Infants being totally dependent on their mothers for their physical needs of safety and security and their emotional needs for attention, affection, significance, esteem, power, and control place very high demands on their mothers. I say mothers as it is the mother that the infant is biologically bonded to, and this bond must be maintained for the first five years of life, or trauma results. As a result of our socioeconomic structure mothers do not get the support they need in order to meet the emotional needs of the child. Women need a stress free environment in which to raise a child and this is not the case in our capitalist society. As a result ninety nine percent of us experience some form of trauma in infancy and early childhood. This emotional trauma causes the ego to develop in unhealthy ways and this causes us to deviate from the path of individuation, the path to wholeness and completion. The more significant the trauma the greater the deviance and the greater the pathology. We cannot blame the traumatized infant nor the stressed out mother who also was traumatized as a child by her traumatized parents, so blame becomes irrelevant and unhelpful on the journey towards health, healing and wholeness. We are dealing with multi generational systemic trauma brought about by capitalism and the lack of empathy and compassion it generates. Capitalism promotes greed and selfishness, and individuality at the expense of Individuation. Capitalism is traumatizing.
These wounded, broken children grow up to be dysfunctional adults and deviated from the path of individuation they manifest all forms of deviant behavior, which causes further trauma. Dysfunctional adults are emotionally immature. Their childhood emotions were repressed in an infantile state and therefore emotional maturity was thwarted. Infantile emotional outbursts by an infant or child must be met with patience, understanding and empathy by the mother in order to guide the infant through the perceived crises and unto emotional maturing.
Remember infants don’t have language and therefore are incapable of rational thought. Irrational emotional outbursts are normal for an infant. If these irrational emotions are repressed into the unconscious they will produce irrational behavior in the adult. This will result in judgement, condemnation and punishment producing more trauma and suffering.
Infants must never feel rejected, for their emotional immaturity, and they must never be abandoned and left to cry. The mother must use her empathy and understanding of the perceived crises to end the crises, by so doing the child learns that there was no real crises and emotional maturity advances through the process of resolution.
Children must never be punished, punishment of any kind is forbidden. Punishment always produces trauma. Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is the act of “making a follower of”, a disciple. Children must be helped to learn why some behaviors are acceptable and some are not. Discipline is an educational process leading to understanding and maturity. Punishment is just a reactionary immature response by the wounded parent. Judgement, condemnation and punishment are forbidden in a compassion based society.
Currently in our society deviant behavior is often referred to as a crime and punishment ensues. Broken, wounded suffering people are thrown into prison and their life is destroyed. The so called criminals in our society are merely the most wounded people in desperate need of healing. Judgement, condemnation, and punishment merely compounds the problem resulting in more trauma to the individual and society. Our society has been deeply traumatized by the lack of compassion we show to these deeply wounded people. People who through now fault of their own were set upon a deviated path as a result of their childhood trauma. If they are not at fault they cannot be punished, instead of prisons we need rehabilitation centers that treat Post Traumatic Childhood Disorder. Centers of understanding, empathy and compassion, helping the person understand their suffering and the deviance that has resulted from it and how the deviant behavior causes more trauma and suffering to themselves and others.
We live in a very violent society, much of the violence we perpetrate upon the most wounded individuals in our society traumatizes them and us. We are traumatized any time we practice judgement or condemnation of another. Any time we inhibit the development of compassion within ourselves we further repress our Authentic Self. Remember the hallmark of Individuation or Authenticity is compassion. If we deliberately repress compassion in favor of punishment we are rejecting our authenticity and we become more deviated, more emotionally immature and we will suffer more as a result. If you want to end your suffering work hard at developing understanding, empathy and compassion, For yourself and others, these three qualities lead to an intuition based form of real Wisdom. This innate intuitive Wisdom transcends the wisdom of the world.
It is interesting that western nations claim to be Christian, and yet Jesus forbade judgement with the commandment “thou shalt not judge”, he also forbade condemnation and punishment. Instead he commanded that we “love (be compassionate towards) our neighbor, ourselves and our so called enemies”. Oh, how far we have deviated from the path. All the result of our individual and collective childhood trauma.