Infancy . Trauma

The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.

In the lead up to this event in 1988 I had embarked on a deep search for meaning in my life. I examined everything that I had ever done. Looking into my past, I examined my involvement in local politics, my social and sexual relationships, my practice of yoga and Buddhism, my standards of ethics.

Over a period of some weeks I gradually found that meaning was absent or non-existent. I had already discovered, in my 20s, that there was no meaning in science. [²]. Now I reached the conclusion that meaning was merely an ethereal will-of-the-wisp. According to the predilection of the person, so science, religion, sex, etc may seem glamorous, but there is nothing underneath that glamour. I gradually understood that all religious and secular doctrines, ideas and practices were nothing more than a hollow panacea over a black hole of meaninglessness, a black hole of nihilism. [³]

This inquiry had been predominantly intellectual in manner, but in November 1988 I followed it through to its psychological termination. I was sitting in my living room at home, looking vacantly out of the window into space – this attitude facilitates reverie and intuitive thinking in me. I was thinking about the complete absence of meaning in life, when all of a sudden my intellectual understanding was transposed into a totally intuitive one and I experienced the emotional impact of that understanding. The transposition was instantaneous and devastating.

In the twinkling of an eye I went from sanity to insanity. The speed of the transition was unbelievable. There was no possibility of defence. My whole being was filled with fear and self-pity (as a mode of guilt). [4]. I was petrified. I could not move my body. My will collapsed completely. I just sat there, staring out of the window, immovable, in utter desolation. I had never before experienced such mental pain – the totality of the desolation is indescribable.

The pain was so intense that I could not endure it. Slowly I resurrected my will and withdrew from that state. This experience had profound and lasting effects on me, among which it instantly deepened my level of self-awareness.

Catatonia is a state characterised by the complete collapse of the will: the adult becomes petrified, his mind overwhelmed by fear and guilt (mode of self-pity). I call this state ‘the desolation of the will’, or ‘DOW’ for short. The central core of a person's being is his / her will ; when it collapses, the resulting state of mind is one of complete desolation. It is unimaginable to anyone who has never experienced it.

However, catatonia is not the original infancy trauma itself but a particular response to it. Another response to the original infancy trauma is schizophrenia: in this response, the person creates an outer mask in order to shelter his fragile inner self, now made unstable by the trauma, from the external world of sorrow.

Infancy trauma is not confined to the children of a few bad parents ; it occurs to most of humanity in some degree and has shaped the course of human evolution (due to its long-term effects on sensitive and creative people). Trauma due to physical abuse is perhaps not the most common kind. I consider that trauma due to the child's mistaken interpretation of unpleasant emotional experience is the most prevalent kind, and it is this kind that I focus on in my articles.

Childhood . Wounds

The original infancy trauma can generate infancy catatonia. I attribute this effect to the infant whilst recognising that its collapse of will is not obvious. The distressed infant hangs on to the mother’s will, and this manoeuvre gives it the appearance of near-normality. In other words, the infant is not in a position to become truly catatonic because of its identification, its bonding, with the mother. My mother often told me that she was baffled as to why I, as an infant, cried so much, much more than infants normally do. My constant crying indicated the destruction of my internal world.

When, during my self-analysis, I abreacted the childhood states of infancy trauma I experienced devastating intensities of psychic pain. This pain proved to me that time does not heal childhood wounds ; the wounds are only banished to the subconscious mind, where they exert a permanent yet unrecognised influence on the ego. (I use the term ‘psychic pain’ to indicate pain that is felt by the ego and its mind, and not pain that is generated by the physical body. Hence psychic pain is the kind of pain produced by negative psychological states such as depression).

In my view, every sensitive and creative person experiences infancy trauma in some degree, ranging from mild to severe. The trauma may not always produce psychosis (catatonia or schizophrenia). Apart from these possible severe reactions the trauma always generates a long-term response: it deepens the intensity of hatred within the child. Hate can be used in two ways: it can be directed at oneself or it can be directed at other people. These responses of hate lead to guilt and pride respectively.

The child desperately needs to withdraw from hate, especially the self-hate. So it flees into either identification or self-absorption. [5]

Subconscious Emotions of the Parents

Identification revolves around a central difficulty, which is that people are unaware of their emotional motivations and responses to life. This lack of awareness in parents can produce severe problems for the infant, especially if the parents are strong-willed or moralistic. In such parents, the stresses of materialism and the stresses of relationships are usually kept repressed and hence are subconscious. The mother passes these subconscious stresses to the infant, as it introjects her emotions. [6]

The mother, rather than the father, usually handles and cares for the infant. The regular close-proximity of the mother and infant means that the infant is regularly within the mother's aura : this situation allows the infant to introject the mother's emotions.

A parent may deliberately ill-treat a child. But this is not what I am attempting to analyse. In the following analysis I am assuming that there is no conscious desire to ill-treat a child. I am highlighting the subconscious dynamics of the mother-infant relationship.

