Giving Children What They Need To Mature

 

GIVING CHILDREN WHAT THEY NEED TO MATURE

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.    9-13

ABSTRACT:  The guidance and experiences that a child needs in order to most easily and completely mature psychologically and morally are described.

KEY WORDS:  maturity, childrearing, raising children, morality, ethics

Most parents would like to equip their children to become mature adults, with experiential learning as well as adequate food, clothing, and shelter.  Using my definition of the processes and evidences of maturity, experiences for children that will help them to grow and mature are presented below.

The capabilities needed for maturity are (1) a reasonably accurate understanding of self, others, life, and the world (including an accurate sense of likely consequences of various behaviors; (2)  awareness of how people tend to make reality what they want it to be and to fool themselves about this, and a desire not to do this when it could result in harm; (3) enough empathy to enable one to understand others and their needs and feelings reasonably well, and the desire to understand them; (4) reasonably good ability to manage emotions (not letting them push one to distort reality or push one to violent and impulsive behaviors that harm self or others); and (5) a basically positive attitude toward others, so that one is oriented toward cooperating and helping others   Persons who have these abilities in sufficient measure will be mature and will be seen by others as mature.

Observable behaviors that usually result from engaging in the five processes above and that most people would consider evidence of maturity are honesty, responsibility, trustworthiness, self-control, good judgment , fairness, positive relationships with others, above average concern for those around one, tolerance for people in general, generally appropriate behavior (resulting from above average clarity about right and wrong and above average concern for others), constancy in mood, emotion, and behavior (including willingness to endure discomfort in order to reach goals), a tendency to avoid excess and harmful behaviors, and being self-supporting.

                      
These attributes result in mature persons fulfilling their various roles (parent, worker, leader, friend, citizen, etc.) in a praiseworthy and effective way and result in them contributing more than others to the essential tasks of society—raising children to be productive members of the community, sustaining life, and building and sustaining the community itself.

What You Can Expect From Using These Principles

Every system of ideas that promotes a program for living or a way of living has a particular way of living in mind, whether that is made clear or not.  The principles presented here will move your child toward being a person who is honest, responsible, loving, accepting, cooperative, fair, self-aware, self-confident, empathic, and compassionate, who has good self-control and can manage his or her emotions effectively, and who can stand alone when necessary in support of what is right.  They promote a way of being and an existence that has the greatest chance of maximizing joy, fulfillment, contentment, and satisfaction for individuals, maximizing equality among people, and minimizing conflict, hatred, and violence.  These principles provide a comfortable context within which to live joyfully, serenely, effectively, with great satisfaction, and at peace with oneself, others, and life.

People who utilize the principles presented in this book will be generally happy with themselves, others, and life, will be zestful in using their abilities in seeking goal attainment, and will be seen by others as unusually mature.

This system promotes “good” or “positive” interactions among people, which are defined as interactions in which both parties feel comfortable and safe (as a result of understanding each other and feeling treated appropriately by the other person) and in which both parties are motivated to cooperate to achieve mutually agreed-upon goals.  These interactions succeed through understanding and cooperation and result in minimum amounts of conflict and violence between people.  People living by these principles will approach others and life with positive expectations, will be able to be emotionally close with at least some others, will seek good outcomes for both self and others from all of their behavior (partly through "doing the right thing" in all circumstances), and will be calm, compassionate, and understanding with others.

Guidelines For Parents

General

Meet your child’s needs reasonably, promptly, and reliably, so that the child accepts and becomes comfortable with his needs. Don’t make your needs (or those of anyone else) systematically more important than the child’s needs, for if you do, you will teach the child that he is inferior.

Be trustworthy and responsible toward your child, thus demonstrating that she is worth treating well.

Teach your child that a certain amount of stress, pain, and discomfort is an inevitable and necessary part of life but not to accept pain that is unnecessary.

Teach your child to do what is truly best for himself at all times, since doing what is truly best for himself includes taking into account all of the consequences of his behavior (immediate and long-term, as well as his impact on others) and often includes letting others take a turn or have their way.

