Tag Archives: incest

Does “It Take A Village?” Yes, It Does!

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“Families are to be from.”  This was a wry quip from a high school student of mine in the early 80’s when a sociology class discussion about families was wrapping up.  This young lady was grasping the complexity of family relationships even at her young age, recognizing poignantly that one needs to extricate oneself at some point in life from the familial orbit.  This is usually done with the normal developmental process as young people reach maturity, seek a mate, marry, have children, and begin a family of their own.  But sometimes even then the emotional ties with the family of origin will be inordinate and, one or both of the marital partners will not have “cut the cord” and complications will develop.

The family is a primary dimension of social life.  Family structure is the template in which a child finds his place and learns how to “find his place” in the family at large, i.e. the community, and eventually even in the world “family.”  The family is where connection is established, and explored, and the skills…or lack thereof…will be offered in the social body. The anchor of the family is the mother and father and if their relationship is not stable, or insincere, then the children will not have a stable basis upon which to find their roots in the family dynamic.  A college psychology professor of mine, decades ago, noted that for a child it is more important for a child to know that his parents love each other than that the parents love him.  For the connection between “mommy and daddy” provide an anchor for an inchoate identity and from that anchor will arise a knowledge of parental love that is not prosaic or formulaic.  The script always includes “mommy and daddy love me” but the nuances of the family dynamic, based on the connection between “mommy and daddy” often convey otherwise.

But let me close this grim assessment with a positive note.  The human soul is indomitable.  Most families provide what British psychiatrist Donald W. Winnicott described as “good enough ‘parenting’” (his term was “good enough ‘mothering’”).  If parenting were perfect, then children would get a naive impression life is about and would be ill-equipped to face that “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” And a facetious note is here in order.  My children are perfect!  That is because my “children” are only whims and fancies of what might have been, whims and fancies that I pine for, but have never experienced.  That is because I never had the courage to take that important plunge into the “dog-and-pony show” of this human endeavor and father children, trusting that Life is good and that all would be well.  But I firmly believe that “there is a destiny that doeth shape our ends, rough hew them as we may” and that all is well in the end.  Yes, even with this current political maelstrom that is gnawing at the soul of my country.

 

An Addendum on the Incest Theme

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Let me explain a little further about the incest notion. Incest is a spiritual problem as are all problems for we aren’t a body who has a spirit but we are a body who is intrinsically an expression of Spirit. When incest takes place, something has gone horribly awry in the depths of the human heart and sometimes, though not always, finds expression in behavior. But it is first and foremost a spiritual matter. Now, of course, when addressing this issue as a clinician, my first concern was not so much the “spiritual” as the behavioral—the behavior had to stop and thus the legal system had to be employed. And by here speaking of the issue as “spiritual” I do not diminish in the least the horrible nature of the deed itself.

And by “spiritual” here I am not speaking of “Spiritual” necessarily as in God and such…though ultimately that is where this “spirituality” leads. But I am talking about the subtle intricacies of the human heart, the hidden fancies and whims which for most of us are filtered out of consciousness. Some are not so fortunate and have their conscious thought violated by these thoughts and are often overwhelmed with their intoxicating lure. When the intoxication becomes too intense, acting-out often occurs.

The spiritual incest phenomenon reflects a great distrust of the world and I suspect it stems from a great distrust of the man/woman’s own physicality. He…and I’m going to focus on the male…is fearful of the outside world and comes to find the realm of private fantasy more appealing than that of the outside world. Sure, the outside world beckons but to venture there exacts a price, it entails risk and fear, and it is easier to just retreat within a private world. And this “private world” inevitably is orchestrated in the dynamics of the parents who have their own deep-seated problems with personal and physical intimacy. And this poison deepens and evolves, becoming increasingly convoluted, and when children come along they inevitably imbibe of this atmosphere and internalize it. And, this is true even when some of these families never actually become “incestuous” overtly. For some reason they mercifully they maintain the physical boundaries but the spiritual boundaries are not there and the children are enmeshed in a morass of expectations which always include a disdain and fear of the outside world. This often gives rise to some of the families who decide to “home-school” their children, keeping them from being “contaminated” by that “evil and wicked world out there.” And they almost always adopt religious views which encourage this poison.

