If You Deny Your True Feelings, Your Children Might Just Express Them for You

A Dialectic Perspective On Defense Mechanisms.

In my post of February 11, 2011 on dysfunctional family roles, I described the roles of the savior and the avenger.  In families in which children play these roles, a parent is suppressing and/or denying strong impulses or desires which were unacceptable within the family in which the parent grew up. The parent tries, more or less, to ignore these impulses or even to pretend that they never existed.

In the case of the savior, the child acts out the parent’s repressed ambitions. In the case of the avenger, the child acts out the parent’s repressed anger and hostility. 

The above picture is a skit from the comedy duo Key and Peele doing an impression of President Obama. The President gets to act all cool and collected while his “anger translator” goes off the deep end.  This symbolizes exactly what such kids are actually trying to accomplish.

Why and how do children end up doing this?

To start with, trying to deny or ignore one’s strong emotions or urges unfortunately does not make them go away. This just plain does not work. This fact sets up what psychoanalysts call an intrapsychic conflict. The repressed urges and feelings press for expression, while the person who has them attempts to fight them off in one way or another. 

The analysts focused mostly on the individual’s mental gyrations, called defense mechanisms, by which people with intrapsychic conflicts compulsively attempt to ward off the undesired aspects of themselves while still covertly allowing themselves some hidden expression of those very aspects.

Although the analysts were wrong about a lot of things, they were certainly on the right track with the concepts of intrapsychic conflict and defense mechanisms. Those are quite real, and are universally recognized by people in our culture in their everyday lives - even by those psychologists who claim they do not exist!  

Even cognitive behaviorists have been known to shout at someone, “Don’t take your frustration out on me!”  That means the frustrated person is relieving himself of the feeling of frustration by redirecting it to someone that the person is not afraid of. This is the defense mechanism called displacement.

What the analysts missed are some of the interpersonal effects of defense mechanisms and their ramifications. It took a whole different school of therapy, family systems, to point out that repressed and warded off feelings in a parent can directly induce their children to act out those unacknowledged feelings. 

Of course, family systems therapists had to distance themselves from the psychoanalytic therapy that was the predominant paradigm when they started out. So they repaid the analyst’s favor by not acknowledging the role of the parent’s intrapsychic conflict and its aspects within the individual.

The dialectic perspective tells us that a mental phenomenon is neither exclusively an intrapsychic phenomenon nor  an interpersonal phenomenon, but both simultaneously. In fact, in general the dialectic perspective consists of the concept of both/and as usually being preferable to either/or. To fully understand psychology, we have to look at phenomena from a variety of perspectives and try to integrate them into a unified viewpoint. In today’s fragmented field of clinical psychology, an integrated, unified viewpoint is what is often sorely lacking. 

There are some of us trying to work on that (See the Unified Psychotherapy Project for more information).

So let’s get back to our repressed parent. The denial of strong feelings or urges leads people, in response to certain aspects of their family environment, to behave in a somewhat unstable way. They may appear to other family members to be highly emotionally disturbed. This affects the other family members and often leads to highly charged, dysfunctional interpersonal reactions by the whole family group.

Since group survival depends most on the functioning of the group leaders – the parents - having unstable parents frightens children. They consequently are induced to try to find ways to behave that seem to make the family interactions at least somewhat smoother. This does not mean that the interactions will become truly smooth by any means. Just more predictable and somewhat more stable. The process by which all family members strive to keep the behavior of its members within certain bounds is called family homeostasis by family systems therapists.

If the child acts out or expresses the parents’ repressed urges, the parent often calms down.  

As I explained in the earlier post, parents frequently live vicariously through identification with their children. When their children do what they themselves are afraid to do, it allows for some expression of their repressed urges. The parents may even subtly encourage these behaviors from their children without actually asking them to do anything. A parent might, for instance, grin like a Cheshire Cat as they describe their little darling’s exploits to others in the child's presence.

Of course, they cannot actually praise the behavior of the child without admitting that they think what the child is doing is a grand idea, so they have to deny that that they are subtly pushing the child in these directions. In fact, they will turn around and criticize the child for exhibiting the very behavior they are pushing the child to perform. This is the most common and typical type of double message seen in dysfunctional families. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

This general pattern of acting out is not limited to repressed ambitions and repressed hostility. A whole range of repressed feelings, urges, and even beliefs can be acted out by children. Let me give one more example.

