!!??

Addition at 21.15 on the same or similar theme as in this post: In a new readers’ letter on Miller’s web Miller wrote in an answer about not increasing the life-long feelings of guilt and about plenty of esoteric and religious offers of help for people.

In another a reader wrote abut that Miller has written that she thinks those involved in religious cults comes from an abusive back-ground. They are drawn (easily) to hem. The reader had belonged to such a cult for 17 years, but had quitted it. Had an older sister who belonged to another fundamentalist religious cult and had married an abusive man, but unfortunately still remained in the cult (and marriage??).

This reader also wrote about that he/she realized the dangers of the

“nice is better than honest”

philosophy impregnated much of the western church.

Antidepressants and calming medicine...

I have a couple of colleagues that have been or are exhausted, and a couple that are partly sick-paid (what work-life is this????). Today before a meeting with students we sat there in groups chatting we teachers...

A female colleague had been eating antidepressants for four years and stopped wit them this summer... She wondered if she had done this too early. Another colleague, male, also said he is eating them since 2 months... He was sick-paid the last months this spring. The female colleagues mother is also eating antidepressants. And they discussed what sort they ate. Now my female colleague said she felt "dizzy" in her head, had problems to focus etc. I don't remember exactly...

I just dropped my cheek and thought a lot. Filled with a lot of emotions (I have had a tough period, over many years, but I have never eaten any antidepressants so far - thank God!!! From deep in my heart, and not self medicated with alcohol or something like that, maybe with other things as going up in things, being enormously engaged).

Another colleague is probably eating medicine to calm down!!! She is in upper middle age...

It's easier to prescribe a drug than doing anything else!!??? And probably also easier for the person in her/himself, for dealing with things, immediately and swiftly!!?? There is no space in life and circumstances to let things heal on the time that it actually would have taken (but in the long run - what then??)

And how many aren't self-medicating, with for instance alcohol, and maybe both alcohol and food??

What sort of lives are we living?? For what purpose??

I have started to write another blogpost - longer, triggered by this and that...

PS. A picture on a cute dog I met today. It's a he, and he is only 4, 5 months!!

The disobedient child...

There was an article in the Swedish magazine ETC about disobedient children getting electro-shocks. Is this really true?

A reportage by ”Mother Jones” about electro-shock for disobedient children was linked. We read about strict discipline which touch submissiveness (and IS about submissiveness, pure submissiveness)… No dialog between the child and grown up??? Just obey!!?? As the child is stupid and nothing understands, only understands the hard language (and I can imagine some children are so harmed that they maybe aren't able to help any longer... But... Something that could be prevented to an even higher degree!?? By information among other things. Complex things, yes, are handled with "simple", quick fixes!!?? I don't find words, literally for all that is going on in the society).

It stands at this site:

“… the Judge Rotenberg Center, a facility where autistic, mentally retarded, and emotionally troubled children from eight states are subjected to food deprivation, social isolation, and even electric shocks.”

At the news here it is a lot about foster-home children and what they have been exposed to and endured... It is the first news. "Stolen childood" ("Stulen barndom" in Swedish).

I wrote about the clever (obedient) child in the previous blogpost...

The obedient, clever child - what becomes of that child?? It makes great success, but to the prize of what? And what becomes of the obedient child? Does it take revenge later??

We have a school minister talking about "tougher grips" in the school... Very populistic!

Yes, where is the dialog?? Ugh, from deep in my heart!! I don't like this - at all!!! And I was the clever, well-mannered, obedient child... I have seen that side... And what THAT leads to.

Just some spontaneous morning thoughts... Yes, it is really a backlash in society, to a much more authoritarian one (with the risk of being totalitarian???)... Scary...

Normality can become psycho pathological as it stood in the blogpost referred to in the previous
blogpost here. I also came to think about my studies in pedagogy 20 years ago where one of the books were about "normality"... Yes, what we consider as "normal" what can be hidden behind that?? Tragedies?? Both later perpetrators of crimes and later victims of crimes of all degrees have been created??

