courts, that they can discover, sometimes stupefied, their own history. And
realise thereby that for years they have attempted to act out their own
scenario, just to get rid of it. The majority of psychologists believe that
the explanation of this fact is that “information about the cruelty
suffered during childhood remains stored in the brain in the form of
unconscious memories. For a child, conscious experience of such treatment
is impossible. If children are not to break down completely under the pain
and the fear, they must repress that knowledge.[9]” But the unconscious
memories of the child who has been neglected and maltreated, even before he
has learned to speak, drive the adult to reproduce those repressed scenes
over and over again in the attempt to liberate himself from the fears that
cruelty has left with him. For example, The German reformer Martin Luther
was an intelligent and educated man, but he hated all Jews and he
encouraged parents to beat their children. He was no perverted sadist like
Hitler's executioners. But 400 years before Hitler he was disseminating
this kind of destructive counsel. According to Eric Ericson's biography,
Luther's mother beat him severely even before he was treated this way by
his father and his teacher. He believed this punishment had "done him good"
and was therefore justified. The conviction stored in his body that if
parents do it then it must be right. This example shows, nothing that a
child learns later about morality at home, in school or in church will ever
have the same strong and long lasting effect as the treatment inflicted on
his or her body in the first few days, weeks and months. “The lesson
learned in the first three years cannot be expunged,” –[10] said Freud.
So we can see that if a child learns from birth that tormenting and
punishing an innocent creature is the right thing to do, and that the
child's suffering must not be acknowledged, that message will always be
stronger than intellectual knowledge acquired at a later stage. Alice
Miller made really great research work and her conclusions give us, at
last, the hole picture of this situation:“ Usually away from home either
praying in church or running the priest's household. Stalin idealized his
parents right up to the end of his life and was constantly haunted by the
fear of dangers, dangers that had long since ceased to exist In the lives
of all the tyrants I analyzed, I also found without exception paranoid
trains of thought bound up with their biographies in early childhood and
the repression of the experiences they had been through. Mao had been
regularly whipped by his father and later sent 30 million people to their
deaths but he hardly ever admitted the full extent of the rage he must have
felt for his own father, a very severe teacher who had tried through
beatings to "make a man" out of his son. Stalin caused millions to suffer
and die because even at the height of his power his actions were determined
by unconscious, infantile fear of powerlessness. Apparently his father, a
poor cobbler from Georgia, attempted to drown his frustration with liquor
and whipped his son almost every day. His mother displayed psychotic
traits, was completely incapable of defending her son and was but were
still present in his deranged mind. His fear didn't even stop after he had
been loved and admired by millions.” [11]
But, what happen with people who were loved in their childhood?
They have a better live without violent and horror. There are people who
grow up with loving and protecting parents who “can later find a kind,
sympathetic partner, can organize their life and become good parents”,
even “if they have to go through the horror of a concentration camp during
their adolescence” [12] after learning about Pablo Picasso we can mention
the severe trauma that the child Pablo Picasso underwent at the age of
three: the earthquake in Malaga in 1884, the flight from the family's
apartment into a cave that seemed to be more safe, and eventually
witnessing the birth of his sister in the same cave under these very scary
circumstances. However, Picasso survived these traumas without later
becoming psychotic or criminal because he was protected by his very loving
parents. They were able to give him what he most needed in this chaotic
situation: empathy, compassion, protection and the feeling of being safe in
their arms.
Thanks to the presence of his parents, the two enlightened witnesses
of his fear and pain, not only during the earthquake but also throughout
his whole childhood, he was later able to express his early, frightening
experiences in a creative way. In Picasso's famous painting "Guernica" we
can see what might have happened in the mind of the three-year-old child
while he was watching the dying people and horses and listening to the
children screaming for help on the long walk to the shelter. Small children
can go unscared even through bomb-raids if they feel safe in the arms of
their parents.
It is much more difficult for a child to overcome early
traumatizations if they are caused by their own parents. Here we have an
another example. I analysed the childhood of the writer Franz Kafka. I’ll
try to show that the nightmares he describes in his stories recount exactly
what might have happened to the small, severely neglected infant Kafka. He
was born into a family in which he must have felt like the hero of The
Castle (ordered about but not needed and constantly misled) or like K. in
The Trial (charged with incomprehensible guilt) or like The Hunger Artist
who never found the food he was so strongly longing for. Thanks to the love
and the deep comprehension of his sister Otla in his puberty, his late
"helping witness," Kafka could eventually give expression to his suffering
in writing. Does it mean that he therefore overcame his traumatic
childhood? He could indeed write his work, full of knowledge and wisdom,
but why did he die so early—in his thirties—of tuberculosis? It happened in
a time when he knew many people who loved and admired him. However, these
good experiences could not erase the unconscious emotions and memories
stored in his body.
Kafka was hardly aware of the fact that the main sources of his
imagination were deeply hidden in his early childhood. Most writers aren't.
But the amnesia of an artist or writer, though sometimes a burden for their
body, doesn't have any negative consequences for society. The readers
simply admire the work and are rarely interested in the writers' infancy .
However, the amnesia of politicians or leaders of sects does afflict
countless people, and will continue to do so, as long as society remains
blind to the important connections between the denial of traumatic
experiences in early childhood and the destructive, criminal actions of
individuals.