Let’s say Mom was brought up in a severely and strictly religious family that preached that women must and should be totally subservient to their husbands. On the surface, Mom may claim to really believe that this is the way things ought to be, and join in with friends and fellow church members in loudly condemning more assertive women.

Underneath this almost smug sense of being satisfied with this allegedly morally superior way of  relating to their husbands, the women may actually be seething and chomping at the bit to decide for themselves how to behave, even if their husbands disapprove. In such a situation, they are actually jealous of the assertive women they criticize. They also covertly hate these other women, because the other women serve as a constant reminder to them that they are not really happy being on a leash. If they lived in a cave and didn’t get cable, as comedian Bill Maher used to say, they would not see that there were other options, so these hidden dissatisfactions might be easier to ignore. But alas, they do not.

Children are very perceptive and try to find ways to make Mom feel better. They look for ways to allow their mothers to vicariously live through them as they behave in a somewhat assertive way with the men in their lives. On the other hand, they cannot be too successful at being assertive in this manner, because that too would remind Mom of how unhappy she is when perhaps she does not have to be.

This bizarre situation can lead a child in this position to devise ways to walk this tightrope. Actually, there are a whole host of different strategies than can be employed to accomplish this seemingly impossible feat. For example, a daughter in this situation may marry a series of domineering and possessive men, put up with them for a while, and then go all ballistic on them in a wild and ultimately self-defeating form of rebellion that may adversely affect their own children. They then leave each men and go on to another one just like him.

Their mothers and other interested parties then get to tell them how insane they are, and also get to remain smug in the knowledge that they themselves would never act in such a manner. Being a "wildwoman" may even become a label by which other people tend to refer to them.

This is of course is just one example of ways in which children may develop a false self or persona. While the intrapsychic conflicts of the parents affect every other member of the family to a greater or lesser degree, one sibling out of many may become “it” while the others escape relatively unscathed.

The Obvious Secret of Interpersonal Influence Within Families

It always amazed me that therapists, who are in the business of influencing people to change their behavior, are often somewhat clueless as to how individuals are influenced by members of their kin group – that is, by their families.  Even the analysts, who thought that psychological problems derived initially from family of origin interactions, sometimes seemed to think all of the child’s reactions to the parents were somehow innate rather than learned. Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan were the two major exceptions among the early analytic theorists.

When family systems theory came along, its ideas about cybernetic feedback loops of interpersonal influence seemed to me to be a major step forward. However, perhaps because they had to go to the opposite extreme from the schools of individual psychotherapy in order to distinguish themselves, some theorists seemed to think that individuals almost did not exist outside of their social context. Systems therapy pioneer Jay Haley pretty much said as much.

I kept coming across a peculiar problem in their explanations for interactions in family systems. Actually, I noticed that the same problem kept creeping into explanations of human behavior from the individual psychotherapy schools. They all seemed to assume that, on some level, people are just incredibly stupid.  Somehow they believed a person could repeatedly get the same feedback from other people about the effects of their behavior on both themselves and on others, yet just not notice what was happening!

Now of course if one looks for evidence of people behaving stupidly, it’s not very hard to come up with examples. But are they really too stupid to notice that when they act in certain ways, they invariably get hit over the head with a two by four, in a manner of speaking.  Maybe the first couple of times their perceptions of the chain of events might miss the inevitable result because of preconceived biases, but over and over?  

If anything, I would think that being hit on the head over and over with a two by four would make the sequence rather salient! To think otherwise is to turn the whole evolutionary reason for the existence of pain on its head.

So what if we assume that people are not that stupid? To explore this, I would like to make a detour and discuss the different perspectives on how individuals influence one another presupposed by the therapeutic schools. Individual therapies tend to be based on something called linear causality; systems approaches on circular causality. A more powerful concept of causality is, in my opinion, dialectic causality.

