What’s Wrong with Society: Part Two

After reading Part One of this article, you may want to know more about the dynamics in childhood that convince people they have to present a seemingly more acceptable version of themselves which is out of harmony with the way they really are. When caregivers reject certain qualities and behaviors in children and approve of others, they force the child eventually to do the same within themselves. As I explained before, the process of socialization is about internalizing the judgments of caregivers and society. The child learns that in order to be loved and approved, he or she needs to be perfect according to the conditioned standards of caregivers and of society.

Being unable to attain this perfection due to actual objective structural constraints, however, as I explained in Part One, people feel it is imperative at least to present an image of themselves as conforming to the expectations of others. Thus we have a pandemic of dishonest, inauthentic people in society. This situation is so endemic that it appears normal to most people.

The process of socialization, to give it a benign name, fosters splitting the psyche into so-called good and bad parts – positive and negative – or whatever terminology you want to use. The strong tendency is to identify with the positive parts and repress or suppress the negative parts. The nascent person in the process of formation tends to identify with the approved or positive qualities and reject the negative qualities.

The negative qualities or energies, however, do not just go away. Reality is not actually one-sidedly positive. It’s not really possible to be “all-good” or “all-light” and to get rid of the negative pole, which is always necessary to balance the positive pole. The rejected negative qualities tend to come out in various covert ways. It’s actually painful to reject half of reality. Sometimes the negative qualities form complexes which seize control of the nervous system and cause a lot of emotional pain. At such times the person may behave “out of character.” Afterwards, they may say, “I don’t know what came over me.”

One handy mechanism that tends to keep consciousness of the rejected negative or Shadow-side repressed is projection. Projection is when a quality or behavior is rejected in the self, the self sees the quality outside itself in other people and condemns it there. This is the genesis of blame. We see others as embodying the negative qualities that we cannot admit in ourselves.

It often happens that the polarization of the psyche is so extreme that the person develops hatred of others or of whole groups. So strong is the need to see oneself as wholly good and right and without any negativity that one blindly hates and even dehumanizes others. At that point one feels completely justified in treating others badly. Wars start and continue due to demonization of the “enemy” at a collective level. It’s the same mechanism of projection that operates in individuals.

Some people have a hard time keeping the negative qualities totally out of consciousness. Although such people are often perceived as weak and flawed due to their psychological and spiritual struggles, I would actually say that they are the fortunate ones. Although their life will be painful and hard to manage, they are more healthy ultimately than those who easily keep their negative side repressed. They will be forced, to differing degrees, to investigate and deal with the original polarization of the psyche.

When the fragmentation of their psyches is sufficiently painful, they will seek a resolution of the original core wound that almost everyone carries to one degree or another. Recovery requires facing and fully accepting all the emotions and qualities that were originally alienated. Doing so, dismantles the one-sided false-self system and restores the psyche to wholeness and completeness.