An American writer, Richard Bach, is well knowing by his Fantasy and
Philosophy. He solves difficult problems, which are connected with “Human
psychology”. He does not have special education, Richard is only a pilot
(in any case, he was…before he began to write). His first book was “Sea-
gull”, than “breach through the eternity”, “One”, “Plane” etc. In this
stories and novels Bach taught upon lots of different topics, and one of
them is about childhood. This man deadly believe that a person cannot live
without his past. And what do we have there, in the past? Of course,
childhood! This topic glassed in one of the latest work: “Running from the
safety”. The main idea of the plot is that “Richard-men” [13]( he prefers
to write about himself rather then to work with heroes) meat “Richard-
kid”. It means that he, the old one, meat in his own world a little boy of
eight years old. This boy is “HE”, but from the past. In this novel Richard
Bach tried to answer the the question: ”What will you do if you meat
yourself-from-the-past?” The own correct response he has able to find is
“to learn everything what you can from this kid”. What can you learn from
the little child from your past? What he can give us? This questions can
appeared in the mind of everybody… in “Running…” Bach neatly respond to
them: “he remembers all what I have forgot” Really, we have spoken about
this already, all information which people get in an early age cannot be
remembered further. But kids retain all this, cause it still in their
active memory. Some people had critical moments in their childhood, which
influence their lifes, but they cannot remember this episode – the most
impotent one – and that’s why cannot change the situation. For example, a
man is a looser all his live. He cannot do anything with this. Why? After
memorising his childhood, he remembered that he was whipped by schoolboys
and after this all the school was laughing at him…He understood everything
and tried to change the attitude to this situation at last we won for first
time. Richard Bach had such critical moments too. At first, the death of
his brother and his climbing to the water-tower. After this he understood
that he was not a little boy, and “left the family and common world”
after this moment he decided to become a pilot and “made the biggest fault”
in the live: went to the army. Why he did it? For what he left the family?
Why his behaviour was such as it was? Richard cannot understand. But after
the talk with Dickey (Little Bach) he was able to explain all this to
himself and “ the desert” – Dickey’s world – “converted in a field of green
grass”. At first Richard was not able to “survive in the dark of the mind”.
But Dickey was able to return to Bach “the part of himself”, and he did
it. Now he could be “ out of space and time”. Telling things about the live
and answering to Dickey’s questions, Bach found lots of responses for his
own issues. “Dickey knows everything about the childhood, and I knows
everything about one of his Futures”, - told Richard to his wife. So, the
boy could find all the answers in several months, and spare 50 years of
had learning the live. The man remembered the half of his life and
understood the roots of all the problems. And both took that they could
not live without each other. “I preserve his future, he preserves my past”,
- said Richard Bach and he was absolutely right.
Conclusion (Part 3).
So, we can see that the question about the Childhood is really important.
It found the glass in many spheres of human life and men’s deeds. It is not
a science theory, but a reality. We know that every cow is an animal
doesn't include the statement that every animal is a cow. It has been
proved that many adults have had the good fortune to break the cycle of
abuse. Yet I can certainly aver that I have never come across persecutors
who weren't themselves victims in their childhood, though most of them
don't know it because their feelings are repressed. The less these
criminals know about themselves, the more dangerous they are to society. So
I think it is crucial to grasp the difference between the statement, "every
victim becomes a persecutor," which is wrong, and the statement, "every
persecutor was a victim in his childhood," which I consider true. The
problem is that, feeling nothing, he remembers nothing, realises nothing,
and this is why surveys don't always reveal the truth. Yet the presence of
a warm, enlightened witness ... therapist, social worker, lawyer, judge ...
can help the criminal unlock his repressed feelings and restore the
unrestricted flow of consciousness. This can initiate the process of escape
from the vicious circle of amnesia and violence. Working toward a better
future cannot be done without legislation that clearly forbids corporal
punishment toward children and makes society aware of the fact that
children are people too. The whole society and its legal system can then
play the role of a reliable, enlightened and protecting witness for
children at risk, children of adolescent, drug addicted criminals who may
themselves become predators without such assistance. The only reason why a
parent might smack his children is the parent's own history. All other so-
called reasons, such as poverty and unemployment, are pure mystification.
There are unemployed parents who don't spank their children and there are
many wealthy parents who maltreat their children in the most cruel way and
teach them to minimise the terror by calling it the right education. With a
law prohibiting corporal punishment towards children, people of the next
generation will not have recorded the highly misleading information in
their brain, an almost irreversible damage. They will be able to have
empathy with a child and understand what has been done to children over
millennia. It is a realistic hope to think that then (and only then) the
human mind and behaviour will change. With a law that forbids spanking
every citizen becomes an enlightened witness.
So, we see that everything lays in ourselves. It is easy to understand that
people can change everything around themselves. The theory about personal
children problems is really correct. Now everybody can just analyse his
past and remember the main idea of his last deeds. They will help him to
solve the difficulties. It is the easiest way to survive in your own inside
world, which can be a bright one. But the main problem is that not
everybody knows about this theory, and especially such people can not be
happy and live an easy life else the whole world can be changed. People
will understand all their problems and (it is important) now how to behave
and solve all the difficulties. It means – no depress, mad people and their
deaths, good social situation, at last. To my mind we should try to use
this material, because it can help us and it will be so easy to understand
each other and, at the first term, ourselves, is not it?
The list of literature
1. “People, who play in games” A. Birn
2. “Psychology” Camille B. Wortman
Elizabeth F.
Loftus
3. “ The Childhood Trauma” Alise Miller
4. “Running from Safty” R. Bach
5. “Interpretation of dreams” S. Freud
-----------------------
[1] The list of literature. The 2nd book.
[2] The list of literature. The 1st book.
[3] The list of literature. The 2nd book
[4] The list of literature. The 5th book.
[5] The list of literature. The 3rd book.
[6] The list of literature. The 1st book.
[7] The list of literature. The 3rd book.
[8] The list of literature. The 3rd book.
[9] The list of literature. The 2nd book.
[10] The list of literature. The 5th book.
[11] The list of literature. The 3rd book.
[12] The list of literature. The 3rd book.
[13] The list of literature. The 4th book. Other quotes are from this
book.
Ñòðàíèöû: 1, 2
