Review: the Netflix documentary Pray Away

 

This post is the second about media describing organizations that practice a hateful form of groupthink. The Netflix documentary Pray Away focuses on gay adult Christians who used to preach and embody gay conversion therapy ideals to other gay adults. They led various organizations with their destructive idea of family, faith, and freedom. (The film is not about gay “conversion” psychotherapy of minors, which is another, even more despicable manifestation of this movement). Many of such people have embraced the idea that homosexual urges are part of a psychological problem, a result of some trauma or of some negative relationship with a parent, rather than something natural.

Many of the people interviewed in this documentary fell hook, line and sinker into these teachings while hiding their own backstories of self hatred. They are given screen time to now confess to how all of it was a painful lie. 

The movie profiles several of those people who and acted as advocates to make people "ex-gay." John was a major public advocate for gay conversion who appeared in Newsweek with his “ex-lesbian” wife—and reveals here that it was all a charade. He couldn’t admit, even to himself, to his continuing attraction to other men.

Michael created Exodus, the first gay conversion organization in the late 1970's. The film showed an auditorium full of smiling young adherents to this group under a poster exclaiming, "Join the Movement!" 

Julie became a public speaker as a young woman, with her highly articulate stories about how she had successfully rid herself of her lesbian feelings, with seemingly logical arguments for her past efforts to do so. She did not stop doing this until confronted by certain misbehavior from her former cohorts, and eventually renounced them and married another woman.

Their institutions, similar to the ones described in my previous post about the book Stolen, prey upon people's self-loathing, self-denigration, and desires to be accepted by their families and their churches. Prey away!

The irony here is that the parents who previously rejected these children is that, if in fact homosexuality is somehow a bad choice, and/or is a result of a bad relationship with parents, then the parents who rejected them on these grounds are admitting that they were crappy parents who raised a child who made bad decisions! But as we all know, the definition of the word “contradiction” is: something which such people pretend they don’t understand.

 

Book Review: Stolen by Elizabeth Gilpin

 

A startling and fascinating new book and an equally mesmerizing new Netflix documentary look at organizations which are designed to destroy people’s self actualization and their true selves in favor of a particularly monstrous form of groupthink. As the author of Stolen says, attendees were supposed to become like bees in a hive. Both of these groups twisted religion and psychotherapy to the point that they are almost unrecognizable.

One, the one described in the book, was even worse than the other, if that’s even possible, because it attacked and destroyed children: so called “schools” for “troubled” kids. At least the one described in the documentary was aimed at adults who were willing participants.

This post will be about the book, while the doc will be described in the next one. Stolen, was written by a woman who, when she was 15 years old, was a star high school athlete in two sports and an A student—but was nonetheless labeled as a disturbed troublemaker by her highly critical and often absent father and a hyper-religious mother who spent a lot of her time reading the Bible. Gilpin doesn’t describe any physical or sexual abuse in her home, but strongly implies that her parents, particularly her Dad, were verbally abusive and highly invalidating. Her Mom would support her privately but then always side with the Dad when the family was together.

She had started running away when she was only five, and later began partying with high school friends to avoid being home. She was also admittedly very angry and at times returned the father's verbal abuse, and she did dabble in alcohol and pot a few times. But the book doesn’t really describe in detail why she was so angry, although she did accuse her parents of never believing her. Oddly, the parents entirely discounted their own parenting as a factor in her behavior and never seem to wonder what made her like she was. At one point during her stay at the school, her father wrote a letter that said, “I’m glad that you’ve been able to accept that you’re ultimately to blame for your own anger.”

She was suddenly taken away by strangers in the middle of the night and sent to a “therapeutic” boarding school run by an organization called CEBU, which was anything but therapeutic. For the first three months, the teens were made to hike over and over again to a bunch of different campsites in the middle of the woods and were subject to physical abuse, such as being made to keep marching even after the group was attacked by a hive of bees and had multiple stings. They weren’t allowed to shower and were given crap to eat. They were monitored constantly and communication between the victims was highly restricted.

They were then transferred to a high school which had various exercises that were designed after something we Californians were aware of in the sixties and seventies called the Synanon Games, a twisted version of AA. More on Synanon at the end of the post.

