Crippled inside

 

Man, historically, has a rignificant proneness to be asocial and inhumane toward members of his own and self. Some causes relate to primary, secondary and social narcissism, identification, alienation, sadomasochism, fear, reinforcement, emotional conditioning and programming irrespective of the biblical “love thy enemy.” At about 6 months, the infant fears strangers and later learns to hate differences of skin color, race, sexual orientation, and intelligence, religious and political beliefs.  Because of man’s psychological design, it’s far too easy to convince him man that his enemies are nonhuman and belong to another species.

Contrasting man’s aggressiveness toward his own species, the study of paleontology has revealed the following: 1. Researchers found that if the social structure of baboons was not disturbed, there was little aggressive behavior except gestures or threatening postures. 2.  The likelihood of aggressive behavior for chimpanzees was low. 3. Jane Goodall found that a gorilla’s behavior was primarily related to eating, sex and grooming. As far as dominance, her gorillas exhibited assertiveness during the navigation of trail and grooming. The guerrillas used, with an alight tap, the back of their hand to direct another guerrilla. When it comes to defensive aggression or survival, animals can be found to fight or flee.  With that being said, this disquisition looks at violence in a compendious way.

Our 3 basic brain structures include: 1.The Archaic Brain. One function of the archaic brain (lizards and snakes} is instinctual behavior for defending territory and keeping safe.2. The Old Brain (cats and dogs) have many functions one of which includes and found in the ‘amygdala.” The amygdala is primarily responsible for fear, fight or flight responses and anger.  The hypothalamus, another brain function, is the major controlling organ of the autonomic endocrine system. It regulates temperature, hunger, thirst, sexual arousal and the sleep -wake cycle. 3. Humans have the New Brain. This new brain has higher cognition, abstract thought, use of tools, formation and comprehension of language, social behavior, creativity and problem solving. It is called the Executive Function. Let’s reframe and refer to it as the “Destructive Function.”

It’s apparent that man and the animal species are aggressively wired for survival. Paleontology studies have observed animals in the wild and in captivity. Briefly, yes there are predatory animals, but field observations show that aggression is found in food acquisition and mainly as a defensive reaction. In captivity, often an animal will show aggression when a new member enters the setting. Generally speaking, animals are not found to be predatory. They prefer to run or escape as opposed to fighting.

In the evolution of intuitional Catholicism, Adam’s disobedience was considered sinful because of man’s nature. Luther and Calvin agreed and had man dependent on God for salvation. Both the Old and New Testament, with the 10 commandments, acknowledged man’s aggressiveness toward man. Later, Charles Darwin wrote about evolution and the necessity for aggression regarding survival of the species and his “Survival of the Fittest” was published in 1869.

Sigmund Freud wrote, from a biological orientation, about the development of the mind. He identified the master drive or need for survival, the libido and with its aggressiveness as in sadomasochism. He later added the death instinct as a second major competing need or drive. He believed there was an interplay dynamic and struggle between life and death. I’m winning Dr. Freud.

The history of Homo sapiens have glorified  military rulers  Joshua, Alexander the Great, Hannibal, William the Conqueror, Caesar, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent, Francis Drake, Frederick The Great, George Washington, Horatio Nelson, Geronimo, Ulysses S Grant, Eisenhower, Halsey, Lemay, Patton Jr, Rommel Jr, Dayan, Zedong and many others. Our military gives medals for excessive killing. Yes, winning, death, destruction is glorified for the winners. Man’s aggressiveness toward man is noted.

For the past 20 years, our country has been at war in the Middle East and is withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.  We’ve been part of a worldwide pandemic in which there have been over 190 million cases with over 4 million deaths. On January 6, 2021 we witnessed an attack on the US Capital. Certainly the war in the Middle East, the pandemic and capital attack was fight and not for defensive purposes. Moreover, there are numerous shootings and killings every day in this country.  There is little doubt of the preponderance of aggression, on display, directed toward others.

Now, let’s take a look at how man aggressively treats himself. First, Henry Murray built on Freud’s psycho dynamic theory and then created his own theory of personality. Murray stated that the existence of a need can be inferred on the basis of: 1. The effect and result of the behavior 2. The particular pattern or mode of behavior involved 3. The selective attention and response to a particular action of stimulus objects 4. The expression of a particular emotion or affect 5. The expression of satisfaction when a particular effect is achieved and disappointment when the effect is not achieved.

Murray then identified man’s needs that pertain to survival. Our focus is Abasement Need-to submit passively to external force. To accept injury, blame, criticism, punishment. To surrender. To become resigned to fate. To admit inferiority, error, wrongdoing or defeat. To confess and atone. To blame, belittle or mutilate the self. To seek and enjoy pain, punishment, illness and satisfaction.

