Alice Miller, Continued . . .

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I’m having a little trouble getting this idea across, the idea of parental force and violence, of parental power, as a condition necessary for abuse. To read the psychoanalysts on the subject, gives one a concept of a purely mental process of manipulation, that abuse is inevitable unless a caregiver purges himself of all unconsciousness of his own damage, of his own abuse suffered in his own powerless state of childhood.

Full disclosure – I have not had the therapy, I haven’t discovered my own emotional history. I am told I’m a rather closed person. I’m not sure the psychoanalysts are wrong in the above idea, and I’m not sure my own children are without some damage. Certainly there is a great deal of education I was unable to give them,  certainly my inadequacies must add up to deficiencies in their lives. Certainly my blind spots resulted in a failure to acknowledge and nurture certain traits or abilities in them, and in a real sense, this must be a kind of abuse.

Having said all of that, is this really the larger problem?

Would this sort of abuse have spawned psychological thought, that is, would the symptoms, the resulting damage from these sorts of failings have brought about an entire branch of medical care, one that began in hospitals?

If we were to triage the various phenomena of mental damage, I think we should look first to the more immediate, more invasive sort of trauma. Perhaps if we can make some kind of dent in the mountain of abuse damage that we are very actively creating by our own force, then we may have a generation, a society that can look to the sort of failing I have visited upon my children, who were never punished, ever, for anything.

I raised my kids on the theory that if I never forced them to accept anything I may have wanted them to have or do, that along with the good learning and disciplines I might have imparted, they would not have to accept any bad thing I might have also imparted to them. I hoped that the truth of life and the world could be apparent to them if I did not force or coerce them into accepting my views, which considering my damage, must probably be very flawed. My idea was that if I never punished, never forced, I could never abuse. This is the concept I am having so much trouble articulating here:

Abuse is not automatic, not transmitted invisibly from one mind to another. Abuse is something that occurs in a power imbalance, with the exercise of power, and much thought, both of professional practitioners and theoreticians of psychology and parents, seems to hold that the very power dynamic that makes abuse possible is proper and necessary, and in fact, that force and even violence is proper and necessary. My own view of this idea changed many years ago, and now, I am somewhat hesitant to say, this idea seems . . . crazy.

Are we truly, as a society, simultaneously of the opinion that abuse is transmitted somehow invisibly, not to say ‘magically,’ and also that the force and violence of punishing children is not only not involved, but actually absolutely necessary?

Abuse is transmitted by very clear means, for the most part, at least the worst kinds are, and the foundations of it are the power dynamics of the parent/child relationship. The mechanics of it are in the practice of punishment. Whomever was abused, whomever has witnessed abuse, I challenge you: could it have happened, or could it have been allowed to happen without the existence of the socially accepted structures of power and punishment? For the largest part, punishment is a condition for the existence of abuse, and the difference between the two being considered as only in the details, the particulars – that is everyone’s, society’s blind spot.

Alice Miller was wrong.

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Not about the problem. The problem Dr. Miller identified is real. It’s real, and it’s huge and serious. Nearly all children, for basically forever have been abused by their caregivers, usually their parents. Child abuse is ubiquitous and systemic. True dat.

But the doctrine that she offered and has been held by her followers, that a person must have a deep and thorough therapy and recover their memories of childhood trauma, recover the feelings buried during those traumas? This is a good plan for a person, a way for a person to get in touch with themselves, a way for a person to heal themselves, and some folks may succeed. It’s well documented that Dr. Miller failed in her attempt, and sometimes offered as a criticism of her work, at least as a qualifier of the success of her work, but that doesn’t amount to anything. Therapy is not going to solve this problem.

Dr. Miller understood the goal, and she was motivated, personally and professionally, yet still she failed. One reason for this is that almost no-one has escaped the problem Miller described – her therapists included. No-one understands all the types of abuse, no-one qualifies all the abuse as such, no-one can acknowledge all of it. The problem she has described is real, and very serious, even – incurable. Every year we live is more influential and more important than the next, so traumas in early childhood have more power over our development and therefore in our lives than any attempts at intervention afterwards can ever have.

