The Significance of High Value in Human Behaviour: Speech of the Suffering Soul 2018052132, 2018054690, 9781351010412, 9781138541672

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The Significance of High Value in Human Behaviour

The Significance of High Value in Human Behaviour is an innovative conceptualisation of how the quest for a high self-worth works as a psychosocial dynamic, presenting the idea that feelings of impotence and low self-esteem induce a powerful impetus on negative human action. This book gives an account of what it means to base a whole psychological perspective on high value, which has been an understudied aspect of human action. Employing an ethnographical approach, the book uses client observations and social research to promote original solutions in an empathetic and engaging manner for psychological support services aiding isolated individuals. It considers the concept of a valuable self and examines the negative effects within the personality which can be generated when this drive for a valuable self is blocked through human devaluation or violence. The Significance of High Value in Human Behaviour will appeal to academics and post-graduate students in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy, psychotherapists with specialist interests in loneliness and self-worth, and sociologists concerned with the psychology of the self. Chris Steed is a trained counsellor and Anglican priest who combines the experience of counselling psychotherapist practice and post-doctoral research where he developed the distinctive approach in this book. He is a member of the British Association of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the American Psychological Association, and is the author of Smart Leadership – Wise Leadership: Environments of Value in an Emerging Future (2017) and We Count, We Matter: Voice, Choice and the Death of Distance (2018).

This is a really fascinating book. Rev Dr Chris Steed is a priest, theologian, academic, counsellor and educator and his thesis for the book can be summarised in this single quotation from his introduction to the book: “What we will propose here is a new approach to the inner world based on the value and worth people need to have in order to flourish but which is by definition relational, held with others.” That is exactly what this book does drawing on the fields of psychology, philosophy, sociology, economics and theology. I commend it highly. –Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes, CPsychol CSci FBPsS FRSM FAcSS TSSF, Past President, British Psychological Society

The Significance of High Value in Human Behaviour

Speech of the Suffering Soul

Chris Steed

First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Chris Steed The right of Chris Steed to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Steed, Chris, author. Title: The significance of high value in human behaviour : speech of the suffering soul / Chris Steed. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2018052132 (print) | LCCN 2018054690 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351010412 (E-book) | ISBN 9781138541672 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Self-esteem. | Value—Psychological aspects. Classification: LCC BF697.5.S46 (ebook) | LCC BF697.5.S46 S735 2019 (print) | DDC 155.2—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018052132 ISBN: 978-1-138-54167-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-01041-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Setting the scene – the psychopathology of everyday life

1

PART 1

Arenas of anxiety

9

1 Companion

11

2 Comparison: “go compare”: social media and social toxins

23

3 Competition: tales of humiliation

36

4 Compensation: violence, transfer and scapegoats

57

PART 2

Notes on a theory of value

79

5 A discourse on method and the dog that didn’t bark

81

6 Re-setting the personality drivers

99

7 Markers of devaluation: difference and indifference

112

8 Dignity, indignity and the anger of a valuable self

126

9 The relational turn: self-esteem and self-actualisation

134

10 Like a sailboat in the harbour: collision and collusion

147

11 Through the life course

161

vi

Contents

PART 3

A positive psychology

181

12 Transformative change and positive places

183

Postscript: what is it that Protests?

195

Index

199

Setting the scene – the psychopathology of everyday life

Although the term “psychopathology” is used medically to mean diseases of the mind, in fact it derives from the Greek words “psyche,” “pathos” and “logos”: literally, the speech of the suffering soul.1 Stress is the disease of the West; worry and anxiety mass murderers. Psychiatric hospitals are full of victims broken under the strain. From ulcers to cancers, insomnia to alcoholism, the toll is heavy. One woman in two is depressed. Every other man is stressed. Extreme alternatives of fight or flight meant they are kept on full nuclear alert without standing down; pepped up, ready to go. Psychotherapy and psychiatry are widely drawn upon to preserve the mental health of Western society. Young people are more stressed, anxious and depressed than ever, according to 2018 data from the UK Prince’s Trust. A survey of 2,194 respondents aged 16–25 showed that young people’s levels of happiness and well-being has dropped to its lowest level since the Prince’s Trust Macquarie Youth Index was launched in 2009.2 As I write these words, an article in the UK press reports “self-harming by teenage girls doubles in 20 years.” Pressures of school and social media blamed as hospital admissions rise to 13,000. The number of hospital admissions for girls who self-harmed jumped from 7,327 in 1997 to 13,463 in 2017. The number treated for attempting an overdose rose more than tenfold from 1997 to 2017.3 Psychological distress gives rise to considerable controversy in diagnosis; divisions that are yet to be healed.4 Is psychiatry merely a list of symptoms manufactured by drug companies to make money or are the more biologically minded right to dismiss psychiatric and indeed psychoanalytic ideas as no better than palm-reading? While acknowledging benefit many find in antidepressants or mood-shifters, can it be right to pathologise and medicate forms of behaviour deviating from “normal”? Equally, huge claims are made today about the way neuroscience is being used to support the biomedical model. It seems to provide strong support for the diagnostic categorisation of mental illness and provision of pharmacopeia to deal with it. This does, however, assume that what is taking place in the brain and showing up in brain scans is the cause of presenting symptoms of disorder. Brains are in bodies and bodies have a history inhabited by a social and cultural

2 The psychopathology of everyday life

context. Is it the chemical map of brain processes that gives the clue to distress? Or is it individual experiences that shape the neural pathways? To say that a given brain state is the underlying basis of a given problem is to specify the brain as the causal source. What is it that brings about the brain condition that is showing up in the scans?5 The theme of this book is that mental and emotional states are shaped by cultural meanings and that these socio-genic issues are in turn shaped by where society places value as well as the way this reacts with the value of the individual concerned. Frank Furedi, for example, has shown how the therapy industry is the unwitting tool of political and cultural interests in the very turn to the self and the cultivation of vulnerability.6 The theme of this book is too close to home to be viewed dispassionately. It pulls us all down – or rather reveals the murky depths. The need for human significance binds humanity together in being able to hold our head up high in common enterprises. Its antithesis is isolation: solitary confinement. Positive psychology is often regarded as superficial: a disregard for the brutal realities everybody experiences. Identifying strengths and resources to deal with those circumstances gives hope. What we will propose here is a new approach to the inner world based on the value and worth people need to have in order to flourish but which is by definition relational, held with others. This is surely needed today. To view the world through different eyes is to perceive ourselves as compassionate and connected; one where the values of empathy and community are core to our existence not only as individuals but also as societies.7 A new politics surely waits to be formed through a re-discovery of non-polarised cooperation and common good. The idea of people needing to have a sense of a valuable self has often been noticed. Invariably, this is at the level of counselling practice; treating people ethically. Counsellors and counselees alike though are all in this together. Being a counsellor can help ease feelings of insignificance and powerlessness; to admit that is hard to do. Helping others often gives a sense of purpose and value. These proposals here will show how the notion of human worth can be operationalised to become fundamental to theory structures of personality and drivers of behaviour. The theme here is the value placed by society upon us and how that impinges upon our experience. Our experience is necessarily communal. Indeed, we have a social brain. As Louis Cozolino argued, brains exist only within networks of other brains. Every living thing depends for its life on interactions with others.8 We will, therefore, approach this by noticing certain features of the contemporary landscape that generate questions of the self in relation to others and society: • • • •

Loneliness (companion) Social media and mental health (comparison) The quest for significance, for example, zero-sum games in human relationships or the workplace, Islamic Jihad, world leaders (competition) Violence (which leads to demands for symbolic and legal compensation)

The psychopathology of everyday life

3

A set of data will be assembled, some of it confirmatory studies, some from reflections on client reports on grounds of strict anonymity and with permission. The data will be deployed to indicate pathways into the psyche that throw a good deal of light on the drivers of human action. The central proposition is this: a major driver of behaviour is the need to cultivate a high value and to pursue our worth against all factors in lived experience that militate against it and diminish us. There is an intolerance with which we are faced, whereby our value is calibrated through conformity to the norms of society. Yet there is another reality, sometimes stronger, of push back against that value-system based on the internal sense of value that almost always can be mobilised. In the realm of psychotherapy, the world has been split into two; the internal realm hermetically sealed from social pressures.9 Attempts were made in the 1930s, as we will note, to ensure that psychoanalysis was not abstracted from the rest of society. Society is hard-wired into us. This recalls the pioneering work of Andrew Samuels in a more integrated view of the human psyche being a political psyche.10 Michel Foucault wrote about the “political technology of the self ”; in other words, the controlled subjectivisation by the State that shapes the power relations of society.11 This is a world away from the idea of atomised individuals competing against each other that underlay modern psychology. How the social transmission of value impacts upon the value within the personhood of the individual subject will be a major focus here. As we will argue, significance is a vital and ineradicable impulse in human affairs. Yet it is one head of a three-headed hydra of ways in which a high value asserts itself in everyday life. The demand to be listened to and given attention is also pressing; the need to be accorded dignity goes to the heart of our humanity in equal measure. An imperative towards being of significance and not being given second class treatment or live a third-rate life is somewhat different to not being heard. It is distinguishable from the question of reacting to indignity or being set trashed. This essay attempts a unified theory about the way that human devaluation drives social processes. The internal psychological landscape is one aspect, the Protest against being treated with: 1

2

Indifference – the need to be heard, to be taken seriously, to be involved and given attention. Not being seen or heard or given attention; being disregarded, set aside or left behind is devaluing. The social sensorium renders people as invisible products, dependent on recognition. Inferiority (diminishing) – the politics of reduction, of insult, of a denial of a full measure of humanity. Being belittled or placed in a passive position sustains dependence and vitiates against walking with heads held high as a free and equal participant in social relations. The reflex against reduction or being humiliated calls for appropriate respect for a valuable self and affirmation.

4 The psychopathology of everyday life

3

Indignity – at the interplay of indignation and dignity lies the assertion of a valuable self: “I am worthwhile.” This is the politics of invasion, of being dishonoured, of violation of sacred space that is the essence of violence.

These “triple-A” factors will be looked at through the lens of their opposite: the contrast pole enables a dimension of analytic clarity that gives extra insight. The contrast experience of dignity is that of being treated invasively; the integrity of one’s sacred space compromised. The contrast of being taken seriously, being heard and noticed, is to experience indifference. Significance, the sensation of being somebody, is slightly different. Its contrast polarity is to be insignificant, disregarded. Taken to the margins, it is to lose the point of oneself. Aloneness is a major driver in the feeling of insignificance, of lesser worth. On the contemporary scene, it is most manifest in the growing social problem of isolation. Lonely society is everywhere pervasive and present. At some point political arguments run out and we are left with something else, an “inaccessible interiority” that lies beyond the reach of any political or sociological framework.12 This is the black box of politics. The value of the human is a thread through the project I have explored in various fields. This has been under analysis within the life and times of contemporary organisations and how, collectively, we must fight to ensure that humans are not relegated to the margins of high tech society. We have looked at the same subject within the realm of collective action. “We Count, we matter” indicated that the sharp divide in politics around social distance is due to those who wish to fight to maintain their position and those who are less bothered by being a part of an interconnected web. We have looked at this reality of loss of significance through the battlefield casualties in the economy and market society we have created. We have made a fresh study of inequality, indicating how intensified social comparison presents needs and imperatives towards equal worth but which sets up existential crises. And we have looked also at this through the lens of the principles that forge high value society and its political community based on people-power. In this book, the quest for a high value and its antithesis, loss of significance, will be pressed in a number of directions.

