Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 15
Objectivity as a
Requirement for Love
(page 3)
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Why People Cannot Be Objective and Non-Judgmental and Why They Are Stuck in Destructive Fights
As the sentimentality and the mysticism of new age approach penetrate the fabric of the middle class life, objectivity is looked upon as something bad, abstract, and cold. As hope for a change has been vanished, objectivity (seeing society and ourselves as we really are) is met with a growing fright. Contemporary psychologists play a very harmful role in that. When you go to a couple therapy and express your thoughts about the problems between you and your partner, or why you think your partner behave the way she/he behaves, the therapist is likely to stop you, waving a red flag in front of your eyes: “Stop being judgmental. Do not talk about your thoughts and assessment of the other. Tell us how you felt when your partner was angry at you a minute ago” The assumption is that nobody can be objective, and that any attempts to assess the loved one objectively and express such thoughts to resolve a conflict is a cover up for unexpressed negative feelings. It is assumed that since we are all so defensive and irrational, the beloved ones can only perceive objective criticism through their infantile subjective filters — that is, as an attack, whether this is the case or not.
We must clearly distinguish between being loving and objective and being judgmental. Being judgmental indicates a lack of objectivity. A judgmental person’s criticism of the other is a rationalization for unexpressed feelings; the judgmental person projects his/her own fears and insecurities on the attacked (judged) person. When your friend says to you: “you are being an asshole for not calling me for three weeks”, that friend may be judging you and projecting his/her insecurities on you, because he/she cannot express the feelings of being hurt by you. Yet, this kind of judgmental attitude is increasingly being confused with objective reasoning in a conflict. Such reasoning can be very helpful for an opening of a dialogue and for the resolution of the conflict. If your friend does not call you for three weeks, you can be loving and objective and still critical in a positive sense, that is, from the place of stimulating a good dialogue to resolve the underlying reasons for not calling you. You can say: “I am concerned that you have not called me for the last three weeks. I am not happy about it, because I feel that when we are not in touch it creates a distance between us. I sense that you may be upset and pre-occupied with something. I wish to talk about it if it is O.K. with you”. This way, your criticism comes from the heart — from the wish to keep the strength of the friendship, and help with the difficulties of your friend. Thus, your friend does not perceive this as an attack but as a concern from the heart coupled with the ability to understand and be objective about what is going on with him/her. In this case your friend is more likely to trust you and open up to you. When your friend trusts your objectivity, he/she feels more at ease to express problems in regard to your relationship without fearing that you would be hurt and attack him or her.
On the other hand, since so many people are not in touch with their feelings, their thoughts about the others are not objective but rather rationalizations for their own semi-conscious (or unconscious) distortion of the others. When this is the case, the other perceive it emotionally as an attack or judgment, even when it is a genuine attempt to be objective. Let take an example of a typical couple.3 Paul comes home from work and talk excitingly about his interaction with his co-workers. Amy his wife, who works from home, feels isolated and insecure about herself and their relationship, and she reacts with jealousy and anger. When they go to the couple therapist, Paul complains that he cannot talk about what is going on in his life without some expression of irritation or impatience from Amy. Amy stops him with an angry comment: “you are always talking about these boring people at work. I am sick and tired of it. You hardly talk about us.” Paul reacts, saying: “You are just jealous because you are bored and lonely, being alone in the house all day”. While Paul may be quite right about how Amy really feels, he fails to communicate this to her in a way that encourages her to hear him out, because he expresses his correct comprehension about Amy in an emotional defensive manner, i.e. by attacking Amy. The therapist will be correct to ask Paul to stop talking about Amy, and express instead what Amy’s angry reaction did to him emotionally. Thus, many times even correct objective observations are mixed up with hidden emotions of anger and anxiety about the other. Such observations are correctly viewed by the other partner as an attack or a judgment.
But most couple therapists proceed with the assumption that we cannot really be objective. It is assumed that relating to each other from our insecure gut feelings is just our nature. Therefore, the best we can do in couple therapy is understand better the partner feelings, learn to be more empathetic with him/her, learn to improve communications, and handle better feelings of constant anxiety and mistrust in the relationship. This normally leads to temporary relief or “oiling” of the relationship since the assumption is that both partners cannot overcome the basic personality flaws in our society — that is, they are unable to be objective and loving. It is assumed that many times we interact with others — including our closest friends and lovers — from the stance of negative social feelings such as fear, anxiety, anger, mistrust and defensive combativeness. Such negative feelings that drive our passions in human interactions express the alienated character’s fundamental flaws. Most times healing of relationships can be done only by the healing of the alienated character which results in a serious change of character. Yet since this is not possible for most people in our society, the answer of mainstream psychologists is to improve self awareness by learning to improve the management of the negative feelings. This is done by teaching the couple how to develop better empathy toward one another with acceptance of each other’s crippled character.
For example as we saw earlier the technique of mirroring4 never deal with the fundamental hidden social problems of the couple: why, for instance, after the honeymoon of “falling in love” is over, many couples retreat into patterns of fights where they destroy each other over petty issues? Why the life of many couples in our society is dominated by negative feelings toward each other that are originated and re-enforced by the terrible stress from living in this society? Mirroring and similar techniques cannot help in the long run as long as a better understanding of the negative feelings of the other does not extend to the couple fundamental flows that comes from alienation. As long as the couple still relate to each other from the deep anxieties and insecurities of the alienated character in our society better communication can only soothe the tension between them temporarily. How does better understanding of negative feelings help, for example, if the fundamental stresses that greatly enhance such feelings is caused by long hours of work with inhuman conditions that cannot be changed?
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[3] This is only an example about the need to be objective and at the same time non-judgmental in a couple’s relationship, which a requirement for real dialogue when we communicate with others. The same essential problems in communications exists between siblings or friends; while they manifest themselves somewhat differently — sometime the emotional “investment” into one another is not as strong as in a couple’s relationship — the essential way in which the difficulties in communications manifest themselves is the same.
[4] See Chapter 6, “The Essence of Today’s Conformist Psychology.”