Addendum to Parental Expectations, and Damaged Self-Esteem

Addendum to Parental Expectations, and Damaged Self-esteem

The purpose of this addendum is to provide additional motivational dynamics, in order to better understand, Bo Schembechler’s character regarding his aggressive behavioral tendencies. As we know, we all start out and begin life feeling insecure and powerless. Personality develops, as a result of parental, peer group associations, socioeconomic religious, and environmental interactions. Within our being, unfortunately, anxiety and fear stay with us in varying degrees. With anxiety and fear, unfortunately often follows anger and the expression of aggression.   For too many, inappropriate, aggressive and hateful interpersonal explosive interactions are too frequent. Fortunately, there are various ways to compensate. Some mechanisms are good and some are bad. For instance, the feeling of power, is one way to compensate, and is appropriate in a non-neurotic person. In this case, the individual has the realization of his own superior strength. That sense of superior strength can be expressed in numerous ways. It can be physical, mental, including being wise and having wisdom.

For too many others, it results in more of a striving for power. This striving for power is often expressed toward members in the family, towards political figures and ideas, economic philosophies, educational attainments and settings and even pertaining to the area of sports, etc. In other words, a neurotic striving for power can be born out of anxiety, hatred, and feelings of inferiority. The emphasis is on the neurotic. In other words, normal striving for power becomes born out of a sense of strength, while for the neurotic, the striving for power is born out of a sense of weakness.

Anxiety is a major cause in the development of a neurosis. Unfortunately, with anxiety, we often find anger and often the expression of aggression. This also means this the individual is on guard, so to speak to any form of perceived helpless, or weakness in himself. As a consequence, he exhibits behaviors that are diametrically opposed to this often unconscious sense of insecurity. His anxiety is a clue, although he may be consciously unaware. The striving for power is paramount to essentially an emotionally protective device against the danger of feeling or being regarded as insignificant. This neurotic individual develops the irrational idea that because of his own “strength,” he should be able to master any situation, no matter how difficult it is to accomplish. Just put your mind to it. The perception of any weakness is experienced as not only dangerous, but as a disgrace. Therefore, this individual, by perception, classifies people as either “strong” or “weak.”  In essence, he admires the strong in attitude and despises the weak, in attitude. Furthermore, the neurotic’s anxiety and insecurity translates into the desire and drive motivationally to control others and to have his own way. He is inclined to want to be right all the time and dislikes being proved wrong, even if it is only an insignificant detail. Some refer to this as being narcissistic.

To Be Continued