First, aloneness The prevalence and depth of isolation in contemporary society shows a lonely exodus that is in retreat from itself as social bonds weaken. We will theorise loneliness in terms of the void in contemporary society and the human soul. The void must be covered over, compensated for by acts that disguise the true extent of the existential crisis facing us. In myriad ways, we must cover up, for

The psychopathology of everyday life

5

we are naked underneath. What happens when humans do not find the social and personal significance for which they yearn? Often, we curl in on ourselves. We come to feel we are non-people. Those around us are not taking note of or honouring our humanity. Connections between this and loneliness should be apparent. Humans are social creatures who rely on interaction from which to derive our worth. Interaction is the stuff of life and of validation. Intensified social comparison – over-sharing on social media creates pernicious consequences. All the way from fame-hungry children to the epidemic of self-harming and threat to mental well-being that is crippling young people, we live in anxious times.

Conflict and violence One way of looking at the violence that continues to disfigure humanity is that of rival groups competing for the scarce resource of attention. Much violence can be seen as a bid to be seen and heard, to make a statement through being noticed. It is a perverse claim that says in effect, “look at me.” The insignificant feel their status; their situation that has operated for the diminishment of self. What is needed, or so it is perceived, is violence. Acts of violence will do the job; re-establish the position and reverse the status quo. Violence accomplishes this remedial action through setting up a social exchange system through which the devalued and the victim change places. At the heart of this hermeneutic of violence is transfer, of “the other” that offers atonement. That the impetus towards high value through significance is a source of much social conflict can hardly be denied. Life is a zero-sum game: there are no winners and winners. On the micro-level units of families, churches, voluntary organisations or commercial companies, significance can be a highly charged competition. Those in hot pursuit of significance, often at others’ expense, can wreak havoc. Channelled effectively, it can be a source of much dynamism. On a larger scale, there are countless people who lose out because economic growth is spread unevenly. A capitalist economy generates winners and losers – those who fall behind and have power of money used against them. This leads on to a third arena for the significance of significance; that of the psychology of politics. I have written about this elsewhere. There is a strong need for politicians to listen to the people, to understand their needs and concerns. “One thing that people who wield great power often fail to viscerally understand is what it feels like to have power wielded against you,” wrote a much circulated visceral cry in Trumpian America.13 “The people who start the wars do not have bombs dropped on their houses. The people who pass the laws that incarcerate others never have to face the full force of the prison system themselves. The people who design the economic system that inflicts poverty on millions are themselves rich. This sort of insulation from the real world consequences of political and economic decisions makes it very easy for powerful people to approve of things happening to the rest of us that they

6 The psychopathology of everyday life

would never, ever tolerate themselves.” On the other side of the pond, white collars had little conception of blue collar lives. The significant trash the insignificant: a perennial drama of political operations that does violence to them. Value and power are deeply entwined. The point about significance in the psychology of political action shows up in another way. Political leaders often take the line of pursuing State action that will bolster their image on an international stage. Previous humiliation or diminishment must be reversed. Russia – or Great Britain come to that – must be great again. Like individuals, State actors often only know how to be significant by throwing their weight around, by being aggressive or dominant rather than a more mature political community at home with itself. Putting politics on the couch in this way is highly instructive. It is also highly relevant. How do we engender a positive vision of what a society can be without regard to the psychology of human flourishing? The impetus to be valued and to feel valuable, the need to feel one is worth something that is central to what it means to be human. In contemporary life, value is accorded to individuals and groups in a way that is unrelated to inner value or “value-in-oneself.” What someone is worth is awarded to social participants on the basis of the wage economy (economic value), identity badges (status value such as ownership or appearance) or identity boundaries (social value; being the right sort of person). The reality is that the social transmission of value and worth is far more than a question of what individuals do for or to each other. Value is communicated at a much broader level than conscious actions and choices. It is embedded within society; individual practice can be read off social practices on a far bigger scale than people and families. Human worth is transmitted by deeply rooted social structures: systems that whirr away behind the scenes to quiet yet deadly effect. It is for the most part systemic factors that explain racism or the power of other “isms.” The psychic impact of this needs exploring. Before we go to proposing an account of what that impetus towards a high value and significance looks like within the psyche and what it is based on, we look at the issue of loneliness and why that generates an existential crisis for growing numbers of people. We then go on to consider the toxic life of cyber space and the way that is fuelling a mental health crisis amongst young people especially. Our third landscape of social anxiety is one of conflict – the kind where because of our separateness and aloneness, we lash out and conceive of the world as a zero-sum game which only winners and losers can play. That leads on to consider how such significance games and violence generally sets up some kind of transfer “change and mart,” a social exchange arena in which the violent and the victim engage in trading places. We are compelled to live as if we are worth something. Where that is absent, experiences of devaluation set up a reaction, that at a profound level, we matter. Experiences of devaluation play loudly in people’s lives. A sense of a valuable self is formed in the face of someone who smiled when they saw you. But

The psychopathology of everyday life

7

experiences of devaluation create an energy which fuels the Protest. Anger was often hot collective indignation; the capacity for outrage a test of the bonds of humanity. In short, the interior landscape cannot be understood without some concept of the struggle to realise our sense of inner worth and what we will call “a valuable self.” With those considerations in place, we move on to asking a fundamental question. How deep does it go? What theory can help to explain these arenas of anxiety? Can we propose new theory? What would it mean to say that the impetus towards high value is fundamental? Should the inner world be re-configured? Should we care if the human dimension is pushed to the wall? Valuing the human is vital to the public discourse of our time. The moral imperatives of the age are inscribed in large lettering across the contemporary insistence in public discourse that all should be treated equally, irrespective of class, creed, colour, and that all should be cared for and given respect, whether old or young. I argue that the role that human value plays stands out especially when it is viewed negatively and indirectly. Cultures of devaluation that are indifferent to or diminish human concerns or which treat people with indignity constantly arise. It is vital to understand the routes through which cultures of devaluation are triggered in psychosocial worlds. There are, I propose, essentially three. Circumstances that erode a sense of value and by implication, a culture of recovery do, I suggest, boil down to indifference, inferiority and indignity. Social analysis must also take this into account. This book goes beyond “A Question of Worth” to explore the notion that human value is a dynamic in society. It arises in contemporary social processes precisely because it is a factor in psychological life. The impact of those factors and the relationship between them is what will concern us here. This dynamic has been under-theorised. Drawing on neuroscience, Duffel contends that leaders cannot make good decisions without emotional information (Antonio Damasio), nor grow a flexible brain without good attachments (Sue Gerhardt), nor interpret facial signals if your heart has had to close down (Stephen Porges), nor see the big picture if your brain has been fed on a strict diet of rationality (Iain McGilchrist).14 We argue here that the mystery of a human person could not be grasped without invoking a construct of human value. Strategies people use to pursue their value are as various as human ingenuity can devise – outrage, laughter, achievement, significance and anger, ever-present. This elixir of life – or is it necessary food? – is gained for many through making some contribution to their world, to feel they counted for something. This was worth waking up in the morning for. The world of social policy woke up to how people needed incentives, to aspire and perspire in a way that fed a sense of worth. Young people in a state of transition need positive identities. Those trapped in gun crime or radicalisation need employment, music and a group identity that conveys thawing worth. (To concentrate on the guns and the crime and

8 The psychopathology of everyday life

the ideology is to freeze it and risk problematising normal adolescent developmental behaviours.)15 For everywhere there are deficits. Condemn us to live without value and the flowers perish – or they never unfolded. That they can still respond to the sun shows how essential that sun is. Try as we might, we do not function well without a sense of a valuable self. We were condemned to live as if we had a value, to fight against the depression that condemns us to a constituency of one. Self-respect or the value of significant others is not self-indulgent luxury food. The language of our inner self where we construct meanings of everyday life is clear. “Give us this day our daily bread!”

Notes 1 Hillman, J. (1992) Revisioning Psychology. New York: Harper Perennial. 2 The Prince’s Trust Macquarie Youth Index. (2018) www.macquarie.com/uk/about/ community/news-stories/almost-half-of-young-people-fear-that-there-will-be-fewerjob-opportunities-in-the-next-three-years 3 www.thetimes.co.uk/article/self-harming-by-teenage-girls-doubles-in-20-yearsx2vbzm87m accessed 6th August 2018. 4 Leader, D. (2013) Strictly Bipolar. London: Penguin. 5 Gergen, K. J. (2015) The limits of neuroscience. In D. Loewenthal (Ed.), Critical Psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Counselling. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 6 Furedi, F. (2004) Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge. 7 Duffell, N. (2016) Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion: A Psychohistory. London: Lone Arrow Press Ltd. 8 Cozolino, L. (2014) The Neuroscience of Human Relationships: Attachment and the Developing Social Brain. New York: W. W. Norton. 9 Smail, D. (2017) Understanding the social context of individual distress. In R. Tweedy (Ed.), The Political Self: Understanding the Social Context for Medical Illness. London: Karnac Books, pp. 3–28. 10 Samuels, A. (2002) Politics on the Couch: Citizenship and the Internal Life. London: Karnac Books. 11 Warnecke, T. (2015) The Psyche of the Modern World: Psychotherapy and Society. London: Karnac Books. 12 Anderson, A. (2017) Bleak Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 13 Nolan, H. (2018) This is just the beginning. https://splinternews.com/this-is-just-thebeginning accessed 25th June 2018. 14 Duffell, M. (2014) Wounded Leaders: British Elitism and the Entitlement Illusion: A Psychohistory. London: Lone Arrow Press. 15 Coppock, V., & McGovern, M. (2014) ‘Dangerous minds’: Deconstructing counterterrorism discourse, radicalisation and the ‘psychological vulnerability’ of Muslim children and young people in Britain. Children and Society, 28, 242–256.

Part 1

Arenas of anxiety

Chapter 1

Companion

Without friends, no one would choose to live though he had all other goods. – Aristotle

Loneliness’ lament is a sigh of our times. It is exceedingly difficult to measure and difficult, therefore, to know if it is on the increase. That it is making its way up public policy concerns is, however, unmistakable. The effect of persistent loneliness is harmful to humans; it can seriously damage your health. “As the public health function moves back into local government, councils should ensure that loneliness is recognised as a public health issue, and is proposed as a priority for health and wellbeing boards.”1 Loneliness is a well of sadness about the lack of human connection. People can be on their own and enjoy it. All the religions speak of solitude in a positive sense. Yet when humans persistently lack friends and someone close to talk to, it begins to have a negative effect; an effect shaped by cultural influences and not just situational. Loneliness is not the same as isolation. I am isolated if I have few people around me with whom I can share. Loneliness is not the same as isolation: it is the meaning we wrap around the absence of contact. It is though not purely a question of meanings. Loneliness is harmful to the soul. As modernisation occurs, it is likely that loneliness grows in its wake.2 The loneliness of the contemporary self is not a passing fad or social panic. It is being generated by modernity’s restless surge: a surge that breaks down social ties in the same breath as it breaks down tradition. It takes prisoners of any age, indiscriminately. “Loneliness is a significant and growing concern for many older people and is something that is now being identified as a major public health issue,” the Local Government Association reported in January 2016.3 Aloneness is profoundly threatening. But why?