During these games the teens were subject to vicious verbal attacks from the people running the school, and also forced to attack one another in the same way. For the high crime of having engaged in a sex act, for example, the girls were called sluts and whores who were desperately seeking attention (because they were starved of it at home perhaps?). With the boys, however, the prevailing attitude was “boys will be boys.” 

Gilpin was still a virgin at the time, but was immediately told she was a liar when she said that. She was accused of being a drug addict and an alcoholic despite her limited behavior in this regard. If a student denied being an addict, they were immediately accused of being “in denial.”

If she told the truth, it never seemed to be bad enough for the counselors, so she began to just make stuff up. Clearly she wasn’t the only one of the teens who felt they had to do that. If the teens rebelled, they were punished severely. Once when she threw up she was forced to eat her own vomit. They were threatened with being transferred to an even worse facility, masquerading as a hospital, if they did not fall in line.

Clearly the program was an exercise in degradation designed to stamp out any semblance of individuality. Gilpin said that the more self hating she seemed, the more she was praised for “doing good work.” In reality, both her parents and the school were victim blaming, scapegoating her for her own abuse at their hands. One of her friends there later committed suicide.

Interestingly, even after she “graduated,” she did not tell her parents exactly what took place at the school. At least she did not write about doing so. She described herself as letting her anger with them take over, doing nothing but shouting at them about how f’d up they were for sending her to such an awful place. IMO, in doing this, she was actually providing her parents with justification for their having sent her there in the first place. Protecting them to an extent, just as I suspect she was doing by not describing in more detail in the book the way they had been treating her that made her want to run away so badly.

Synanon was initially a drug rehabilitation program founded by Charles E. Dederich in 1958 in Santa Monica, California. By the early 1960s, Synanon became an alternative community - later labeled a cult - centered on group truth-telling sessions that came to be known as the Synanon Game, a form of attack therapy. 

Attack therapy involves highly confrontational interaction between the patient and a therapist, or between the patient and fellow patients during group therapy, in which the patient may be verbally abused, denounced, or humiliated by the therapist or other members of the group. Attack therapy "attempts to tear down the patient's defenses by extreme verbal or physical measures."

Synanon ultimately became the Church of Synanon in the 1970s. Synanon disbanded in 1991 due to members being convicted of criminal activities (including attempted murder) and retroactive loss of its tax-free status with the Internal Revenue Service due to financial misdeeds, destruction of evidence, and terrorism. It has been called one of the “most dangerous and violent cults America had ever seen." Mel Wasserman, influenced by his Synanon experience, founded the CEDU's schools which used the confrontation model of Synanon. 

The CEDU model was widely influential on the development of parent-choice, private-pay residential programs. People originally inspired by their CEDU experience developed or strongly influenced a significant number of the schools in the therapeutic boarding school industry.

Creativity and Self-Actualization

One of the themes of this blog concerns the forces that interfere with the ability of people to self-actualize, or express themselves and their opinions, and act on their own personal desires, even when their kin or social group may not always be supportive. Self-actualized people do not always follow in groupthink patterns during which they will go along to get along, agreeing with the family or ethnic groups ideas and philosophies while remaining willfully blind to any information that contradicts the group mythology.

 

Although she did not put it in those terms exactly, the question of whether the ability to do this is an important contribution to creativity in the arts and sciences was addressed by Nancy C. Andreasen, a well known psychiatry professor at the University of Iowa College of Medicine and the former editor in chief of The American Journal of Psychiatry, in an article entitled Secrets of the Creative Brain in the July/August 2014 issue of the Atlantic magazine. 

 

She describes a study she has been doing with a lot of creative people, many of whom are celebrities. In the article, she first discusses the often purported relationship between genius and madness, and found that there is indeed some truth to the idea that there is some. The incidence of mental illnesses in her subjects and their family members is indeed higher than expected. Although some of it may involve heredity, as evidenced by the incidence of schizophrenia, most of the psychiatric disorders found in her sample were those that primarily involve interpersonal dysfunction: certain mood and anxiety disorders and alcoholism.

