Alienation in the Post Cold War Era
Chapter 4
How Alienation Affects
Our Basic Psyche
(page 4)

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Let’s take examples. The stress of life in the 1990’s — during which both parents frequently must work long hours — exacerbates the tension from a divorce many times. Many divorced parents who had fought for a long time before they divorced instill in their child a great amount of anxiety. Such divorces are extremely frightening and anxiety producing experience for small children. In most divorces in American society the mutual antagonism of the parents usually damages the child’s emotional world even if the antagonism does not manifest itself openly; children pick it up anyway.[6]

So what hostile divorce do to the tens of millions of American children? Most children in such situations experience acute feelings of separateness and loneliness coupled with self-blame for the divorce; the antagonism of the parents is experienced by the child as a lack of love; the child develops the feelings that he/she cannot love her/him self and others (the desire by such children to see their parents come back together represent a desire to overcome such feelings). If the children do not have very loving people around them that counterbalance the negative emotional output from the parents with the love of life and self, such children usually “adapt” or deeply effected by the compensatory mechanisms of the dominant parent. If the primary parent is dramatized from the divorce and the stress of life after the divorce and thus become emotionally stunned and absent from the child life, the child is likely to become emotionally paralyzed as an adult later on. Such adults have great difficulties in opening up emotionally, and they develop compensatory mechanisms such as compulsive cleanness with compulsive punctuality to compensate for the mountains of unbearable anxiety; or alternately such adults could develop a “messy” and oblivious character — they do not take care of themselves because they need to put all their defensive energy to “protect” themselves from the antagonism of life; and thus they are left without the emotional energy to deal with many daily tasks. Which opposite they develop depends on their temperament and the specific circumstances.

We can also take the example of a child of a mother who is very insecure, and who uses a neurotic overprotection of her children as a way to compensate for her deep insecurities and hostilities toward life. Such a mother normally claims that she loves her children more than anything else; that they are the center of her life. She seems to sacrifice her life for the sake of the children. But such a mother cannot develop self love and a loving relationship to the world and other people. She uses the overprotection of her children to compensate for this. Normally such a mother have unconscious hostility toward her children, and such feelings are detected by the children at some levels. The child of such overprotective and overbearing mother can develop as an adult a tedious personality in which the “protection” and “safety” of the familiar environment plays a decisive role. Such persons tend to be adverse to taking risks and acting with courage; they use the routines of everyday life as a compensatory measure to feel secure and avoid the abyss of anxiety and loneliness. Such people will likely to chose a partner who is non-threatening to the deadness of their personality. At the age of growing pressure for long hours of work, such routinized personality can easily internalize the routine of long working hours. In the last analysis, capitalist society uses the growing insecurities from the growing stress of ugly divorces, and the growing fear of loneliness for its own advantages: for the development of a more tolerant breed of a conformist personality. As we saw that starts with children who do not get consistent love with the encouragement for independent growth and personality.

Another very important compensatory mechanism that is a favorite in today’s culture is the development of a personality that emphasizes the fast intellectual capability and the ability to manipulate data. Such a personality develops an ego in which self- worth is centered around the glory of intellectual abstractions and the manipulation of data. Such personality usually comes at the expense of aliveness, and the ability of the person to experience deep feelings not to talk about expressing them. Such personality is also cultivated many times in childhood. It is cultivated mainly in a middle class culture in which the parents condition love with the ability of the child to show off “smartness” and talk about the data of the dominant culture: books, music etc. Such a child is discouraged to express strong feelings and in particular negative feelings toward the parents. Such children who are terrified to disappoint their parents suppress many feelings. They experience “love” with intellectual success at home and in school but their basic deep anxiety and inability to connect with others remain deep inside them. Such children develop smartness and the ability to manipulate data with self confident as a comfort or as a protection against their inability to experience their deeply suppressed emotions. As adults they experience deep anxieties and lack of self-worth when they encounter strong spontaneous feelings that contradict their “smart” personality and their comfort with abstractions. They have little capability to experience themselves spontaneously, and they compensate by showing off their “smartness” as a key for a “successful” life.

Such people lack the ability to experience themselves as grounded humans with deep feelings that are their own. They cannot say with pride and love “I am”. They do not use the mind and their analytical capabilities in unison with the ability to experience spontaneous feelings of joy or even sadness. They experience their intellectual capability as an alienated thing. The abstractions in their heads are alienated data hostile to their humanity which is deeply suppressed in their unconsciousness. Sometimes, more often then not, their acute absorption with lifeless data propel the elements of the necrophilous personality, that is, of a person who is obsessed with lifeless dead things. Such people obsess with lifeless data at work, money, or consumption of lifeless things, rather than being in nature or experiencing feelings of aliveness and joy with others.[7] Their “smartness” that compensates for the lack of emotional aliveness goes together with their inability to overcome separateness and love deeply. Such a personality is used greatly in today’s emotionless world in which an abstract busy lifestyle is greatly encouraged to be combined with abstract data associated with computers and the internet. These people emotionless “smartness” is exploited well by such culture.

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[6] Children experience negative emotions from the closest people very strongly until they develop the social skills to dampen negative emotions or put them in social context outside their immediate needs.

[7] For more about the necrophilic personality, see Eric Fromm, The Heart of Man, pages 35-70.