reading

The Glendon Association Los Angeles, California

INSIGHT BOOKS

Human Sciences Press, Inc.

Firestone, Robert.

Psychological defenses in everyday life.

Rev. ed. of: The truth. cl981.

Bibliography: p.

Includes index.

1. Psychotherapy. 2. Truth. 3. Defense mechanisms (Psychology), I. Catlett, Joyce. II. Firestone, Robert. Truth. III. Title. [DNLM: 1. Defense Mechanisms. 2. Psychotherapy. WM 420 F523t]

RC480.5.F47 1989 616.85’2 88-9477 ISBN 0-89885-454-7 _________________

ISBN: 9780967668468

This volume is a revised edition of The Truth: A Psychological Cure, by Robert Firestone and Joyce Catlett, originally published in 1981 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., and subsequently published in paperback as The Truth: An Approach to a Psychological Cure by Everest House Publishers.

The names, places, and other identifying facts contained herein have been fictionalized and no similarity to any persons, living or dead, is intended.

A Subsidiary of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 An Insight Book

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher

Printed in the United States of America

To our patients and friends who contributed the truth of their personal experiences as well as their intellectual analyses

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface to the Revised Edition

Introduction

I. THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY

Defenses

The Mixed Messages of Society

Why Most Parents Have Difficulty Sustaining Loving Relationships with Their Children

Social Pressure

II. PATTERNS OF DEFENSE

Reliving vs. Living—Destructive Repetition

Withholding—A Basic Hostility Toward Self and Others

Playing the Victim

Painkillers

Fantasy—The Great Painkiller

Bonds—Destructive Tie

III. DESTRUCTIVE MANEUVERS

Man vs. Woman and the Myth of Jealousy

Natural vs. Traditional Views of Sexuality’

Vanity and Its Destructive Effects

Negative vs. Positive Power

You’re Not Nice—The Incidental Destructiveness of Defenses

IV. THERAPY IMPLICATIONS

An Approach to Nondefensive Living—The Therapeutic Value of Friendship

Critique of Traditional Psychotherapy

Denying Death—The Ultimate Defense

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgments

THE AUTHORS WOULD LIKE TO EXPRESS THEIR APPRECIATION to Jeremiah Kaplan, who had faith in the value of this book in spite of the challenge it presents to psychological defenses. We would like to thank Cecilia Hunt, whose editing helped make this book more readable by a wide audience.

We are also grateful to Barry Langberg and Tamsen Firestone, who contributed their ideas to the organization and rewriting of the manuscript; to our agent, Frank Tobe; and to the many typists and proofreaders who worked with our word-processing consultants to complete the final draft: Linda Clark, Eileen Parkes, Jan Brown, Susan Short, Anne Baker, Sara Bartlett, Patty Lubin, Sonya Rousso, Robyn Parr, Marcia Mirman, Catherine Cagan, Scott Cranmer, Richard Catlett, and Tom Chester. And, finally, our thanks to Linda Benvin for all her help during the production of this book.

We would also like to express our appreciation to Norma Fox of Human Sciences Press and Ana Perez of The Glendon Association for their support and help in completing the revised edition.

The authors gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following:

from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. Copyright 1923 by Kahlil Gibran; Renewal Copyright 1951 by Administrators C.T.A. of Kahlil Gibran Estate, and Mary G. Gibran. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Reprinted by permission of McGraw-Hill.

from “Prisoner of Love” by Leo Robin, Clarence Gaskill, and Russ Columbo. Copyright 1931 Edwin H. Morris & Company, A Division of MPL Communications, Inc. Copyright renewed 1959 Edwin H. Morris & Company, A Division of MPL Communications, Inc. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Preface to the Revised Edition

THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS BOOK, formerly published under the title of The Truth: A Psychological Cure, has had a significant impact on those mental health professionals and members of the general public who read the work and valued the insights and personal understanding therein. This popular version of my theoretical approach was written for the lay public as well as for psychologists and psychiatrists. We felt that it was important to reissue the book at this time because of the continuing demand for it from psychotherapists and mental health specialists, many of whom recommend that their patients read it as an adjunct to their sessions.

This revised edition has been retitled Psychological Defenses in Everyday Life. The new title better represents the book’s focus and intent and more accurately describes our basic hypothesis about the interaction between the individual and society. It is our thesis that man’s basic mental health problems are related to an overgeneralized system of psychological defenses. We conceptualize society and organized social pressure as representing a pooling of these individual defenses. Therefore, conventions and social mores tend to support and condone the maintenance of traditional habit patterns that have a destructive effect on the individual. We contend that man can live without dishonesty, distortion, and defensiveness, without the protection he needed as a child. In living openly, a person would necessarily experience more of both the pain and the joy of his existence, represent himself honestly, and interrupt the chain of destructiveness from generation to generation. A society without unnecessary rules and restrictions, roles, and mixed messages would be possible if men and women fought to be free of their restrictive upbringing.