12

Arenas of anxiety

Speaking into the void When felt intensely, loneliness rips apart the safe certainties of predictable life. “I’m on my own” forces us to teeter over the precipice. It is linked at a profound level with the notion of separateness. Alienation from the regular world provokes an interior split. Bifurcation of life results in parcelling our connections into two camps – everyone else and then there’s me. I am separate, cut off from connections with meaningful others with no one to share.4 Aloneness is the stuff from which existence is wrought. Naked and alone we came into the world: we leave it one soul at a time. It is intrinsic to our nature to be separate yet longing for union. This is a question that the major world religions have sought to answer. The fear of aloneness is that we will disappear. Out of sight and out of mind, loneliness threatens to suck us in. The void will claim us. Like unwelcome retirement, loneliness reveals that we are cut off from a powerful source of validation. It is a dashboard indicator to our relational orientation, the pivot of the soul outwards. The Campaign to End Loneliness surveyed 1,000 GPs in 2013 looking at the impact loneliness has on their patients’ health. Of doctors, 75% said they see up to five patients a day whose main reason for visiting their doctor was loneliness and probably have nowhere else to go to for conversation. Of doctors, 10% said they see six to 10 patients each day who say they are lonely.5 I’d definitely class myself as lonely. I’ve always been a lonely person, even when I’ve been in a relationship or had loads of people around me. My mental health hasn’t been great over the last six months, mainly because my fiancé and I recently split up and we were supposed to get married in July, and my younger brother hasn’t been too well, which hasn’t helped my mental health. Having a mental health problem is lonely because you constantly feel like you have to explain yourself and tell people why you feel a certain way. If people don’t get it, it can be very isolating, especially if you’re not able to articulate how you feel.6 Studies are indicating that those who identify as lonely are twice as likely to have problems with mental health. Loneliness has an adverse effect on both physical and mental health with lonely people being more at risk of high blood pressure, early onset of cognitive decline, dementia and depression.7 Depression and anxiety can influence how we connect with others and how we develop relationships.8 There is a strong link between loneliness and depressive symptoms.9 Research conducted by Com Res in the UK for the charity “Silver Line” in November 2013 indicates that up to 2.5 million older people suffer from loneliness.10 According to UK Age Concern:11

Companion

• • • • • • • • •

13

Only 46% of over-65s said they spent time together with their family most days, compared with 65–76% for other ages; 12% of over-65s said they never spent time with family. Only 35% of over-65s spent time with friends most days in the last two weeks – 12% never did. 49% of all people aged 75 and over live alone. 9% of older people feel trapped in their own home. 6% of older people leave their house once a week, or less. 30% of older people say they would like to go out more often. Nearly 200,000 older people in the UK who do not receive the help they need leave their homes. 17% of older people have less than weekly contact with family, friends and neighbours. 11% of older people have less than monthly contact.

Such studies can be multiplied. The evidence is mounting up. In a survey of various loneliness research reports, the Campaign to End Loneliness found that half of all older people say the television is their main company.12 In other research reported by the Campaign, it was found that loneliness has an adverse effect on both physical and mental health, with lonely people being more at risk of high blood pressure, early onset of cognitive decline and dementia and depression.13 The association between loneliness and health is well-documented.14 It is not just a UK issue. About 20% of Belgians feel lonely often to always. A recent paper explores the relation between the feeling of loneliness and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) in three studies using a database of 3,770 Belgians. The third study, for example, investigated whether the relationship between loneliness and SWB is mediated by income, health or the basic psychological needs. Preliminary results illustrate a clear relationship between lack of SWB and loneliness. This highlights the importance of tackling loneliness as a serious social issue in the Belgian society.15 The point at which loneliness and mental health issues intersect is a particularly tricky one, and the relationship between them is causal for many people.16 For some, a mental health condition prevents them from being able to socialise and open up to people, whereas for others, mental ill health stems from a lack of close relationships.17 Social isolation is most certainly not just an issue for the elderly. Compared with people over 64, three times as many 16- to 24-year-olds regularly feel lonely.18 It is severely affecting their mental health. Loneliness is strongly linked with premature death in old age, to a similar degree as smoking or obesity. With increasing attention on loneliness as a major public health issue, the study highlights the importance of early intervention to prevent young adults being trapped in loneliness as they age. Over 2,000 British 18-year-olds were asked questions such as “how often do you feel you lack companionship?” and “how often do you feel left out?”

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Arenas of anxiety

and were interviewed about their mental and physical health, lifestyle habits, education and employment. Loneliness was common among young adults: the researchers found a quarter of study participants reported feeling lonely some of the time and approximately 7% reported feeling lonely often. These findings mirror a recent UK Office of National Statistics survey which found that loneliness was more common among 16- to 24-year-olds than any other age group. Lonely young adults were more than twice as likely to have mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, and to have self-harmed or attempted suicide. They were more likely to have seen their GP or a counsellor for mental health problems in the past year. One in five in the loneliest 10% of the sample were not in education, employment or training, compared with one in 10 non-lonely young people. Lonelier young adults were more likely to be out of work and education, less likely to be physically active, more likely to smoke and more likely to use technology compulsively (at the expense of other activities and obligations). They were less confident about career prospects.19 A study published in Psychological Medicine has shown how millennials have a higher risk of mental health problems if they are lonely. Being lonely does not necessarily mean you are on your own. If though you are feeling isolated from other people, it can be completely debilitating to your life. It’s bad for stress and even increases the risk of early death by 26%. Lonely millennials have twice the risk of developing mental health problems like depression and anxiety, compared with those who are connected to others. Researchers from King’s College London analysed 2,066 millennial twins in England and Wales. They were asked about their experiences at different stages of life, their relationships, how lonely they were and how their mental and physical health was. The most recent data was taken while the twins were 18. Results showed that 7% of participants said they often felt lonely while 23–31% said they felt left out or lacked companionship. Being lonely was associated with double the chance of a mental health problem and a 38% increased risk of being unemployed. Lonely individuals were more likely to engage in risky behaviours like smoking and not exercising.20 Thirty-three-year-old Michelle Lloyd wrote: I’d definitely class myself as lonely. I’ve always been a lonely person, even when I’ve been in a relationship or had loads of people around me. My mental health hasn’t been great over the last six months, mainly because my fiancé and I recently split up and we were supposed to get married in July, and my younger brother hasn’t been too well, which hasn’t helped my mental health. Having a mental health problem is lonely because you constantly feel like you have to explain yourself and tell people why you feel a certain way. If people don’t get it, it can be very isolating, especially if you’re not able to articulate how you feel. I started having mental health problems in my teens but I never spoke to anyone about it until my early 20s and it was when I went to university that the loneliness hit. I was spending a lot of time on my own, I was homesick and it got worse from then on. I’m now living alone in London and I feel more isolated than ever, which comes with its own complications.

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I’ve always had periods of feeling very lonely and London is a different kind of beast to everywhere else I’ve lived before.21 Matthews observed: Our findings suggest that if someone tells their GP or a friend that they feel lonely, that could be a red flag that they’re struggling in a range of other areas in life. There are lots of community initiatives to try and encourage people to get together and take part in shared activities. However, it’s important to remember that some people can feel lonely in a crowd, and the most effective interventions to reduce loneliness involve counselling to help individuals tackle negative patterns of thinking.”22 What, however, is the pathway by which people react differently? For the purposes of this essay, the culprit may well be one of a deficit in felt value. Valuing environments are crucial for human flourishing. The impetus towards “companion” is that our very core sense of being worthwhile as a human is at stake. Without it, we wither.

Relationality Paradoxically, the more individualistic a culture becomes, the more its members need community. It is also paradoxical that this existential crisis developed at the same time as advances in technology have supposedly brought us closer. In 2017, London’s Time Out City Index survey placed it as one of the loneliest cities in the world. A total of 55% of Londoners said it could feel lonely here sometimes, compared with just 10% of the friendly citizens of Lisbon.23 Poorna Bell commented: You hear it in the voices of people who have tried and failed to make it here, and of those who are wondering if it’s time to leave. My experience with loneliness in London is one of the reasons that compelled me to write Chase the Rainbow about what my husband Rob and I had been going through. He had two stays in The Priory, one of his first revelations was: ‘I don’t think I realised how lonely I’ve been.’ It had nothing to do with our marriage but more to do with how Rob viewed his own problems and his inability to articulate them and open up. A perfect storm is created: you can’t confess to your vulnerabilities because everyone else seems to have life sorted out, and no one else confesses for the same reasons. Human connection is the antidote to loneliness but London is a city where it is not only hard to make friends, its drive for success can be utterly singular and unrelenting around career, money and relationships. It means that when things go wrong, you feel as if you can’t talk about what’s going wrong.”24 Loneliness is more than just feeling sad or being alone. It can be wistful or an acutely painful sense of disconnection. “It’s that subjective, distressing feeling of

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that discrepancy between one’s desired and actual level of social connection,” observed a major researcher in the field.25 Experts are deeming loneliness a public health threat more pressing than smoking and obesity due to its prevalence. But why is it so common today? Have we become so closed off from each other so quickly? What contributes in any event to the weakening of social bonds? Is it due to more of us not just living older but living alone longer?26 Beyond doubt loneliness, the distressing feeling that one’s social relationships are deficient in some important way, is all too common a human experience. Social disconnection is a malaise where the tides of social life and technology leave many people washed up on a lonely beach. Over a third of people aged 65 and over in the UK feel out of touch with the pace of modern life and nearly a tenth said that they feel cut off from society.27 Social media use feeds feelings of isolation. People have fewer close friends than they used to, and live further from family.28 There is mounting evidence that social isolation and loneliness are increasing in society. They should, therefore, be added to lists of public health concerns.29 Although further research on causal pathways is needed, researchers now know both the level of risk and the social trends suggestive of even greater risk in the future.30 Current evidence indicates that heightened risk for mortality from a lack of social relationships is greater than that from obesity.31 The number of people living in one-person households has increased dramatically from 17% in 1971 to 29% in 2013. Figures published in 2013 by the Office for National Statistics show that those who: • • •

Live alone (29%) say they feel lonely some or most of the time; Have been widowed (63%) say they feel lonely some or most of the time; Have poor health/disability affecting their normal daily living activities are most likely to report feeling lonely (45%), saying they feel lonely some or most of the time.32

Research evidence points to a range of risk factors associated with loneliness. However, knowledge of the mechanisms by which these factors lead to loneliness is limited. As Burholt and Scharf point out, few models of loneliness are based on theoretical assumptions.33 How, then, do we theorise loneliness?