It is prevention that we need to solve this problem. There is no fixing it afterwards. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men . . .

Millerian doctrine has it that we cannot save our children except if we become conscious of our personal histories, of our childhood traumas and abuse, but this rests on an assumption very few people fail to make: that all children need be abused, that all children will be subject to force and violence, because they MUST be. The assumption is that all children must be controlled, and controlled by force and or violence. We seem to consider that it is abuse only when it is carried too far.

This is where I introduce punishment as the vector for the disease. I submit, that if we do not punish our children, that if we never hurt them, as Dr. Miller says, “For Their Own Good,” then we will never go too far with it. If we can find a way to never hurt our children, and not PLANNING to hurt them would be a good start, if we don’t plan to hurt them or abuse them any way whatsoever, then we will never visit upon them even the particular abuses our own personal histories have left us blind to. That is the one, universal repressed thing that we are all blind to, punishment, that is the secret, and if Dr. Miller ever realized it, she never told us.

We all have this blind spot, we all think punishment is OK, that punishing is somehow different from abuse. That is the key., and that is the thing that when we realize the truth, Alice Miller’s dream can come true, children raised without abuse, because the children of someone who has realized this will be safe, despite the particulars of their parent’s abuse. These parents will not pass on abuse, because abuse is passed on by force.

If we refuse to use force, our children will be safe.

I’m with Alice Miller.

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Really, Alice laid it out, I’m only trying to give her POV, her revelation in a different way, and from different angles.

I think she’s been somewhat marginalized because so much of her ideas have been bound up with the repression concept, and worse, with the hope of the recovery of repressed memories. That controversy introduces some doubt, and that is all we all need to justify our denial.

I hope that my contribution to the conversation will be to show that the important parts, the main points of Miller’s teaching, do not require that repression or the recovery of repressed memories be accepted. I think I can make a case that children the world over and forever have mostly been abused, and that even ‘acceptable’ punishments constitute that abuse. I think it can be shown, in simple language and without any leaps of faith that punishment – any punishment – causes damage to people, children, and that the ubiquity of the damage does in no way invalidate the harm to individuals and to societies. Rather the reverse.

 

Punishment, Rewards, and Human Nature

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. . . and Capitalism.

We are not ‘born bad,’ despite what our authoritarian parents and leaders would have us think, despite that everyone seems to think we are. The Christians call it Original Sin, they think we are born evil and need God and His rod to beat it out of us, and the evolutionists think we are basically animals, and need to be civilized by force.
So we use punishments and their inverse, rewards, to teach us how to behave and this makes everything about us and our desires. That is the concept of punishing, to turn us away from an unwanted behaviour by causing some pain for us – just in case the actual negative consequence of our behaviour escapes us. Punishing brings an immediate focus of it to us, to our personal selves. Rewards do the exact same thing: when we do something good, it’s made good for us.
Of course, this teaches the opposite of any true morality, this negates any idea of altruism. Punishments and rewards simply train us to behave certain ways only because of the benefits or detriments to ourselves. This does not teach concern for others.
This is how we raise our children, this is how we teach, all day, every day, for the longest period of childhood and education of any animal on Earth . . . and then the Capitalists talk of competition, self interest and even greed as “Human Nature.”
Of course, Human nature is only a collection of observations, and not in fact a cause or explanation for anything. Again – all day, every day, for the longest period of childhood and education of any animal on Earth, we punish and reward, making every teachable moment for every human only about himself, and then we declare people to be “naturally” only interested in themselves.
Pffft, I say. Rubbish.
Science is telling us that the “blank slate” theory is not true. And correct as they may be, born as a blank slate or not, we spend, again – all day, every day, for the longest period of childhood and education of any animal on Earth – writing on, drawing on, and inscribing into our slates, until our slates are left with no clear, unused space, we end with layers upon layers of script, all mixed up and nearly indecipherable. It is truly no surprise that the original state of our slates is such a mystery, but it is no mystery that we very actively and forcefully write on it ourselves, and science also tells us that all that energy and force will not be without effects.
Human nature is what we make it. Until we stop so forcefully creating our natures, we will never know what it may have been, what the scripts might be if we really allow nature to mark our slates.