 

Why might that be? Her answer speaks to my speculation about the role of self-actualization in creative people:  

 

“One possible contributory factor is a personality style shared by many of my creative subjects. These subjects are adventuresome and exploratory. They take risks. Particularly in science, the best work tends to occur in new frontiers. (As a popular saying among scientists goes: “When you work at the cutting edge, you are likely to bleed.”) They have to confront doubt and rejection. And yet they have to persist in spite of that, because they believe strongly in the value of what they do. This can lead to psychic pain, which may manifest itself as depression or anxiety, or lead people to attempt to reduce their discomfort by turning to pain relievers such as alcohol.”

To be innovative in one’s field involves the ability to persist in letting one’s mind work in the face of scorn and rejection from one’s peers. Even though it does hurt, innovators didn’t let rejection of publications or grant application stop them from continuing. They also had the wherewithal to be proven wrong at times and yet not be discouraged from continuing to search widely for better answers to technical questions.

 

Creative genius also involved the willingness to teach oneself about a wide variety of subjects rather than be spoon fed by teachers only in one’s chosen field of endeavor. Andreasen noted that many of her subjects were what she referred to as autodidacts – basically self-taught. Many had gotten in trouble with their school teachers for pointing out times when the teacher said something that was not true. She also found that many of her subjects were “polymaths” – people who read widely not only in their chosen area of expertise but in many subjects, both in the sciences and the humanities.

This sounds like self-actualization to me.

 

The Role of the Family Black Sheep – The Hidden Aspects

Are you a black sheep in your family? You know, the one that doesn’t seem to go along with the program and acts in ways that seemingly run counter to the values of the rest of the family? Guess what: you are not nearly as rebellious as you think you are.

A frequent topic on this blog and on my blog on Psychology Today is dysfunctional family roles. Because of the biological phenomenon known as kin selection, individuals are often willing to sacrifice their own needs and desires in order to act in ways which stabilize unstable parents and maintain what family systems therapists refer to as family homeostasis. 

The latter is a process by which the family operates by rules, strongly enforced by all family members, in which every family member plays a predictable, designated part. Family rules are originally derived from the culture or ethnic group in which the family has operated as well as by family experiences that necessitated certain behavior. In dysfunctional families, the family rules have become obsolete due to rapid changes in the ambient culture (cultural lag).

Many cultural changes have lead to situations in which individuals are much freer to express their own wants and needs separate from those of the family (self-actualization). If the family is stuck in the past, members (especially the older ones) may be threatened by certain aspects of individual freedom. They may be enticing and seductive, but were strongly forbidden to them by the people that raised them in earlier times.

This desire versus fear dynamic is what the Freudians were talking about with their notion of intrapsychic conflict. What they missed, however, was that the conflict is not entirely intrapsychic, but is triggered and reinforced by an entire family. In fact, the “intrapsychic conflict” is actually shared by all of them! It leads to family members giving off mixed and contradictory messages to one another about what is expected of them.

A big source of shared intrapsychic conflict in families that I have not discussed extensively is changing attitudes toward individual satisfaction involving things such as the proverbial sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There has been a marked cultural shift in the propriety of pleasuring oneself with these pursuits. Because of cultural lag, people will often give lip service to such issues as sexual abstinence or reserving sex for procreation only, while at the same time covertly availing themselves of opportunities seemingly at odds with their expressed values.

This is the situation that leads to one member of the family – often but not always a younger child—to volunteer to be the rule breaker, enjoying that which is attractive to but forbidden to all the others. The others, particularly the parents, get vicarious satisfaction of their own secret desires through watching their children indulge themselves. However, the situation is far more complicated. While black sheep may seem to be having a good time so the parents can do this, that unfortunately is not their only job.

If they have too good a time, and end up being happy and content, a parent who was secretly and subtly pushing them to break the family rules starts to become unstable. Vicarious experience, while mildly satisfying, is just not the same thing as actual experience. The conflicted parents start to wonder about their own choices in life and then become depressed, have marital problems with the spouse that has helped them go along with family rules, or engage in self-destructive behavior.

To prevent this and keep the parents stable, the black sheep must also demonstrate the folly of engaging in the “rebellious” behavior. They do so by, in a sense, finding ways to make themselves miserable because of it. In a sense, they fail at it, so the parents can become once again secure in the knowledge that they made the right decision in sticking to the old prohibitions.