Aloneness and the human situation Once we have looked into the existential abyss and realised how random life can be, that there is no safety net, a profound crisis is set up. Work and the world of close others, are powerful sources of validation on which our value depends. According to Janoff-Bulman’s theory of shattered assumptions, there are three implicit beliefs we hold; the world is benevolent, meaningful and predictable, and that we are worthy, decent people with the ability to control outcomes.

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With loneliness, these foundations disintegrate.34 Is that due to our cultural meanings through which we interpret the world? Or is that because aloneness and the need for companion is core human “stuff ”? Aloneness takes us into the question of subjectivity, of consciousness, a preoccupation of 20th century philosophers. The examination of consciousness, the essential structures of experience and what makes them possible was fundamental to the phenomenological work of Edmund Husserl.35 There are many ways to think about how to interpret our loneliness and aloneness. For instance, Martin Heidegger’s project of an existential fundamental ontology in Being and Time in which he posited the notion of “Dasein” – being in the world. In the hands of Heidegger, “Dasein” is a substitute for human consciousness whose theme is “being there.” We are “thrown” into the world and into any given situation and this is part of what it means to be human. He rejects the whole thrust of Cartesian distinction between the questioning self and the objects of external experience. Dasein is a unified sense of being in the world. I am already engaged in the world. This bold move rejects the old way of thinking about self and self-identity. These questions we raise about ourselves – who am I?36 His central insight is that we cannot exist independently of our relation to the world, and this relationship is a matter of mood and appetite, not rational contemplation. Heidegger says that we do not feel “at home” in the world. This is the motivating theme of his philosophy. We are not first of all knowers or spectators. Primarily we are engaged in the world of other people. Kant had supposed that the world consists of objects. For Heidegger, the world is implicated in engaged people. A car is not just a description of knowledge; it is something I use.37 Though Heidegger denied he was part of the philosophical mood labelled existentialism, “dasein” is often translated as “existence” and indeed usually means that in German. Sartre was more reflective of that mood though somewhat different. We have an inbuilt compulsion to find meaning in life, though for everyone that will be different.38 Victor Frankl’s “Logotherapy” was based on the same approach, that it is important to find meaning whatever the circumstances we are in.39 Neither focussed on what is called increasingly “existential loneliness.” In that tradition, “Existential Loneliness” is a new concept. The sense of emptiness and void is a deficit within each person, not a lack of meaningful relationships. Has our deep sense of something missing been miscast as an inter-personal problem? Loneliness is interpreted invariably as meaning a lack of human connection, but in an existential sense it runs much deeper than that and is a fundamental part of modern human existence. Michael Schreiner argues: The more freedom you have to direct the course of your life the more will this feeling of being separate gnaw away at you. Here we see the appeal of all caste systems. If your role is clearly defined for you and you are completely sure of your place within a society then you feel like you are a part not apart.40

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It is both interesting and sad to reflect on the experience of the brilliant German Friedrich Nietzsche. He wrote about the looming void in Western civilisation but arguably, he lived it. The dominant characteristic of Nietzsche’s life was that of the lonely self, battling on in order to make sense of life.41 Loneliness is the subjective aspect of objective isolation. Loneliness is felt where there is no significant relationship or where connection has been lost with a loved one. The fear of loneliness is that we are and will be in lack. It is both present reality and presentiment that we will feel the need of something in our lives that will bridge the divide to each other and even to our own selves. Is it always negative? Are we in suspension, waiting for delayed response from those who populate our clump of the world? Higham suggests that we misidentify ourselves as separate entities: that we are looking for a direct relationship with the source of belonging and affirmation.42 So where can we find authentic connection?

What do you expect? Theorising loneliness Risk factors are numerous. There will often be precipitating events which lead to a decrease in achieved levels of social interaction and social participation, ultimately impacting on loneliness. Life events are a major factor in shaping loneliness. The onset of ill health or disabling conditions, loss of mobility or retirement can bring it on as can widowhood or assuming caring obligations that will tie someone in and impede social interaction. Psychological factors contribute to it – such as cognitive function, anxiety or depression. Loneliness can also be affected by a range of socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, childlessness, poverty, income or education. There is also a strong environmental aspect. Loneliness looks different in urban or rural contexts through the experience is perhaps the same. In rural areas, the achieved level of social interaction and social participation can vary significantly for good or ill.43 These studies do not show that loneliness is the cause of problems in health and well-being. They do show how loneliness is associated though with a wide range of important social issues. One approach to explaining loneliness is in terms of cognitive discrepancy theory. This sees loneliness as a discrepancy between desired and achieved levels of social relations. Mismatches may arise due to life events or specific sets of circumstances (e.g. widowhood, migration, onset of ill health) Loneliness can be reduced by adjusting either expectations of social interaction or achieved quality/frequency of interactions.44 There is a gap, in other words, between what people expect and what is realistically available. Harry Stack Sullivan offered in his theory of personality development the view that in preadolescence, a powerful human need for intimacy first emerges. This makes teenagers especially vulnerable to the driving force of loneliness. The year 1959 saw a paper by Fromm-Reichmann on loneliness, based on her clinical work with schizophrenics. She too emphasised that loneliness is a

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distressing and powerful experience, often traceable to childhood experiences in the family. Riesman et al. drew attention to the possible impact on personal relations of social changes on personal relations and loneliness.45 Empirical research began to take off. A major marker was Robert Weiss’ book, Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation (1973). Weiss offered an interactionist view of loneliness as stemming both from personal vulnerabilities and situational constraints on relationships. He brought together papers which attempt to capture the phenomena of loneliness with case materials that illuminate the descriptive and theoretical accounts. It is organised into seven sections, covering explanations for the neglect of loneliness, and an attempt to describe the condition; mechanisms underlying some forms of loneliness; a discussion of situations in which loneliness is commonly found; loneliness among those suffering the loss of a loved one; the loneliness of social isolation and resources available to the lonely.46 The theoretical architecture I propose will be developed in a later chapter. We will argue that social relationships convey value and worth through which humans thrive do not thrive. Total isolation is harmful for mental well-being and indeed disvalued because relationality is conduit for a social value that translates into personal value and worth. Take that away and the individual begins to crumble. We are a being that cannot come to terms with itself. Yearning to express ourselves, we do not want to be what we are. Concealed behind a thousand ideals, the lonely self harbours innumerable contradictions in its inner being; unsure where to go to be free from them or to untie the knot. Who is this who asks the question? Who is it, so conscious of wonder, so tortured with lonely questions of existence? Who is this who even dares to pit itself against the vastness and claim significance? Theorising loneliness has to take on board, almost by definition, the reality that humans are inescapably subjects of social interaction. Humans live in societies; entities that are greater than constituent individuals. Contemporary society, like those that preceded it, is a system of social relations. Symbolic communication, group cooperation and interaction are essential. Loneliness represents a direct assault on a social mode of existence. Isolation is a mirror on the significance of social relationships. The developing child has become a social personality, enmeshed in a web of relationships through which meanings are communicated. The structure of human personality is a product of social interaction. Although there are occasional instances of feral children, almost all become those for whom isolation and lack of contact have negative value. Solitary confinement can involve dramas of play or the imaginary but the element of novelty and surprise are always lacking. Why social relationships become ends in themselves is not hard to see. Some patterns of interaction are purely instrumental but a society that did not teach its members to value social relationships would be missing a vital dimension that makes for its cohesion. “Most individuals who have a poetic conception of solitude for a day, much less a week could not stand it.”47

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So, we close this chapter with a well-known quote from the poet William Cowper, writing about the loneliness of the shipwrecked sailor Alexander Selkirk, set in 1704: I AM monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute; From the centre all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place. I am out of humanity’s reach, I must finish my journey alone, Never hear the sweet music of speech; I start at the sound of my own. The beasts that roam over the plain My form with indifference see; They are so unacquainted with man, Their tameness is shocking to me. Society, Friendship and Love Divinely bestow’d upon man, O, had I the wings of a dove How soon would I taste you again48

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Notes 1 Combating loneliness: A guide for local authorities www.bristol.gov.uk/documents/ 20182/34732/A-guide-for-local-authorities-combating-loneliness accessed January 2017. 2 Perissinotto, C. M., & Covinsky, K. E. (2014) Living alone, socially isolated or lonely: What are we measuring? Journal of General Internal Medicine, 11, 1429–1431. 3 Local Government Association spokeswoman for public health Izzi Seccombe. (2016) Papers for Annual Public Health Conference, January www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ health/news/12126606/Loneliness-is-a-major-public-health-issue-local-governmentbody-claims.html accessed January 2017. 4 Fromm-Reichmann, F. (1959) Loneliness. Psychiatry, 22, 1–15. 5 www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/press-releases/ accessed January 2017. 6 Michelle Lloyd. https://youdontlookdepressed.com/ accessed 28th May 2018. 7 Evangelical Alliance. (2014) The extent of loneliness in the UK http://eauk.co/1bdhtqB accessed January 2017. 8 Mental Health Foundation. (2012) The Lonely Society? 9 Cacioppo, J. T., Hawkley, L. C., & Thisted, R. A. (2010) Perceived social isolation makes me sad: 5-year cross-lagged analyses of loneliness and depressive symptomatology in the Chicago Health, Aging, and Social Relations Study. Psychology and Aging, 25(2), 453–463. 10 www.thesilverline.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/The-Silver-Line-LonelinessSurvey-FULL-FINDINGS-1.pdf accessed January 2017.

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11 www.ageuk.org.uk/health-wellbeing/loneliness/ accessed January 2017. 12 www.campaigntoendloneliness.org.uk/information-on-loneliness/loneliness-research/ accessed January 2017. 13 Evangelical Alliance. (2014) The extent of loneliness in the UK http://eauk.co/1bdhtqB accessed January 2017. 14 Cacioppo, J. T., Hawkley, L. C., Crawford, L. E., Ernst, J. M., Burleson, M. H., Kowalewski, R. B., et al. (2002) Loneliness and health: Potential mechanisms. Psychosomatic Medicine, 64(3), 407–417. 15 T’Jaeckx, J., et al. Paper for a British Sociological Association conference ‘How Are Feelings of Loneliness Related to Subjective Well-Being?’, Ghent University, Department Public Health and Primary Care, Belgium. 16 Peplau, L. A., & Perlman, D. (Eds.). (1982) Loneliness: A Sourcebook of Current Theory, Research, and Therapy. New York, NY: Wiley. 17 House, J. S., Landis, K. R., & Umberson, D. (1988) Social relationships and health. Science, 241, 540–545. 18 Blau, Z. (1961) Structural constraints of friendship in old age. American Sociological Review, 26, 429–439. 19 Matthews, T., et al. (2018) Lonely young adults in modern Britain: Findings from an epidemiological cohort study. Psychological Medicine. 20 Matthews, T., et al. (2018) Lonely young adults in modern Britain: Findings from an epidemiological cohort study. Psychological Medicine, 24th April. 21 Michelle Lloyd https://youdontlookdepressed.com/ accessed 28th May 2018. 22 Matthews, T., et al. (2018) Lonely young adults in modern Britain: Findings from an epidemiological cohort study. Psychological Medicine, 24th April. 23 Time Out’s City Index survey. Time Out 16th February 2017. 24 Bell, P. (2017) Chase the Rainbow. London: Simon & Schuster. 25 Holt-Lunstad, J. (2015) Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227–237. 26 Klinenberg, E. (2012) Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone. New York, NY: Penguin. 27 www.campaigntoendloneliness.org.uk/information-on-loneliness/loneliness-research/ accessed January 2017. 28 Goswick, R. A., & Jones, W. H. (1981) Loneliness, self-concept and adjustment. Journal of Psychology, 107, 237–240. 29 McPherson, M., & Smith-Lovin, L. (2006) Social isolation in America: Changes in core discussion networks over two decades. American Sociological Review, 71, 353–375. 30 Wilson, C., & Moulton, B. (2010) Loneliness among Older Adults: A National Survey of Adults 45+. Washington, DC: AARP Inc. 31 Victor, C. R., & Yang, K. (2012) The prevalence of loneliness among adults: A case study of the United Kingdom. The Journal of Psychology, 146, 85–104. 32 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7898510.stm and Measuring National Well-Being: Older People and Loneliness, 2013. Office for National Statistics and Families and Households 2013 Office for National Statistics. 33 ‘Loneliness: Understanding risks and influences’. Burholt, V., & Scharf, T. (2012) Irish centre for social gerontology: What do we know about loneliness? Merton College Oxford, 9th– 10th July www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/wpcontent/uploads/downloads/2012/ 07/Vanessa-Burholt-Thomas-Scharf-July-2012.pdf 34 Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992) Shattered Assumptions. New York: Free Press. 35 Husserl, E., & Carr, D. (1970) The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy(Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 36 Heidegger, M. (2010) Being and Time. New York: State University of New York Press.