For simplicity in discussions of circular causality, systems theorist have usually used as a teaching example a schematized and admittedly oversimplified version of a couple consisting of an alcoholic who drinks and his wife who nags him to stop, so let me start there. 

A linear model would suppose that the nagging or the drinking is one element which causes the two behaviors in question:

Nagging----------------------> more drinking (though this might be seen by analysts as a mere excuse covering up some “real" linear cause).  

drinking---------------------> induces more nagging.

Circular causality, on the other hand, would presuppose a sort of vicious circle with no beginning or end, although in fact all interactions must have a beginning, even if it is only when this couple first meets.

T1 = time 1, T2 = a short time later, etc.

In this case, drinking---->nagging----à drinking--à nagging    - ad infinitum

The second model has obvious advantages over the first model in that it includes the obvious fact that both members of the couple are influencing each other in a continuous process with constant feedback. Systems theory would say that this creates a vicious circle where more nagging leads to more drinking which leads to more nagging and so forth. But here is where the “problem of stupidity” pops up.  

If we assume that the nagger is not stupid, we must assume that she knows that her husband is, at the very least, using her nagging as an excuse to drink, and will drink more if nagged rather than less. The husband tells here so, and his behavior bears it out, so she would have to have to have the IQ of a turnip not to notice!

Conversely, the drinker knows that his drinking induces more nagging. If each member of the couple wants the other member to stop drinking/nagging, and I do believe that to be the case, then how do we explain the fact that both of them continue in the non-productive behavior?

More importantly, both members of the couple know that the other member is not stupid, even if many therapists do not, so how do they explain to themselves why the other member of the couple is inducing the very behavior that he or she is complaining about?

In fact, each member of the couple in this situation is not giving off a congruent message to the other, but a double message. Verbally, the drinker tells the nagger to stop nagging, and the nagger tells the drinker to stop drinking. The way that this is done, however, says quite the opposite. The nagger, by continually nagging in a situation where both of them must know that this is counterproductive, is saying to the drinker: go right ahead! I'll give you the excuse you need. And vice versa.

If we assume that these people are not stupid, then we cannot assume that this is just a vicious circle. Indeed, it would be more consistent with the clinical picture to say that the nagger nags in order to give the drinker an excuse to drink, and the drinker drinks in order to give the nagger an excuse to nag. A strange concept indeed! But how can this be?

Surely the wife does not want the drinker to drink, and the husband does not want to listen to his wife's nagging. I agree. So what goes? 

The explanation that I am advancing here is that each person in the relationship thinks, rightly or wrongly, that it is the other person who wants the relationship to continue in its current form. Each thinks this, because the idea is borne out by the context of the other's behavior.

The drinker, by continuing to drink in a context where this behavior is destined to bring out nagging, is in a sense "asking for it." You've all heard that phrase, haven't you? "You're making me mad, you're just asking for a spanking!" What I am suggesting here is that people literally do think this; it is not merely a joking figure of speech.

Now, since both of these people are "asking for it," then they must at some level want it. This contradicts, of course, what I just said. I just said they did not want it. So am I giving you a double message?

What I believe is happening is that each member of the couple is actually of two minds on the subject. On some level, they are more comfortable with the relationship in its current form, but on another level, they hate it. Now, you may ask, why would they be comfortable with such a horrible relationship on any level? I'll answer that shortly, but first I'd like to point out that each member of the couple has no doubt asked him or herself this very question about the other member of the couple. Each correctly ascertains that the other seems to need the relationship as is, but they have not the slightest clue as to why.

If indeed, as I am proposing, they are both ambivalent about it, a direct question will probably lead to a defensive and negative response. These problematic responses could range from the other person changing the subject or denying any incongruity even exists all the way to bashing the questioner in the face.  In therapy I find that, because of these negative reactions, people will not ask their partners this sort of question, and therefore have to make guesses.

Because psychoanalytic ideas have become common currency in America, these guesses are usually linear explanations based upon what I call "bad psychoanalysis" (with apologies to Dan Ackroyd and Leonard Pinth Garnell). As mentioned, psychoanalytic explanations are linear and not circular or dialectic. The wife, for instance, would never in her wildest dreams come up with the explanation that the husband drinks out of a misguided perception that she needs him to.

