(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?

A model of mental health

During these last few weeks I've been working on a model for understanding mental health and therapy. It is a way for me to make sense of, to make a map of what I'm learning in classes and what I'm exploring in my own therapy. This is my personal understanding of mental health, but I'm hopeful that it will be helpful in understanding and helping others, and curious of which clients and which diagnosises it models well.

I - Life issues
As we grow up, struggle through life, we must all find our own answers to the big questions – Things like....

Who am I?
Is the world a safe, good place?
How do I protect my self from those who would do me harm?
Do I deserve love?
How will I convey my own love?
What sources do I draw from to strengthen my self-esteem, what makes me feel good about myself?
How will I handle a neurological handicap I was born with or a brain injury I sustained mid-life?

Life demands answers to these questions. Our answers become models for handling everyday life, they shape who we are, what we think, what we feel. Without these models, life would be impossibly extorting.

There are some patterns that keep re-emerging as answers to these questions, for instance:

- People neglected by their parents as children become insecure of their self-worth, typically beccoming withdrawn or clingy and love-hungry.
- People denied their individuality and integrity and self-worth (and with the right biological sensitivity) can protect themself by displacing their guilt and shame into an accusing voice or delusions of other people controling them, becoming schizophrenic.
- People who are wrought by difficult loss (by a parent, for instance) and lack of love in their early years may come to the conclusion that it is actually they who doesn't deserve love. This is to retain the feeling they are in control of their life and protect themselves from the very frightening insight that they have to rely on people that deep down doesn't give a shit either way.

Questions resolved in a healthy fashion doesn't follow common patterns of development in the same way, perhaps because mental health is characterised by self-realisation, individuality, to become your own person – That is, to defy patterns and go your own way.
Or maybe just because there is far more research on mental illness than mental health.

Whereas some life questions are resolved in a way that leave the person vulnerable and frail in that domain, others are resolved successfully, and will be a source of strength and confidence for the person, following hir through life. Though typical models keep reappering in the care of mental health, each person, both ”normal” or ”abnormal” must be understood as made up of a unique disposition of life models.

You can understand these "life issues" as a mix of existentialism (It's up to everyone to find answers in life) and cognitive-behaviour therapy. (People live by automatic models, programs so to speak, of behaviour.)


II - Normality
Let us revisit Lucien A Buck's model of normality, placing different answers and strategies to life issues on his continuum of mental health.



Buck describes the abnormal position as a defensive one, protecting oneself from regressing, losing what one has. The schizophrenic person fears sie might disintegrated any moment, and keeps a paranoid wall against all other people. The bipolar (or manic-depressive) person goes into manic states to defend hirself from the soulcrushing darkness of depression. It's all or nothing, either you surrender to unbearable anxiety or you wall yourself off to survive. Abnormality is characterized by this all-or-nothing stance, it is rigid and without flexibility.

To have achieved normality in a life issue is to have accepted the answers provided by society as good. There is safety in this, community and efficiency, but normality is not without it's own problems: There is still a stiffness in letting a norm define you, not daring to explore your own answers. There is stress and ulcers in societies' norms, and it is difficult to change when you are dependent on other people's ready-made answers. And we all change with age, thus the age crisis.

Whereas abnormality and normality is defined by rigidity and stiffness, health is characterised by a form of softness – When you trust yourself this much, you can allow yourself to change according to situation, without losing track of who you essentially are. You can be playful, adaptive, open-minded. You can also be thoughtful and genuine - You know yourself well enough for that. You have explored yourself and found the right answers for your questions, whether they are part of norm or not.

Buck encourage us to take caution when exercising mental care, not to squish a person into a normality that sie doesn't fit into, and would feel alienated by. We should rather give security to abnormal issues and take care of and develop the healthy ones.

The model is actually a continuum and should be drawn as a line, but I like the thought of someone standing in the circle of normality/health/abnormality at a given moment.


III - Security
The difference between these positions can be explained with the words "sense of security".

At the greatest level of abnormality, security is none. Your life issue is at constant threat of regressing, desintegrating, collapsing, so you protect yourself against others fiercely.

Going from abnormality to normality is characterised by establishing outer control: Limits, borders, structure in your life that provides predictability and manageability, even protection from yourself.

