(2/4) Norms and identity

Second part in a series. First part here: Accepting and justifying traditions.

So humans have a tendency not to question established norms and tradition, not to become overloaded through them. In this post I will discuss when this becomes a problem. Accepting normativity can lead to opression or foreclosed identity. First, let's look at opression.

Norms and opression

First of all, structures can confer power to some people, and we then might consider this power natural and not something to question. Patriarchalism and gender roles for instance; There are heavy expectations on gender roles, especially the female role. These gender roles disempower women, but we consider this role something naturally feminine, and thus it needs not change.

Secondly, people may be refused their way of life if it deviates from the norm. People become very, very provoced when other people prove to them that another way of doing things is possible, and thus cognitive dissonance prompts them to stop the deviants. Same sex marriage and adoption for instance - What if you don't need a man and a woman to make a family? Then what is our traditions and norms good for? What if they are pointless?

Humans must have clear borders to live within, our the anxiety over what to do will become too much. Some people will fear these borders and measures of how to live will shake and crumble when we challenge them. Even the opressed people may promote these norms to avoid the cognitive dissonance of realizing they're accepting abuse from other people.

Identity and mental health
Finding your own answers and forming your own identity is preferable to accepting normativity.

Again, let's go back to my model of mental health. In this model, I have put health above normality. (As did Lucien A. Buck) I stated that it is better to find your own answers to who you are, what is moral and how to do things than to uncritically accept these from society, parents or other authorities. The process of "finding oneself" is described by James Marcia (epigon of Erik H. Erikson), who outlines four states of identity. Once again, I'm quoting Wikipedia.

A) Identity Diffusion, is the status of individuals who have not yet experienced a crisis or made any commitments. Not only are they undecided about occupational and ideological choices, they are also likely to show little interest in such matters.

B) Identity Foreclosure, is the status of individuals who have made a commitment but not experienced a crisis. This occurs most often when parents hand down commitments to their adolescents, usually in an authoritarian way, before adolescents have had a chance to explore different approaches, ideologies, and vocations on their own.

C) Identity Moratorium, is the status of individuals who are in the midst of a crisis but whose commitments are either absent or are only vaguely defined.

D) Identity Achievement, is the status of individuals who have undergone a crisis and made a commitment.

So, what is the problem with foreclosure? Well, the first is that by not challenging and scrutinizing societies' norms and answers, you might allow yourself or others to be oppressed, as outlined above. Secondly, withouth properly thinking through who you are and how you wish to live, experimenting and searching during a moratorium, your sense of self won't be as stable. I'll elaborate:

When searching yourself for answers, you get to know yourself. You feel more at ease with yourself. By working your answers through, you reach a deeper understanding of them than the hollow granted-at-surface of foreclosure - You can present rationals for the choices you've made, rather than justifications.

Furthermore, as you walk the metaphorical landscape of your inner world to find your place, you learn your way around these landscape. You know them, and thus you can change your position if need be. You can adapt. These are the reasons I've put Health at a greater sense of security than Normality.

In contrast, if you have just decided on a position and stuck with it, rather than exploring it, your understanding of it is more shallow. You cannot backtrack and adapt so to speak, so instead you must defend this position. 

A note on normality

Normality and normativity is something powerful. We fear and condemn the abnormal. To be called unnormal is to be denied you humanity and fellowship with other humans, and it stirs up powerful emotions. The "abnormal" and isolated people, such as schizophreniacs and autists who are unable or unwilling to participate in human society, reject their labels and diagnosises. But do they reject them to maintain their sense of belonging with other people, or do they (in the case of severe symtoms) reject them simply because they've do not care what other people think of them, and thus the concept of insanity holds no meaning to them?

Next part here: Follow the rules or follow your conscience?

Meaning, story, understanding

I've been reading a book on school psychology. (Psykolog i skolan, Schad 2009) This is what Leif Strandberg has to say about learning (my translation and emphasis):

"Letters, symbols, thoughts and knowledge are the tools of freedom and creation of meaning: The freedom to move beyond the world they [the pupils] occupy right now; the freedom to visit strange places and visit people they otherwise never could reach; the meaningful experience that the air they breathe, the water they drink and the stars glittering above are not only wonderful sensory impressions - they can be understood (!), and when they understand one thing they will discover that there is still more to understand, there is always another step to take, and then yet another one..."

And it struck me like a bomb. No, not the point he was trying to convey, but a different idea made up with the same images:

Meaning = Story = Understanding

We can imagine early humans, gazing up into the sky and conjuring stories of what the stars were, from where they came, what their names were... For man must understand the world.

Understanding
In his book Psychological Therapy, Grawe cites Epsteins four basic human needs, the need for orientation and control being the most basic one. (The other ones being increasing pleasure and avoiding pain, the attachement need and the need for self-enhancement) This makes sense - What point would there be to all your mental processes if you couldn't use them to predict and exert control of the world?

So man conjured stories to explain and predict nature, and at the same time gave meaning to nature.

Story
Today we can explain and predict nature through science, but science cannot provide meaning. Meaning is the sign of storytelling, the idea that there is a point to what we just heard - Things doesn't happen for no reason in a story, they happen because there was a lesson to be learnt, symbolism we could recognise or themes we could relate to our own lives. Back in the day, the Pleiades were not just a random configuration of stars, they were seven sisters, transformed into stars for a reason; Zeus had put them there to protect them and comfort their father Atlas, and the reason one of them doesn't shine quite as bright as the others is because she is shamed eternally for having an affair with a mortal. Now that's a story, there is a point to it, and it relates to us  humans, our lives and our emotions.