Help your child to recognize and believe that she will get more out of life by treating others well than she will by trying to take advantage of them.

Give special support to children who have been victims of trauma or who for some reason receive chronically negative messages about themselves.

 

Psychological

Help your child to learn about and become comfortable with everything about herself—all of her perceptions, thoughts, feelings, needs, motives, potentials, abilities, and body.  Help her to be always self-aware so that she can make the best behavioral decisions.

Help your child to establish sufficient security in the world by facing problems confidently, acting responsibly, and accepting life’s inevitable misfortunes with good grace yourself.

Make it clear that the child has a definite and irrevocable right to exist in this world, by taking the child’s needs seriously and communicating that he is important to you.

Help your child to be adequate in the world by teaching her needed knowledge and skills and by encouraging her as she practices new skills.

Help your child to feel adequate and feel like she is “enough” by demonstrating your love and acceptance of her.

Give affection and love generously, including safe, appropriate, and loving physical contact.

Convey to the child, verbally and non-verbally, that she is valuable, worthwhile, important, and deserving of nurturance and good things in life.

Respect your child’s equal rights and basic equality with others (including yourself) at all times and in all circumstances, without exception.

Act toward your child with respect at all times, just as you would show respect to an adult and would want respect from others yourself.

Help your child to be appropriately accepting of himself, by accepting your child as he is, with his own needs, feelings, and behaviors. Help him find a way both to be himself and to be socially acceptable. Don’t pressure him to be someone he is not. Accept the ways in which the child is different from you, and don’t force him to be just like you.

By recognizing, acknowledging, accepting, and praising the child’s personality and unique traits and abilities, give the child the message that she has the right to be exactly who she is, and that to be herself is a great thing.

Help your child construct a positive self-concept by verbalizing positive perceptions of the child whenever possible.

Help your child construct an accurate self-concept by helping him recognize his negative and his positive behaviors and traits.

Help your child develop a positive identity by showing your love and acceptance of her.  This will also remove the need for trying to be OK through being superior to others.

Accept your child’s feelings as a natural part of him. Don’t make them “bad” in an effort to control his behavior. Help him to control the expression of his feelings by teaching him adaptive ways to manage feelings and by showing him how you do this. Accept that it takes children years to learn to manage their feelings.

Be satisfied with your child.

Help your child to feel just as deserving of the good things available in life as others are.

Praise and encourage your child’s efforts and successes.

Provide comfort and support in times of frustration and failure, so that your child can learn to comfort herself.

Help your child to understand what it is to be oneself with integrity—to be true to oneself, to make one’s private and public selves as congruent as possible, to stand up for one’s values, and to express one’s love and enthusiasm for oneself by being oneself completely and with vigor.

Encourage your child to express thoughts and emotions as needed and useful every day.  (This could involve conversing, singing, dancing, or creative arts, alone or with others!)

Tolerate your child’s “adolescent rebellion” by supporting his need to prove to himself that he can disagree with you and be his own person without losing your love.

 

Expectations and Standards

Hold clear, consistent, humane, and appropriate expectations and standards for your child that she can readily understand and, with appropriate effort, can readily meet.  If you always expect more or urge the child to be perfect, she will learn that she is not OK.

As your child matures, encourage him to evaluate all standards and expectations, including yours, and to formulate his own humane and reasonable standards and expectations, particularly his standards and expectations for himself.

As your child grows, encourage your child to think hard enough about right, wrong, good, and bad, to construct—using the basic values that you have taught—his own values and sense of right and wrong.

Teach your child to do all that she wants to do to make herself, others, and life the way she wants them to be, and then accept the results without further desire, distress, internal conflict, or stress.

Help your child to learn that while certain behavioral standards must be obeyed, all human standards are the opinions of fallible men and women and should be questioned or replaced when more humane and reasonable standards are possible and appropriate.

Show your child how to play and relax, so that he understands that it is good to work hard but also good to play.

 

Discipline/Behavior Control

Use only appropriate and fair means of discipline with your child, concentrating on withdrawal of privileges and communicating your feelings in response to the misbehavior, and avoiding physical punishments except for light spanking in the early years.

