Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.
-- Laurence J. Peter
I had a friend years ago who went to a psychologist at length, for god knows what reason. He told us that one of the "therapies" this guy used was sitting on my friend's back, twisting his arm on his back and pinning him to the floor, to demonstrate what his parents were doing to him supposedly.
And obligingly he started blaming his evil parents for all his troubles.
Only thing is I met his parents, and you would have to look far and wide to find more mousy, bland, middle-class, inoffensive people. His mother was quiet and pleasant, and his father spent his life planted by the TV.
We have to rise above being a doormat, sure. But we also have to rise beyond blaming others for our own lives.
That's why my father grew up to be just like me!
ReplyDeleteExactly. And insanity is hereditary, no question about that. You absolutely do get that from your children!
ReplyDeleteI don't blame anyone, except Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown.
ReplyDeleteNo, I know she broke the unions, but she also broke BR.
I must say that in this post, I prefer the comments. :-)
ReplyDeleteWell, many of my posts are just bait for the commenters to to the real work.
ReplyDeleteAlex, somebody told that the new rail systems are the best gain from the Thatcher period.
I have no real data, but it just seems the situation is not one-sided.
And it seems that before Thatcher, the marginal tax bracket was even more insane than the Danish one.
Only thing is I met his parents, and you would have to look far and wide to find more mousy, bland, middle-class, inoffensive people. His mother was quiet and pleasant, and his father spent his life planted by the TV.
ReplyDeleteThat could explain a lot right there. A father who spent his life planted by the TV? Sounds like father of the year. Parents like that have a lot to answer for. The first few years of a child's life are the most important, and who are the biggest influences? The kid's parents.
My parents made mistakes, like they all do, but not the mistake of doing nothing. It's true that we must accept responsibility ourselves, but it would be as foolish to say that our parents can't be blamed for any of it as it would be to say they can be blamed for all of it.
I don't know about that psychiatrist, though. I'm not sure physically abusing your patients is an accepted method of treatment. That guy was a quack.
his message may have been not that he should blame his parents but that they are useless baggage that is only holding him down
ReplyDeleteThat would be more useful, yes.
ReplyDeleteCrap, I just posted and it got lost and now I need to retype it. oh well.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting. I was speaking with my cousin last week and she described this fairly well. You see, children get genes from the mother and children get genes from the father. Due to chemistry, some genes are left as is, some mutate and become a new creature within, all by themselves. You see, we're not to blame at all ;>)
When I were a lad, the railways speed limit was over 100mph, but due to the underfunded or poorly maintained track, the speed limit was much reduced.
ReplyDeleteWith the passengers charter maybe on-time performance improved, but some outlaying districts seem to be impacted adversly.
After privatization (post Thatcher, but she turned us into a nation of "investors") there were through ticketing issues, but that seems to be resolved now.
Mutation is nowhere near that common. It's very rare.
ReplyDeleteWell... remember, you don't really know people until you've lived with them. A couple of parents might act meek and most pleasant when people come around, and be the suffocating, cold, passive-aggressive types with their children in private, causing great but unseen psychological harm.
ReplyDeleteI know such people. And I only know them because I've lived alongside them long enough. Some terrible abuse happens without ever landing a blow.
So it's not always the blame game of hysteria and denial.
Not always...
"Well, many of my posts are just bait for the commenters to to the real work."
The mark of a true evil genius, right there.
Tell me about your childhood, ya?
"My parents made mistakes, like they all do, but not the mistake of doing nothing."
Same here. There's no such thing as perfect parents (and wouldn't they be Brady-like SCARY then?), but their sole obligation is to try sincerely.
"I don't know about that psychiatrist, though. [...] That guy was a quack."
Or at the very least, slightly a whack! ;-)
"some genes are left as is, some mutate and become a new creature within, all by themselves."
Some also give an entirely new result by their COMBINATION. "The whole is more than the sum of the parts."
I'm notably taller than both my parents, for instance. AND than my siblings.