We would like to express our appreciation to our new publisher, Human Sciences Press, for recognizing the unique value of this work and its profound effect on those searching for personal understanding. We want to thank them for their cooperation in making the revisions necessary for the new edition. Our hope is that the book will continue to help people in their struggle for personal freedom from the debilitating defenses and cultural myths that limit their lives.

Introduction

I HAVE SPENT THE PAST THIRTY YEARS working with my patients and friends trying to overcome one of the most puzzling and frustrating aspects of human nature: the stubborn and unconscious resistance to a better, more emotionally rich life. Though we know that people’s psychological defenses, which protected them from pain when they were children, later play destructive limiting roles in their adult lives, keeping them insulated, mechanical, and cut off from their feeling of love and compassion, it has often been difficult to understand why those defenses are so hard to give up when they are no longer needed. Over the years, I have come to understand that not only are these defenses deeply rooted, but they are also intertwined with those of the larger society.

Out of my work, I have developed a broad concept of a cure for neurosis that will help those who are brave enough to accept the truths about their early lives, their present relationships, the society at large, and the reality of their finite existence.

There are two guiding principles in this book. The first is that there is no simple, quick cure for individual unhappiness or for society’s ills. The second is that nonetheless people really can change. They can change their lives enormously. This second principle challenges the deep-seated myth that people and things are basically unchangeable, in spite of many social and technical advances. Most people believe, on a deep level, that “People are what they are” and that “You can’t change human nature.” On the contrary, there is no psychological problem or emotional malady that is impervious to change, providing a person has both motivation and understanding.

My experience observing and interacting with people in experimental social milieus has impressed me with an unhappy truth about most people: the perversity with which they refuse to accept nice treatment and a positive environment; it is perhaps the greatest limiting factor in psychotherapy and in people’s lives in general. Unbelievable as it may sound, most people cannot tolerate the kind of life they really desire. Most of us reject or manipulate our environments to keep from feeling an emotional experience that contradicts our early conception of reality. This is a major reason for our resistance to change.

Learning to live with the truth is the only way to get what we want and enjoy it. As compelling as fantasies or illusions can be, they cannot satisfy our deep need for a sense of reality. Nothing but the truth can truly fulfill that need. For each of us, our defense system is our illness; it “protects” us from the truth. It is a painkiller and an anxiety reducer, just like a drug. Withdrawal from the addiction to defenses and illusions is the path to cure, but it is not an easy cure. The truth can be like a bad-tasting medicine, but it can effect a real and dynamic change in us. In learning what originally caused us pain and distress, what we originally had to protect ourselves from, we can stop blaming the outside world for our misery and begin to do things to challenge and dismantle our defense system. This self-examination will make us anxious, but as we adjust to the anxiety, we can begin to change our lives.

My optimism about writing this book sprang from my feeling that people, by understanding the nature of their defenses and the myths of their culture, may well decide to challenge them both. They might choose to go against the habitual patterns that deaden them. By understanding how pain and neuroses are passed down from generation to generation, they might decide to break that chain. They could choose to live by an implicit code of morality that minimizes psychological suffering, a morality that doesn’t fracture their feelings and experiences or those of others, a morality that enhances their wellbeing and personal development. If this book can be a step toward creating a society that is sensitive to the emotional and psychological fulfillment of its members, I would feel more than deeply gratified.

Robert W. Firestone

I. The Individual and Society

Defenses

OUR SOCIETY ACTUALLY EXISTS as a kind of negative afterimage. We all live in a crazy, backward world, often unaware of the lies and double messages we are given. If we could be free for a moment to catch a glimpse of our true situation, if we could view our society as a visitor from another planet, we would be stunned at the nightmare in which we live. The things we are expected to believe about ourselves and about society are frequently the very opposite of the way things really are. Unhappily, the individual and all the members of our society are often unconsciously working together to maintain a largely defensive and dishonest way of living.

As a clinical psychologist, I have devoted my life to studying and understanding human psychological suffering and to helping alleviate that suffering through psychotherapy. This has been the compelling interest in my life. For the past thirty years, I have been working with individual patients and discussing the problems with colleagues and friends. Initially, I practiced intensive individual psychotherapy with schizophrenic patients and then extended my interest and practice to include more “normal” neurotic people. Also, at different times, associates and friends who were not patients have volunteered to participate in my search.