Do not use the overly simple and terribly destructive labels of “good” and “bad” on your child. You can communicate your love or your displeasure (e.g., “I don’t like that,” “I don’t like it when you do that”) clearly without “good” and “bad,” and you can reinforce behavior adequately without them.

In showing disapproval as a method of training a child, help the child to understand that it is his behavior that is unacceptable, rather than himself as a person.

Help your child to be able to know what is appropriate, by taking into account standards and expectations, using empathy to understand the needs of others, and applying the principle of fairness.

Teach your child appropriate self-control by demonstrating good self-control yourself.

Help your child to learn to delay action and delay gratification when useful, so that he has the self-control necessary for achieving his goals.

Help your child not to automatically “feel bad” just because another person is upset with her or wants her to be different.  What your child wants is just as important as what anyone else wants.

Help your child to avoid extreme, excess, and dangerous behavior by showing good judgment yourself.

Thinking and Problem Solving

Encourage your child to learn as much about the world as possible, so that he is not restricted to his immediate environment in his thinking or his relating.

Help your child to learn useful methods of deciding what is true and what is not.

Discuss with your child how people make thinking errors by such things as overgeneralizing or broadening definitions, so that he can improve his thinking.

Help your child to understand how people distort reality to make it what they want it to be, and encourage her not to do this herself.  Show her how to stick to the truth, rather than make herself feel better by denying or lying about it.

Help your child recognize how much we dislike the unknown and not knowing and how we are prone to making up answers when we have none, in order to manage our anxiety.  Help her to accept and tolerate ambiguity and not knowing.

Help your child to not base his perceptions of reality on momentary and changeable emotions, so he can be “a rock” for others when needed.

Show your child how to reflect on and choose her own attitudes, assumptions, and expectations about others and about life, by showing her that you know how to talk about your own attitudes, assumptions, and expectations.

Help your child to learn how to consider what is right, independent of how she wants things to be, so that she can come to appropriate conclusions in balancing her needs with the needs of others.

Help your child to understand that sometimes longer-term rewards are more important than short-term gratifications (getting an education, contributing to the community, deeper relationships, etc.).

Help your child to develop good judgment by showing him how to take all relevant information into account (including long-term as well as short-term results and the impact of his behavior on others), to consider others’ welfare as well as his own, to understand the reasons for the rules, to remove his personal biases, emotions, and needs from his conclusions about reality so as to make them as accurate as possible, and to choose actions that create the greatest benefit for both self and others.

Discuss with your child the fact that a culture’s beliefs and assumptions are just that—beliefs and assumptions—rather than truths. 

Help your child achieve the insight that no one's and no group's "reality" is really "reality," which helps us to avoid conflict and to allow for learning and cooperation.

Help your child to have a well-developed sense of morality and ethics by focusing on the positive or negative impact that we each have on others with our behavior, by helping your child to empathically appreciate what others experience, and by telling her your formulations of principles of right behavior.

Help your child to develop inspiring and useful ideals, by living in ways that are consistent with your own ideals and telling her what those ideals are.

Emotions/Motivation

Help your child to know his emotions (by properly identifying your own) and to manage them adaptively (by your example).  Demonstrate for him appropriate restraint and appropriate expression.

Be available to listen to your child concerning his emotions (insecurity, shame, guilt, rejection, disappointment, loneliness, etc.) and his attempts to figure the world out.  (How can I both be myself and be pleasing to others?  How can I be close without losing myself in the relationship?  How do I tolerate the risks in life that are there all the time but that we mostly ignore?  When should I stand up for what I believe, and when should I keep quiet?  Etc.).

Give your child life experiences that provide opportunity for her to develop tolerance for unpleasant emotions but that do not overwhelm or ask too much of the child.  We learn how to tolerate or live with frustration, disappointment, and other painful emotions through experience, by getting familiar with and used to them and by developing ways of understanding those situations and “advising ourselves” on how to get through them.  Help your child by describing for her your methods of managing emotions.  Do not give her the belief that all pain should be avoided or try to take away all of her pain.