Consistency of Discipline

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Something we hear a lot from those who advise parents, is the need for consistency with our discipline. Logically, in terms of the need, I couldn’t agree more. It’s not a deterrent if the miscreant lacks a reasonable expectation of the penalty and if punishment fails for no other reason, this would be enough, and this may be the most epic of all of the failures in our system of punishment. Consistency is an illusion. First, consistency is not completely within our control, is it? You have to catch them first: any misbehaviour that is undetected can never be punished in the first place, and so, regardless of whether we are capable of machine-like consistency ourselves, consistency fails in the real world.

The success of the use of punishment depends on the subject’s knowledge that the unpleasantness is coming, so that he or she may alter their actions to avoid the consequence. Therefore, there must be a warning, an explanation of the process, “you do this, and you get that.” The explanation, and/or simple repetition connect the behaviour to the punishment, and the child learns to change their ways, and so the child’s behaviour is improved, hopefully in the long term. It needs to be said, that the sort of control that could provide the recommended consistency to make punishing reliable is only possible with very young children indeed. Punishment is insidious that way; it can appear to work on babies and very young toddlers, but as soon as a child gets his legs and a little freedom, as soon as he discovers for that very first time that all his crimes are not detected and punished, it’s over.

(Of course, I don’t advocate for improvement in our consistency, quite the reverse. If we were to do what would be necessary for one hundred percent consistent application of detection and penalization, that would be a nightmare even worse than the random abuse we live with now. That situation would be a futuristic police state that even George Orwell would not wish to imagine.)

With the failure of consistency being the norm, we must confess that the deterrent component of punishment fails, yes, but also the whole concept. Human beings are not inanimate things, we can see that the behaviour our punishments are intended to change do not have to change for us to escape the penalty, only the detection of the behaviour. When punishment is the tool being applied, we only ever need to learn a single lesson, “don’t get caught,” and we will also have our justification to ignore the intended lessons. With the failure of consistency comes the failure of punishment to correct behaviours, and our ‘punishments’ therefore fail the definition and fall from grace into mere abuse, at least in the minds of the punished. Of course, that is where the damage occurs.

My Journey into Parenting

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When we finally caught pregnant and made it past the first three months, we decided we were on our way, and we set up a bedroom for the baby. We cleaned a room, painted it, and found a nice crib – but before the baby arrived, we had changed our minds. We’d been thinking and talking a lot about raising children, and it had occurred to us that no animal on earth except Homo Sapiens Sapiens puts their infants away from them like that, out of arms’ reach, especially down the hallway in another room. Just imagine our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees or bonobos having a separate nest for their babies, where they would be easy pickings for predators of all sorts! We had learned to see that idea as counter-intuitive at best, completely unnatural in the mid-range, and a total set-up for even the worst kinds of abuse – privacy for any horrible act by anyone –in the worst case. We placed the crib against our bed, with the bedside wall taken off. We became a ‘family bed’ family, and remained as one for longer than we ever would have imagined, long past what was to be a lengthy nursing period. It was just the most natural, most loving, and the safest thing to do.

I don’t know when it hit me exactly. I know it came out of what I’ve called ‘the many problems’ in the first few chapters, the umpteen sorts of failed childhoods that people spend their lives recovering from and my suspicion that everyone is suffering that sort of pain, even those who can’t claim one of the popular abuse syndromes. There was something else, too. It was the disenchantment of growing up, the feeling of having been lied to – well, that’s too strong, but I never have been free of a certain childish judgement that life was not what it should be. As a young man, I read about Maya, the world of illusion, in “The Glass Bead Game” the Hermann Hesse novel, and some yoga book, and it struck a chord in me. I think I’ve always seen two worlds at once, the world we have and the one we only say we have. I think in the one we say we have, children are loved, the policeman is your friend, the western world is full of functional democracies, and there are good people and bad people. In that world, we can change the bad people by hurting them.