Leonard Pinth Garnell (AKA Dan Ackroyd, Saturday Night Live)

She, being a product of American culture, would think he needs to drink for some selfish reason, not an altruistic one. She might think that he needs to drink in order to provide an excuse for acting in a hostile fashion - people are often not held accountable for their actions while drunk - in order to vent his otherwise unacceptible hostility towards his own nagging mother.

Because each member of the couple always plays a certain role, each believes the other wants to play the role, when in fact, each is playing the role compu1sively partly because each thinks the other wants it that way. The compulsivity of the behavior reinforces this view. Both usually believe, and in therapy they will tell you, that they think the relationship will end if it gets better!

There is a vicious circle going on here, but it is completely different from the vicious circle postulated by systems theory. Each member of the couple sees the other's behavior as self-generated, not realizing that it is, in fact, reactive to their own behavior. The more the nagger nags, the more the drinker drinks, because he sees her continued nagging as evidence that she wants him to drink. His increased drinking reinforces the nagger’s view that the drinker needs more nagging, and so forth.

This mutual and simultaneous influence on behavior is what is entailed by the idea of dialectic causality. Diagrammatically, it looks something like this:

The people are labeled Al, A2 etc. because the interaction over time is helping literally to create a somewhat changed individual. Dialectic philosophy tells us that nothing in the universe is constant, change is universal, and even though we are always ourselves, people do change, and much of the change is due to the nature of interactions with others.

Cognitive mental models of how to behave in certains social situations (schemas), for instance, are continuously updated through the twin processes of assimilation and accommodation. The diagram above shows that A and B are continuously pushed further apart over time. The confused, mixed message picture within the relationship creates friction which eventually causes these people to move apart, a phenomenon called distancing. The relationship is co-created by the way each person in the relationship perceives the needs of the other.

Unfortunately, I must add one further complication in order to explain why the couple got started in the pattern in the first place. Circular explanations ignore time, and often genesis, but time is intrinsic in dialectic interpretations. The nagger cannot be nagging only because she is trying to please her husband, although that is a very important reinforcer. She must at some level be more comfortable with the role of "the Nag With An Alcoholic Husband" than without it, despite the fact that this role is so horribly ungratifying.

What I am about to propose is that each member of the couple developed the role they play in response to a perceived need in the family of origin of each. Part of the reason that they picked each other in the first place is because they needed help maintaining an ungratifying role. Some of these roles were described in previous posts. That is why each continues to provide this sort of "help" and why each thinks the relationship cannot change. The concept of role function support by a spouse is exactly like the concept of enabling from the 12 Step literature - except that the alcoholic husband is also enabling the "co-dependent" nagging wife.

Each needs to play his or her role at great personal cost because each believes some disaster would befall their parents, or other important family members, if they stopped playing the role. For instance, Mother might become depressed, or Father might start drinking. We all care about our families deeply despite what we might like to think about that proposition, and the prospect of stopping our role behavior is indeed terrifying.

The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous - a Translation

Getting all of the blame, but none of the credit

One of the central ideas I use in trying to understand the relationships between various theories and treatment models within psychotherapy is that, within all groups of human beings, there is a constant battle (called a dialectic) going on between what Murray Bowen’s protégé Michael Kerr called the "forces of individuality" versus the "forces of togetherness" (collectivism, in politics speak). The dialectic between individual desires and group norms can be seen dramatically within the twelve steps of Alcoholic Anonymous (AA). 

Caveat: while this post may seem critical of some aspects of 12 Step Programs, I want to emphasize that these groups do help a certain percentage of addicts. Being addicted to substances is usually far worse that endorsing any of the problematic aspects of the AA ideology. Until something much better comes along, AA represents the only hope for some individuals. 

The strategy that AA uses to help alcoholics and other addicts is based on techniques used by Protestant religious denominations to convert non-believers. Those, in turn, are based on the techniques that such groups use to enforce group behavioral norms while still allowing a certain degree of individuality, as described by Erich Fromm in his classic book, Escape From Freedom. 