The most unpleasant introjected emotions that the infant has to confront are forms of hatred, especially the hate mode of pride. In a moralistic or a strong-willed mother (as mine was) the morality or the strong willpower go hand-in-hand with a dominant sense of pride. Now pure hate is the emotional dynamic that sustains strong willpower (hate enables the person to cut out any irrelevancies and unimportant issues), and strong pride centres on its hate mode. These factors ensure that modes of hate are a regular occurrence for the mother – though primarily it is the mode within pride that distresses the infant (whereas in a weak-willed mother the subconscious hatred is not so intense).

The mother is also likely to be experiencing abreactive hate regularly. [7]. When a marriage partner has a strong will or a strong sense of pride, there is likely to be little emotional support happening between the couple ; so the effects of abreaction will be felt more intensely. Her moralistic stance will intensify her resentments, since resentment is the ground of social morality. [8]. And when she gets angry, her anger just intensifies the infant’s problems (in an ideal world, when the mother is angry or feeling hateful she should avoid handling and feeding the infant).

The infant absorbs the mother’s subconscious hatred whilst it is trying to construct its ego. The hatred has the effect of de-stabilising the ego whilst it is in the process of formation. In a mother-infant relationship, oscillating between love and hate, the infant cannot be neutral or calm. It has three choices: the first two focus on hatred, and the last one on self-pity. In the first two choices it can either accept the mother’s hate and become distressed ; or it can refute that hate by generating its own hate, thereby becoming aggressive and rebellious. These choices lead to guilt and pride. In the third choice, it can become depressed and filled with self-pity ; this alternative can lead to masochism and sadism. [9]

When the infant accepts the mother’s subconscious hate, it experiences it as being directed at itself ; this turns the introjected emotion into self-hate. The infant is plunged into trauma.

Its primary belief is that it has been rejected.

It creates guilt as its long-term response to the mother. But even guilt (mode of self-hate) is a terrible emotion, especially for the infant. It ‘escapes’ from its predicament by identifying with the mother. Identification is the primary form of bonding, and results from the need to flee from guilt and from rejection. [10]

Two Strategies

There are two common strategies that attempt to accommodate to the pain of infancy trauma – those of schizophrenia and catatonia. These strategies orientate around the two ways that a person can define himself: he can either centre on his social identity or on his sense of being an individual (his individual identity). [11]

The hallmark of schizophrenia is that it refutes the social identity, whereas the hallmark of catatonia is that it refutes the individual identity.

When the person is an adult, the situational pressures may create anxiety of sufficient intensity to de-stabilise the ego. De-stabilising the ego means that the use of the person’s will becomes problematic and vacillating. In this circumstance, the person’s willpower can no longer keep repressed the most potent aspects of the subconscious mind, and so the pain of infancy trauma begins to rise from the subconscious mind into normal consciousness. Then either schizophrenia or catatonia may begin to emerge.

The person who gravitates to schizophrenia tries to deny the social identity and affirm the individual identity, but without success. Schizophrenia is the effect of a denied social identity and a failed individual identity.

The person who slides into catatonia tries to deny the individual identity and affirm the social identity, but without success. Catatonia is the effect of a denied individual identity and a failed social identity.

Like emotions, mental disorders are centred on unconscious ideas.

This article is a shortened version of the article Guilt & Meaning - part 2, on my website Patterns of Confusion. See Links page.

The number in brackets at the end of each reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my websites are on the Links page.

[1]. I explore catatonia and schizophrenia in more detail on my website that explores mental disorders : Patterns of Confusion. [1].

[²]. I discovered that there is no meaning in science through my experience of mental enlightenment. This experience is described in the article Satori on my website Patterns of Spirituality. [2]

[³]. There is an article on Nihilism on my website A Modern Thinker, in the section on Free Will. [3]

[4]. My definitions, descriptions, and analysis of emotions are given in the three articles on Emotion. See home page. [4]

[5]. See the article Identification and Absorption. [5]

[6]. There is an article on Projection and Introjection on my websites The Strange World of Emotion and Discover Your Mind. [6]

[7]. My analysis of the process of abreaction is given in the five articles on Abreaction. See home page. [7]

[8]. The link between resentment and social morality is explained in the fourth article on Abreaction : Resentment and Bitterness. [8]

[9]. Sadism and masochism are the subject of an article on my website The Strange World of Emotion. [9]

[10]. An article on Bonding focuses on some problems of a sensitive child and explains an unintentional source of infancy trauma. [10]

[11]. See the article Two Identities. [11]

Infancy trauma is explained in more detail in two articles on my website Patterns of Confusion.
The first article, Vulnerability of the Ego, focuses on the origins of violence.
And the second one, Guilt & Meaning - part 2, centres on why trauma occurs unintentionally ; it is a more extended version of the present article. See Links page.

The articles in this section are :

Transference

Social Approval & the Inferiority Complex

Identification & Absorption

Infancy Trauma

Bonding

Copyright © 2002 Ian Heath
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The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.

Ian Heath, London UK

http://members.freezone.co.uk/ian-heath/

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