In the world we have, however, hurting people only hurts them.

In the world we really have, punishing people only hurts them. Punishing people has all the negative effects that abusing them has, and that is our state of affairs, that is what has happened to very nearly all of us. This was my epiphany. Punishment is abuse, only legitimate: abuse with an excuse.

Punishment – the Definition

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Punishment describes the act of imposing something unpleasant or aversive on a person or animal in response to an unwanted behaviour. The behaviour may be unwanted for any number of reasons, including disobedience and immorality, and the unpleasantness may take any number of forms, but we understand the use of punishment as intended to condition the person or animal to stop the behaviour, to learn not to do it. We use the term to mean some unpleasantness brought to bear by an authority onto a misbehaving party with the intention of correcting the misbehaviour. According to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy,

“In common usage, the word “punishment” might be described as “an authorized imposition of deprivations — of freedom or privacy or other goods to which the person otherwise has a right, or the imposition of special burdens — because the person has been found guilty of some criminal violation, typically (though not invariably) involving harm to the innocent.”

In short form, then, in the most general view, punishment is the act of an authorized person imposing something unpleasant or aversive in response to an unwanted behaviour.

In the technical language of psychology, the definition of ‘the reduction of a behaviour by the removal (negative punishment) or application (positive punishment) of a stimulus’ only applies if the intended result is actually achieved, if the unwanted behaviour is reduced. This ‘application of aversives’ is only elevated to the definition ‘punishment’ if it succeeds.

It is possible to break the idea of punishment down into its components, or aspects, and those may need some definition as well:

Retribution:

Possibly the original idea of punishment, the straight-forward practice of getting “even” with someone who has caused harm, the idea that the perpetrator of a wrong then suffers is seen as just and proper, even if no other benefit is seen. While it may be seen as abuse, it is considered to be justifiable on the basis that when there is no retribution, the innocent victim suffers more than the guilty party, which would be counter-intuitive to a just society. Having said that, a brutal retribution probably also has aspects of either incapacitation or deterrent (see below). Part of the definition is that the miscreant suffers a fate that is equal to the suffering of his victim.

Rehabilitation:

This is the attempt to turn the criminal away from crime, to show him the error of his ways, and to try to give him another way to live, to bring him back to the life of the just, that he won’t return to crime when he can. This is a lofty goal, not really part of his punishment as such, but often attempted simultaneously with punishment.

Incapacitation:

This refers to restricting a miscreant’s ability to continue his wrong deeds, in order to protect future victims. Common methods have been exile, incarceration, or the more brutal practices of mutilation, such as castration of rapists or the cutting off of hands for thievery.

Restoration:

Simply put, the wrong-doer simply is made to right the wrong, perhaps cleaning up a mess he created, or repaying money he stole. This is seen as a more rational sort of consequence than some other types of action that can be taken against a criminal.

Deterrent:

The idea that the prospect of a punishment could stop a crime from ever being committed, that if the criminal knows the punishment and fears it, he may decide against the crime, it is often referred to in cases of severe punishments, the more severe, that the stronger the deterrent effect. In cases of capital punishment (the death penalty), deterrent is the argument for it, along with retribution, being that other aspects of punishing, like restoration, or rehabilitation, cannot be applied.

Corporal punishment:

Physical punishment, the deliberate application of physical pain applied as retribution and/or deterrent. According to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, corporal punishment is

“any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light.” (UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (2001) “General Comment No. 1.” Par. 11.)