Help your child understand her motives, so that she can choose better when to get what she wants and when to allow others to get what they want.

Teach your child to deal himself with his emotional reactions to others and their behavior (instead of trying to get others to change so that he can feel better or more comfortable).

Teach your child to enjoy being herself, so that she can be alone sometimes and still be happy.

 

Social Relations
Show your child how to be comfortable and happy being around others outside the family, so that he can have a basically positive attitude and positive expectations of others.

Help your child learn the skills needed in order to get along well with others and to get what she needs from others, in positive, mutually beneficial relationships.

Help your child develop realistic trust, based on the assumption that most others will treat one well in most circumstances, and the ability to determine in what ways and to what degree each person can be trusted.

Help your child make his peace with the facts that his needs are not the most important thing in others’ lives (as they were to his parents), that he has the primary responsibility to gratify his own needs (instead of continuing to depend on others for this), and that in general he can take better care of himself than others can (because one’s needs are primary for oneself and because one knows oneself much better than anyone else can).

Help your child to have a basically accepting attitude toward others, instead of wishing to change them so that she can be more comfortable, while knowing enough to avoid people who are harmful or toxic.

Help your child to be able to love and to join in loving relationships and treat others lovingly, by showing your affection and love for him and for others openly.

Teach your child to treat others as she would most like to be treated, to use reciprocity as a guide to ethical living, and to make fairness the touchstone of her ethics.

Help your child to recognize and believe that she will get more out of life by treating others well than she will by trying to take advantage of them.

Educate your child that many people try to appear to be superior to others as a means of competing with others and of feeling OK about themselves, and make clear to her the damage that this does to the self-esteem of those who are defined as inferior.

Through helping your child to feel good about himself and to be confident that he is adequate and lovable, minimize your child’s temptations to use hatred, status striving, and superiority to bolster his self-esteem.

Help your child to insist on basic equality with others in the world and not to settle for less.

Help your child develop appropriate assertiveness skills, to support the various requests and demands he must make of the world.

Give your child experience with people from other cultural backgrounds, so that she will learn that most differences do not have to divide us, and she can be tolerant of others.

Help your child to recognize how we tend to identify others as either being part of “us” or part of “them,” with the latter being more likely to be seen as outsiders, competitors, and unworthy and to be treated less well than those who are “us.”  Help your child to have the broadest possible definition of “us,” so that he can get along with everyone in the world.

Help your child to achieve the insight that no one's and no group's "reality" is really "reality," which helps us to avoid conflict and to allow for learning and cooperation.

Show your child how to understand others using empathy for them and for their experience, so that he develops concern for others’ welfare.

Help your child to view others’ needs as being as important to them as his are to himself, so that he can see the fairness and workability of viewing others as basic equals.

Teach your child to be honest and to tell the truth, by being honest and telling the truth yourself.

Teach your child to be responsible and trustworthy, by being responsible and trustworthy yourself.

Encourage your child to see the humor in his foibles and his behavior and in those of others.

Help your child to make a healthy adaptation to competition, enjoying the challenges that stretch our limits but knowing that application of our capacities to real life is much more important than expending energies in delimited, structured competitions, and knowing that more cooperation, rather than more serious competition, is the key to better outcomes for everyone.

Help your child to be assertive in life but to refrain from violence and hurtful behavior in general, through having empathy for the pain that our violence and hurtful behavior causes to others and through believing that compromise, communication, and cooperation almost always provide better outcomes than violence.  Demonstrate for your child, both at home and in your dealings with those outside the home, that compromise, communication, and cooperation do provide good outcomes.

Help your child to tolerate rejection, through understanding that we all choose the relationships we prefer and that not being chosen is not a statement about one’s unacceptability or unworthiness.  This is much easier for your child if you do not make her “bad” or withdraw your love for unacceptable behavior, but instead focus on improving behavior and administering reasonable negative consequences.

Help your child to judge accurately the difference between when another person’s feelings are hurt and when that person is actually harmed, and to assess realistically whether he himself has harmed the other person (instead of assuming that any time someone else is upset or “hurt” that he must have done something wrong).