But this same dynamic is often present with the hyper-conservative extremist groups. They reject the world, turn within, and end up feeding on themselves; or, as Shakespeare put it, they find themselves “feeding even on the pith of life.”

The Incestuous Nature of Political Extremism

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I am one of those guys who see both sides of any particular issue and, in fact, see multiple sides of many issues. That stance in life has become problematic if one is not careful as it leaves one wishy-washy, unable to take a stand, and given to be a “commitment-phobic.” And certainly it was no accident that I did not commit to marriage until I was 37!

So, on the current political morass my country is facing I do see the need of a solid Republican Party as well as a solid Democratic Party. And I do see arrogance on both extremes. HOWEVER, what is going on with the Republican extremists, more or less the Tea Party, merits the full brunt of my analytic knife.

Any group who lives in “the bubble” like they do end up feeding on themselves to the point of catastrophe. One classic example of this insularity run amok is an incested family, a family that has become so insular, so barricaded from the outside world, so deprived of external reference, that they do feed on themselves as demonstrated by sexual violence. And in so many of these families the poison does finally erupt into physical violence and murder and mayhem ensues. (An example of this occurred in my state in the 1980’s. You can google Ronald Gene Simmons and Arkansas if you are interested.)

Now if you interpret this to mean that I am accusing the Republicans of incest you are really not a discriminating reader. My point is that incest is an illustration of the poison that the extremists of that party are infected with and that poison has been allowed to filter out into the ranks of the party as a whole. This is best illustrated in how they have ostracized two of their on in the past year for merely demonstrating a willingness to fraternize with President Obama. I’m speaking of the ex-governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, and the current governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie. Christie deigned to accept Obama’s help for his state last fall when it was ravaged by a hurricane, was photographed with Obama, and was recording thanking Obama for his help. As a result, Christie is now persona non grata with the Republicans and last week was, like Rudolph the Red nosed Reindeer, not invited to participate in one of the Party’s “Reindeer games”—the Conservative Political Action Committee. And Crist’s mistake was warmly receiving Obama shortly after his election in 2008 and even being seen embracing the President.

These extremists do not want any outside influence. They know the truth and they insist that others accept that truth and these others will not have their approval unless they accept the party line. They have the obsessive need for purity which I discoursed about earlier in the week. This too is incestuous as the incest dynamic reflects a need for self-sufficiency, an unwillingness to “marry-out”, and an unconscious belief that the family unit can meet its own sexual needs and this in turn is ultimately about meeting one’s own spiritual needs without outside influence. This is evil. And our world has before us a glaring example of where this poison leads—the Taliban!

Perils of Excessive Love

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As is obvious, I love words. They speak volumes too us, but only if we are willing to break them open and let their meaning flow. Someone once said that to make a poem just grab a word and pull on it. It is the “pulling on it” that breaks it and lets its hidden riches spring forth.

Now we can’t do this with all words! That would get absurd. But key words, words that portend great value merit some of this “pulling”. I would like to focus briefly on the word “love.”

It is so easily used and has become so common place that often it has no value. For example, two people meet and find each other attractive, they are consumed with lust, and they “do the deed”, and ipso facto they announced, “Oh, we are in love!” Well, perhaps but only time will tell.

In my clinical practice, in my personal experience, and in my reading I have seen so many examples of horrible things take place under the name of “love.” For example, I’ve seen parents control and manipulate their children to keep them dependent on them, to keep them safe from “this evil, dangerous world”, when their real intent was merely to keep them from leaving home. I’ve seen this “invertedness” so extreme that at best the only “marrying-out” that could take place was to marry and pull up a double-wide next door to mom and daddy. I’ve seen extended families living in double-wides on a small plot of land. I’ve seen marriages gravely impaired because the primary emotional attachment with one of the partners was still with his/her mother.

A popular bromide is “love holds with an open hand.” It is often hard to love with that in mind as our own neediness is to powerful; and neediness is part of the human experience and even a component of love. But when neediness becomes paramount it could devour the other person and everyone in its path. Tangentially related, W. H. Auden asked, ‘Suppose we love no friends or wives, but certain patterns in our lives?”

