Continuing on from my last two posts about how I incorporated ideas into my psychotherapy model from fields outside of mental health, as well as fitting together seemingly contradictory theoretical aspects of several other psychotherapy schools:
I previously
mentioned how the rules by which families are supposed to function within their own culture have changed
as culture has evolved, with more and more freedom allowed to individuals to
set their own course – cultural evolution.
I also have mentioned that problems with family homeostasis seemed to me to be highly
related to the intrapsychic conflict which
is one of the hallmarks of psychoanalysis. That is defined as a conflict between one’s
natural desires (the “id” ) and one’s conscience or learned rules of
interpersonal and work behavior (the “superego”). So what is the exact nature of this relationship?
In today’s world, the newly
found freedoms to follow one’s own muse independently can seem highly attractive to people who are stuck with the old, more collectivist rules. The new rules seem to allow, in some instances, for much
more satisfying behavior. But engaging in it puts the person at odds with their
family system – in this case their own parents and extended family. If a
person dares to even talk about these new options, and their desirability - let
alone partake of them - their families may come down on them like the proverbial ton
of bricks.
For reasons to be discussed in
the next entry in this series, they decide that it best to go along with the old
rules. But that doesn’t mean that new possibilities are no longer attractive.
Such a person becomes highly ambivalent about their own choices. Their
surroundings usually provide a constant reminder of what they may be missing.
In other words, they develop an
intrapsychic conflict. But I believe the
psychoanalysts missed something important with this concept of theirs: This
conflict does not end up residing in just the one person’s mind, but can become
shared by their own spouses and
children. So how does this happen?
I’ll leave the question about
spouses for another time, but let’s look at parent-child relationships in
situations like this.
To simplify the process quite a bit, a parent’s ambivalence can result, in various degrees, to their giving off double messages about what they expect from their own children. They may vicariously enjoy their hidden desires somewhat by living through their kids as the kids engage in them - but won’t ever admit to that being the case because it would expose their own hidden desires. And if the kids are too successful at enjoying them, their parent may get depressed and/or jealous precisely because they really had wanted to do these things themselves.
Depending on the nature and extent of the underlying ambivalence, this may not
create too big of a problem. However, if it’s a real hot-button issue for a person’s family, in response the parent may appear to become highly unstable. And if their kids make the wrong decisions when this occurs? The parents seem to decompensate. They may start drinking more or threaten divorce from one another. Domestic violence may increase. They may even become suicidal.
Because of the evolutionary forces
of kin selection, children in this type of situation are almost always moved to
try to stabilize a parent who appears to them to be unstable. They will then sacrifice
their own underlying desires in order to do so. But how? The parent is such cases is giving out a
highly confusing mixed message. For example, a common conflict in today’s
Western societies are the new opportunities for women to enter the workforce
and not just be wives and mothers, in a situation where their doing so may be highly alarming to their own parents. To their
kids, such a mom can seem to resent being saddled with taking care of kids, but
guilty if they are not constantly there for their kids. They covertly hope that their
kid can be in a career that they had let themselves had forsaken, but then
seem to decompensate if that starts to happen. What does the kid do then?!?
To even understand this picture
further, we need to further discuss why they just don’t do whatever the hell they
really want to do. How does kin selection manifest itself in a modern human’s
mind? In the next post in this series, I
will discuss the relevance of ideas from two other therapy schools – mirroring (from Heinz Kohut) and groundlessness (from existential psychotherapy).
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