On Being Emotionally Damaged

It seems like in psychology today the lingua franca in describing patients is “emotionally damaged.” So what is that? It means someone who is neurotic, full of pain, damaged by years of abuse, etc. So I got to thinking about it and tried to define it in a more precise way. There are two aspects to this. One: There is a timetable of needs beginning in the womb. How completely they are fulfilled or not determines one aspect of the pain. Secondly, needs that require fulfillment are the most painful the earlier they occur. And this is pretty much true for all of us. Early primal needs are nearly always a matter of life-and-death. Their lack of fulfillment can be catastrophic. This is imprinted and endures for nearly all of our lives. There are secondary, non-lethal needs that require fulfillment but when not fulfilled hurt but do not change our basic neuro-physiology. These needs come late in the evolutionary time-table.


So let us assume that of the many needs, to be touched, talked to and listened to, to have our needs acknowledged, to be understood and have our moods mirrored by parents, there are only one or two that are fulfilled. The rest means pain. There is hierarchy of needs; those that are involved in life and death—oxygen at birth, a calm environment while being carried, feeling safe in one’s surroundings and being protected. Above all, being touched and caressed and kissed right after birth. Parents need to show their love. Lesser needs such as being talked to are important but they do not alter the great pain of not being held and caressed as an infant. We can adumbrate the amount of pain by measuring the vitalness of the need and how much it was not fulfilled.


Those who are most damaged are those who have in my lingo, first line pain. The only damage equivalent is something that is commensurate with first line such as incest at age six or eight. But in addition to that there are other needs not fulfilled, then you have the makings of serious mental illness. When the parent who is supposed to protect you becomes the danger, damage is inevitable. When a child has no one to express her feelings to, damage is also evident. In my books where I write on the nature of love, I have discussed the various needs and their need for fulfillment. If you have been touched and held but not talked to the damage is much less. If you have not been held but have been talked to the damage is much more. So damage increases as deeper brain areas are touched. That is why Hollywood does not ordinarily ruin people. Those who are already wounded seek out Hollywood.

More on Beliefs (Part 3/3)

In the paper recently is a story about a female astronaut driving one thousand miles to do away with a perceived rival for the affections of another astronaut. All of her amazing education and brilliance could not stop her from doing something absolutely crazy. She could not think out this problem and decide on a different course of action; she was compelled to follow her deep feelings of past rejection into oblivion. Could there be a better example of rationality living side by side with irrationality in the brain? In cerebral terms, it is deep feelings of rejection in the right hemisphere and in the forward top brain (the orbito-frontal area) that sends the message over to the left prefrontal brain and says, "Stop the rejection by any means possible!" She could not do it as a child — helpless before parental neglect and indifference, but now she can do something about it. But ay any ay, what she did was nuts. So the left advanced brain tried to find symbolic solutions to an old imprinted problem that had only one solution — love by the parent — at that time and no other. So here we have the perennial dilemma: the left prefrontal brain always tries to find current solutions to old historical problems; and it therefore always fails.
This seeker gives up everything in exchange for the hope of receiving what was deprived her long ago. She becomes an extension of the leader's will. She and the other disciples will kill others or themselves at the leader’s behest, turn over their money to him, live by capricious rules he makes, think thoughts he inserts in their minds, eat what and when he allows them to. They act like devoted children, and his authoritarian bearing reinforces that childishness. Women will even give over their bodies to the leader, and their mates will allow it because they have learned obedience to authority. That obedience is one of the most dangerous facets of human life. All manner of crimes exist in its wake. Fascist dictators can easily get thugs to do their murderous bidding because those thugs are loyal and obedient to the leader. Those in war can kill because it is their job; they usually don’t kill out of anger. It is a job like any other, devoid of passion. In need of order in a world of chaos, hope and magic instead of confusion and pain, they swallow the ideology the leader dispenses hook, line and sinker. In the case of our homegrown cult leaders, women will even submit to the leader's sexual whims, will leave their husbands, and abandon children in order to please him. In the case of one cult leader, the wives’ mates bunked in a dormitory downstairs while they slept with the guru. Parents went along with their leader's penchant for their pubescent daughters. But the leader has to have the answer! And he must exert his ideas with certainty and force. Beliefs are medicine for the hopeless. They attenuate despair, vitiate parental substitute. He gives love and can take it away from those who are not obedient. For those who were rejected by family, to be again rejected and thrown out by the "new family" is intolerable. Some prefer death to this pain. loneliness and dissipate helplessness. Not a despair necessarily arising out of one's present circumstances, but one that is imprinted physiologically and emotionally in the individual — the despair of a baby in the crib who cries her heart out for days hoping someone will come to feed, cuddle, caress and soothe her. The despair of a child who sees his mother die in an auto accident or his father leave the family for good. A despair long ago forgotten by the mind but not by the body, consigned to the unconscious, covered over by layers of newly constructed hopes ... and best of all, the hope for a different and better life. Later on, it is no wonder that person becomes radicalized, looking for a better world, trying to destroy symbols of his current world, becoming a utopian who must find the perfect system or perfect place — all because his early life was such hell and so hopeless. We need hope more than we need truth. Hope feels good, but truth often hurts. The truth hurts because to feel that "my parents don’t like me, don’t want me around and they never will love me," is intolerable for a youngster. If the Bible is your bag, you can be born-again. The medicine of hope dispels the misery of our pre-born-again life. Hope's assurances shield our ears from the child screaming below the surface of consciousness. She is screaming yet even she cannot hear it — until, we take her back to her childhood and help her cry and scream, at last. Now she knows what has driven her.