Help your child to achieve a healthy sexual adaptation, by demonstrating an appreciative, accepting, but appropriately controlled attitude toward sex yourself.

Help your child to develop appropriate boundaries and comfort with our lifelong existential separation from others and with being appropriately autonomous, so that she can function independently and can protect herself from infringement and mistreatment by others.

 

Adjustment/Adaptation
Help your child to understand and to accept that everyone makes mistakes, including you.  Help her to respond to her mistakes with analysis and plans to minimizing mistakes in the future, instead of denying them or sweeping them under the rug.  Demonstrate how to do this yourself.

Teach your child to take responsibility for as much of his life as he can (for all of his reactions to everything that has happened to him in the past and for everything that he can do from now on to make his life what he wants it to be), which will make him see himself as the primary determiner of his fate.  (This includes defining oneself and defining one’s standards and expectations for oneself, instead of allowing others to do this.)

Help your child to understand the importance of each day’s efforts in the context of our limited and somewhat unpredictable life spans.

Jobs/Professions

Teach your child to be effective in the world and to view herself as being effective.

Help your child to cooperate with others helpfully, responsibly, and without complaint in achieving joint goals

Self-Support/Self-Care

Show your child how to meet her own needs, by taking good care of yourself, meeting your needs acceptably, and doing good things for yourself.

Show your child how to take good care of herself by taking good care of yourself (being understanding toward yourself, rewarding yourself appropriately, comforting yourself, treating yourself lovingly, meeting your needs acceptably, having compassion for yourself)

Show your child how to be nice to himself, by loving yourself, being kind to yourself, and comforting yourself.

Help your child to develop good friendships and to seek support from others during difficult times, as well as being supportive of herself.

Help your child see the wisdom of leaving punishing, harmful, adult relationships that cannot be improved, in order to seek better relationships in the world.  Your child has no obligation to suffer for the sake of someone else.

Help your child develop the ability and mechanisms for forgiving herself and others, when appropriate, by demonstrating how to recognize your errors, forgive yourself, and avoid similar errors in the future.

Help your child to become appropriately self-sufficient, so that he can support himself and those who are legitimately dependent on him.

Teach your child to assert his worth and value in the face of group standards or expectations that demean certain people.

Encourage your child to talk to herself every day, lovingly, intimately, and humorously.

Being a Good Citizen

Help your child to understand what it is to use his talents and uniqueness to contribute to the social good. 

Help your child learn to participate adequately in roles necessary for group cooperation and maintenance (including socialization of new human beings and passing on personal and cultural wisdom).

Educate your child about good parenting by being understanding, supportive, loving, and fair with her, and using appropriate and fair discipline.

Help your child cultivate the skills of empathy and cooperation that will enable her to join in group efforts and conform as necessary for group survival.

 

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Psychotherapy As The Pursuit Of Truth

 

PSYCHOTHERAPY AS THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.     11-11

 

ABSTRACT:  Explorative psychotherapy can be understood as the overt pursuit of truth about ourselves, others, life, and the world, and even behavioral therapies can be viewed as seeking a better alignment with reality for the client.
 
KEY WORDS:  psychotherapy, truth

Human beings have in common a basic assumption that knowing the truth or knowing the nature of reality accurately will help them to function better in the world.  Knowing how to fix a car helps one to shorten lapses in having desired transportation.  Knowing when to plant crops makes for a better harvest.  Sizing up people accurately helps us to avoid being harmed by those who seek advantage over us or seek to harm us.

Explorative psychotherapies all seek to improve the client’s condition (symptoms, emotions, and/or functionality) partly by helping the client to know himself better.  Given the human penchant for deceiving ourselves, this usually involves uncovering things that we could know but have denied or repressed, and assisting clients to discover and to accurately understand things not previously known out of ignorance.  These discovered or uncovered matters include aspects of ourselves that we dislike, aspects of others that we dislike, our feelings about ourselves and others, and our false opinions and assumptions about ourselves, others, life, and the external world.  The discovery of unpleasant things and inaccurate beliefs and assumptions is resisted, of course, and much of the psychotherapist’s skill lies in being able to encourage and support clients in facing unpleasantness.