In the process of indulging themselves in sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, black sheep may develop an addiction, contract a sexually transmitted disease, have an affair and destroy their marriage and their relationships with their own children, have multiple divorces, or become deadbeat dads. The rest of the family can then hold them up as examples that “prove” that the forbidden impulses are forbidden for good reason. The old family rules against self indulgence simply must continue to be followed. 

If they want to redeem themselves, black sheep may have to join a 12 step program and denounce their own willfulness. They need to go back to that old time religion – and the group that they join, in order to maintain itself, also needs someone to do just that. Just like their families need them to do.

Themes of This Blog Seen In Newspaper Advice Columns – Part III

This is the third in an occasional series of posts showing how several of the issues I discuss in this blog show up in letters to newspaper advice columnists. In order to assure themselves a wide readership, advice columnists must bring us problems that resonate with a fairly wide demographic, and they therefore provide us with another source of information about human behavior and cultural trends.

I follow Jeanne Phillips (Dear Abby), Carolyn Hax, Amy Dickinson (Ask Amy), and Marcy Sugar & Kathy Mitchell (Annie’s Mailbox).

Of course these letters leave out a lot of what might really be going on with the writer, and I will be admittedly speculating about how the behavior described in the letters may be examples of covert issues that are not being directly discussed.

Before each letter, I will discuss the blog subject that seems to be being discussed. I will also include a link to a related post. I am not including the columnist’s responses to the letters. 

*

In the following letter, a father pushes his son away by constantly telling him what a disappointment he is. The son has rejected the trappings of what the father considers successful living. It is quite likely in such situations that the "disappointing" son might be acting out the father's repressed or covert rebelliousness against the very standards the father seems to embrace. 

In such situations, the father probably does things on rare occasions that indicate to the son that the father is "getting off" on what the son is doing - but then the father rejects him as a way of rejecting that part of himself that he finds unacceptable. In actuality, those parts were unacceptable to his own family of origin.  The son then obliges by keeping his distance. Thus, this could be a possible example of the role of Avenger.

12/6/15, Carolyn Hax.  Dear Carolyn: Through the years, my husband has learned to let go of the hopes and dreams he had for his son, that he would achieve financial and social success as my husband defines it: white-collar job, nice house, nice cars, wife and family, membership to country club, all the trappings that he has achieved for himself and that represent success to him. His son, on the other hand, works in the restaurant trade (not in management), lives a pretty bohemian lifestyle but has neither been in trouble with the law nor abused drugs... Husband has never made it a secret that he feels son could have done better. Son has never married at age 40 but now finds himself the father of a child (he plans to take responsibility for the child). We want to be a part of this child’s life. At this point, the only expectations my husband has of his son is that he respond to his efforts to contact him. To no avail. Son responds on his own timeline or not at all despite repeated requests. My husband wants to draw a line in the sand over this. I think we should go with total capitulation for the sake of the future grandchild. How can I be supportive of my husband (“Yes, I understand how frustrating this communication thing is for you”) but still make it clear that I will not take part in any “line in the sand” stance? This is creating tension between my husband and me. - The Step Mother

*

In the States, we tend to think people are basically selfish and don't care what other people think, especially family members. We think kids growing up are more influenced by their peers and the media. Of course, the questions of which media a teen looks at and with which peers he or she chooses to associate with - and there is a large variety to choose from - is ignored in these formulations. The choices people make are no accident. Also, as I've pointed out many times, kids who appear to be oppositional to their parent's wants and values only do that because that is what they think the parents expect of them.

I believe people really are willing to sacrifice their own opinions and desires in order to please their parents. Of course, how much one can challenge parental values depends on how conflicted the parents are about them. In the following letter, a woman performs summersaults trying to both be her own person and please her parents at the same time. 