At normality, the borders and norms have been internalised - They are a part of you now. Your self is secure enough to let other people near without exaggerated fear of being hurt. There is still a sense of insecurity though – There are still parts of you unknown to you, since you have just accepted the answer rather than exploring the question fully.

Going from normality to health is characterised by process depth: Exploring, understanding and taking control of your inner processes.

At health, security is greatest. Imagine you have built a very sturdy house – You then have the safety to leave it, to explore. You also feel safe going into your dark places, the parts of yourself you don't normally think of, confident you can handle any anxiety it wakes up. The house will hold together.

There are parallells to different psychological theories on security here:

Attachement theory describes how the children with a well founded sense of security are the bravest in their exploring. Safe in the knowledge that you can always return to your parents and they will provide safety, they will go explore the world, not needing to conform to other people for validation and approval. They already have an internal approval firmly placed in their hearts.

Humanist Abraham Maslow has an interesting idea of how humanity have a series of human needs (physical safety, social, self-realization etc), and just like the child can establish a sense of security in their parents, people can establish a sense of security in these different needs. For instance, if I have a sense of security in my social needs, I do not need constant confirmation from my friends that they still like me.

Maslow has also written on the subject of the self-actualizing person, the healthy person so to speak, who seeks to explore and express hirself, actualize hir inner potential, to grow. Just like in Buck's model, Maslow characterizes this person as someone who is genuine, who follows hir own way, not in a forced way but in a curious and open-minded way. Self-actualization is not a goal that can be reached, but rather a process, to be in movement, to be open-minded and fluid.

I associate this model to learning theories as well, but that's for another post.


IV - Therapy
All therapy must somehow first establish a sense of security. This is called therapeutic alliance, a sense of trust and hope between the client and the therapist. When the client feels safe in the therapeutic room, sie can let hir models of thought out into the light and examine them. Sie can, not necessarily consciously, test the therapist with them - If I expose you to what I was exposed to, will you react like I did, or is there another way you can show me? In this way, people's model are changed.


                                               Acceptance, empathy, genuinity ->   
                                                                     New mental models ->

Now, the big question is, does security lead to healthy models, or does healthy models lead to a sense of security? Like so often in psychology, you can work in either direction:

Humanistic therapy creates an atmosphere of acceptance, empathy and genuinity, building on the sense of security. Provide the sense of security and carefully prod the client towards processing depth, and sie will spontaneously explore hirself. Having written it down, I can see that this model implies that in humans there is a natural movement towards health, growing and development as long as safety, security and acceptance is supplied, and this is a foundation of humanistic psychology.

Cognitive-behaviour therapy works the other way around, first you assess the clients mental models and provide more healthy alternatives, and with this competence the client will gain a sense of security.


V - Soft-Hard
"Defensive" is a word which has made it's way into everyday english, but it is originally from psychodynamic theory. According to psychodynamic theory, defenses are something we must have to protect ourselves from anxiety, but when defenses are too strong, too primitive or too inflexible they may become a problem.

This points to how different people will handle issues differently: In a way I inhereted my fathers sense of guilt when he raised me, but whereas he keeps this guilt away by intellectualization, I have instead become sensitive and vulnerable to other people's disapproval and sensible to their own insecurities.

Strong defenses also illustrates the rigidity of abnormality: In the hard circle of abnormality, you can either let the problems and anxieties of life issue manifest themselves freely, or you handle it with strong defenses - throw it away completely, deny it, unable to confront it. All or nothing.

The softness and adaptivity of the healthy individual remind me of the ideals of taoism: Do not force yourself onto nature. Be fluid, like water, and you cannot hurt yourself. Be accepting, humble, genuine and happy in the way of the ever-curious and innocent child.

Coincidentally, it also reminds me of impro theatre.

One of my difficult life issues has been romantic love. I've never actually achieved a romantic relationship, which has been the source of great stress - I felt that I had to have it, I had to reach normality, and through reaching this normality I would reach a sense of self-worth. I've had problems with expectations building up - Love encounters became confrontations with the only possible outcomes a) high expectations fulfilled or b) nothing at all. As you can tell, there was a great deal of stiffness involved.