I have found that there are concepts and ideas that can be of considerable assistance to anyone who wants to understand the source of his pain and who hopes to find an honest way out of his suffering. These ideas may be painful. They may destroy illusions you have about yourself and your life. But facing up to your defenses is the only way to live your life more fully.

How Defenses Are Formed

One crucially important truth to face is that destructive processes in your way of living may be deadening you as a thinking, feeling person. Usually you don’t know what you are missing because you have never allowed yourself to taste the difference. We often unconsciously turn our backs on our real feelings and real desires, and this self-denial is the core of a self-destructive process that deadens us emotionally and cuts us off from our deepest personal experiences. What is ironic is that the self-destructive process originated in the defenses that protected us and helped us to avoid painful feelings as children. What began as ways of freeing ourselves in situations we couldn’t change or run away from became our imprisoning agents.

I want to make it clear that having emotional problems does not mean a person is sick. An individual’s present-day emotional problems exist primarily because, at various points in his early life, he tried desperately to avoid psychological pain that threatened to overwhelm him. There are many ways of cutting off pain. You may have protected yourself against the pain by blocking it off, soothing it away, retreating into fantasy, vowing to never take a chance again, or even falling asleep to escape. Over a period of time, like everyone else, you built a defense system, using these methods and many others. These defenses that you built long ago are now what cause most of your misery. You are like a knight in a suit of armor who cannot move freely. You are trapped in your iron fortress.

To illustrate, a woman patient I treated several years ago was imprisoned within a self-protective defense system she had built as a child. Gretchen’s defenses severely limited her and had kept her distant from people all her life. Gretchen’s father, an auto mechanic, often used her as an “assistant” when he was working on projects in the garage at home. From the time she was six years old, Gretchen spent long hours helping her father, who was impatient and perfectionistic in his work habits. Whenever she was slow or incompetent, he became angry at her. If she cried, he became angrier and often hit her. In general, he was overly critical of her throughout her childhood, never acknowledging her efforts to please him.

As Gretchen grew up, she believed that all men were mean and critical like her father. During high school, she had very little contact with boys until she met the high-school football star. She began dating him but was rejected when he fell in love with her best friend. This painful rejection confirmed her view of men, and she secretly vowed never to fall in love again. However, she later married and had two children. The problem was that she chose a man who was critical and demanding like her father.

Gretchen’s self-protective vow didn’t help her. It imprisons her to this day—and it imprisons her husband and children. She cannot feel much affection toward them. In denying her loving feelings toward men, she has cut off most of her natural affection in general.

In a certain sense, Gretchen did have other choices. She could have given up her assumption, her prejudice that all men are mean. She could have taken a chance, challenged her self-protective attitudes, and developed a relationship with a man who was accepting and uncritical. But instead, she chose to marry a man who would criticize her. She was imprisoned by her defensive attitudes, and these attitudes predisposed negative choices that caused her to relive her early life. In that sense, she was neurotic.

Gretchen developed into a deeply cynical woman, and her point of view about men was unshakable. Unconsciously, she anticipated anger and criticism from men and behaved in ways to provoke it. In the office where she worked, she hovered around her boss, waiting for dictation. Her behavior was servile, but her facial expression was hard and set in deep, sullen lines. She often acted incompetently and made clerical mistakes, thus provoking her boss into the same kind of rage that her father had expressed toward her years before. Her negative view of men was verified again in the work area.

In her marriage, Gretchen played the role of the victim, but she was not aware of it. In her view, her husband was hostile. True, she had chosen a man who was critical, but in trying to make her marriage correspond to her early family life, Gretchen needed to continually provoke her husband. Unconsciously, she sought the same mistreatment from him that she had received from her father.

One of Gretchen’s constant provocations involved the mail. Her husband, Mitch, liked to have his mail left on a table in the hall so that he could easily find it. Gretchen rarely placed the mail where Mitch wanted it. It would get mixed up with the children’s school papers or sometimes even be thrown away. Mitch pleaded with Gretchen to keep his mail together in one place. He really didn’t care where; she could even leave it in the mailbox. He only wanted to be able to find it when he got home from work. But Gretchen withheld this simple courtesy for years. On the surface, this provocation appeared to be innocent forgetfulness, and Gretchen never admitted that it was anything other than absentmindedness.

Gretchen’s tendency to withhold sometimes led to a direct confrontation with her husband. In an individual session, Mitch related an incident where he had become extremely provoked by her procrastination.