12/14/15. Ask Amy. Dear Amy: I have been with my partner for five years; he rents his own place and I live with my parents. My parents are old-fashioned and believe I can only live with him when we are married (I used to share this view, but now I don't). I have finished college and have moved back home to pay off my debt and save for a house (or wedding!). My partner's home is five minutes away from my workplace and my folks' house is one hour away (in good traffic), so I do frequent "sleepovers" at his place. This is causing tension in both households. I pay rent to my parents and I help out my partner by cleaning up after myself and buying bread, milk and eggs regularly. But he says that I'm using him, and that I'm just doing the minimum. He says I should be preparing dinners for both of us when I am there, doing washing, or helping by paying rent or at least one utility bill. Now I'm broke, tired and grumpy. I'm at his house cooking and cleaning, and then when I'm at my parents, I'm doing exactly the same thing to appease them because I've slept over at my partner's house. I've gone cold turkey and have slept only at one home, but then money is wasted on gas driving back and forth. I can't afford to move out and I don't want to get married just so we can live together. HELP!!! — Betwixt

*

When someone is playing a dysfunctional role within their family of origin, it can be difficult and painful. When seeking a spouse or partner, such people will often pick someone who will help them to continue to play the difficult role. They, in turn, help their spouses play a difficult role within the spouse's own family of origin. This is what I refer to as mutual role function support. It can be thought of as a form of mutual enabling.  

It is important to remember that the alcoholic enables the "co-dependent" to be a co-dependent as much as the co-dependent enables the alcoholic. The whole process is bidirectional - it goes both ways simultaneously. In the following letter, the son of a controlling mother marries a spouse who is also rather controlling, as even the advice columnist recognized. In a variation on this theme, the mother and the wife start competing with one another over who will have the most control over the poor guy. If the mother's need to control men were a bigger issue for her and her family, he might never have even become engaged in the first place.

12/15/15. Ask Amy.  Dear Amy: I have a controlling, manipulative, guilt-tripping mother-in-law-to-be! I know that each time I hear from her she is just trying to trap me into saying yes to something. These traps include trying to get me to change our wedding plans, and roping me into a jewelry party hosted by her friend (repeatedly pushing on that). She just can't understand the word "no." When I did say no she whined to my fiancé, saying it felt like a slap in the face (can you say "manipulation"?). This has to stop. My fiancé tried dealing with it by telling his mom that I will say no to some things, but I felt this was really his way of calling me "pushy." My fiancé tried the kid gloves approach and it didn't work. I decided to take matters into my own hands and texted her three examples of her overstepping her boundaries and letting her know it would no longer be tolerated. She had the nerve to say it made her "sad." Now he is having a hard time because his mom is upset. He doesn't understand that we have to back each other up, especially in situations like this. His mom is so bad that she needs a copy of his shift schedule at work because she wants to keep track of him. Maybe my approach is too direct, but so what? We are in our 40s and don't need to be under her thumb. I don't let my mom get away with this kind of behavior, and I'm certainly not letting a MIL do this. What is your opinion, Amy? — Upset

*

One of the most read posts on my Psychology Today blog, and the one which generated some of the most heated responses from reader, posed the question of whether parents who had been cut off by their adult children were really as clueless about the reasons that happened as they portray themselves to be in public. With my patients, unlike the followers of many psychotherapy schools, I always presume that people are never too stupid to notice that their repetitive behavior leads to bad outcomes - yet they continue to engage in it anyway.

The following letter is remarkable in that, while ostensibly asking advice, the mother of an alcoholic woman, who is also what I refer to as a Minnie the Moocher, admits as clearly as imaginable that "I know I've enabled my daughter for her entire life."

12/28/15. Annies' Mailbox.  Dear Annie: Our oldest daughter is married to a nice man and they have a sweet 2-year-old daughter. My son-in-law makes good money and my daughter can afford to stay home, but they never seem to have enough to get ahead. My daughter has been known to spend foolishly. They only have one car and it doesn't run half the time. They can't afford another. We let them live in our home for a year rent-free, so they could save enough to purchase their first house. I know I've enabled my daughter for her entire life. She is very spoiled and self-centered. We argue a great deal and exchange hurtful words. Regularly, I surrender to her selfishness and give her money or run errands for her, even though I work full-time. I do these things because she is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and I fear she will otherwise return to that life again. She doesn't attend her meetings anymore. I don't know how to handle her. I'm either forced to defend myself or give in to her whims. She never appreciates anything I do for her and she never does anything for me. Her husband is no better. He is selfish and spoiled by his mother, and he also enables my daughter. She's a good mother, but I babysit a lot. Her husband doesn't complain when she gets together with her friends, but he works long hours and they don't have much time together. I think he feels neglected. How do I know when to do things for her and when not to? How do I tell the difference between enabling and being a good mother? When she gets into one of her horrible, blaming moods, how do I handle that? This child has become a bitter pill to swallow, but I love her so much.  — Mother of a Narcissist