With a greater sense of security, with the safety to explore these feelings, process them deeper and understand them better, with a chance to experiment without the have-to's, love can become something playful and lustful. Something healthy. I can stay in the moment, fluid, enjoying the present rather than building up to some wishful future state.

I don't actually have to have a single relationship if it doesn't feel right - The one important thing is that I find my way to that bright and gentle circle of health.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3phAqQeMMcc&feature=related

I'm introducing: Lucien A Buck

While doing research for a paper on normality and self-realisation, me and my partner stumbled across the research of psychology professor Lucien A Buck, a paper titled "Normality, abnormality and health". In this paper he makes several references to patients with autism and patients with schizophrenia, the people farthest away from our normality and community.

But Buck argues that instead of placing a diagnosis on the abnormal and move them towards normality, we should see the individual strengths and weaknesses that exists in every person... Screw it, I'm just going to quote his abstract:

Most forms of psychotherapy are limited by assumptions about abnormality that focus on pathology while ignoring the potential for growth that exists in all. Effective psychotherapy requires respect for human complexity. Each person needs to be perceived as embodying a unique balance of strengths and weaknesses: The potential of normal people cannot be properly evaluated if their limitations are ignored, nor can individuals diagnosed as abnormal be understood by relying upon a pathology perspective. "Normalization" - psychotherapeutic practices aimed toward producing normal behaviour - can deprive people of existing strengths.

What he is saying is basically, instead of seeing people as mentally ill (With different diagnosises as the subcategories) or normal, we should see all people striving with the same human basic goals (which constitute the terms of human existence and what it means to be human) Almost no one person is entirely sick or entirely healthy. I'll quote Buck again:

"It is possible to conceptualize abnormality, normality and health as segments along a continuum of increasing capacity for managing the essential issues of living: autonomy, identity, work, creativity, propagation, aging and death."

As you can see, Buck separates normality and health: He argues that normality means letting everyone else decide on your life issues for you, resolving these issues based on conformity. Normality is an efficient way to live, but it also brings "normal problems", such as stress and age crisis.

Abnormality in life issues means you haven't given up and let society define your issues, but it isn't in your own power to define yourself either. The life issue is ruled by chaos instead of control, it is ruled by the fear of losing control of it rather than the security to evolve it and let it develop. The abnormal position is fortified one, and it means the person aggressively defends against other people's expectations and conformity which threatens to take hir over.

Health is also a sort of deviance from normality, but a balanced one. You have managed to reach your own conclusions on these life issues, and the healthy issue is characterized by originality, creativity and genuineness.

Let's draw a model to illustrate. I've chosen four issues and made a slice of someone's life. Let's call him Tim.

So instead of saying "Tim is a schizophrenic", we assess that Tim has great problems with identity, keeping a stable sense of himself and what he is, as he fears he might be desintegrated any moment. Love is really difficult as well, with no point of ego to fix it to. Tim has a great health in creativity, though. Work is alright.

So instead of trying to make Tim normal and potentially crush his creativity and alienating him from himself in the process, we should take care of his abnormal issues and encourage his healthy ones.

Let us now combine this with humanist psychology founding father Abraham Maslow's idea of the healthy, self-realising person.

According to Maslow, this person is genuine, original, brave/secure and has a healthy bit of perspective on normality. Maslow describes the healthy person as someone who "can wear normality as a coat", so to speak, put it on or put it away as sie likes. When the situation calls for it, sie can put on a tie and a suit, and respect norms and courtesies to smooth out human interactions, even if sie considers these rituals rather pointless...

For you see, the healthy person can do this without endangering hir own sense of identity and security - It takes great deal of security and confidence in your life issues to be able to venture out of the safe zone, explore the issue without fear and needing to defend your standpoint.

What really strikes me about Buck's model is that he interprets normality as being stiff, abnormality as being completely stuck, and health as a creative, playful stance. Remember what I said about impro?

I love this dude. Check out his tribute:

http://www.dowling.edu/wikis/pmwiki.php/LISSHistory/ATributeToDrLucienBuck

Next up: Life issues, sense of security and playfulness. After that, we'll take a look at life issues in roleplaying games. (flags)