I was really looking forward to my vacation and our trip across country. I had been busy packing the camping equipment and loading the station wagon. When I finished, I sat in the front seat for about twenty minutes, waiting. Gretchen had said she would be right out. Finally, my patience ran out. I went back into the house. Gretchen was on the phone with one of our neighbors. I couldn’t believe it. I was furious. The kids were sitting around waiting for her, too.

I whispered loudly to Gretchen, “Who are you talking to?” Gretchen shot me a look that could have killed, a look of contempt that I’d seen hundreds of times before, but it had never registered with me that much. That look had always made me stop cold in my tracks and feel like apologizing for bothering her. But not this time.

I just became more furious. I felt enraged. My daughter was there in the room, so I really controlled myself. By now she was smiling that fake smile of hers and hating me with her eyes.

I swear, I shook with the feeling. I remember gripping the edge of the bar until my knuckles turned white. She finally hung up and walked really fast toward the bedroom. I caught up with her and (this is what I’m ashamed of) I grabbed her by the arm hard. I said something like, “Just one minute! The kids and I have been waiting for you for the past half hour. Don’t you ever keep me waiting again, do you hear?”

I squeezed her arm harder. She looked like she was going to cry. She told me to let go of her arm. She said that she didn’t know what I was talking about, that she’d been hurrying as fast as she could. She was whining and crying and saying that I never noticed that she needed help getting the kids ready and that she’s with the kids all summer and they drive her crazy and that I should be more firm with them. She went on and on. I yelled at her to shut up. I was shocked at the sound of my voice. I had hardly ever shouted at her like that. Then she really cried. I remember her saying, “You’re scaring me. You’re scaring the kids. What’s come over you? Please stop yelling at me.”

She looked like a pathetic little girl. Suddenly I wasn’t angry any more. I felt sorry for her and scared by what I had done. I looked around to see if the kids had heard. They weren’t there. For that I was grateful. I would have been humiliated for them to witness that scene. I went out to the station wagon. The kids were there, waiting. They stared at me. I felt terrible. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as bad as I did at that moment. In a few minutes we were driving down the highway. The sun was shining and everything looked as if it would be a great vacation. But I felt nothing of that. I was depressed and worried. Strangely, I started thinking about money, about having no savings, that the station wagon was over four years old, that I was a lousy provider.

Gretchen had been able to provoke the response she wanted, first by keeping Mitch waiting and then by acting helpless and innocent. She had been successful in her manipulations, but she and Mitch were both miserable as a result. The outcome is a common one. People often sacrifice positive experiences with their loved ones in order to keep their defense system intact. This is what Gretchen did on the morning of what could have been a pleasant vacation.

Some men feel that all women are out to trap them and take away their freedom. This feeling might have been accurate during a particular man’s childhood; his mother may have refused to allow him the independence he needed as he grew older. But if today he chooses a woman to marry who is extremely possessive of him, he, like Gretchen, is making a neurotic choice. His defense system is the trap, not the woman he marries. As an adult, he has far more control over the situations in which he puts himself.

One of the great dangers of defenses is that they are indiscriminate. A person begins by not trusting one person, usually for a very good reason, but he can end up trusting no one. Once he is “burned,” the scar tissue that originally protected him from further damage now only causes disfigurement. The defense that once saved him now causes him more pain.

I see neurosis as a process of reliving rather than living—choosing bondage instead of freedom, the past instead of the present. Neurosis is a childlike clinging to our defenses, our fantasies, and our connections to our parents long after this behavior has ceased to be appropriate.

Defenses are not easy to shed. They are even difficult to break down when there is a change in environment while a person is still young. Eric was a young boy who didn’t want to take another chance on people.

Eric was seven years old when his mother became too ill to take care of him. His father was unemployed and spent much of his time at home, drinking and physically abusing his son. A close friend of Eric’s mother took him into her home to look after him until Eric’s mother recovered. The friend had known and loved Eric since he was an infant, and it had caused her a great deal of pain to see him neglected by his mother and mistreated by his father. Eric liked his mother’s friend and had always responded warmly to her. Over the next several months, the friend and her husband tried to repair the damage that had been done to the child. These were two people who, with their genuine affection and intelligence, should have been able to help this battered child. But Eric rejected their warmth and love. He became sullen, unruly, provoking, and mean. And in anger he tried to destroy several of his new toys.

It was tragic. Eric couldn’t tolerate the positive atmosphere of his new home because his defenses were already too well developed. He tried to provoke the same kind of treatment he was familiar with at home. Eric was afraid to take another chance and perhaps be hurt again, even though he was in a situation where the odds were totally against his being mistreated.