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37 Nichols, C. M. (2000) Primordial freedom: The authentic truth of Dasein in Heidegger’s ‘being and time’. In Thinking Fundamentals, IWM Junior Visiting Fellows Conferences, Vol. 9. Vienna: IWM. 38 Sartre, J. P. (2007) Existentialism Is a Humanism. New York: Yale University Press. 39 Frankl, V. (1964) Man’s Search for Meaning. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 40 Schreiner, M. (2014) Existential Loneliness. Existential Psychology, 14th August https:// evolutioncounseling.com/existential-loneliness/ accessed June 2018. 41 Cate, C. (2003) Friedrich Nietzsche: A Biography. London: Pimlico Press. 42 Higham, N. (2018) Living the Life That You Are: Finding Wholeness When You Feel Lost, Isolated and Afraid. London: New Harbinger. 43 ‘Loneliness: Understanding risks and influences’. Burholt, V., & Scharf, T. (2012) Irish centre for social gerontology: What do we know about loneliness? Merton College Oxford, 9th–10th July www.campaigntoendloneliness.org/wpcontent/uploads/down loads/2012/07/Vanessa-Burholt-Thomas-Scharf-July-2012.pdf 44 Perlman, D., & Peplau, L. A. (1981) Toward a social psychology of loneliness. In S. Duck & R. Gilmour (Eds.), Personal Relationships in Disorder. London: Academic Press. 45 Glazer, N., Denny, R., & Riesman, D. (1961) The Lonely Crowd. London: Yale University Press. 46 Weiss, R. (1973) Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 47 Davis, K. (1949) Human Society. New York: Macmillan, p. 152. 48 Cowper, W. 317. The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald. The Harvard Classics www.bartleby.com/41/317.html

Chapter 2

Comparison “Go compare”: social media and social toxins

A second way of framing contemporary concern about the interior landscape is that of intensified social comparison. This is especially critical in an era of social media and the effect on the well-being of young people. The rise and rise of social media from the mid-2000s has revolutionised the way in which we communicate and share information. It has permeated nearly every aspect of the mainstream. We are only just beginning to take stock of the extent to which it impacts our lives.1 Social media has become a space in which we form and build relationships, shape self-identity, express ourselves, and learn about the world around us; it is intrinsically linked to mental health.2 The platforms that are supposed to help young people connect with each other may actually be fuelling a mental health crisis.3 Loneliness is not a diagnosable disorder. It reveals itself in symptoms such as behaviour patterns of withdrawal. Young people and children often exhibit this. One in five of us will feel lonely at some point. As we saw, 16- to 25-yearolds are becoming more isolated. Having a connection to the outside world is far healthier than its alternative. Yet there is growing evidence of valid concern about the mental well-being of young people generally. Data obtained by UK children’s charity the NSPCC show that schools in England have made a total of 123,713 referrals for specialist help since 2014–15. More than half of these came from primary schools. The youngest child referred for help was 3 years old. Issues of depression and anxiety were so severe that it can lead them to the brink of suicide. In 2017–18, some 18,870 children aged under 11 were referred for specialist support. This was a rise of 5,183, or more than a third, on those referred in 2014–15.4 The mental well-being of young people is problematic in the anxieties of contemporary society. In 2003, the World Health Organization reported that 20% of adolescents may experience a mental health problem in any given year.5 Depression and anxiety are affecting more young people than ever before. According to a study published at the end of 2014 by the Office for National

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Statistics, one in five 16- to 24-year-olds suffers from psychological problems.6 A report from the Government Equalities Office claimed that one in five teenage girls are opting out of classroom discussions and playing truant because they hate the way they look.7 There is uncertainty too when it comes to the face (and body) that we present. This may be in conflict with the images set by TV as to the kind of image and style that is valued by society at any one time. The result is appearance anxiety. For all those who find a response in personal make-over projects to be empowering, there must be many more who experience the fascism of appearance practised by our current social arrangements as oppressive. It reinforces low self-esteem, especially with girls.8 A psychologist cautions about the “pornification” of Western society, in which boys and girls are pressured to conform to gender stereotypes; boys pressured to conform to macho images, girls as sexually available objects.9 “Because you’re worth it!” – the strap-line on a L’Oréal advert that cleverly plugged into the quest underlying the pressure to look good and fit in. It affects men as well as women. To have a body like Adonis and look like the latest footballer celebrity sends messages about the kind of people who are highly prized. Witness the now fashionable demand for cosmetic surgeries in the Western societies. Girls are forced to grow up at an unnatural pace with the result that sexualism and materialism is harming emotional well-being. Half of girls in the UK said one of their peers suffered from depression, two in five knew someone who self-harmed and one in three had a friend with an eating disorder.10 It is as if feminism had never happened. Women are judged and judge themselves by being pretty. Neurological research has demolished the notion of the static brain. The brain is plastic, able to be re-moulded with new learning and an enhanced view of valuable self. In an adult with a healthy sense of value, denigration impinges upon that inner worth with an impact that can be mild or stinging, brief or longer-lasting. Yet the capacity to Protest our significance in the teeth of put-downs seems to be spring-loaded. Where patterns of attachment have been insecure or a healthy valuing of self has become dented through loss and trauma, it will take much longer – much as grass can be beaten down. But the capacity to respond to being valued in some way or by someone shows there is still a potential reflex operating to assert a valuable self. “I grew up feeling not worth very much, not as good as everyone else. All my life I’ve felt myself to be 2nd class goods. Yet deep down, I knew it wasn’t at all fair!”11 There has been a steep rise in reports of self-harm among girls aged 13–16, according to a study of data from GP practices across the UK. The researchers, from the University of Manchester looked at data for nearly 17,000 patients from more than 600 GP practices from 2011 to 2014. Their study, published in the British Medical Journal, examined figures that said GPs could be getting better at picking up self-harm. But it was likely that rising stress and psychological problems in young people were also behind the trend. Since 2001, girls have had much higher rates of self-harm than boys – 37.4 per 10,000 compared with

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12.3 in boys. While self-harm rates stayed constant among 10- to 12-year-olds and 17- to 19-year-olds, there was a 68% increase in 13- to 16-year-olds over the three years.12 It is the rise and rise of social media that is fuelling much concern. In Britain, teenagers now spend an average of 18 hours a week on their phones, much of it using social media. In older children, it could be things like never going out with mates, saying they feel sad or depressed, becoming more withdrawn and spending a lot of time alone. Social media use is far more prevalent among young people than older generations. The 16- to 24-year-olds are the most active social media users, with 91% using the internet for social media.13 Studies indicate there are links between overusing social media and depression, loneliness and a host of other mental problems. Former executives have spoken out about the intentional effects they had created. According to former Mozilla and Jawbone employee Aza Raskin, designers were driven to create addictive app features by the business models of the big companies that employed them. “In order to get the next round of funding, in order to get your stock price up, the amount of time that people spend on your app has to go up,” he said. “So, when you put that much pressure on that one number, you’re going to start trying to invent new ways of getting people to stay hooked.”14 Former Facebook executives made a related point. “Social media is very similar to a slot machine,” said Sandy Parakilas, who tried to stop using the service after he left the company in 2012. “It literally felt like I was quitting cigarettes.” What seems to be driving this addictive behaviour is the compulsion of needing to be valued. One of the most alluring aspects of social media for users is “likes,” which can come in the form of the thumbs-up sign, hearts or retweets. Leah Pearlman, co-inventor of Facebook’s “Like” button, said she had become hooked on Facebook because she had begun basing her sense of self-worth on the number of “likes” she had. “When I need validation – I go to check Facebook, I’m feeling lonely, ‘Let me check my phone.’ I’m feeling insecure, ‘Let me check my phone’.” Ms Pearlman said she had tried to stop using Facebook after leaving the company. “I noticed that I would post something that I used to post and the ‘like’ count would be way lower than it used to be. Suddenly, I thought I’m actually also kind of addicted to the feedback.”15 Former President of Facebook Sean Parker made much the same point. The dominant concern was “how do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible? And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever,” he told the news website Axios. “And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you . . . more likes and comments.” Parker added, “It’s a social-validation feedback loop . . . exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”16 Similarly, computer scientist Jaron Lanier argued that people should delete their social media accounts in order to get a greater perspective on life. In an

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interview for the news analysis programme Hardtalk, Lanier said that companies such as Google and Facebook are “behaviour modification empires” due to the intense monitoring of their users and the way they send subliminal messages to them.17 Those are the claims. Is there any evidence for this or are they symptoms of periodic tech panic? Much of the evidence comes from survey data about patterns of usage. An estimated 350 million social media users appear to suffer from social media addiction syndrome. This has become more prominent in users between the ages of 16–25. An estimated 60% of addicts are females, with 68% of users confessing to checking their social media feeds 10 times a day. Three hours a day on average is spent on social media for users aged 15–19. Two full hours are spent interacting daily for users aged 20–29. The most popular place that users check their feeds is in bed, with 66% of users doing so while under the covers. Of adolescents, 31% freely admit to reading and writing on a social media site while sitting on the toilet. Of users, 45% check their timeline while eating. Of students, 37% admitted that their social media updates were more interesting than a classroom lecture. Of youth, 55% check their social media site on a mobile device versus a desktop or laptop. Then comes the downside. Four out of five students admitted to withdrawal symptoms if they went without social media for a day. Crucially, many felt lonely. Some research suggests it is harder to refrain than giving up cigarettes or alcohol.18 A survey of 1,479 youngsters aged 14–24 found Instagram was positive in terms of self-expression and self-identity, but the #StatusofMind survey found that the photo-sharing app can negatively impact people’s body image, sleep and fear of missing out. In addition, many youngsters today say they feel “panicstricken and physically sick” if they do not post dozens of “selfies” each day on social media. A total of 91% of 16–24-year-olds use the internet for social networking. Rates of anxiety and depression in young people have risen 70% in the past 25 years. Social media use is linked with increased rates of anxiety, depression and poor sleep.19 According to qualitative data from the Deloittes sixth annual edition of the UK Mobile Consumer survey analysing the current trends in the mobile industry, almost half of 18–24-year-olds check their phone in the middle of the night.20 There may be some significant risks posed by social media use to young people’s mental health and emotional well-being. However, research is limited as yet. Due to social media being a relatively new introduction to the lives of young people, far more long-term research will be necessary before we are able to fully understand its effects.21 We should not be quick to attach the term “addiction” to social media activities. The science behind this is to incorporate design techniques to make technology manipulative through the scroll that never finishes. Social media is habit forming. It is all designed to keep us coming back. It is as if cocaine is being sprayed over us. Technology is being used to manipulate our habits through