The goals of facing this unpleasantness are to better accept and love ourselves and others and to function better in the world as a result of having a more accurate understanding of ourselves, our goals, our abilities, and the world around us in which we must choose behavioral pathways to our goals.

Insight in Various Psychotherapies

Psychoanalysis is perhaps the example par excellence of a therapy that promotes insight.  The analyst interprets aspects of the client (behavior, dreams, transference, emotions) in order to help the client to gain insight and understanding.  Every detail of the client’s life and experience is open to potential interpretation.  It is believed that gaining insight will help the client to tolerate life with more grace and to make better choices in life because she knows herself better.  Psychoanalysis in its earliest form has been criticized for not focusing more on changing the client’s behavior and subjective state or happiness, but analysts believe that after gaining insight, the client will be better able to resolve inner conflicts, make better choices, and relate to others more comfortably and deeply and therefore will be happier.

Psychodynamic therapies follow the lead of psychoanalysis in exploring the client’s self and life in order to offer insights about the client’s inner workings, but they depart from psychoanalysis in allowing more and more varied interactions between therapist and client.

Existential-humanistic therapies also explore but with a focus on pervasive experiential commonalities among people as well as pervasive dynamics common to all people (e.g., the anxiety of just being as opposed to the anxiety residues of specific traumas).

Relationship therapies focus primarily on uncovering the client’s misapprehensions and maladaptive beliefs regarding others and regarding relating to them.

Practitioners of behavioral and conditioning therapies as a rule do not believe that conscious insight is necessary in treatment (i.e., that it is not necessary for the client to “understand” anything differently), but the maladaptive conditioning that they seek to correct can be understood as evidence of misunderstanding by the client (or at least of the client’s inability to interpret events and emotions more correctly for herself) which leads to the maladaptive behaviors.  These therapists try to recondition the client so that her behavior is more in line with reality (e.g., being able to have an intimate relationship partly by realizing and coming to truly believe that there are some good people in the world and that not everyone will mistreat her).

Departures from Truth-Seeking

Therapists of any school may depart from the seeking of accurate insight or alignment with reality whenever they steer the client toward adaptation rather than understanding.  Here are three examples.

     The therapist suggests that the client understand her

     mother as “well-meaning” in order to minimize overt
     conflict between the two, even though much of the mother’s
     behavior is clearly toxic.

     The therapist reframes the client’s expressed desire for a

     divorce as energy seeking change in general and focuses on
     changes in the marriage.  (“Reframing” can be either useful
     or not useful, depending on the therapist’s accuracy of
     understanding the client and the impact of the reframe.)

     The therapist delegitimizes the client’s reasons for

     thinking about suicide by chiding her about what will
     happen to her children if she were to die, in order to
     prevent her from killing herself.

Consequences of Insight and Understanding

Of course, there are negative as well as positive consequences of gaining a more realistic view of things.  It can be painful to realize and accept that one’s mother was toxic, that one’s spouse has never really loved one, or that one’s obsession with football is the result of feeling inadequate as a male.  If children reacted to seeing the realities of their parents by running away from home or using drugs, we might wonder if knowing the truth was worth the cost.  The most common of the feelings resulting from gaining insight are chagrin, disappointment (at others or oneself), anger (at others or oneself), shame or embarrassment, guilt (for not doing better, or for seeing a truth that one is not supposed to see), and fear of one’s inability to handle or make the best of one’s new opportunities.

Most therapists believe that coming to these understandings will result in better outcomes overall than continuing to believe otherwise (not blaming oneself any more for one’s supposed faults in the eyes of one’s mother; finding a more gratifying spouse and marriage; discovering one’s male energy and using it in the world).  Tolerating the emotional pain of these discoveries, until it subsides through the passage of time or through achieving the more gratifying positive outcomes that are now possible, requires some “ego strength” and resolve.  If people react to knowing the truth with appropriate coping efforts, trying to make the best of the situation and find ways to incorporate this new information into what is still a good life, then we can argue that knowing the truth is worth the price.  It is part of being emotionally healthy to be able to manage our painful feelings and feelings of insecurity. 

