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(1)
Our principal problem then is to relate the earlier stages of becoming to the later.
Freud taught that the foundations of character are established by the age of three; he held that while later events may be able to modify they can never basically alter the traits then formed.
Even Adler, who agrees with Freud on little else, dates the adoption of a lasting style of life around the age of four or five.
While there is serious exaggeration in these views we dare not blind ourselves to the impressive supporting evidence that exists.
We think in this connection of the work of Spits, Levy, Anna Freud, and others.
Bowlby has reviewed their investigations and added important date of his own.
With some regularity it turns out that a child’s character and mental health depend to a considerable degree upon his relationship with his mother in early years.
Adverse relationships seem often to create insuperable obstacles to effective therapeutic treatment at later periods of life.
Delinquency, mental disorder, and ethnic prejudice are among the antisocial conditions that have been traced in part to affect ional deprivation and disturbance in early childhood.
All in all a generous minimum of security seems required in early years for a start toward a productive life-style.
Without it the individual develops a pathological craving for security, and is less able than others to tolerate setbacks in maturity.
Through his insistent demanding, jealousy, depredations, and egoism he betray the craving that still haunts him.
By contrast, the child who receives adequate gratification of his infant needs is more likely to be prepared to give up his habits of demanding, and to learn tolerance for his later frustrations.
Having completed successfully one stage of development he is free to abandon the habits appropriate to this stage and to enter the mature reaches of becoming.
Having known acceptance in an affectionate environment he learns more readily to accept himself, to tolerate the world, and to handle the conflicts of later life in a mature manner.
If this interpretation is correct it means that early affinitive needs (dependence, succorrance, and attachment) are the ground of becoming, even in their presocialized stages.
They demand a basic rapport with the world before growth proper can start.
Aggression and hatred, by contrast, are reactive protests, aroused only when afflictive tendencies are thwarted.
A patient in treatment, we know, makes progress toward health in proportion as his resentments, hostility, and hated lessen, and in proportion as he feels accepted and wanted by therapist, family, and associates.
Love received and love given comprise the best form of therapy.
But love is not easily commanded or offered by one whose whole life has been marked by reactive protest against early deprivation.
It is a hopeful sign that psychologists are turning their attention to the affiliative groundwork of life.
Its sheer ubiquity has perhaps led to its relative neglect up to now.
We have paid more attention to the pathology of becoming than to its normal course, focusing upon disease rather than health, upon bad citizenship rather than good, and upon prejudice rather than tolerance and charity.
(2)
Self-esteem and personal security depend to considerable degree on a sense of being able to understand and thereby exert some control both over the reactions of others toward oneself and over one’s own inner states.
The inability to control feelings, thoughts, and impulse is inherently demoralizing.
Uncontrolled feelings also impede a person’s ability to influence others by preempting attention from social interaction and distorting perceptions and behavior.
The feeling of loss of control gives rise to anxiety and other emotions that aggravate and are aggravated by the specific symptoms or problems for which the person ostensibly has sought psychotherapy.
Even psychotic patients can benefit from regaining a sense of control over their symptoms, as was illustrated by an out-of-town schizophrenic patient who telephoned one of us (J.D.F.) while on a visit to Baltimore.
The patient stated that she was psychotic, that her symptoms had been controlled by Stelazine, but that she was beginning to hallucinate and giggle.
She feared she might be suffering a relapse.
After establishing that the patient’s dose of medication was adequate and that she was under considerable tension during her visit, I reassured her that her symptoms would probably subside after she returned home.
About six weeks later the patient wrote to me : “After receiving your opinion I returned to good functioning again.
Just to be reassured by a competent psychiatrist that I and Stelazine are in control of the situation is the best therapy possible for me!”
All schools of psychotherapy bolster the patient’s sense of mastery (Liberman 1987b) or self-efficacy (Bandura 1977) in at least two ways : by providing the patient with a conceptual scheme that explains symptoms and supplies the rationale and procedure for overcoming them, and by providing occasions for the patient to experience success.
Since words are a human being’s chief tool for analyzing and organizing experience, the conceptual schemes of all psychotherapies increase patients’ sense of security and mastery by giving names to experiences that had seemed haphazard, confusing, or inexplicable.
Once the unconscious or ineffable has been put into words, it loses much of its power to terrify.
The capacity to use verbal reasoning to explore potential solutions to problems also increases people’s sense of their options and enhances their sense of control.
This effect has been termed the principle of Rumpelstiltskin (Torrey 1986), after the fairy tale in which the queen broke the wicked dwarf’s power over her by guessing his name.