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driving human behaviour. The “hook” is that we feel appreciated. It plugs into the need to be valued: self-esteem seems to rise.22 The news is not all bad. There is evidence to suggest that strong adolescent friendships can be enhanced by social media interaction, allowing young people to create stronger bonds with people they already know – supporting the idea that, in social terms, the “rich-get-richer.”23 Social media can enable inter-personal relationships through staying connected with friends and family members around the world who would otherwise be contacted less frequently, Social media can also act as a “second phase” of interaction after an initial faceto-face encounter with someone new. This means even the briefest interactions can be kept up.24 The link between these concerns and a positive sense of self-value seems clear. Self-expression and self-identity are important aspects of development throughout the teens and early twenties. This stage is a time when young people try new things and experiment with different aspects of themselves and their identity. Young people may pass through several identity phases throughout this period before developing a comfortable sense of self.25 It is important throughout this period that young people have a means to express and explore who they are as people. Social media can act as an effective platform for accurate and positive self-expression, letting young people put forward their best self.26 Like all things, social media has its strengths and disadvantages. It can be used to promote health campaigns and raise awareness of mental health issues. For example, certain celebrities and figures in the public eye have openly discussed their mental health issues, which can be a great source of help and support for people. On the other hand, online bullying plays a huge role on people’s mental health and have led to suicide attempts and completions. Social media can also be fickle. Before Facebook the big craze was MySpace. Instagram is growing in popularity now, and there are of course different forms of social media in different countries. In some countries, Facebook is banned, but they have their own alternatives.

Toxicity and social life In ways we are just beginning to understand, social comparison shapes lived experience markedly.27 Conspicuous consumption means that things become the norm and relative gains are neutralised. Relative-income effects matter profoundly.28 Wilkinson and Pickett seek to show that individuals are affected by the social structure not because they have an income distribution per se (something that is only observable from outside) but because they have relative position. To be sure, they argue that it is the scale of inequality that must be changed rather than individual psychology. Nevertheless, sensitivity to inequality comes on account of shared psychological characteristics.29 The cognitive turn in social sciences endeavoured to take account of the interaction between mind-emotions and our social experience. It is a commonplace

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of the cognitive sciences that there are different realities. Rooted in the phenomenological tradition of Husserl30 and Merleau-Ponty,31 the embodied mind and emotions are a dynamic and plastic way of knowing and as a formative root of one’s selfhood and subjectivity.32 How someone else perceives the world is different to mine. Experience of reality is not “one-size-fits-all.” Reality is something that is created inside our heads. Every brain gathers together the fragments that come to us every day and from it constructs a narrative. Reality is whatever our brain tells us it is. Routinely, may seem to people misconstrue the social and economic reality they inhabit. But does that matter? Who is the social scientist to deny the subjective sense of reality they lay claim to? Both poverty and higher status, wealth and power have ambiguities that are masked by a formal attribution of where people stand in the social hierarchy. It is an observable fact in the Parish or consulting room that not all those who are poor by comparison have an equal sense of being poorly off. Those who experience what Oliver James labels “affluenza” often experience an obsessive, envious, keeping-up with the Joneses that makes apparently better off people twice as prone to depression, anxiety and addictions than those in many other countries.33 They can experience the advantages that seem to accrue to them as bars in a “gilded cage,” to use Max Weber’s phrase. Affluence can demoralise as vigorously as poverty.

The standard of comparison The proposal here is that relative standing and positioning matters because it is a question of value and worth. It is our sense of personal value that is compromised if we have less relative position. In troublesome reaction to this un-brave new world, intensified social comparison is creating serious harm. Proposed by Festinger, a fundamental impetus within the human psyche is that we make constant self-evaluations based on how we measure up against others.34 Our own frame of reference is continually shaped in a larger field in which social actors perform. How people measure their self-worth is not a question of private judgement but this bigger frame of reference. Necessarily, social actors compared themselves to others for the purpose of self-evaluation. The more someone is different from you, argued Festinger, the less likely you are to compare yourself with others. The importance and relevance but also the attraction of a reference group determines the pressure towards uniformity.35 What, then, are the motivations towards such referential evaluations? The drives towards social comparison are those of selfenhancement and maintenance of a positive self-evaluation. Downward comparisons are more likely when self-esteem is lower to begin with.36 Invariably, the consequences are deeply pernicious when, according to a UK study by the Mental Health Foundation, a quarter of young people suffer from anxiety and depression, attributable in no small measure to intensified social comparison. The well-documented rise in distress amongst teenage girls arises

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from social toxins such as models of idealised body shapes, the pressure to look good, consumerism – all of which feeds relative deprivation that others are ahead in the high-stakes game of life.37 If so, many 15-year-old girls of all classes are emotionally distressed to a significant degree, this phenomenon highlights how we should re-visit what the drivers are in negative social forces. Within inter-personal and intra-personal life, for instance, “Social Anxiety Disorder” is well-documented. It is the most common type of anxiety disorder and the cause of much limitation. Despite it being common human experience to know what it is like to feel shy or lacking in social confidence, social anxiety is under-recognised and under-treated. Feelings of nervousness or dread in relation to feared social situations might come out as physical symptoms such as trembling, rapid breathing, sweating or blushing. Panic attacks are common. Sufferers tend to be very self-conscious and worried about whether others might be evaluating them negatively.38 Worries about appearance – exacerbated by unattainable images on social media – are thought to be a big factor, as is the pressure to live up to gender stereotypes – for boys to be tough and girls to have nice clothes, for example. Struggles with sexuality can contribute, along with the likes of bullying, exam stress, abuse or grieving. In an increasingly visual culture, beauty has now become a moral imperative and ethical ideal. Heather Widdows argues that the range of what is considered beautiful is becoming more uniform and converging globally – thinness, firmness, smoothness and youth.39 Shame accrues to the wrinkled face or body hair. Beauty failure affects the whole sense of one’s self. One value (such as the importance of body work) tips into the value people perceive they have generally. Young men are prone increasingly to selfesteem issues arising from body anxiety.40 Intensified social comparison is a troubling issue for the mental health of young people. A UK church campaign promoted by the Bishop of Gloucester observed with reference to adolescent girls, “so much of what they experience through social media presents a message of value based on physical appearance.”41 Negative body image is creating a generation with low self-esteem. Her move follows a Children’s Society report earlier this year that found a third of girls are unhappy with their appearance, attributed to the pressure to be perfect exerted by advertising and social media. Girls as young as 7 believe women are judged on beauty and not brains, the Girlguiding’s Girls’ Attitudes Survey 2016 found. More than a third (35%) of 7- to 10-year-old girls agreed that women were rated more on their appearance than their abilities – and 36% said they were made to feel their looks were their most important attribute. In the previous five years, body confidence levels of those aged 7–21 had plummeted.42 As I write these words, much is being made of the fact that a contestant on the British reality TV show Love Island has undergone a fair amount of cosmetic surgery. By Harley Street prices, the procedures she has undergone could have cost over £30,000. With pictures circulating online that claim to be presurgery Megan – showing a completely different-looking woman – combined

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with the fact that pretty much all the men in the villa appear powerless to resist the glamour model, it is perhaps inevitable that the reality TV series has led to increased interest in cosmetic surgery. Dr Tijion Esho observed: “I’ve noticed a huge rise in the number of 18–25-year-olds seeking lip fillers since Love Island. Many show pictures of the contestants they love on the show and how they can achieve the look. The millennial mindset is focused on looking your best and now more than ever they’re aware of how they look and affected by the pressures to look amazing on social platforms. Love Island is huge and plays a role in part but the cause is multi-factorial with social media at the centre of it.” Many were concerned about the message this sends to viewers, particularly younger ones who may be more impressionable.43 Quite apart from cosmetic surgery, social comparison is intensified when photos of people are often digitally manipulated. This may be in the form of a small watermark at the bottom of someone’s photo that indicates an airbrush or filter has been used that may have significantly altered their appearance. Young people, and in particular young women, are bombarded with images that attempt to pass off the edited off as the norm. This practice is contributing to a generation of young people with poor body image and body confidence. Fashion brands, celebrities and other advertising organisations may sign up to a voluntary code of practice where the small icon is displayed on their photos to indicate an image may have been digitally enhanced or altered to significantly alter the appearance of people in it.44 The idea of social comparison as social dynamic is nothing new. Hobbes had placed as being central to human conflict the passion that proceeds from the imagination or conception of our own power above whoever contends with us.45 Istvan Hunt points out that Adam Smith, rather than write two contrasting books as often supposed (Theory of Moral Sentiments vs Wealth of Nations) had a unified view. At the heart of his single project is the notion that social relations depend on the capacity to compare ourselves with others and to have good standing in their eyes. This may be benign, in the sense that self-regarding desire is suspended in favour of impartial assessment of the valid needs of others. But it can also be malign in giving us the motive for greater status being a spur to demand that in turn benefits those who produce otherwise useless commodities. Hont argues that although Smith critiques Hobbes’ view of conflictual life, our moral sense as well as striving for superiority emanates from this same social dynamic of comparison.46 Rousseau also, far from being in hoc to the idyll of a non-commercial society, saw the human capacity to compare ourselves with others and see ourselves through their eyes as being the driving force for both good and evil in society. While it is true that Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men47, opposed the harmful effects of amour proper (that leads to fierce comparison and emulation), he also believed that social comparison can be channelled into a positive constituent of human relations.48 What is new is the effect of both print media and social media. For example, women’s magazines “do not simply mirror our own dilemma of beauty .  .  . they intensify it.” Advertisers, photo features and beauty copy in the glossy magazines

