I am chemistry, no doubt. Biochemistry! But I am also cells, tissue, organs, and systems of organs. I am my respiratory and digestive systems. Not to forget my wonderful brain and heart. I am my arteries and vessels that bring oxygen and nourishment to my brain and my body. I am also my inherited DNA, of course. And my genitals that in some years can pass this DNA message forward to the next generation.
But even with all this material, I have not yet become me! I am physically born, I am living, yes, I can breathe and feel, oh yes, I can even eat and get rid of the products my body don’t need. Shit, yes!
Yet, the “me”, and the “I” are not born however. They float somewhat in a mist where mom and dad appears and disappears like islands in the sun and fog. So I don’t know yet who is really doing all this that we do from day to day. I am blowing in the wind of sensations and feelings, and sometimes it’s really emotionally stormy. Then I open my mouth and scream!
I can say this to you now and pronounce “I” only in retrospect. When it happened “I” was not there! My “I” was just at its beginning of its long journey into my life. Or you could say, I was like a home, were the house’s important foundations and walls were under construction, while the roof and attic were far from finished.
I was just like a small fetus.
When the “I” later appeared, it happened gradually. Then this magic emerged:
“I was born for the second time in my life.”
Born psychologically!
As you see on the photos, earlier My “I” and “Me” was also like a small fetus. Then my parents mirrored my feelings and wishes for a long period, and even acted upon them consequently. When I one day suddenly saw that child in the real mirror again, I knew it had to be me!
But I must admit I did not yet understand the full meaning of the concept of “I”. Then mummy told me that was a problem even philosphers ruminated on, so now I just continue to shout “I” when it pleases me, and leaves the unraveled mystic of the concept of “I”to philophers like Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. For the moment!
In the next post I will tell you how this psychological birth happens. I will do it by referring to some amazing research in the field of infant-mother-father-child relations.
What does infant research say about how “I” was born.
A wide range of infant researchers have the last 30 years given us much more insight in these relations. They have shown how the infant’s psychological universe emerge as a consequence of the quality of the relations. Daniel Stern (1985, 1995.1998) in America, Colin Trevarthen (1998)in Britain, the Hungarian Fonagy(2001), and the American duo, Beebe & Lachmann (2002) are some of these most prominent scientists.
The I, and me, cannot emerge without a relation with you.
No doubt the relation between mother and child is of basic importance. Nine months of sharing the same body cannot be underestimated. By the time the infant is born it has listened to her heartbeats, breath, moved with her, heard her voice, even father’s voice, if he has been present. It has had billions of sensations and ups and downs together with her. As a consequence, the human child is no blank sheet or tabula rasa when it’s born.
If then mother has been abandoned, or had to flee from a war zone, – familial or political, the child’s body and nervous system will know it, without yet knowing it consciously.
Through vast amounts of video recordings of mother-child, and mother-father-child relations, this infant research has also put the spotlight on relations and care conditions predisposing developmental disorders.https://youtu.be/T4Pyu-61N2g
The infant has an inbred capacity for dialogue, and is normally very social.
Trevarthen and Tronics studies found that the infant has an inherent capacity from birth to “enter into a dialogue with its surroundings.” The child’s early ability to mimic and mirror the caregiver’s behavior was detected in many of these studies. From the infant’s side this preverbal dialogue, or “proto conversation” was first without words, in the sense of symbolic language. Instead the “dialogue” was saturated with facial expressions, head, body and arm movements, similar the gestures in a verbal conversation. Gradually also simple words and phrases joined into this interactional pattern.
The quality of the maternal relation
In these studies, it was proven that the quality of the maternal dialogue with the child was decisive for whether the child maintained contact with her, turned away, or started to cry.https://youtu.be/Btg9PiT0sZg
As the infant grew the observations also revealed the development of a recognizable parallel pattern of communication between mother and child. A pattern that seemed to repeat itself from out of the first typical prototype, only just more elaborated.
This relational pattern was understood as a precursor of the child’s later more established social behavior. It was also understood as a result of the way the child was treated in the primary mother-child-father relationship.
Infant studies have given psychological treatment new methods
Such infant research has ever since fueled psychodynamic relational psychology and relational psychoanalysis with basic empirical knowledge. It has given confirmation, and input to relational theory of treatment. This has been the case both for the methods in individual psychotherapy, and in couples and family therapy.
The way you have been treated by your parents, seems very much to affect the way your treat your own child. It also of course, influence the way you think and feel about yourself and other people. You may for sure know differently, but in the act of child rearing you evolve your own history of being raised in a relation, almost automatically.
No wonder that earlier, both people in general and older genetic researchers believed that this behavioral pattern was mostly determined by family genes. Nowadays studies have shown otherwise. The human infant and child’s conception of it’s “self” and it’s identity is mainly determined by the way he or she is met by it’s caretakers.
The conclusion seems very clear:
When the extremely significant treatment by parents has not been based on true recognition of the child as it is, the child’s Self, will derail.
If the child is met with skepticism, and not acceptance, with scolding and disparagement and not by positive encouragement, with threatening and frightening and not by security and comfort giving, the child will develop a worthless “me” conceived as “bad”.
Psychologically this may be denied however, in the child and adolescent. Instead the “invulnerable” but false “super me” may arise, with lots of behavioral and psychic problems.
Usually however, child rearing is a positive, active and very giving process. The infant and child’s alert perceptiveness and presence in the relation is mind blowing and inviting. It is important to remind ourselves that the parents are always responsible for handling the feelings that occur in the process. They are also responsible for moving the interaction and “dialogue” with the child, in the right direction. That is making the child feel accepted for his or her contribution to the interaction.
Making the baby and later the toddler, to feel itself understood, included, respected and wanted. Then the child’s “me” will be conceived as “ok” or “good enough”, even better “highly appreciated”. Then the child’s self will not unconsciously have to survive by inflating an insecure self-confidence, into unrealistic proportions. Or by some kind of withdrawal from the social world, based on anxiety or fear of rejection and renewed disappointment.
A child without boundaries is a helpless child
Through millions of different types of interactions, and through verbal labeling of objects and events in this process, the child will gradually be able to speak a simple language. And by observing and sensing the difference between himself, mother, father and others in the family or community the child will soon experience a stronger sense of self. By being stopped gently but firmly, not by condemning the child when it demands more than can be achieved or delivered, the child will also gradually sense its limitations and boundaries. A child without boundaries is a helpless child ridden by the tyranny of his impulses and the moment.
Don’t yield to every demand that is not necessary.
It’s ok that the child shows greed, but it’s not ok constantly to yield to such demands and cravings. Here, accepting overtly the child’s feelings and urges as they appear, without yielding to them, is a winner. A child that always is gratified by parents afraid of disappointing or hurting the child, or parents with too much vulnerability for tears, this child will most likely never be satisfied.
Contrary to the “American credo”
Urge and greed must contrary to the American credo, not just be satisfied. Then it will most likely grow to endless proportions, and make no one happy. In other words, parents must learn the child to mourn losses or disappointments. That’s the only way to grow as a person and be satisfied with what one has. It is also the only way to start reflections inside the child’s brain, on what another person might feel, or think, or might do if the child does not accept limits.
Portrait of a greedy grown up that is unsatiable and dangerous for the society
The capacity for being social at the start of the infant’s life seems to be inborn in humans and chimps. But the effect of how we as grown-ups deal with our children, is what distinguishes an insecure stressed child from a child with a good sense of self, and “me”, and with a strong and conscious “I”.