We are—all of us—not too different from Eric, though our early lives may not have been as traumatic as his. The cynicism, the lack of trust, the things you keep secret because you’re ashamed, the whole process of being inward and secretive to “protect” yourself hurts you far more than any external event in your life today. Refusing to take any more chances because you want to protect yourself is more than a no-win solution; it can be profoundly self-destructive.

Defenses take different forms. There are painkillers that soothe us, put us to sleep physically and emotionally, dull our pain, and keep us emotionally deadened, as well as illusions that help us maintain a false image of ourselves and a false sense of security. Smoking, excessive drinking, overeating, compulsive sex, long hours of television viewing—all of these defenses are used to regulate anxiety and keep pain at low levels. They are what we call ego-syntonic. All defenses are addictions, and these particular ones are harder to break because they make us feel better temporarily.

The first step toward learning to live without defenses lies in knowing what your problems are. Your problems are your defenses, and your system of defenses is a neurosis. Ironically, your system of painkillers is what is causing you so much pain.

One of the first steps toward giving up your defenses is to realize that you’re not too different from anyone else—we are all well- defended. All of us suffered varying degrees of emotional pain as children, but we’re not sick or deeply disturbed. When we were children, we formed imaginary connections with our parents in an attempt to ease anxiety and pain. Our parents probably felt that we belonged to them, and we drew some satisfaction and security from that illusion. Naturally, we felt less alone and vulnerable if we thought we were permanently connected to someone, even if it was only a fantasy, and even if the relationship was largely negative. Because this made us feel secure, as we grew older we probably attempted to recreate this relationship with our parents in other people or institutions, or, if all else failed, within ourselves, in our heads.

Deep down, we still feel, as so many parents have said, that “The family will always be there” and “No matter what happens, you can count on your family.” What we fail to see is that this conscious or unconscious image of a close family structure is often an attempt to avoid the real pain of facing the feelings of rejection and aloneness that we experienced as children. We avoid painful truths from the past and pay the cost by giving up real experiences and personal dignity in the present.

Many parents gave up the real affection they had for their children and substituted role-determined feelings and behavior deemed appropriate by society. Birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, and funerals are occasions that offer clear-cut examples of the effects of socially-determined responses. We are supposed to feel something at these events, but what we allow ourselves to feel is very often not real. In fact, we may kill off any spontaneous feeling in order to be able to show the “right” (socially accepted) emotion. This defense of showing an “act of love” instead of real affection is not a minor form of dishonesty. It damages us and those people closest to us. Knowing the difference between real feelings and role-determined feelings is a very important step toward change, toward feeling whole.

A father cried at his daughter’s graduation. But at a restaurant later the same day, he made a sarcastic joke when his daughter reached across the table to say that she had felt happy when she spotted him in the audience.

In the first situation, most of the father’s feelings were sentimental (he was remembering his own graduation), proud (he hoped that people would notice that his daughter was the one getting the award for outstanding scholarship), and dramatic (this was the big moment, a huge step forward in his beautiful daughter’s life; also, others were teary-eyed, so it must be an intensely moving moment). His responses had tended to be more role-determined than real.

He had experienced a catch in his breath and a lump in his throat when he first noticed his daughter entering the auditorium. She was leaving for summer school at a distant college, and he had thought simply, “God, I’m going to miss her.” This was a real feeling, but it was too painful for him. So he withdrew into his familiar internal world, which had very little to do with his real feelings. Later at dinner, when his daughter spoke to him affectionately, he cruelly cut her short because he could not tolerate the reawakening of the earlier real feeling. In addition, he added one more twist. When he saw her face fall after his “joke,” he said, “C’mon. I’m just kidding—can’t you take a joke?”

This father had unintentionally hurt his daughter because of his defensive nature. The genuine feeling he had experienced cracked his defense system for a moment, and he couldn’t tolerate it. The daughter, in turn, was largely unaware that her face had registered her hurt. She was more conscious of being ashamed that her father’s remark could affect her so deeply and almost unconsciously tensed her face and body. On some level, she vowed to be more on guard from then on.

As a child, small and vulnerable, you did not have the power to leave or take active measures to cope with stress and pain. You defended yourself against pain and anxiety as best you could under the circumstances. However, these defenses that worked when you were a child tend to persist beyond childhood, and they become neurotic and self-defeating when you generalize them and extend them to other persons and situations.

Defenses that are appropriate to the child who is at the mercy of his environment and who is, in truth, a passive victim of life are not appropriate to a striving, active adult who can control his world to a large extent. Unfortunately, the fear of change often causes us to persist with the defense long after the original situation that stimulated it has passed. Our childhood defenses and false hypotheses about life later restrict and hurt us and damage the people we are close to.

