When my oldest son struggles to write an essay for his
English class, I try to look for the strengths in his writing and
tell him in supportive ways about those strengths.
According to Kohut, being an empathic parent is a central part of the
process of giving children confidence building experiences. To
affirm children, I try to open myself in ways that help me see the
world from the child's point of view. To affirm children I try to let
them know I am doing my best to understand the way things look to
them. Kohut wrote: "The best definition of empathy . . . is that it is
the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another
person. It is our lifelong ability to experience what another person
experiences . . ."
One major implication of this is that being empathic means being less
critical and judgmental of the child's experience of the world. If I am
constantly critical of my children, I teach them to suppress their
thoughts and feelings. Lack of empathic acceptance from parents
drives whole segments of the child's personality underground.
Kohut also believed that the empathic parent is less defensive.
Defensiveness is a dangerous enemy to the process of giving children
affirmative experiences. He suggested that when under attack by our
children the first rule be not to fight back, either directly or through
subtle interpretations. Instead Kohut would have us say to our angry
child a simple empathic sentence, something like this: "What I have
done has upset you."
Children, he taught, have a constructive emotional encounter when
they have a sense of being listened to by someone truly willing to
work to understand them. They receive a supportive emotional
experience when they have the sense of being understood, and when
they have the sense of being accepted.
You may be thinking, as I am, that no parent can always be perfect at
providing confidence-building experiences for a child. Parents must
go to work, or wash the clothes, or attend to the other children or even
sleep sometimes. Judith Viorst, in her book Necessary Losses writes:
. . . we can glut ourselves with how- to- raise- children
information and we can strive to become more mature
and aware but none of this will spare us from the
inevitability that sometime we are going to fail our
children. Because there is a big gap between knowing
and doing. Because mature, aware people are imperfect too. Or because some current event in our life
may so absorb or depress us that when our children
need us we cannot come through. Facing fallibility as
mothers and as fathers is another of our necessary
losses.(2)
Kohut said that this fallibility is a good thing, if it does not happen
too often or too traumatically. Young children who have had many
positive encounters can draw on the memory of these experiences.
With this memory, children find within themselves an ability to cope
with stress for a brief time. In other words, children internalize the
affirmative encounters they have with their parents. Gradually over
time, as a child grows and develops, these internalized constructive
experiences add up and the children grow to become emotionally
healthy adults. These adults feel that they are acceptable, attractive,
and likable people. Of course, even as adults we never totally get
beyond the need to have supportive relationships with our parents and
others. Nevertheless, if we get enough confidence-building experiences when we are children, we grow up with a strong sense of
ourselves.
Kohut believed that if both our parents are too occupied with
questions of their own self-esteem, and if we have no other substitute
parent (such as a grandparent or teacher), we never have enough early
positive encounters. When this happens, as adults we are likely to
suffer from insecurity. We often push our need for affirmative
experiences into our subconscious, the way Freud's patients repressed
their sexual needs to the point that they were not consciously aware
of them.
Kohut wrote that a second strong need of children is the need to
idealize at least one parent (as we do on Mother's Day). To become
healthy adults, he believed that we need at least one parent or
substitute parent whom we can hold in high regard. We need
someone who is stable, reliable and calm, whom we can place on a
pedestal to admire.
This time of year our culture is full of examples of people who
idealize their mothers, from simply sentimental expressions of love,
to moving testimonials, to silly poems.
A son in his 20's writes:
My mom was the nicest Mom on the block.
Our house was THE house to visit.
It was not a picture out of Better Homes and Gardens,
But it was warm and inviting.
We were proud to have our friends over.
Another expression of an idealized mother comes from a 79-year-old
daughter. She writes:
The woman I wish to tell you about was truly exceptional. At once, strong willed, compassionate, loving,
intelligent and fun loving.
In 1884 at age four, Sophia rode in a covered wagon
with her parents and two sisters to a homestead in
northern Minnesota.
At age seven, she went to a small town where she
lived with a local banker and his family so that she
could attend school. At age eleven her education was
cut short. She had to stay at home to help care for her
younger siblings, and to feed the livestock and chickens. Sophia left home at seventeen and went to
Duluth, Minnesota where she worked as a waitress.
She later moved to Minneapolis where she met the
man who was to become her husband. They married
and moved to Chicago. In Chicago, she went back to
school and received an elementary school diploma
when she was twenty-four years old!
She lived a life of giving and sacrifice, but in 1919,
she made her greatest sacrifice. She promised her
dying sister to take her newborn baby girl and raise
her as her own. My Aunt Sophia became my wonderful and caring mother.
And I found these words by an aspiring young writer who struggled
to idealize his mother, while simultaneously finding words that
rhymed with lass.
A mother is a special kind of lass,
Taking care of everything with ease,
And doing it with her own touch of class.
A mother is a confidante with sass,
A shrink who doesn't charge big doctors' fees.
Yes, she should get a trophy made of brass.
Of course, no parent is always perfect. No parent is always stable,
reliable and calm. When we are children, we discover this. However,
if as children we have had repeated opportunities to encounter
reliability and calmness in a parent, we can better cope with our own
conflicts and stresses. It gives us the capacity to sooth ourselves in
times of stress and pain.
To summarize, according to Hienz Kohut, if we are to grow into
emotionally healthy adults, we need at least two things. First, we
need others to give us empathetic positive experiences. Second, we
need at least one stable, calm adult whom we can idealize.
No parent can always meet these two needs. Kohut believes that if
these failures to meet these needs do not come too often or two
traumatically, we will gradually develop a solid sense of ourselves.
Our internal emotional structures will become strong in the same way
the muscles in our bodies will become strong.
However, sometimes our childhood environment cuts us off from
supportive encounters too often or too suddenly. When this happens
it is as if someone has given us weights to carry that exhaust or even
tear our emotional muscles. To be emotionally healthy we need many
confidence-building experiences, with gradual opportunities to
internalize these positive encounters as we grow into adulthood.
Kohut taught that the development of emotional maturity is a lifelong
process. Throughout life we need affirmative experiences, and we
need people whom we can idealize and therefore use as mentors.
Mother's Day is part of this need to idealize an adult whom we can
use as a guide in our lives.
The old letters I have from my own mother are about ordinary things.
For example, in 1956 my mother wrote:
Roger had a big birthday party -- seventeen five-year-olds in the house since it was raining that day. They
were all good and cute as can be. He got a "Dennis the
Menace" mischief set -- right up his alley.
As these old letters remind me, being a father or mother is not easy.
Today I have a 16-year-old son, a 11-year-old son and a 7-year-old
daughter. I am under no illusions that I will be spared the stresses
that most parents encounter as they watch their children grow into
adulthood. Nevertheless, I hope I will stand on the shoulders of my
parents and thinkers like Hienz Kohut. I hope I will learn from their
successes and from their mistakes. With the help of memories, old
letters, books and friends, I hope to do a little better at the art of
parenting, make a little progress. Mothers and fathers do both
deserve recognition: the work of parenting is a skill not easily taught
or learned. So to all of you and to your parents, "Happy Mother's
Day!"
Sources:
"The Meeting of Psychoanalysis and Humanism: Heinz Kohut," a
chapter in Between Therapist and Client: The New Relationship, W.
H. Freeman & Co. N.Y. 1991, pages 81-114.
"Heinz Kohut's Self Psychology: An Overview," Baker, Howard, &
Baker, Margaret, American Journal of Psychiatry, January 1987,
pages 1-9.