C. S. Lewis in The Great Divorce describes one mother’s love as being so needy and so oblivious to the reality of her son that she is willing to “love” him into hell itself. He described this “excess of love” as a “defect”, noting “She loved her son too little, not too much….But it well may be that at this moment she’s demanding to have him down with her in hell. That kind is sometimes perfectly ready to plunge the soul they say they love in endless misery if only they can still in some fashion possess it.”

Dangers of Spiritual Incest

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Incest was a common theme in the clinical word that I did as a counselor.  The incest always reflected pronounced family dysfunction, always gravely influencing each member of the family even if they were sexually abused themselves . Incest is about power and control and often occurs in families who are isolated in some respect from the local community, be that a perceived isolation or something more concrete such as geographical or socioeconomic factors.

But incest is also a term that can be applied to groups as a whole.  Some groups can function as an incested family and be similarly inverted, turned-in on themselves with minimal reference to the outside world.  Usually this internal reference is perceived as a virtue and in fact reference to the external world is not only discouraged but is often demonized.  The world is perceived as dangerous and threatening, “evil” if you please, and contamination by this world is a constant peril.  (I feel strongly that this is often an element in the home-schooling movement though certainly not in all cases.)

I would like to focus briefly on what I call “spiritual incest.”  By this I mean the tendency to isolate ourselves in groups who believe just as we do and to discourage any dissenting beliefs.  In groups like this “doctrinal purity” is inordinately emphasized.  And there is nothing wrong with purity of any sorts but when it becomes an obsession it always leads to problems.  For example, when the “doctrinal purity” demon is unleashed, it tends to never end.  Once there is a “house-cleaning” and the miscreants are expelled or “churched…to use an old frontier term…the demon remains.  So, a few years later, there arises a new doctrinal dispute and once again another “house cleaning” is necessary and the ritual is enacted again.  For, this is tremendously rewarding to be on the side of the pure and know that you are “cleansing the temple”, that you are “standing firm for the truth that was once delivered unto the saints”, etc., etc.  I know.  Been there.  Done that.  Gosh it was fun.  I felt so pious.

Oh the shame of motives late revealed, and the awareness of things ill done, and done to others harm which once we took for exercise of virtue.  (T. S. Eliot “Four Quartets”)

(HISTORICAL NOTE: Historians have noted that this quest for doctrinal purity, especially in the 19th century on the frontier, created our “denominational society” as churches routinely split over picayune doctrinal disputations, giving rise to new churches and denominations)

Warren Jeffs and mental illness

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Warren Jeffs provides us with still another object-lesson in madness.  His private delusional system eventually was confronted by the world outside of himself and he was found guilty.  It was interesting to note that even as the hand of justice came down on him, his only defense was to recite his self-serving interpretation of FLDS holy writ.  He still didn’t get it.  And, he won’t get it.  His delusional system is too rigid.

Jeff’s delusional system was mirrored by a somewhat larger delusional system, the sectarian religious culture that he had lived in for his whole life. But that sectarian world-view was not mirrored…eventually…by the world at large.  And the “mirroring” by the world at large is what separates a sect from non-sectarian religion

We all have private belief-systems even apart from religious/spiritual beliefs.  That is to say, we all have our own private world that we live in.  But the issue is always the boundary-region between that private belief system and the world at large.  If the belief system is too rigid, if there is no permeability with the world-at-large, then madness reigns.  Mental illness is a reference problem.

The more rigid the private world view, the less permeable it is and the more likely it is that an “us-them” paradigm will emerge. Those ensconced in such a paradigm tend to be paranoid.  And, of course, the more paranoid one is the more likely one is to see “them” as being intrusive and aggressive, even threatening.  This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as the paranoid individual’s attitude, speech, and behavior eventually lead to intervention by “them.”  (For a provocative analysis of this phenomena on the group level, see Richard Hofstadter”s Paranoid Style in American Politics.)

Groups such as the FLDS are always in-bred in the sense that they are their own private reference system.  Being “in-bred” like this, it is no accident that incest and child-abuse takes place.  For incest…speaking now in terms of family-system theory…is always an illustration of a family or group feeding on itself.