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“make up the beauty index, which women scan as anxiously as men scan stock reports.” As Naomi Wolf remarks, what “men want from women is actually what their advertisers want from women.”49 Kat Banyard quotes studies showing that just five minutes’ exposure to thin and beautiful images of women leads viewers to feel more negatively about their body image in comparison to more neutral objects.50 Adolescence has always generated anxiety, at least since its invention in the 1940s. Social media is amplifying a particular self-consciousness, however. Charm, looks and popularity are paraded, weighed in the balance and found wanting. This is an image-saturated environment where there is a disproportionate emphasis on appearance, there is unsophisticated anxiety about rivals in any department and bullying is rife.51 It is the impact of the social media avalanche that has given a tornado twist to comparison. Having to cope with peer pressure amongst many hundreds of young people around you at school daily is hugely magnified by social media. For anxiety is now framing social space, not only inter-personal exchanges. Increasingly, within the general population first thing in the day we spend more time checking e-mails than eating breakfast. Jean Twenge has analysed how teenagers are more depressed and isolated than ever because of smartphones which may be destroying a generation of young people. They go out less, date less and feel more depressed and suicidal. There is a strong link between the amount of time they spend looking at screens and how sad they feel. “Around 2012, I noticed abrupt shifts in teen behaviors and emotional states. The gentle slopes of the line graphs became steep mountains and sheer cliffs, and many of the distinctive characteristics of the Millennial generation began to disappear. In all my analyses of generational data – some reaching back to the 1930s – I had never seen anything like it.”52 The year 2012 was the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50%. As Jean Twenge observed, rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011. It is not an exaggeration to describe this “iGen” as being on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades. It is deeply linked to the vitriolic multiple personality world of social media. It was a new and disturbing development. Twenge had already found an upward graph in anxiety. Two meta-analyses find that Americans have shifted towards substantially higher levels of anxiety and neuroticism during recent decades. Both college student (adult) and child samples increased markedly. The average American child in the 1980s reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients in the 1950s. Correlations with social indices (e.g., divorce rates, crime rates) suggested that decreases in social connectedness and increases in environmental dangers may be responsible for the rise in anxiety.53 Twenge discovered a trend that was linked with that, a rise in narcissism, an unhealthy form of self-esteem. There are similar studies showing a rise in anxiety and depression in many developed countries. Depression amongst people in their mid-20s was found to be twice as common in a study of some 10,000 born in 1970s.54 A review of studies from 12 industrialised countries found that adolescent girls are increasingly depressed and anxious about their looks. Peggy

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Orenstein argues that this pernicious self-objectification comes at a cost.55 It is the fall-out from the wider cultural pressure to reduce their worth to their bodies – and this is probably the point. Intensified social comparison devalues human beings. Very likely, our brains are already beginning to work differently and we are being re-programmed by social media: coded with the expectations of others as Laurence Scott puts it.56 Technological innovations affect how we connect and interact with one another and as a collective, where newer generations are leading the evolution. The broader cultural consequences are just beginning to be felt.57 “Your device is learning every day more about who you are and what is important to you. Your life is being downloaded.”58 The stress of overwork is fuelled by social comparison and the need to keep up and never switch off. Today’s workers are shaped by the high-stakes drive for performance, raised to be equipped to compete. Fuelled by tech firms, the war for talent that generated such huge rises in CEO remuneration has created inequality within companies. A highly anxious workplace became the norm. The social comparison of relative performance becomes a driver of inequality. Many companies have a rating system that can in some cases sack people. Data is collected on staff, on everything they do from start to the end. Productivity and activity level are measured by algorithms, the new bosses. This will be fuelled by automation and forces an identity crisis. Teachers, doctors and lawyers are seeing their professions change as much as the physical labour of yesterday. How did work go from what we do to who we are? You have become your job. Chronic social self threats are integrally linked to the persistent experience of shame-related cognitive awareness. It is causing considerable stress.59 Indeed, Scheff remarked that shame (in the sense of looking stupid) is THE social emotion.60 Everywhere lurks the dark side of the social evaluative threat. Social media can be a validation factory. Either that or it wreaks havoc. ‘In short, it is the need for approval from one’s peers that is sharply accentuated in contemporary life’.

Notes 1 #StatusofMind Social media and young people’s mental health and wellbeing Young Health Movement. Royal Society for Public Health www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/ campaigns/status-of-mind.html accessed July 2018, p. 5. 2 Shirley Cramer CBE, Chief Executive, Royal Society for Public Health www.rsph.org. uk/our-work/campaigns/status-of-mind.html accessed July 2018. 3 Collishaw, S., Maughan, B., Goodman, R., & Pickles, A. Time trends in adolescent mental health www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15482496 accessed 17th April. 4 National Society of Prevention for Cruelty to Children figures under Freedom of Information laws requested by 53 of the 66 health trusts known to provide mental health support to children www.nspcc.org.uk accessed May 2018. 5 WHO. (2003) Caring for Children and Adolescents with Mental Disorders: Setting WHO Directions. Geneva: World Health Organization www.who.int/mental_health/media/ en/785.pdf accessed 14th September 2015.

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6 Measuring National Well-being, Exploring the Well-Being of Young People in the UK. (2014) http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105190918/www.ons.gov. uk/ons/rel/wellbeing/measuring-national-well-being/exploring-the-well-being-ofyoung-people-in-the-uk-2014/rpt-exploring-the-well-being-of-young-people-in-theuk-2014.html accessed July 2018. 7 Government Equalities Office. www.gov.uk/government/organisations/governmentequalities-office 8 See Orbach, S. Fat is a Feminist Issue (1978), Fat is a Feminist Issue II (1982), What’s Really Going on Here (1993), Towards Emotional Literacy (1999), The Impossibility of Sex (1999) and Susie Orbach on Eating (2001) – all published in London by Penguin Books. 9 Comments by Dr Linda Papadopoulos, Daily Telegraph, 6th March 2010. 10 A Generation Under Stress, Girlguiding UK and Mental Health Foundation, 2007. 11 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 12 For the Children’s Society published 29th August 2018 www.bmj.com 13 Office for National Statistics. (2016) Internet access: Households and individuals: 2016 www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/home internetandsocialmediausage/bulletins/internetaccesshouseholdsandindividuals/2016 14 Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology44640959 accessed 4th July 2018. 15 Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users https://citinewsroom.com/2018/07/ 04/social-media-apps-are-‘deliberately’-addictive-to-users accessed 4th July 2018. 16 Billionaire ex-Facebook president Sean Parker unloads on Mark Zuckerberg and admits he helped build a monster http://uk.businessinsider.com/ex-facebook-president-seanparker-social-network-human-vulnerability-2017-11 accessed July 2018. 17 Lanier, J. Social media feeding a manipulation machine www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/tech nology-44684524/jaron-lanier-social-media-feeding-a-manipulation-machine accessed 2nd July 2018. 18 Adcock, A., Bate, A., & Woodhouse, J. (2016) Effect of social media on the mental health of young people http://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/ CDP-2016-0196#fullreport 19 #StatusofMind Social media and young people’s mental health and wellbeing Young Health Movement. Royal Society for Public Health www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/ status-of-mind.html accessed July 2018. 20 Lee, P. Deloittes mobile consumer survey 2016 www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/ technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/mobile-consumer-survey.html accessed February 2017. 21 #StatusofMind Social media and young people’s mental health and wellbeing Young Health Movement. Royal Society for Public Health www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/campaigns/ status-of-mind.html accessed July 2018, p. 26. 22 Orehek, E., & Human, L. (2017) Self-expression on social media: Do tweets present accurate and positive portraits of impulsivity, self-esteem, and attachment style? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(1), 60–70. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/0146167216675332 23 Lenhart, A. (2015) Chapter 4: Social media and friendships www.pewinternet.org/ 2015/08/06/chapter-4-social-media-and-friendships/ accessed April 2017. 24 Sainsbury, M., & Benton, T. Social networking: A way to re-engage young people with politics? www.nfer.ac.uk/research/projects/cels-cit/CIVTA3.pdf accessed April 2017. 25 Lloyd, A. (2014) Social media, help or hindrance: What role does social media play in young people’s mental health? Psychiatria Danubina, 26(Suppl. 1), 340–346 Medicinska naklada – Zagreb, Croatia. 26 University of Minnesota: Introduction to psychology. 6.3 Adolescents: Developing independence and identity http://open.lib.umn.edu/intropsyc/chapter/6-3-adolescencedeveloping-independence-and-identity/ accessed July 2018.

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27 Fliessbach, K., Weber, B., Trautner, P., Dohmen, T., Sunde, U., Elger, C. E., et al. (2007) Social comparison affects reward-related brain activity in the human ventral striatum. Science, 318, 1305–1308. doi: 10.1126/science.1145876 28 McBride, M. (2001) Relative-income effects on subjective well-being in the cross-section. Journal of Economic Behaviour & Organization, 45(3), 251–278. 29 Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, R. (2010) The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone. London: Penguin, p. 13. 30 Husserl, E. G. (1982) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Vol. 1. Hague: Kluwer Publishers. 31 Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012) Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. by D. Landes. New York, NY: Routledge. 32 Morris, D. (2010) Empirical and phenomenological studies of embodied cognition. In S. Gallagher & D. Schmicking (Eds.), Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Dordrecht, New York, Heidelberg, and London: Springer, pp. 235–252. 33 James, O. (2007) Affluenza. London: Vermillion. 34 Festinger, L. (1954) A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140. 35 Deutsch, M., & Krauss, R. M. (1965) Theories in Social Psychology, Vol. 2. New York: Basic Books. 36 Collins, R. L. (1995) For better or worse: The impact of upward social comparison on self-evaluations. Psychological Bulletin, 119(1), 51–69. 37 Sweating, H., et al. (2009) Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 44, 579–586. 38 http://social-anxiety.org.uk/ accessed October 2017. 39 Widdows, H. (2018) Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 40 McDonald, C. (2017) Am I beautiful? Finding freedom in the answer www.facebook. com/authenticpublishers 41 www.premier.org.uk/News/UK/Bishop-of-Gloucester-launches-self-esteemcampaign accessed 23rd October 2016. 42 www.girlguiding.org.uk/social-action-advocacy-and-campaigns/research/girlsattitudes-survey/ accessed September 2018. 43 Hosie, R. (2018) Love Island contestants fuel increased demand for cosmetic surgery Independent Newspaper London, 5th July. 44 #StatusofMind Social media and young people’s mental health and wellbeing Young Health Movement. Royal Society for Public Health www.rsph.org.uk/our-work/ campaigns/status-of-mind.html accessed July 2018, p. 24. 45 Hobbes, T. (2005) The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic. Boston, MA: Adamant Media Corporation. 46 Hont, I. (2015) Politics in Commercial Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 47 Rousseau, J. J. (2016) Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men. Amazon.com: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 48 Neuhouser, F. (2015) Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 49 Wolf, N. (1991) The Beauty Myth. London: Vintage, p. 73. 50 Banyard, K. (2011) The Equality Illusion: The Truth about Men and Women Today. London: Faber & Faber, p. 33. 51 Sales, N. J. (2016) American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Life of Teenagers. New York: Knopf. 52 www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-ageneration/534198/ accessed October 2017. 53 Twenge, J. (2000) The age of anxiety? Birth cohort change in anxiety and neuroticism, 1952–1993. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6), 1007–1021.