I know, first hand, about a basement. I have been consistently running, roughly 50 trail miles a week for 50 weeks per year since 1997 totaling over 50,000 miles; approximately 650,000 hours or for a total of a year and a half. Take that Forest Gump! Did I seek and enjoy pain, punishment, illness, and satisfaction? Well, I have often experienced pain, punishment, satisfaction and some injury. Also important, is the ability of having an image of a special food, during a run, which is an aspect of the oral experience and addressed later.

I have experienced discomforts from overuse injury. Treatments included ibuprofen, ice, spa Jets and visits to chiropractor Matt; Monster of Massage Veloyce, physical therapist Jim, and in 2019 to the Dutch Dr. orthopedic surgeon. He told me that I had a knee of a young man. Oh yes, in 2005 I had meniscus surgery on the left knee with Dr. Kevin, one squamous cell surgical procedure and two hernia’s removed. I do my best to rationalize my running obsession. I have read and wrote in “It Has Nothing To Do With Age” about the benefits regarding health. Currently, I am running slower and therefore not likely to experience another overuse injury. In essence, I’m currently satisfied with my abasement need Dr. Murray.

I know a number of NFL and college players. Most were linemen that received honors. They enjoyed their NFL careers and likely would do it again. Ed, Jim, Reggie, Connie, Dan and Mike, with the exception of Ed, are about 10 years younger than me. I can easily run circles around all of them suggesting that they significantly hurt themselves while playing that violent game. Another friend, Thom, is part of a longitudinal Harvard study evaluating the health effects of playing that game.

Noting the need for abasement, certain occupations have high suicide rates. For instance, a recent study stated that police officers are at a higher risk of suicide than any other occupation. Number of police officers who died by suicide is more than triple that of officers who were badly injured in the line of duty. 13.42 out of every 100,000 people have died by suicide in the general population. That number increases to 17 out of every 100,000 for police officers.  Hate supersedes love. California, Florida, New York and Texas suffer from the highest rates of officer suicides.

In the military, a total of 377 active-duty service members died by suicide 2020. Active duty suicides have been steadily increasing since 2016. Also in 2020, there were more than 6,500 Covid -19 deaths and 150,000 infections. They are losing. Then we have military casualties of war. Join the military and learn how to die and kill others as well.

There were 33,244 total motor vehicle crashes the United States in 2019.  36,096 deaths occurred. The fatality rate per 100,000 people ranged from 3.3 in the District of Columbia to 25.4 in Wyoming. With mental illness, there were an estimated 18 million individuals in United States suffering from depression; 40 million affected by anxiety disorders and 1 in 20 children found to have anxiety or depression in the single year.  As far as gun violence, there were nearly 20,000 Americans killed from gun violence in 2020. Plenty of killers in our society.

Turning to oral dependent behavior, the US adult obesity rate stands at 42.4%. There were more than 2.8 million hospital stays every year in the US where obesity was a cause or contributing factor. Approximately 300,000 people die for obesity in America every year. People are eating more processed and high-fat foods, eating larger portions, exercising less, spending more time in front of screens for some explanations. 71.6% of adults age 20 are either overweight or obese.

Excessive alcohol use is responsible for more than 95,000 designated deaths each year. The number of shortened lives that die are calculated to be roughly 29 years or a total of 2.8 million years of potential life lost.  Nearly 841,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose. In 2019, there were 70,630 drug overdose deaths in the country. Further, there are more than 480,000 smoking deaths per year, including more than 41,000 suffering from secondhand smoke or 1300 deaths every day.

Psychodynamically, infants are not born to hate but are born helpless, dependent and begin to form reality. The infant’s tension system is activated when hungry and reduced-pleasure when fed in this primary narcissistic object less phase. How, when, what and the manner in which the infant is fed is considered psychologically a critical period. As in Goldilocks and the Three Bears, the porridge can be hot, cold or just right. Being held, cuddled, talked to and being able to be properly nursed by a warm, secure, non-anxious, healthy and loving caretaker is the issue. Also important is the timing to reduce the tension; the proper amount of milk; or on whose schedule when the infant is fed, especially during night feeding? The feeding process and interaction can be easily disturbed and the infant can be spoiled, constricted, regulated or even in varying degrees frustrated. How much and how often should delaying gratification be implemented? With frustration, conflict and other psychological issues at this stage, a number of timely studies by Spitz, Goldfarb, Harlow, Anna Freud and others found significant infant childhood illness depending upon the dynamics of caretaking.  In Erikson’s psychosocial model, he wrote about whether or not the infant can develops a sense of trust (emotional health and richness of interpersonal interactions) or whether a sense of mistrust was established. This psychological state has implications for inter-and intra-psychological interactions. With mistrust, the ground floor for the development of paranoia and suspiciousness becomes established. Thus, initial emotional well-being or not becomes generalized toward the outside world.