While giving some praise to the individual in a series of clever paradoxes and ambiguities, certain aspects of individuality are ritually denounced - most usually, the "dangers" of unrestricted willfulness. Willfulness, or the desire to follow our own inclinations, is equated with sin, and is seen as leading invariably to de­gredation and despair. 

The alcoholic and the teetotaler really believe much the same thing and need one another desperately. The teetotaler says that self-indulgence leads to ruin, and the behavior of the alcoholic proves the point. Without the example of the latter, the philosophy of the former could not be reasonably maintained. Without the warnings of the non-drinker, the alcoholic would have no one to defy. The success of AA is dependent on a continuing supply of new "sinners." 

The 12 Steps refer to the issue of the individual versus the collective both directly, when the issue of human will is discussed, and indirectly, when they speak of God or a "higher power." To show how often the denigration of individuality arises in Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, I am going to list some quotations from the book. 

Admittedly, I am taking these quotes out of context. The reason that I do so is that, as I will show shortly, the context contains large numbers of contradictory statements that are not juxtaposed for comparison, as well as paradoxical statements, which mask the underlying message. Of particular note is that the entire book is written using the collective pronoun we. 

[Page numbers that are referred to are from the following edition: 
Alcoholics Anonymous. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. New York: Alcholics Anonymous World Services, Inc., 1981. (Originally published 1952)]. 

…self confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. (p. 22) 

…the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme... (p. 24) 

"How he [the practicing alcoholic] does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and therefore the only God that his universe knows!" (p. 25) 

…those filled with self sufficiency who have cut themselves off [from God] (p. 28) 

Now we come to another problem, the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman... far too smart for own good... blow ourselves into prideful balloons... (p. 29) 

cut away the self will... (p. 34) 

The philosophy of self sufficiency is . . . a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin. (p. 37) 

We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. (p. 43) 

It is not by accident that pride heads the procession [of the seven deadly sins]. (p.48) 

It is worth noting that people of very high spiritual development almost always insist on checking with friends or spiritual advisers in the guidance they feel they have received from God. (p. 60) 

It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, there is something wrong with us. If someone hurts us and we are sore, we are in the wrong also. (p. 90) 

…any success we may be having [in remaining sober] is more His [God's] success than ours. p. 92) 

…personal ambition has no place in A.A. (p. 183) 

…A.A.'s twelve traditions repeatedly ask us to give up personal desires for the common good... (p. 184) 

Moved by the spirit of Anonymity, we try to give up our natural desires for personal distinction ... p. 187) 

…a loving God as he may express Himself in our group conscience. (p. 
189) 

As I mentioned earlier, these types of statements are intermixed with paradoxes and ambiguities. On page 26, we are told that the AA group does not demand any belief or behavior — that all twelve steps are merely suggestions. Of course, on page 174, we are told that any group member that defies the "suggestions" has probably signed his own death warrant. 

We are exhorted to keep an open mind while at the same time to "resign from the debating society" (p. 26). We are told that the best way to get rid of self-will is through our willingness to do so. We are told that dependence upon a higher power is a means of gaining "true independence of the spirit" (p. 36). 

One rather frequent ambiguity in the book is that it sometimes implies that its ideas concerning over-indulgence apply primarily to the issue of alcohol, while at other times it seems to apply its concepts far more generally. Page 36 implies strongly that the twelve steps do not apply just to the issue of alcohol. 

Throughout the entire volume, debatable statements about self-indulgence are mixed up with statements concerning over-indulgence that only a fool would debate. Page 44 sensibly discusses instincts running wild, and, on page 65, we are even told, paradoxically, that God does not expect us to fully eliminate all of our natural drives. 

The book's discussion of pride also presents us with a mix of statements that confuse one type of pride — unwarranted pride — with all types of pride. It is also fascinating that, shortly after discussing the alcoholic's generic pride, the book goes on to discuss the alcoholic's generic feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Are we to assume that alcoholics are both truly proud and ashamed of themselves simultaneously? 

Allow me to translate the 12 Steps from the collectivism vs. individualism perspective. In step one, addicts admit their powerlessness over their own impulses. The way to stop behaving self-destructively, says step two, is to turn to a power greater than ourselves. Step three defines exactly what it is that we are supposed to do in relation to that power. We are supposed to turn our will over to it. We must not trust our own instincts, but only some power greater than ourselves- the collective, of course. 