These defenses extend everywhere. As a group, we pool our individual defenses, and this makes up our social order or society. And, completing the cycle, the social order in turn confirms and supports the individual’s defense system and negative world view, making it difficult for him to change, to live nondefensively.

Defenses limit and kill off our everyday experiences. They numb us as feeling persons and rob us of our dignity. A passive victim has no dignity; he only feels hurt pride. This is a tragic way to live, but there is a way out. By giving up some of his prized ways of looking at himself and at the world, an individual will be able to feel like a real person again with dignity and trust and self-respect. As a person begins to experience more of himself and his strength, he will begin to see the possibility of an adventurous life instead of a boring, senseless, repetitive existence. He will have more control of his fate in personal relationships and in every aspect of life. He will develop the mood of an adventurer. An analogy to this kind of life is drawn by Don Juan in Journey to Ixtlan by Carlos Castaneda (1972) when he describes the mood of a warrior:

One needs the mood of a warrior for every single act… . Otherwise one becomes distorted and ugly. There is no power in a life that lacks this mood. Look at yourself. Everything offends and upsets you. You whine and complain and feel that everyone is making you dance to their tune. You are a leaf at the mercy of the wind. There is no power in your life. What an ugly feeling that must be!

A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. But once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That’s abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions. (p. 150)

A warrior cares very much about how he lives; he is in control of his life. I feel that all of us can care very much about how we live and how we express our lives. We all have choices, and one of the best choices we can make is to try to live fully alive, nondefensively.

The Mixed Messages of Society

ONE OF THE MOST SHATTERING blows an individual can sustain is to have his sense of reality distorted or denied. A correct perception of reality is central to a person’s well-being. To mislead him or confuse his perceptions of the world around him is extremely destructive, yet this action is carried out thousands of times a day in families everywhere.

Numerous researchers studying the origins of severe mental illness or psychosis have shown that it is not simply the parents’ rejection that severely damages children; it is the denial of their rejection with double messages that has the most profound effect. Having their sense of reality fractured by parents whose words they trust and believe literally drives children crazy. Rejection and emotional deprivation are serious enough issues in young children’s lives, but if their parents also pretend that they are not rejecting them—if they tell them one thing and do another—they may cause more harm than most children’s egos are capable of handling.

On a larger scale, our society is so permeated with similar types of double messages that one can predict a corresponding effect on a social level. If our sense of reality is being subtly twisted and distorted, if our perceptions are constantly being confused, then we must expect drastic consequences. Mixed messages—where we are told one “fact” yet see something else happening—are prevalent in our society and do have a devastating effect on all of us. It is important to our emotional well-being that we be aware of the contradictions that every day impinge on our sense of reality.

For example, in our society we profess strong support for close, enduring relationships between men and women, yet the reality is that men and women very often are not friends and are not loving toward each other. In fact, despite the “sexual revolution” and male and female liberation, they are still enemies in the battle of the sexes. Their learned, stereotyped attitudes about each other are as discriminatory and deeply-rooted as racial prejudices.

People place a high value on a happy marriage, yet for most couples the marriage ceremony signals the end of romance. Most relationships deteriorate, either rapidly or slowly, and this fact is simply hidden away in the bedrooms of the unhappy couples.

Parents are “supposed” to love their children and raise them to be happy, fulfilled adults, yet most parents are not emotionally free enough to love their children, and most children end up resenting their parents, even after they themselves have become adults. Most books on child-rearing do an untold amount of damage because they promote cover-ups; they teach parents to act the “proper” responses rather than express their genuine feelings. Years of dishonest behavior cause serious damage because it confuses a child’s sense of reality. Parents cannot successfully pretend to love their children. On some level, the child knows that he is being lied to and given contradictory messages. Unfortunately, the child must often sacrifice his own sense of reality to try to fit in with the lie.

Freedom and a democratic form of government are highly valued by all of us, yet most people do not choose to live free, spontaneous lives, the kind of lives that reflect their own points of view. Free from obvious external authorities, people still prefer to set up others as authorities who rule their lives in more subtle ways. Internally, most people are not free either; they are prisoners of their own defense systems.

These are just a few of the thousands of contradictions we face in our everyday lives. However, most people are so emotionally deadened, so cut off from their real existence and from their real feelings, that they rush through life not noticing the insanity around them. They are immune, insensitive to the suffering and miseries of their own lives. They can watch situation comedies on television and laugh at the sarcasm, the meanness, and the mutual nastiness in the dialogue of the characters. They are amused and entertained by these portrayals of their own marriages and families. However, the humor covers the destructiveness in the relationships on the screen and in our own homes. The humor condones the hostility as normal.