Some keys to dealing with these feelings (and feelings in general) are (1) to not blame oneself for one’s previous obtuseness but rather see the insight as an opportunity for a better life; (2) to “let the feeling be” instead of insisting too quickly on resolution; (3) to not distort reality in order to not feel or to nullify the feeling; (4) to gather the useful information implied in the feeling (how self-critical one is, even for having this feeling; realizing how one has fooled oneself about this state of affairs; realizing that even without the love one wanted one has managed reasonably well in life); (5) to accept the information in the insight, without contesting or fighting it (even if one doesn’t necessarily agree with it all); (6) to use the information in the emotion and in the insight to correct and refine one’s false beliefs and assumptions about oneself, others, life, and the world;  (7) to express the emotion, adaptively, if desired; (8) to attend to self-support while processing the emotion (taking good care of oneself); (9) to get support from others while processing the emotion, if needed (including one’s therapist); (10) to grieve one’s loss of innocence or the loss of the illusions that have sustained one prior to the insight; and (11) to forgive oneself (for not handling things better, not being more perceptive, being angry at significant others, or for changing one’s relationships with others (appropriately) in response to the insight).

The adjustment process to seeing things differently, especially seeing oneself and significant others differently, takes some time, since one needs to figure out how to do many things in a new way.  One should not feel embarrassed about this process but should simply let it run its course, while doing one’s best to take advantage of this opportunity to have a new and better life.

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INTERFERENCE IN THE AFFAIRS OF OTHER COUNTRIES

Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D.      9-13

 

ABSTRACT:  The psychological underpinnings of one group or country interfering in the affairs of another are explored.

KEY WORDS:  motivation, politics, fear of others, conformity

Human beings have always been concerned about the behavior of other human groups around them, and there are various motives that might cause them to wish to or attempt to interfere with the affairs and behavior of those other groups.  It may be useful to clarify the psychological needs that are served by these various motives to interfere.  This was perhaps less of a problem when people had less power to actually affect other groups, but with the increase in weaponry and the “shrinking” global world, there seems to be more interference lately by countries in the affairs of other nations.  As a result of our desires to interfere, we want others either to be more like us or to change regarding certain specific behaviors that frighten or threaten us.

Two relatively benign motives for concern and interest in the behavior of other groups are curiosity and imitation.  Since other people have a tremendous influence on the quality of the lives of each of us (starting with our parents), we “naturally” want to know what others are doing and what they are likely to do.  Since much of our behavior is adopted through imitation, we are always alert to behaviors of others that we would like to imitate in order to increase our effectiveness in the world or increase our self-esteem.

Compassion or sympathy can motivate us to interfere also, when we observe that others are suffering and that nothing is being done about it.  We then delegitimize the “inadequate” group leadership or government and seek to intervene.  We use our own standards, of course, for what is excessive suffering, which is not always the same in the other country.

Greed motivates much of our interference, as we can see in the history of conquests, both military (Alexander, the Romans, the Mongols) and economic (the European domination of trade and resources in the 17^th through the 20^th centuries).  Whether the trade is in slaves, cotton, precious metals, or rare earths, people are always interested in bettering their lives materially, even at significant cost to those whose resources they want.   It is noteworthy that moral concerns almost never interfere with our desires to take from others outside our own group, since most people do not view their morals or standards as applying to anyone outside their own group.

Fear is perhaps the most salient motive for interfering in the affairs of other countries.  When our sense of security is threatened, as when we fear that others may attack us or force us to do things differently, we are motivated to act, sometimes even proactively as we saw with U. S. actions in Iraq.

In order to be able to feel secure with others, human beings need to be able to predict others’ behavior—at least to “know” that they are unlikely to act negatively toward us in the near future.  This need is served within a society by developing cultural expectations and rules, so that everyone knows what to expect from everyone else, at least as long as they are conforming to those expectations and rules.  This creates a wish within us for others (both inside and outside our own group) to conform to our expectations and rules, and we are willing to coerce or force others to conform, so that we can feel more secure.  This coercion to conform takes place in families, communities, nations, and even globally now, with United Nations charters and resolutions creating a global set of expectations.