Book Review: Ghost of My Father by Scott Berkun

Half of all profits from this edition of Mr. Berkun's book, Ghost of Our Fathers (Berkum Media, 2014) will be donated to Big Brother Big Sisters of America

Our parents, or our primary caretakers when we were growing up, have a profound effect on us for our entire lives. They have this effect whether they like or not, and whether we like it or not. Attachment research has shown that their interactions with us help shape our mental models of both the world and how relationships are supposed to operate under various environmental contingencies (schemas).

The part of the brain called the amygdala, central to our fight/flight/freeze reactions to fearful stimuli, has specific cells that respond only to the face our mothers (or primary female attachment figures) - and nothing else. It also contains cells that respond only to our fathers/male attachment figures - and nothing else.

Even those who have managed to become more self-actualized or differentiated from our families of origin - who can follow our own muse and live according to our own independently formed beliefs - still hear or feel those old tapes of our parents' admonitions whenever we do things of which our parents routinely disapproved. I know I do, and my parents have been gone for decades. We can choose to ignore these tapes, but there is often a nagging doubt that arises in our minds whenever we do.

In his new book, Scott Berkum describes a feeling of being haunted by the past as well as by the ongoing behavior of his father, and does so eloquently using the words of a poet. I'll mention some examples of his beautifully-worded descriptions of some of the phenomena discussed previously this blog shortly.

Most of what I have written about dysfunctional family interactions on this blog as well as my blog on the Psychology Today website concerns what happens when parents give us contradictory or mixed messages about what is important to them, as well as what they expect from us. But what happens when they seem to give us almost no signals at all? When the parent is a big cipher? This is what happened to the author in his relationship with his father, and I suspect, though to a much lesser extent, with his mother.

His father was gone much of the time during his childhood, spending most of it working or at the racetrack gambling. He completely abandonned the family and the patient's mother twice in order to have extended affairs - once when the patient was eight years old, and once when the patient was in his forties. And yet when he returned each time, the mother would want him back, take him in, and take care of his needs.

He seemed to have little interest in what was important to the author. Much of the time he seemed to barely acknowledge his son's presence. The only sustained interactions they had seemed to occur at the dinner table, when the author, his siblings, and his father  would debate political and social issues. Father would seem to purposely take up a provocative position on the issue, and then stick with it no matter what arguments the author came up with.  Dad would never concede a point.

The author was plagued thoughout his life with a feeling that he was unworthy of his father's attention, and that nothing he did mattered to his Dad.

The author tried on numerous times to do what I recommend to my patients in therapy: attempt to empathically confront Dad to try to find out what made him tick and what he was really thinking (metacommunication). Unfortunately, each time he tried he ran up against a brick wall that would never come down. His father seemed to be incapable of discussing feelings. If the author pressed forward anyway, the conversation would devolve into a shouting match.

The book does not describe what was said during these explosions. With my patients in therapy, I try to obtain a blow-by-blow description of exactly what was said,  in chronological order, as best the patient can remember. This often gives hidden clues about the emotional processes that are taking place in both participants during the battle, as well as to why they are reacting the way they are.  In turn, this can suggest ways to have conversations that do not go in the usual direction and do not become fighting matches.

Interestingly, Dad did apologize for his behavior on one rare occasion and even expressed his love, but both the apology and the expression seemed to ring hollow with the author, who more or less rejected them.

Of course, when the author rejected them, he may not have realized that this let his father off the hook as far as further elaborating on the problem at hand- which was likely the father's goal all along. Saying what a family member wants to hear in a seemingly insincere way and/or when it is least expected often leads to such a rejection of the expressed sentiment. The person who does this then walks away thinking, "Just as I thought - he didn't really want to hear that, but at least I tried." This is an example of the game without end.