"You see, we're not to blame at all ;>)"
Yeah, sure, it's all the fault of everything which made us who we are. ;-p
But then, doesn't this mean that the flawed result of it can "simply be destroyed"? If we're nothing more than a result which bears no intrinsic responsibility, "machines built by Destiny", what reason is there to respect individual life?...
We all have some understandable circumstances, more or less powerful influences that shaped us. But ultimately, we're always free. At least within the situations that Life puts us into.
It's been established, by studying children adopted at birth and comparing them to both their adoptive and their biological parents, that the tendancy to "break the rules", to violate the law and become delinquents, is in part hereditary. In a significant proportion. But:
- This proportion is by no means a sealed fate. It is STATISTICALLY significant, no more. WAY below 50 or 25%.
- For commiting VIOLENT crimes, the same study has established that there is no relation with heredity. We can't blame the genes. (This also completely debunks any racist theories about some populations' criminal NATURE, it's completely bogus.)
That study was carefully designed to separate the influence of EDUCATION, by comparing children adopted by the same family. And only studying cases where the children, and their adoptive parents, didn't know the biological ones.
My belief is, that harsh curcumstances REVEAL either our deep-rooted nature, or some innate TENDANCIES we have. But ultimately, life can only turn you evil if you let it. Having terribly suffered is no valid explanation. Merely an excuse, for those who CHOOSE to perpetuate the abuse pattern. "Wasn't me. Wasn't my fault. I was tempted by my victim. The Devil made me do it." All typical cowardice toward one's own actions.
[Tune in tomorrow for Part 2, same channel, same time]
[My, has it been one day already? Our story continues from yesterday's cliffhanger]
ReplyDeleteThe majority of abused children do NOT become tormentors in turn.
I can confirm this firsthand.
Fortunately, I was never raped by a sicko, or unjustly beaten by indignant parents. But I've experimented other sorts of abuse, more subtle. And I'm sure I'm not the only one to have spontaneously vowed, since I was a child, that I would take my revenge on hatred by spreading love to destroy what had caused ME pain and try to eliminate it from the world.
Nobody TAUGHT me that. It came from within. And I know I'm not a fantastically exceptional wise person, or some unique fluke in the human species.
Whatever my huge fan-club tells you in that regard... ;-)
We are all free within our circumstances.
And I know that arm-twisting shrink could've expected a black eye from me!
Nobody makes me a victim, if I can help it in any way.
And no sadistic bastard is going to turn me into another him. That would be the ultimate defeat. Therefore, at the tender age of 6, it already did inspire me the ultimate rebellion. "So there!"
You have my sympathy if you have suffered. You'll have none if you cause suffering. "I'm sorry for what you've been through, BUT..."
You know the story of the guy who murdered his parents, then asked for the court's leniency on the grounds that "I'm an orphan"? It's an old one. Just google "chutzpah".
"Mutation is nowhere near that common. It's very rare."
Quite true. In my 1st year, our genetics professor told us that a gene mutates in one out of 100,000 times. "And since we humans have about 100,000 genes, each in two distinct copies, we are all mutants, carrying two mutations in average."
Except that, in the meantime, the Human Genome Project has reassessed that figure. It would appear that in reality we humans only have 20 to 30,000 genes. (Gee, now THAT was a discovery well worth those billions spent! ;-) Therefore, we're not all mutants. AND, most of these mutations are silent or of little consequence.
Very few of us can claim to be genetically different in brain-building genes from our parents.
And in spite of this all, becoming a violent person that consciously hurts others is not an inherited trait. Also, "teaching" it is by no means a guaranteed success.
Not all Palestinian kids throw stones, in spite of the religious-backed paroxystic Hamas propaganda in the Gaza Strip. No matter how "noble" it is being presented to all of them, no matter how they all resent the routine abuse from Israeli occupation forces.
When you think of it, that resilience of free will is absolutely amazing. Impossible odds are being mocked every day. Flowers CAN blossom in the tiniest rock cracks.
But enough talking about the mountain village where I grew up! ;-)
Cue credits.