The lies and dishonesty of society begin with the individual. We have all grown up in families that have their own contradictions that mirror society at large. Despite the fact that each family or group has its own unique life-style, there are many general attitudes, behaviors, roles, and routines in society that most of us accept uncritically. Many of these socially approved patterns of behavior and points of view reflect the individual defense patterns of each person. Thus, society represents a pooling of individual defense systems. The combined defenses of all of us who live in our society tend to support the particular defensive life-style of each person.

Generally, a couple starts out with genuine love, sensitivity, and respect toward one another. But as their relationship continues, precisely those characteristics that are highly valued by the other person are unconsciously withheld. Because love and openness were withheld within our original family, we tend to resent another person who genuinely acknowledges us and loves us, because it contradicts our earlier experience. Thus, as adults, when routines set in, the beloved begins to resent the lover, and each partner begins to reinstitute his defenses. Each one progressively blocks out the other, and, individually, they are often the most destructive when the other person is being the most outgoing and warm. Finally, both members of the couple are defeated and have lost the feeling of compassion for each other.

Withholding and withdrawal can start very early in a relationship. A young man told his new wife that he loved the way she looked, especially her hair. He said that he liked the way it fell softly to her shoulders, and that he felt proud to walk down the street with her looking so beautiful. The next day, his wife had her hair cut. Her husband was shocked. He felt as if a mean trick had been played on him, and it was true—his new wife had already begun withholding something he admired.

We can all remember times when we have started off with the best intentions toward loved ones, somehow gotten sidetracked, and then just could not reconnect with those feelings. We can remember how good we felt at the beginning of our relationship with our mate, and we wish we could recapture those feelings.

Many of my patients complain to me about their husbands or wives. When I remind them that they chose their spouses, almost without exception they say, “Well, ________ wasn’t like that when we first met.” To a large degree, these husbands and wives are telling the truth. Their mates have increasingly retreated from the loving way they once were.

For some people, this backing away starts even before closeness has a chance to develop. Many people find it too difficult to tolerate even more than one date with someone; they feel doomed to go from one person to another, making little contact. Many people cannot bear feelings of both friendship and sexual attraction for the same person, although this combination of feelings makes for the happiest kind of relationship.

People try to maintain the fantasy that they really love each other long after the romance and tender feelings are gone. The man and woman who stay together yet have retreated from closeness and genuine affection for one another are in a truly unhappy position; this basic dissatisfaction is at the core of their emotional life. These individuals have formed a strong dependence on one another and at the same time will not accept the true reality of their lack of feeling for each other. This loveless dependency increases the destructiveness between them.

The same man who has described a terrible situation with his wife, when asked, “Why don’t you leave her?” invariably answers, “Because I really love her.” It requires a great deal of imagination to see love between these warring couples. By this time, they may be habitually treating each other with insensitivity and disrespect, yet they do not want to face the fact that long ago they ceased to be friends and are now substituting a pretense of love and loyalty. This deception may go on for a long time as the members of the couple attempt to cover up the fact that they have lost the real feelings of love they once had.

For example, Ronald and Sharon, after three years of marriage, had a fantasy of still being in love. They both felt that they had one of the nicest relationships among their circle of friends. In reality, Sharon had come to believe that Ronald was hard to please and generally difficult to be around. She had forgotten that he had once been very attracted to her. Ronald no longer seemed to care that Sharon was too tired to make love and that she wasn’t excited or happy to see him when he came home from work each night.

Sharon believed that she was a good wife and had discovered other ways to please Ronald. She was a perfect hostess and an immaculate housekeeper, and she took pride in keeping the checkbook balanced. But Sharon had substituted serving Ronald for being affectionate with him. Both Ronald and Sharon were deceiving themselves about their relationship. They were no longer in love but were caught up in role-playing.

The denial of truth within the couple is the fundamental dishonesty within the family and the society. The need to protect these untruths leads to hostility toward anyone who might see and expose the truth; an outsider’s point of view must be suppressed to protect the illusions. We often feel angry toward the people who might reveal our own destructiveness. All of us feel ashamed and even paranoid when we are rejected or are destructive and rejecting to others. We would feel humiliated if we were overheard fighting with our mates.

By the time a child is born, both partners have often hardened into a dishonest style of relating and have long since retreated from basic feelings of love for each other. It is likely, therefore, that love will be progressively withheld from the child as well. When these feelings are withheld, there is a great deal of shame and covering up. The myth of family love and closeness must be upheld. The family will cling to one another desperately and dishonestly, attempting to prove the lie of its closeness. It is terrified of exposure and distrustful of outsiders, though family members often treat each other with less respect than they would a stranger on the street.