Meaning
Humans are meningsskapande, (creators of meaning) that is, we seek to understand things in terms of what they mean to us, what emotional significance they carry for us. Events in our life must be interpreted in terms of meaning and emotion to be fully understood and integrated into our psyche. Thus, it can be said that every person has not only their own mental models, but also their own narrative (or story) of their life and the world around them. Psychologist Erik H. Erikson stresses our need to string our history of life events and choices together to make a coherent narrative. If we are unable to make sense of our actions and thoughts, predict them, find a meaning in them, this is a very distressing situation indeed - Our life doesn't make sense anymore!

Sense of Coherence
There is a questionnaire for measuring this in psychology, called Sense of Coherence, or SoC. It measures to what degree your life is characterized by comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. Sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, who designed the model argues that everyone encounters stress in their life, but it is those with a sense of coherence that pull through and manages it, choosing to focus on health rather than disease in his model.

Our lecturer told us that SoC is a good asset when measuring therapeutic progress - Oftentimes other measurements and tests doesn't show improvement: There might be slight improvement on all symptoms and life issues, but no single factor has changed enough to provide statistically significant differences. With SoC you could show that that all these small improvements have lead to a point where the client now feels sie has control of hir life, can understand what's going on in hir life, and that there is a point to hir life - And in the end, that's the one most important thing.

Psychology, sociology, philosophy
In general, therapeutic psychology and psychological qualitative research stress understanding someone's narrative and and their feelings for the world, rather than the cold, hard and objective facts. To be understanding is to know what another person feels, to see things from their perspective.

I suppose this is obvious stuff to students of sociology, but this was the moment things fell into place to me - I suppose you could say I went from knowing it to understanding it, a process sought after in psychotherapy: When the client process something not only intellectually, but also emotionally, it becomes a real process. You need to activate the emotions and work with them to really make a difference. (Process activation)

I think you could also make a parallell to existentialism, the philosophy where mankind must find meaning in a world where science has replaced stories.

I don't really know much about narrative psychology or related sociology, but I think I should check it up. Anyone suggestions for good reads?

Oh, and I picked up Play Unsafe yesterday. Looking forward to it!

Life issues

Buck is, of course, not the only psychologist to explore life issues and what they mean to us. I'd like to take a look at some other psychological ideas, based on the concept that people have to find answers to their issues in life, building their own identity and strategies to handle the world in the process.

A very strong proponent in people's lives is to find answers, to be able to predict and understand their life - Even more so than having a pleasant life. A life you cannot understand is a very frightening thing indeed... Furthermore, we need our assumptions and models to get us through everyday life, not to be completely overloaded by every decision.

Let's have a look at Erikson's stages first:

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development (link)
Erik H. Erikson lists a series of life stages, each in which a growing person has to find an answer to an issue in life: Can I trust? Can I act? Can I love? What is trust to me? What is my relationship to my industriousness? In what way will I convey my love?

Here are some examples of Erikson's stages:

Trust vs Mistrust (0-1 years old) Will my parents take care of me when I need it? Are people basically good and trustworthy or unpredictable?

Initiative vs Guilt (4-6 years old) Suddenly I'm old enough to do things with a purpose. Does my actions give me pride or guilt?

Identity vs Role confusion (13-19 years old) Who Am I? This is the big one, the crux of development, where the previous stages are evaluated and an personal identity is formed.

Intimacy vs Isolation (20-34 years old) How will I handle intimacy, friends, loved ones? What does friendship and love mean to me?

Ego integrity vs Despair (65 years old and onwards) Can I make sense of the life I've lived? Looking back at it all, does it make me wise and fulfilled, or bitter and regretful?

As we grow a little older and and a little wiser, the outcome of these stages provides answers to what life is and how we handle it. We learn life as we live it, as we grow up, so to speak.

Freudian psychodynamics
A paragon for Eriksons model is present already in Freudian psychodynamics; The oral, anal, phallic and genital phases, where the child encounters and must try to master gratification and separation, control, etc.

Attachment theory
Attachment theory is based on the idea that we adapt to how our parents treat us. During our first years, we learn models for how the world and the people around us works, and how we should handle this. Is the world a safe place? Is it a loving place? Can I trust? (Eriksons first psychosocial stage)

A child which believes it is loved and safe will grow up with a sense of security, and dares to explore the world, to open up to it - Another child might keep itself closed up not to get hurt, a third child might have strong ambivalent feelings to the world, reaching out, desperate for love but at the same time rejecting other people, fearing to be rejected itself. These models follow us through our life, shaping our view of the world.

Existentialism
Existentialism stresses how we must find our own answers about ourselves and the world in this modern time - The priests, kings and traditions doesn't give us the holy, unquestionable answers anymore. Existentialism stresses the questions which are common to all humanity, though: Life and death, love, identity... They are a part of our existence, and so everyone must face them at some point.

I have previously mentioned how humanistic psychotherapy, inspired by existentialism, uses the client's own words rather than theoretical psychological terms. Every client must decide hirself what hir questions are, what life issues are important, unresolved, and how to understand them. These subjects are called themes. I guess you could define them as "stuff the client feels like talking about again and again" ;-)

Cognitive-behaviour therapy
In cognitive behaviour therapy, an emphasis is placed on (not necessarily conscious) assumptions of the world, answers to how the world works, and from these we form behaviours to handle the world. I believe that when people see me for who I am, they will reject me, and thus I act out whenever we start talking about me, anything to change the subject... for instance.

So the answers to our life issues, or life questions, become models for how to live our lives, which we enact every day.

...

Oh hey, my mother just called. We talked about how hard it is to change the answers you find out in childhood, the models your parents give you. It can be done though, by re-learning from persons that become close to you, or through therapy.