The author does discuss some genogram information, although whatever therapists he saw may not have not called it that nor known exactly how that information might best be used to design more productive family interactions in the present. The information about his father's upbringing was rather telling, and seemed to explain one statement the father made in the middle of one of the author's attempts to metacommunicate: "Your problem is you remember too much."

The author's paternal grandfather was described as "the quietest man I ever met." The author adds that he "...was always watching professional wrestling when we visited. He'd stare into the television as if he and it were the only thing left on the planet. His social skills, even with his own grandchildren, were non existent...I don't remember him ever saying a word to me."

No doubt Dad's father had done to him pretty much what he did to his own son. 

Clearly this was Dad's unfortunate role model for being a father. Clearly there was a family rule against fathers and sons communicating meaningfully. The author also admits that he shared some traits with his father - at times more than he cared to admit even to himself - demonstrating the intergenerational transfer of dysfunctional traits. The father must have tried to handle his own feelings by trying to "forget" what had happened.

A clue as to the origin of the family rules is that the father's paternal great grandfather  fled to the US from Ukraine in 1902 to avoid being drafted into the army, leaving his brothers behind. Undoubtedly there was a lot more to that story, especially since the brothers died in the Holocaust many years later. Was there some resulting hidden guilt and shame that had to be kept out of mind and never discussed?

The book is supposed to be primarily about the author's relationship with his father, so Mr. Berkum gives limited attention to his relationship with his mother. While he described them as close, it sounds as though certain subjects were off limits with her as well - like why she remained involved with such a distant man, and why she would take him back after a second betrayal.

The only person in the family who seemed to be able to express anger was the author's sister Tracy, who of course went overboard in doing so. Interestingly, the parents seem to keep her around almost as a pet - she lived with them or next door to them even after she married and had kids - until she, like the author himself did as a rather young man, finally moved away to escape. 

No doubt the parents needed Tracy's expressiveness to release some of their own pent-up rage.

Some concepts from the blog that the author describes poetically:

Distancing: "He mastered wounding us just enough that we'd leave the conversation as quickly as we could." (p. 11).

Existential groundlessness: "...we forget when we become adults that the armor made to survive our youth no longer serves us...yet removing it is painful...it puts us at odds with our family and friends, as tribes prefer to stay with patterns of the past. Most people convince themselves that removing their armor is something they don't need to do. And their families, complicit in the same denial, reward the defense of the status quo, ensuring the...same armor, and the same ghosts, will be passed on to the next generation..." (p. 17).

The power of family ties:  "It is curious, perhaps even strange, that the choices of my father would impact me so profoundly at forty years old." (p. 22).

"I didn't realize that just because you're done with the past doesn't mean the past is done with you."

Mutual role function support: "Each person needs the other badly, in the way an alcoholic needs another drink. When one takes a drink of the other...it feels good. It covers certain holes, allowing them, in moments, to be forgotten, but does not fill them. My mother and father love each other for that feeling, and hate each other  for the same reason." (p. 114).

On the feeling of not counting for his father, after a brief encounter after he returned late from the racetrack:  "It was the bottom of the barrel of his day..." (p. 150).

I could go on. This book is a brutally honest memoir, well worth reading.

Guest Post: Are You Inadvertently Shaping Your Child's Future with Labels?

Today’s guest post is by Rachel Cherry. She discusses how parents may inadvertently induce their children to create what I call a false self or persona - a recurrent theme of this blog - by verbally pinning labels on them. These labels or pet names are sometimes just meant to be "cute," but, depending on other things that parents may say or do and the entire social environment of the family, may take on added meanings for the child and set up behavioral expectations for them. When this occurs, it forces them to try and hide their true nature, preventing what experiential therapists refer to as self-actualization. 

Labeling people is quite common in the world we live in. While many of the names that we call each other have respectful undertones or are shrouded in warmth and concern for  the other person, others are used as digs at a person and are clearly derogatory. When it comes to parents and children, such names can affect childhood development when the actions of the parent reinforce any behavior of the child that is consistent with the label. While most parents do not intentionally try to mentally scar a child in such a fashion, their behavior in a variety of contexts has the potential to solidify certain beliefs children begin to form about themselves and about how they are supposed to behave in various social situations.