Form (the roles and routines of family life) is substituted for substance (the real feelings) when friendship is gone. This substitution is possible because parents believe that their children belong to them and because the parents are so defended that they cannot allow real acknowledgment, positive or negative, of their feelings. The contradictions of family life and the cover-up of this basic dishonesty are present in society at large. All of us are drastically influenced by the contradictions we see around us, by the discrepancy between what people say they want and what they really think or how they really act.

Cynical attitudes abound in our society, yet personal happiness is the stated goal. We all say we want happiness and act as though we are seeking it. Yet if happiness were achieved, it would interrupt one of our most prevalent defenses: the thousands of cynical thoughts we entertain about the world, about ourselves, and about members of the opposite sex.

“All women are bitches.”

“Men only want sex.”

“Women are just after security and want to tie men down.”

“Men are always trying to keep women down.”

“A woman’s place is in the home.”

“Men aren’t supposed to cry.”

“The rich and powerful must be corrupt.”

“You can’t fight city hall.”

“There are no honest politicians.”

These attitudes, supposedly based on extensive previous experience, serve as self-fulfilling prophesies and contribute to a general feeling of helplessness. It is hard to imagine that people really believe they can find happiness in the harsh world described by the above thoughts. They are deceiving themselves about seeking happiness, just as many couples pretend to still be in love.

Personal freedom is a cherished value in our society, yet it terrifies most people. Everyone says that he wants the freedom to live his life to his fullest potential. Yet most people run from freedom as they would from the plague. They prefer to feel victimized by the political system rather than live freely in a democratic government. They use these attitudes to support their feelings of powerlessness. Their search for personal freedom is doomed because of their fear and cynicism.

What people do with their freedom often proves that they are really terrified of it. A prominent professor had achieved prestige in his field and felt that his career was successful. Having reached this happy situation, he found himself more aware of the reality of his unhappy relationship with his wife of 20 years, who was severely mentally disturbed. He felt restricted by this insanely controlling, domineering woman, and now, with a spirit of determination, he decided to obtain his freedom. He divorced his wife and slowly began to make some new friends. For a few months he enjoyed the exhilaration of his freedom. Soon, however, this usually sober man could be found in the cocktail lounge of the university faculty club, drinking heavily. Within two years of his divorce, he lost his tenure at the university and was eventually admitted to the alcoholic ward of a local hospital.

In this extreme example, a man essentially destroyed himself after gaining the freedom he had so longed for. Even though he had become externally free, he was still a prisoner of his defenses. It would have been very difficult for this man of intelligence to admit that he was terrified of freedom. Even today, he is probably unaware that he effectively ran away from the life he had claimed he wanted throughout the confining years with his wife. His desire for freedom and his actions after gaining his freedom constitute a strong mixed message.

Conflicting messages and cynical attitudes can have an insidious effect because they interlock with the defense system. There is also a strong social pull to go along with these contradictions, to imitate other people. A person can resist this social pressure by becoming aware of these mixed signals. Becoming more observant of the discrepancy between people’s words and their actions can clear up the confusion he feels when receiving contradictory communications. In addition, if he learns to trust his own perceptions, he can diminish the effect of these conflicting messages, to some extent.

A young couple I know had been dating for several months. They usually met three or four times a week for dinner and then spent the night together. One evening after they had felt very close to each other, Paul told Alice that he was beginning to care for her more than he had for any other woman. He told her that she possessed qualities that he had always wanted in a woman, and that he would like to spend more time with her, perhaps even live with her.

Alice was happy to hear this, but her happiness was short-lived. In the weeks that followed, Paul’s phone calls came less frequently, and the couple spent very little time together. Finally, Alice realized that they had spent only one evening together during the previous ten days. When Alice asked Paul if he was pulling away, he was offended and became angry, denying the true message of his behavior. She felt terrible and confused. Until she confronted him, Alice had believed Paul’s words of love and had been unaware that his actions had contradicted his words for some time. She would have felt less hurt and confused had she paid more attention to his actions.

People can practice a similar kind of scrutiny on themselves and examine habitual patterns of behavior that contradict their stated goals. They could question themselves, “How many times have I said I wanted love, but then pushed others away? How many times have I pretended that others were denying me what I wanted, when in reality I was probably denying myself?”

In relationships, it is vital for people to be honest with themselves and others about those times when they are not feeling loving. Most important of all, they should try to be honest with their children. Deceiving them with white lies in the name of protection confuses them and tends to distort their sense of reality. Children read their parents’ actions anyway, and it is the parents’ behavior