In a slightly different regard, we also feel and create group pressure toward uniformity, since this can simplify our process of deciding which people are likely to conform to our expectations and which are not (and are therefore a potential danger).  Human beings fear differences, since these make people less predictable, so even though we say we value individuality, we prefer people to be uniform.  To live with or close to people with quite different ways of looking at the world can be disorienting to some, if they feel the pull to conform to differing sets of expectations or worldviews.  Others react by angrily defending and justifying their own ways.

People are also motivated to interfere to protect their sense of self-esteem.  If another group espouses a belief that they are “better than” us for some reason (religion, race, etc.), then we will be motivated to fight against that belief and interfere in the affairs of that group if necessary in ways that reduce the power of that belief.

Taking the current U. S. ambivalence about interfering in the internal affairs of Syria as an example, to various degrees people in the U. S. (1) are moved by the suffering of the civilian population during the civil war, (2) fear loss of U. S. dominance (and therefore safety) if it does not punish Syria for using chemical weapons, (3) fear becoming embroiled in the Syrian civil war and therefore losing more American lives (after Iraq and Afghanistan), (4) fear that the reach of Al-Qaeda will be strengthened if it should end up ruling Syria, (5) are confused about and do not understand the cultural worldview of Arabs or that of followers of Islam and therefore would like to move them toward being more like us, (6) fear a potential threat to their self-esteem from Islam becoming more dominant in the world, since most believe that as a religion Islam sees world domination as its mission, and (7) fear any society that does not espouse democracy, since political and economic systems seem always to fight each other to create uniformity.  Greed and self-benefit do not seem to play a significant role in public opinion on the Syria matter, since most Americans do not know of anything that Syria has that we want, and only a few Americans connect the governance of Syria with the larger and future oil needs of the U. S. 

The integration of all of these emotions and motives will determine U. S. actions with regard to Syria, even though the psychological motives will be publically covered up or rephrased (fear becomes righteousness, for example).  As a psychologist I believe strongly that better decisions come from greater self-awareness and from expression of our true feelings and motives to others involved.  More open expressions of fear, envy, feeling threatened, desire for others to be like us, etc., will allow us to be more centered in ourselves about why we wish to do what we want to do.  Expressing our desire for others to be more like us (even just among ourselves and not necessarily to the other nation), for example, allows us to “own” our fear and therefore to be able to moderate that wish for others to be more like us, instead of allowing unacknowledged emotions to result in war or other unfortunate outcomes. 

In a similar vein, the more we know about the other nation, including the worldview (or range of worldviews) of the people, the nature of its government, the fears of the people, how the people are managing financially, morally, and culturally, and what would ease their fears and anxieties, the more those people can seem human and real to us and the more we can “relate” to them because we have many of the same feelings and problems.  In the past I have suggested the formation of a government office (or “desk”) to gather this information about each nation and major cultural group objectively and comprehensively and to keep it up to date so that our nation can have the benefit of it immediately when the need for difficult decisions arises.  Normal “news” reporting (even in our best newspapers) does not accomplish this, as we are told what happened but rarely why.  Occasionally more in-depth articles in secondary publications do better (journals on international relations, etc.), but these usually cover only one aspect at a time, whereas we would do much better to see it as a comprehensive picture.

As individuals, we can improve our decision-making with regard to our group’s relations with other groups by adding the considerations above to our thinking.  How are my emotions and conclusions being affected by empathic concern that I am feeling for others?  What am I afraid of in the thinking and behavior of the other group?  Are my conclusions influenced by ignorance or unwarranted assumptions that I have about the other group?  Are my emotions and conclusions being distorted by my desire for economic gain from the territory or resources of the other group?  Am I feeling a threat to my self-esteem from the thinking or behavior of the other group?  Is my desire for the other group to change (or even my willingness to force them to change), so that I can feel more comfortable, justified by the true seriousness of the threat?  Honestly considering these issues will allow for more objective and humane conclusions and decisions.

 

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