The book I mentioned is titled "Normality" ("Normalitet" in Swedish and Danish) and is written by Jesper Holt. I think it is written in Danish (not Norwegian). On the cover it stands (my translation):

"The society values its normal human beings highly. It educates children to loose their selves and become meaningless and thus normal. Normal human beings has killed maybe 100,000,000 of their normal human fellow beings the last 50 years"

Ronald D. Laing is quoted here? Yes, Holt is Danish!!?

It stands further on the cover:

"This book discusses the normal normality-apprehensions and what these mean for education and treatment." (my amateur-translation again).

This book was written already in 1978, and I bought it in April 1985!!!

Addition: I think Jesper Holst is now associate professor, see this link!!!! A biography over him exists!??

The clever child…

The dreadful children are a problem. The clever ones are on the contrary no problems. And maybe that’s their problem? But maybe one shall not make something a problem that in fact seems to function. What isn’t more natural than to think that that they who have succeeded, has talent and are praised for their achievements doesn’t have a strong and stable self-esteem? But often it isn’t like that.

Many of these clever children can need consideration and being mentioned. Think of all those children sitting in the cars back-seat when the family is on a trip, telling fun stories, singing songs to sheer all up. Children whose capacities and abilities of caring makes the others feel unconcerned, everything is ok.

Even if they are sick they don’t get fever. They go to school as usual despite their sickness. Asthma, yes, even diabetes – but see how great they are handling it! They are so clever.

They are polite, have nice traits of character and even better report cards. From where do they get their power and ability?

They are in a constant preparedness for doing things/something.

The alternative – not achieving or producing doesn’t exists? (but it doesn't mean that these children take a lot of place and are seen, or want to be seen).

An honourable behavior can be an expression for weak psychological boundaries. The bad brother of care is the lacking care about oneself.

A child has a need for care and it uses its possibilities, just like the plant which turn to the sun for its survival. One way out, handling this lack, is the defensive. A very concrete example of this is anorexia. A person which tries to live on the fact that she doesn’t need anything.

Another path is the compensatory. The child tries to get acknowledgment by trying to reach the norm and our common ideals. The normality becomes the rule into which the child can enter and get security. It gets so melted together with this role so you can hardly see the masked self-knowledge.

These children easily become super adapting!! They can develop their ability as caretakers into perfection. Become mothers to their mothers (and fathers??).

The clever child’s dilemma contains not knowing. The negative emotions are there, but there is no apparent, acknowledgeable history to explain the presence of these emotions with. She/he can have friends with acknowledged traumas; children who have grown up with violence, alcoholism and abuse. The clever child’s story is more about a psychological absence than the presence of something traumatic (the traumatic things are hidden, because the parents had these means???).

The cleverness is no solution to the problem. This sort of (bad) "solution" can strengthen the problem through undermining the ability to expect and receive care. These children are so lonely because the cleverness and the independency camouflage the need of being little. Their cleverness is a way to acknowledgment, but also a way of sabotaging for themselves. It is a way to tell the world that you are self-supported, which one of course isn’t.

Worries from a depressed, anxious and scared mother can be confusingly like love, but it isn’t the same. Worries are the saboteur of love. Worries can look like care… There are explanations to the mother’s problems, maybe even very apparent (but not always, because they can be hidden and denied too), but how does that help her son/daughter? It doesn’t.

The clever child can have learnt very early important and unconscious lessons to adjust his/her expectations on what he/she got in form of care. Maybe the small child was forced into an early form of sense/feeling, which said that in some emotional situations he/she had to be self going (not needing, not problematic etc.).

As grown up he isn’t especially good at utilizing him/herself of the love he/she gets, simply because he/she can’t. She/he could and still can manage without anyone. Very honourable!! (???) Simply because he/she could (can get to hear as grown up "You don't need..."). Noone can hear the suffering that is so well hidden that the child doesn’t (seem) to miss anything, not even the child him/herself can hear it. He/she is a closed circulation, a self-referring system.

But the day the "missedness" comes…? When he/she feels something is lacking…

This inspired by a blogpost here.

Very tired after a day out at a tarn just outside the town with the staff from my work-place. Where we had a barbecue (grilling sausages, meat, fish for lunch) and played (competed with games) from lunch and after... A couple of people took a bath too. It has been a very warm summers day. I would like to scream?? Headache. But I wrote nevertheless.

All children starts school tomorrow.

English word of today "tarn" which means "tjärn" in Swedish.