During this oral, mouth, lips and tongue dominance stage of infancy, the infant’s mentation   introjects an object from the outside world. It can take in “love,” pleasure which is a reduction of tension and/or can take in “deprivation” and frustration without the reduction of tension or discomfort and pain. The object, person or persons can also be introjected as “good or evil” and if evil, rage follows and this feeling can be generalized and directed and attributed to others as well. Simply stated, the mother’s character and well-being is of critical importance for optimum child development. If the woman has already been exposed to consistent pleasure in giving and receiving of love, nurturance and respect, as a wife and mother, the chances are high that the baby will greatly benefit despite his rage, resentments, temper tantrums and “I hate you comments.”.

The mouth, the need or an initial anxiety state, can be a source of tension reduction-pleasure or a source of frustrated painful tension. The mouth and tongue can be associated with love, pleasure or zone of receptivity. Essentially, nurturance taken in by the mouth becomes destroyed. For a moment, think about the nursing mother. Initially it’s a wonderful, symbiotic and pleasurable experience. With development of the teeth, biting of the nipple, can change that pleasure experience and facilitate quick weaning. Initially, we see receptive passivity and then we see aggression as in teething, biting, chewing, devouring with more and more pressure. Devouring is aggressive and becomes destructive.

This oral stage is passive and aggressive as it’s the first pleasure or painful zone in psychological development. Difficulties at this critical stage can become tendencies for oral aggression and hate. Oral aggression, later on, can be exemplified passively by arguing, yelling, shouting, spitting, and/or verbalizing hate and violence. This tendency are passive aggressive examples of an individual developing an oral character. In other words, excessive gratification and/or excessive delay equals frustration of the physiological need, at this stage of development. This dynamic often results with the sadistic impulse to attack others. Also apparent, at this stage, with the frustration of that need, becomes the attempt to magically resolve that early oral deprivation by devouring. Now, for the first time can exert dominance, even if short-term, for being in control- a reception of pleasure. Psychologically, this is referred to as going from the passive to aggressive mode.

With significant problems at the oral or psychosocial stage of development, we find that the individual emotionally regresses in the attempt to overcome and undo that initial and traumatic deprivation.  Individuals use their oral cavity or mouth to bring in food. Food is taken in emotionally, compulsively and not related to survival or being full. It’s the emotional emptiness and anxiety that can never be filled. In addition to food, nicotine and drugs are also emotionally and compulsively misused. They provide, at best, only temporary pleasure, distorting reality by reducing the tension. However, unfortunately these substances have long term dependent, addictive and far reaching unhealthy consequences. Alcohol, is another temporary oral pleasure that distorts reality-reducing tension. It also has significant negative long-term ill health effects. No wonder, our hospitals are filled, as the American life span is shortening.

In essence, lack of trust, disturbance during the oral and psychosocial stage of development, sets in motion the prospect for oral fixation. The oral stamp on character cannot be overstated.  With an oral fixation, we find pessimistic outlook tendencies coupled with aggressiveness and rage directed both inward and outward. There is much more to the story about addictive, dependent and self-destructive behavior but beyond the realm of this essay. In other words, ineffective parenting contributes greatly to the development of this dependent and addictive character disorder. Yes, it’s apparent, that the social character in our country has a negative and sadistic oral dominance.

Thank you John Lennon for your song “Crippled Inside.” It’s clear that individuals have a productivity for directing aggression and sadomasochism against others which cripples our country’s mental and physical health. We are harming ourselves and others over and over again with statistics on the rise. There are some, compromised by health and other cognitive issues, but many individuals are making poor choices, seem out of control, and not able nor care to regulate or moderate their sadistic and hateful behavior. They seem as if they want to end their life sooner than later. It’s not the American dream but the American nightmare.  Too much of the population has ineffective “New Brain” evolution.

PS

Do not forget about another self- destructive act like not following public health and common sense recommendations for the Pandemic and its variants. They are spreading the virus of fear and hate with nearly 4 million cases and nearly 65 k deaths. One evangelical pastor (so called spiritual leader) claimed “Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense.”  That ignoramus is teaching hate.

Reference

Fromm, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. A. Fawcett Crest Book

Murray, H. A. Explorations in Personality. New York: Oxford