Regarding authority, punishments can be legitimately administered by:

– parents or guardians upon children, except that in the case of corporal punishment of children, 32 countries have outlawed it (The U.S.A. is not one of them.)
– teachers and administrators of schools upon students, although not universally, and again, except in the case of corporal punishment of minors, where it has been outlawed in many countries and many of the US states
– criminal courts
– prison authorities
– military organizations
– church hierarchies
– employers (by contract – demotions, etc.)

So, to repeat, for the purposes of this conversation, this will be my definition of punishment, considering the above comments: the act of an authorized person imposing something unpleasant or aversive in response to an unwanted behaviour. To add to it, I think we need to say that the motive is important to the definition, and for me, “in response” doesn’t really say it. The intent of the response, then, is to change the behaviour in order to serve some accepted desire or need of the punisher or the society.

The Common Denominator, Part #2

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Again, psychology tells us that abuse and trauma are damaging to the psyche, and to a person’s development. In simple language, we often say that an abused person “has problems.” It is often considered that an abuser was him or herself, abused. Alice Miller thought so:

“It is very difficult for people to believe the simple fact that every persecutor was once a victim. Yet it should be very obvious that someone who was allowed to feel free and strong from childhood does not have the need to humiliate another person. “

Alice Miller
Alice Miller (20th century), German psychoanalyst and author. For Your Own Good, “Unintentional Cruelty Hurts, Too,” (trans. 1983).

Considering the above, often in cases of clear abuse or even heinous crimes, the perpetrator’s own experience of received abuse is not in evidence. We can be baffled when some person commits acts of violence, and the public record shows that no abuse or violence was committed against the offender. This can become fodder for ‘Law and Order’ crusaders, it can appear to give the psychology of abuse a black eye, it can be pointed to as debunking any correlation between the receiving and the committing of abuse. Then there is talk of sin, Original Sin, video-game and TV and film violence, as well as talk of genetic predisposition. Again, though, the existence of a precursor, or common denominator can reconcile this apparent conflict.

If we thought differently about it, if we saw our world in perhaps a darker light, if we had a reason to think that most people were in fact abused, if our view assumed few people escaped abuse, that view would certainly change the puzzle. When someone committed crimes or abuses that shock and horrify us, we would see that they probably were offended against, as per Miller’s statement; there would be some chance to understand it in some way. The conflicts would clear away, and our confusion would be lessened. That is the key. That is my premise.

– here’s part #1:

The Common Denominator

The Common Denominator

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There are many ways in which child-rearing can be mishandled, many sorts of trauma and many corresponding types of damage that we suffer. As I said earlier, raising children is not what we call a ‘mature science,’ and although we may think it is, in actuality, the scientific method has really never been applied to it. In a sense, I think the old one about the elephant being examined and described by a group of blind men is appropriate –

One man at the elephant’s backside feels the tail and says “an elephant is very like a rope.”

One at the side says “an elephant is very like a wall.”

One at the trunk says “an elephant is very like a snake.”

One feels a leg and declares “an elephant is very like a tree.”

The story has many versions and there is more to it, but the aspect I’m going for here are the several different views from various limited perceptions of one unimaginable thing. I think it’s most likely that the varying forms of childhood trauma may all be aspects of a single, larger thing, and that thing is our belief in punishing, our faith that a process of ‘bringing the pain’ produces good things in us and in the world. It is this belief that helps to make all the forms of childhood trauma either more justifiable, or at least easier to hide.

Psychology has put forth the idea that abuse and trauma are damaging to people, particularly developing people, meaning children. I think this broad idea is largely accepted among the majority. There is a lot of material about it, and types of abuse and its effects are many and well documented. There is no end to the number of the types of childhood damage that can be named, among them, issues of

– Physical abuse
– Sexual abuse
– Abandonment
– Alcoholism and drug addiction
– Verbal abuse
– Emotional abuse

This is not a complete list, and of course some of these categories overlap, and include one another to some degree or other, but it serves to make a point. Again, there are many ways in which child-rearing can go wrong, many types of trauma that can affect us, and many sorts of damage that former children can and do live with, with varying degrees of success.

