This article is about frames. The frameworks that mold us into what we are.  The frameworks that makes us  think as we do, and also act as we usually do.

It has long been a question of giving children the right framework for development, the right framework for learning, and framework for the upbringing.

We seldom choose the frames that surrounds us, as you can in this shop

Women’s struggle for independence and equal rights, has long been a question of giving the women a better framework for education, career and independent economics. In school planning and education, there’s much talk about framework plans, and in governmental politics there’s always talking about the tight financial framework at hand. In this article however, I will primarily focus on frames and frameworks that imprison us.

  Is this how you want to be seen, or how they want to see you?

Recently, it has literally been talked much about replacing some of the heavy, old frames around Munch’s paintings, with simpler and more modern frameworks.  This as the saying goes, to lift famous Edvard Munch’s paintings into a new era. What does this say about our understanding of the term framework?

Conservators at the Munch Museum, Oslo, checking the frame of one Edvard Munch’s Madonna  paintings.

Frame 1: The fishes in the  bowl.

When I started my studies back in 1975, there was a story about some fish swimming around in a small aquarium. From the time when they were hatched as fry until grown ups, they swam around and around in this little pool. When they eventually reached maturity, they were offered an opening into a much larger and more beautiful aquarium.

Around and around they swam and ate, and swam and ate…..

But instead of piling out through the new opening, and really enjoy the amble space for swimming, they chose to stay where they were. In other words, they continued to swim around and around, in the little and rather narrow “fishbowl” as before.

In another variant of the experiment, the fish were released in the big aquarium all together. Then, to the great wonder of the researchers, they continued to swim around and around in a small corner of the pool.

Frame 2: The poor couple that eventually realized their dream.

I also heard a touching story about the originally very poor couple from southern Norway, who in the middle of the war went to America to build up economically. They took service in a richman’s home in New York, – she as a housekeeper and he as a janitor and gardener. Here they both worked, and lived in a tiny flat in a small part of the basement of this huge house north of Manhattan.

    In a classy house like this they worked and worked for thirty years, and lived in a small room in the basement. 

After thirty years in the United States and quite a few dollars in savings, they traveled back to Norway and built a large beautiful villa with panoramic sea views. To earn a little extra, they also built an apartment in the basement of their newly built house.

Then the great day of the move into this dream house, came. A house they had worked for and saved money for, for over thirty years, – on the other side of the sea that they now had such a nice view of.

Instead of moving into the main house with large living rooms and bedrooms, kitchen, dishes, two well-appointed bathrooms and a huge porch, they moved into the small cellar apartment and rented out the main house. And so this married couple lived the rest of their lives.

The house of their dreams, overlooking the sea

Perhaps this is the story of frameworks in a nutshell? That, when we are first caught up inside them, they are difficult to get out of?

Frame 3: Conformity pressure.

The well-known experiment of social psychologist Salomon Asch from 1951,  is also about the effect of frameworks. Briefly, the subject finds himself in a room along with seven other “subjects”. These other seven are instructed by the investigator to influence the subject. They do so both by their physical majority and their assessments.

The task of the subject student is quite simple. He shall compare lines drawn on two cardboards, and find the line that matches on both cardboards. On the first cardboard there are three lines of different lengths. On the other plan, it’s just one line. This line, however, matches in length one of the three lines on the first cardboard.

 

The Asch Experiment.

Everyone can really see which line this is. Nevertheless, one third of the subjects choose the wrong line, – if put under pressure from the group.
Each of the total 50 male subjects receives 18 such tasks. In 6 of the tasks, the 7 others in the group give the correct answer to the length of the line. In the 12 remaining tasks, they are deliberately wrong.

Result: Nearly one third of the subjects followed the group and selected wrong on all 12 assignments. 75% of the group responded wrong, at least once, to the twelve.

Why did the many students comply to the majority, even when it apparently failed the task.

Why did they do that?  The subjects admit that they guessed their answers were wrong, but that they would not stand out from the group. Many of the students also replied that they began to doubt their own judgment, because they believed that so many people could not be wrong.    Peer pressure.

What about questions that there are no such obvious answers to?

Political positions, socio-cultural views, views on asylum and immigration policy? Religion. Distribution politics, and tax issues? In such questions, how are we affected by the framework of people we are surrounded with? What about the impact of our circle of friends, colleagues at work, as well as our neighborhood?

Are we caught in our frames because of ignorance of their existence?

Is it possible for us to think indepedently, think by ourselves, without giving in to the opinions and thoughts of others? Is it possible to have an independent perception of ourselves and the world around us, without a frame of reference?

   Is this possible?

What if this framework we live in is too tight for us and too cramped for those around us? What if this frame is simply misplaced? That we keep swimming around and around in a small fish bowl, with too little fresh water, just like the fish I told about in the introduction?

What has this frame done to him?

What if most of us, despite newly acquired knowledge and inherent intellectual power, only use a small bubble of this our potential psychological universe? What if we continue to live downstairs to those who think what we shall think, and tell us what we need to do, – just to keep us as conformal slaves in the basement of their own flashy buildings?

Dangerous frameworks

I have met many people who have grown up with parents with strong psychopathic features in the way they are. This is often a hell for the children, and not least the spouse. Unfortunately, these children often associate later as adults, also to partners who gradually behave narcissistic and destructive. That is, they fall in love with seemingly fascinating partners.

But when they have established a family life, or encounter resistance, another page pops up. The perverse, offended, revengeful and controlling side of their personality. A side that does not tolerate adversity, and looks very similar to the former parent figure.

 Very little chances to see the opening out of this frame.

If we knew about our frames and could see past them, we would also be able to change our lives.

It may seem that we humans develop our personality and our self-understanding within the family framework we are put in as children. We take this frame with us as the snail with its snailhouse, without seeing and realizing that we do so. In other words, we are mostly unconscious of our frameworks.

Here you can see the opening, but will you dare to escape through it?

In my viewpoint, psychological therapy need to deal with the framework you’re caught inside.  The process need to help you to experience and visualize this frame. Help you to understanding what the frame has been doing to you.  And to make it possible for you to either accept it and choose it, or to get out of it! The last solution, often by needing to break it to pieces, to manage to escape from it.

   To crash a mirror and destroy the frame.

Or we can stop protecting ourselves and listen to our sweetheart or partner, when they tell us how they experience us. Some of it might actually be right, and something to learn from.  If we don’t address our frames and frameworks, at the best we might end up like the fishes in the fishbowl.