Roots in Childhood

By early disempowering a child, one teaches that child that he or she will be given no power to manifest his or her will; that he or she will be at the effect of other, more powerful individuals; and that he or she must learn to express their deepest inner needs filtered through the mask of the persona (or false self).

This is the beginning of the Newtonian-Cartesian split of self and other that so characterizes the entire of the dominant society. It is “learned helplessness” (Seligman, 1975), in which one assumes an attitude or guise of dependence imposed upon one by a dominant figure, and adopted as if one’s own.

Once the child has been denied sovereignty, the education system takes over with its regimenting agenda, further reinforcing the conditions and punishments of the “mainstream culture” on the still active and growing individual; forcing the child to accept the mandates of dominant culture before he or she ever even has a chance to investigate and explore his or her own ideas or soul. This forces one to always stay within the box.

Child abuse of every sort only teaches violence – that might makes right. The power inequities of childhood are then further reinforced throughout the lives of most individuals. One rarely has a chance from the start; but I believe, one may and even must redeem (L., “buy back”) oneself eventually. This may be the defining feature of spiritually aware individuals, no matter how sullied or downtrodden they might seem to have been by the ways of the world. One must reach deeply into oneself to find the clarity, strength, and light to manifest a new pattern, to reverse the course of the old, and stand forth revivified in the light of the revelation of self – one does not have to follow the typical pattern of the dominant contemporary society – of pursuing specious riches and power, only to die spiritually bankrupt and soulfully destitute.

This kind of thinking flies in the face of all that one is usually taught. I myself have been an outcast all of my life because of my desires for and ideas about something more than what might easily be obtained by following all of the rules and being a “good boy.” The early injuries I received set the tone for a lifetime of shame, sadness, misery, and addictions from which I am still recovering.
Being invalidated as a boy by my father, and as a person by seemingly everyone else, was an extremely deep and vicious wound. I never ever felt that I mattered, except to my mother who was using me for her own ends too (though in an even more insidious way that it took me years to unravel). The original invalidation was so powerful, and reinforced so many times and in so many different ways, that I became early convinced that I had no value and indeed, no right to exist (cf., Laing’s [1959] concept of “ontological insecurity” [p. 92]).

Having been consistently and persistently shamed for my size and body weight (a direct insult to my personage), I developed a variety of strategies to cope as I now see it. At the time, I see these reactions as being more reactive, and trauma-mediated emergency measures adopted to allow me to survive the onslaughts of my childhood. I harbored tremendous anger, verging on and frequently crossing over into rage on many occasions. I became severely depressed as a result of not allowing the then natural process of venting said anger. I harbored tremendous resentment toward anyone who seemed to get attention and validation of any kind, though especially so when I felt that I could have or should have “been a contender” for such validation: I became morbidly interested in displaying my intelligence at every opportunity – often being seen as a poseur, not as precocious. I took to hiding my thoughts and intentions, especially as to my very early awakening interest in sex. I began to overeat at every opportunity, especially sneaking food whenever possible, in contradistinction to my parents’ increasingly strident demands of me in this arena. I achieved the best grades for any of the boys in the class, though there were sometimes one or two girls who surpassed me.

I remember always seeming to carry the heavy burden of shame, especially around my size and body weight. I was frequently taunted by cruel invective. I was occasionally hit, spit upon, or assaulted for similar reasons. (I remember vividly once being the scapegoat in a snowball fight in the schoolyard when all of the other boys began pelting me, including at least one who put rocks in his resulting in my suffering a bloody scalp wound). I felt wounded and goddamn angry all of the time; conversely I was always wrangling to get, and craving for, the attention of girls upon who I had fixated my developing attentions. I always felt ashamed and intimidated, which had been deeply ingrained in me by my father’s vicious taunts and denigrations; as well by my mother’s overly lavish attentions and demands. (See Recapitulation II [Malecek, 1992/1993; 2001] for the gory details.)