Much of psychology and personal counselling deals in the details of these particular sorts of problems. There are substance abuse counsellors, rape or incest counsellors and support groups. Often there are very specific things that can be pointed out to people, very specific errors left in the victims’ minds due to the type of abusive environment, or more to the point, many specific kinds of emotional support for the type of feelings that result from it. Of course, these kinds of support and therapies are well informed and well intentioned, and provide a great deal of help for a lot of people. It’s all good. Having said that however, it does sometimes seem that everybody can find one or more of these specific errors in their own childhoods, it can become unavoidable to think that everyone has problems, and if so, that maybe we are getting bogged down in the details, and that all the various forms of abuse might be masking a bigger problem. At some point, it starts to appear that rather than all these kinds of trauma being distinct things in themselves, that they may in fact be various aspects of a larger, almost universal cause, the common denominator in the equation, or perhaps a common facilitator that makes them all possible.

– here’s part #2

The Common Denominator, Part #2

Video-games Do Not Cause Violence.

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It’s May, 2013 as I write this, and the USA is deep into a national debate regarding the ownership of guns and gun violence which has come about in the wake of some very famous rampages where many innocent people have been killed by one, sometimes two, young men with guns. Some people have brought up violence in video-games, film, and television as a part of the problem, that is to say, as one of the causes of what seems to be a disturbing trend towards violence. I can agree with the first part of that statement, it certainly is part of the problem, but video-violence is not causative.

Both of these phenomena, the high-profile shootings and the amazing popularity of the violent video-games, are effects, and neither is a cause. Both these trends can be viewed as the result of violent fantasies, which fantasies can be played out both ways, virtually and literally. Although I do not wish to weigh in on the American gun control conversation or divert this book towards that debate, I must say that America’s unique view of the gun issue would seem also to suggest the presence of violent fantasies in American society. I would note that America is among the last of the former First World nations to ratify the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child legislation; America is a great supporter of the practice of the punishment of children, and also the American lawmakers will not seem to support any sort of limitation of the sale of guns. Again, this suggests the existence of a strong undercurrent of violent fantasies, as well as the reason for them.

Punishment is a form of violence, certainly physical punishment is, and really, there is no other kind. Punishment is unpleasantness imposed, and imposition means force; forced unpleasantness is a pretty good definition for violence. So, if we can grant that (which, maybe not just yet, but we will, someday), then we can view the video-game theory this way:

There is real violence in our society, crime including some rather random mass killings, and there is real violence practiced upon children in the form of abuse and punishment, both corporal and “non-physical,” all of which has been shown, in study after reputable study to be harmful and to increase crime, violence, and poverty. There is also much virtual violence in the form of movies, TV and video-games. Do we really think that virtual violence is a cause and actual violence is not? The real violence is not a problem, but it is the virtual violence on the videoscreen that causes the shocking mass killings?

It is fantasies of violence that makes a child love the virtual violence he or she finds in videogames, a disposition that must exist beforehand, because simple exposure to a stimulus doesn’t cause a need, it only fills it (or not). It is the actual experience of violence during childhood punishments that produce the need, the experience of helplessness that Alice Miller speaks about that creates fantasies of power and violence, and the fantasies predate the experience of virtual violence. If the need wasn’t there before, there would be a much smaller market for violent video-games and movies. If we were unable to identify punishment as violence before, this reasoning would be enough, the size of the market for anything that plays upon our violent fantasies. The other side, the argument against that conclusion would be the same ones about ‘human nature’ and Original Sin:’ it’s nothing we do, we’re just born evil and full of longing for violence, naturally.’ That is counter to evidence, and counterintuitive, to phrase it in the most dispassionate way I can muster.

I must add that the mental illness issue that arises as an alternative conversation to gun control is very largely due to the culture of punishment also; mental illness is one of abuse and corporal punishment’s well documented negative outcomes. If shooting your parents and a bunch of teachers isn’t some kind of reaction to punishment, I don’t know what would describe it better.