There are two parts to any given individual's personality: outward demeanor and inner nature. Your demeanor is how you act around others, and this can be contradictory to how you are truly feeling inside. The demeanor aspect of your self-image is usually centered around how you want people to view you, and it can sometimes completely overwhelm your true, private personality. Inner nature is how you truly think and feel inside. For instance, someone's demeanor may outwardly be cold and calculating - as seen in some company CEOs for example - but his or her nature could secretly be nurturing and caring towards friends and family. Many people feel vulnerable whenever they show their true nature.

Labels and name calling whether good or bad can, when reinforced by certain actions by the parent, alter children’s perception of what sort of demeanor they believe they are supposed to present to the outside world. The child's outward behavior then assumes the qualities inherent in whatever the name signifies to them. Instead of being proud of their own true nature, the child may believe that the outward perception of others is the most important indicator of their validity as a person - especially if the actions of the parent strengthen that belief.

Reinforcing Demeanors:  When someone calls a child a "little princess" or "little prince," he or she could take it as a sign of affection. After all, what child doesn't want to be a part of royalty? However, when parents reinforce negative aspects of that label with actions such as providing various lavish gifts and succumbing to every whim and demand of the child, the child could begin to form a mental correlation between being thought of as royalty by the parents and demanding everything he or she wants. This may easily create a sense of entitlement that children can easily take with them as they develop into adults and interact with outsiders.

Family Sarcasm: Creating an altered persona of the child can be unintentional when the parents think of a label they apply to their child as mere humor. This could inadvertently provide a framework by which a child internalizes the label in a negative way. If jokes go too far, the parents may simply be unaware of how much damage they are truly doing. Taking a jocular stance concerning a child's shortcomings is quite common, but it could create for the child a like-minded negative demeanor as he or she begins to live up to the expectations implied by the comment. For example, jokingly pointing out the failures of a child while sarcastically calling him or her a "loser" could not only make the child feel worse, but it could also create the idea in the child that he or she will always be a failure.

Ignoring Aspects of a Child’s Behavior That May be Related to a Label:  Interestingly, not addressing certain behaviors while using labels can be just as deleterious to the child’s self-image as the labeling itself. If a parent ignores certain of the child’s related behaviors, the child may assume that those behaviors are justified as being part of what the label suggests. While it may be cute to watch a young child plot and scheme in order to get his or her own way in regards to minor situations, if the parents starts to call the child an “evil genius,” the behavior could easily develop into a demeanor for the child that is not so cute in other contexts.

Tone of voice is also important. If the parent uses a positive tone while labeling a child as a "little genius," the child could assume that this behavior is not only acceptable but expected. It could turn into something more elaborate as he or she develops into an adult. Instead of that cute little evil genius plotting to get a cookie, you could end up with a child who winds up spending a great deal of time behind bars.

Labels are Not Always Negative:  Not all labels have to produce negativity in a child. For example, when you call your child a "tough cookie" when he or she doesn't cry or otherwise expresses emotions when injured, it could help the child develop a sense of inner strength. As we all know, despite your best efforts to prevent your child from being injured, accidents frequently happen with the young. Children take their cues on how to react to those situations from the parents’ behavior. Most young children will wait to see the parents' response to an injury before reacting themselves. If you treat the situation light-heartedly, so will the child. This "tough cookie" demeanor could be beneficial throughout the child's life as he or she learns the value of inner toughness and self-reliance.

Labels in and of themselves do not usually create a child's entire demeanor. It is the actions of the parents and others that reinforce their concept of how to behave in interpersonal situations. If this behavior continues to be reinforced by the parents, the child's demeanor could overwhelm his or her true nature and reduce the child’s capacity to discover his or her true inner-self. If the child is constantly putting on a show for everyone by trying to be whatever he or she thinks others want, then there is less of a chance for the child to develop his or her potential. Your behavior as a parent is key to your child's development, and it is wise to monitor yourself closely when applying any label to your child.

Rachael Cherry is a wife, mother, and writer who is passionate about helping connect families in need with high quality caregivers. She has taken that passion and put it to work through NannyPro, a respected online nanny referral service. Learn more by visiting @NannyPro on Twitter.