In step four, we make a moral inventory, in order to discover our liabilities. The type of "defects" under consideration here are spelled out quite dearly. They are the old familiar seven deadly sins. Notice that the issues of the harm that we have done to others and making amends to others do not come up until steps eight and nine — after this moral inventory. We must deal with our own intrinsic evil before we can address the evil that we have inflicted upon others. 

In step five, we are to admit the exact nature of the wrongs discovered in step four to ourselves, God, and another person. We cannot be honest with only ourselves and God; after all, we may be deluding ourselves about God's will. We must confess our sins to others. We must let them know that we were not in control of our impulses. 

The AA book clearly compares this step with the confession of sins in organized religion. In the group meetings, members announce their names and add, "and I am an alcoholic." They say there is no shame in this, but clearly members are ritualistically humiliating themselves in front of the group. 

They may say that they are doing this in order to overcome the denial characteristic of the alcoholic. However, if alcoholism truly is a manifestation of willfulness, then, when practicing alcoholics insist that they can control their drinking whenever they want to, they are telling the truth. The real denial comes when they "admit" that they were not deliberately choosing to drink all along, but were responding to their "disease." 

Steps six and seven involve asking the higher power to remove our shortcomings; again this is to be done before we even consider the harm that we have done to others. The concept of humility and our own powerlessness over our impulses is stressed. 

If we do well in the future, the credit goes to the higher power who has removed our shortcomings. If we screw up?  Well, that's just our own shortcomings.

After we deal with the harm we have done to others in steps eight and nine, step ten involves continuing the process of self-criticism that had begun in step four. The priority goal of this process is self-restraint and the avoidance of pride. This is accomplished by attributing any sobriety we have achieved not to ourselves, but to God. Kindness and love to others arises from our devotion to God, not from our own selfish instincts or will. 

Step 11 involves the personal relationship to God. We are to meditate. and pray to God "as we understand him." On what this understanding is supposed to be based is never specified exactly. In fact, the book takes a religious stance by adopting the notion that the Lord works in mysterious ways which no mere mortal can understand. 

It is clear that what happens in the world is not supposed to happen according to our own notions of right and wrong or our own will. We are to pray for what God wants, not for what we want; we are to ask only for knowledge about God's will for us and His power to carry it out. 

This knowledge does not involve specific answers to behavioral dilemmas, but only knowledge about how we might best forget ourselves and serve the collective. Only then will love, forgiveness, truth, and harmony come about, and we will be rewarded by a sense of belonging to the group. In the twelfth and final step, we are encouraged to spread the gospel, and to apply it to all of our affairs. 

Why are the anonymous groups so powerful when it comes to stopping compulsive behavior? (At the risk of offending the devout, I am going to discount the possibility of divine intervention.) I submit that the answer to the question lies in the fact mentioned above —that both the practicing and the recovering AA alcoholic prove the point that individual will power is a bad thing: Many of the families of addicts are grappling with problems created by the increasing value placed on the individual by society at large, and how the newer prevailing philosophies conflict with the need for their families to function according to an old set of rules. 

Practicing alcoholics appear to be rebelling against collectivist tendencies by indulging themselves with no concern for the health and safety of loved ones or anyone else. They often lie, put others in double binds, defeat expressions of caring and concern, and drive while intoxicated. 

Many individuals and family members directly involved with the problem of alcoholism argue that this behavior results primarily from the influence of the drug, but the 12 Steps argue more convincingly than I ever could that they really do not believe it. The behavior of the alcoholic is clearly attributed to a self-centered attitude. 

The alcoholic's willfulness, pseudo-selfishness (they are really self-destructive), and lack of concern for others, however, does not work. Alcoholics end up depressed, humiliated, and often physically ill. Their rebellion has failed. Willfulness has failed. The only way to happiness is to return to conformity. When they stop drinking and join AA, their lives improve. 

This proves beyond a doubt that conformity is superior to willfulness. By providing such proof, they help to reinforce the role functioning of other family members who are themselves experiencing internal pressures to express selfish impulses at the expense of old established family rules.