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54 Collishaw, S., et al. (2004) Time trends in adolescent mental health. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(8), 1350–1362. 55 Orenstein, P. (2016) Girls and Sex: Navigating the New Landscape. New York: Harper. 56 Scott, L. (2015) The Four-Dimensional Human: Ways of Being in the Digital World. London: Heinemann. 57 Shaping the future implications of digital media for society. World Economic Forum www.weforum.org/projects/human-implications-of-digital-media accessed January 2017. 58 Rivera, M. (2017) Big data: How much is too much? Chief Executive Officer, Grupo Expansion. World Economic Forum www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/big-datahow-much-is-too-much/ accessed Tuesday 28th February 2017. 59 Dickerson, S., & Kemeny, M. (2004) Acute stressors and cortisol responses: A theoretical integration and synthesis of laboratory research. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 355–391. University of California. 60 Scheff, T. J. (1988) Shame & conformity: The deference-emotion. American Sociological Review, 53, 395–406.

Chapter 3

Competition Tales of humiliation

Battles for ancient bones led Marsh and Cope to duel to the finish in the US in 1890. Scientists fought bitter battles. Far from the myth of disinterested science pursuing the truth wherever the evidence took it, this was a period of huge egos with strong characters and intense rivalry. Shoot-outs even took place. Marsh bribed fossil owners to send fossils to him. Their duel lasted for 30 years. Their rivalry became a cause celebre in the New York Herald, the paper that had sent Stanley.1 In a very different context, bickering between rival surgeons led to a rise in patient deaths at a troubled heart-surgery unit, a Review claimed. Two factions created a “persistent toxic atmosphere” in the heart unit at St George’s Hospital in South London. A “toxic” feud between two rival camps at a troubled heartsurgery unit at the hospital left staff feeling a high death rate was inevitable. Its cardiac surgery death rate was 3.7% compared with the national average of 2%. Internal scrutiny was said to be “inadequate” and the department was divided between “two camps” exhibiting “tribal-like activity.” The Bewick Review was quoted as saying, “Some felt that there was a persistent toxic atmosphere and stated that there was a ‘dark force’ in the unit. In our view the whole team shares responsibility for the failure to significantly improve professional relationships and to a degree surgical mortality.” Conversations with staff revealed they were shocked by the death rate, but “most felt that poor performance was inevitable due to the pervading atmosphere.”2 Such stories could be replicated across countless feuds. Many narratives like these have at their core the need for significance as a driver. The central proposition is this: a major driver of behaviour is the need to cultivate a high value and to pursue our worth against all factors in lived experience that militate against it and diminish us. We see this struggle for significance through the value and worth of people in at least four ways: 1 2 3

The push back against globalisation, against remote, impersonal forces The refugee crisis in which a million migrants have fled their homelands Muslim extremism that is sustained by narratives of some sense of injustice, marginalisation and a broad rage

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The role of “significance” and identity in personal and national life, ranging from Russia’s Putin or young Muslims turned towards radicalisation who want to be the star of the show.

The quest for significance is a deeply held dynamic at both international and inter-personal level. Within organisations, the search for significance is a major issue as ingredients of the sense that individuals may feel of personal value and worth. Anecdotally, many voluntary organisations as well as commercial companies witness the interplay of “significance wars.” Those who have been something in their work-life, or aspired to, will often pursue a role and recognition in retirement that can cause problems for those who have to lead. Social valuing is hugely important to people. The pursuit of value takes us from concern for honour and legacy to social esteem, reputation and tokens of recognition. A case can be made that these are species of a generic drive for inter-personal value that is a vital element in human flourishing. They are a key ingredient of biographies, varying through the life course but arguably central to what it means to be human in both healthy personalities and pathologies. A client laments the difficulties she is having as Treasurer of an organisation. She has crossed-swords with the Secretary. It is war. “He wants to have the attention all the time – he is the jealous type. ‘It should have been my face that was in the photograph’ he keeps on about that time he felt snubbed.”3 Often in organisations, the issue is not the issue. At stake is something much more important – the quest for significance is being blocked. This is a prime strategy for an ego that must derive value from somewhere and create a niche for oneself. Psychoanalytic politics offers an example. In the Wednesday society, the members sparred for position, descended into acrimony or vaunted their originality – yet such praxis did not impact theory. For Joan Riviere, for instance, what mattered most was not clearing up her of her private neurosis but the title of “Translating Editor” on the inside cover of English translations of Freud’s works.4 From small communal organisations and churches to larger political or organisational arenas, big egos strut the stage and, to change the metaphor, collide like comets. Individual biography can be charted against the drive to accrue social value which reacts with devaluing circumstances and inter-personal put-downs as well as wider systemic factors that distribute worth in capitalist society. Behind a ceaseless fight for tantalising recognition lies a struggle to be valued by peers, by history and oneself. Underlying such situations of inter-personal conflict, many want to have a role that brings them ongoing significance. They may find this hard to relinquish. Significance is linked to belonging as the collective dimension within which individual worth may be experienced. The need to be a person of value and worth is expressed through SIGNIFICANCE WITH BELONGING. Our sense of being somebody appears to be needed at every level.

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In personal life Here is a client who takes things personally, to whom any action is an insult if not worthy. It is a personal slight – another category mistake. It was not the action but their very selves being threatened. An absolute sense of worth is under fire. What is the fuel causing magnification of a slight in such a way that it sits in judgement not just over a fragmentary action or speech but instead over our whole being? “I am treated with less consideration.” As if to say, “I deserve respect.”5 “‘You don’t deserve to be treated like that,’ we told our daughter,” assert parents, given the run-around by her boyfriend.6 Older siblings had colluded with the father of a client. “Let’s see if we can do it right this time shall we?” was a message a client had downloaded repeatedly. Somehow, in spite of the demeaning talk that had been her constant companion, she had never stopped believing she was worth more than the theatre in which she seemed to act out the script given to her. It is “the Protest.” But did she have to fight! For a while now, her marriage had been fraught – “he got the exact result he intended” she would lament, “to put me down. He talks to me as if I am stupid; he leaves me deflated.” “I won’t be spoken to like that” – she adds, at first wistfully, then with gradual acceleration like a car revving up.7 Across the human landscapes, the put-downs of everyday life disclose a landscape of sorry devaluation. Sometimes it is poverty of aspiration. “You will never amount to anything,” a client was repeatedly told. “You are just like me, never very good at school.”8 Such messages are magnified in the echo-chamber of sibling rivalry. “I won’t be taken for granted,” people say, as if they actually count! “He put me down a lot, often running me down in front of my friends. He brought me low so I wouldn’t leave.”9 A game of power and control has devalued another casualty. Humiliations or being patronised leave its mark. There is to be sure a wide spectrum of put-downs. Demeaning talk, sarcasm as unrelenting as the Arctic tundra or an atmosphere of occasional denigration is, sadly, the environment within which many human plants struggle to grow. A client experienced being belittled by his parents at a party when he was a boy or made fun of in the playground. This is humiliation, a respect issue. It is not so much an affront to dignity as a lowering in size of that person. This perpetuates what can best be described as a “category mistake,” responding to a different issue. Belittling someone often triggers this sort of reaction.

Significance at an international level The value of the human is conflicted with the role of “significance” and a sense of importance in personal and national life, ranging from Putin or young Muslims turned towards radicalisation those who want to be the star of the show. Suicide bombing is the ultimate bid for significance, but how far is this fabricated glory to be repudiated? The latter seems to be a major vehicle for those who often feel they do not belong in Western societies to assume the mantle

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of martyrdom. With Putin’s Russia, academics point out that the demand for respect is central to an understanding of its diminished role and need to assert itself. How far does theory accommodate these dynamics? Before his death in a Baghdad bombing, Vieira de Mello, a senior UN official known as “Sergio” for reaching out to the Serbian leadership, drew attention to the importance of paying attention to the dignity of individuals and nations in international relations.10 The imperative towards significance drives human action in a way that affects international relations. Humiliation as a driver of human action is strongly felt whether it is between people or nations. Whether or not there is a national psyche of humiliation or attributable to individuals has been the subject of debate over the years. Is it only individuals who act? When Germany invaded France at the beginning of August 1914, thus precipitating the First World War, those acting on behalf of the nation were Monarchs, politicians and Chiefs of Staff pursuing their goals as individuals having agency. When in return, the treaty of Versailles of 1919 imposed punitive terms on a defeated Germany, it was the experience of humiliation that drew such hostile fire from the Far Right. The propaganda about being “stabbed in the back” was mobilised politically and felt viscerally. National humiliation became the site of enormous resistance. It was claimed repeatedly – and inaccurately – that the German Army had not been defeated. The First World War had destroyed the sense of European solidarity and a common tradition that had managed to survive for so long. It was bitterness about the new state of affairs expressed in the Treaty of Versailles that allowed the rise of the National Socialists. Hitler made much of a shameful, dictated peace that tarred the struggling Weimar Republic with disgrace, dishonour and powerlessness.11 Anxiety was the permanent emotion of the time. Rarely has an age been so aware of its transitional state.12

Case study 1 – Islamic Jihad There has been a huge debate and very agonised conversation about why it is those in their teens and twenties from Western societies who are susceptible to joining radical groups.Young people comprise the great majority of extremist recruits.Volunteers for al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are often youth in transitional stages in their lives seeking community and significance.The attraction of community is felt especially when this is combined with previous social exclusion amongst fragile communities. It is a sense of significance that most readily propels radical action and a willingness to embark on martyrdom. The sense of significance is underlined with strong defence, as the recruits perceive it, of transcendent values irrespective of material costs or consequences.13 Religion and ideology are not typically the primary drivers of radicalisation, argued a Report from Oasis Foundation Enough is Enough: Addressing the Root

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Causes of Radicalisation.14 It argued that an emphasis on tackling ideology missed the point. A fundamental rethink is needed on the growing youth radicalisation crisis and policies that reflect the complex and multi-layered drivers that lead to different forms of extremism. Instead the report concludes that radicalisation – which exists in many other forms outside of Islamist extremism – including gang membership, gun and knife culture, political extremism and aggressive forms of racism – has its roots in a variety of common causes. It identifies five common drivers – ideology, identity, deprivation and economic marginalisation, mental health, community – and family – breakdown. Citing research from the UN and MI5, the report found that even within Islamist radicalisation, a significant number of young extremists have only a superficial commitment to the practice of their faith, suggesting that other “push-factors” to radicalisation are critically important and that current anti-radicalisation policies that focus almost entirely on Islamist ideology are likely to fail. Ideology is a complex concept and one that politicians should handle with far more care than is often the case. Questions of ideology are intimately linked with matters of identity, connection, belonging and purpose. Academic consensus points to those interconnected factors as significant drivers of both Islamist and gang-based radicalisation. A further driver for both Islamist and gang-related radicalisation is that of deprivation and economic marginalisation. Where data on underlying deprivation is available, 82% of Islamism related offences between 1998 and 2015 were committed by individuals from the 30% most deprived areas in the UK. Similarly, research has established the critical link between unemployment and the increased involvement of young people in gangs. Depressive symptoms are associated with a higher risk of sympathies for violent protest and terrorism (SVPT), according to a study led by King’s College London and Queen Mary University of London.The study, published in The British Journal of Psychiatry, said that the prevention of depressive responses to adverse life events and poor political engagement may marginally reduce the risk of SVPT, but their findings suggest that promoting political engagement and social connectedness are more likely to have a larger impact. As one of the authors of the Report noted, “There are some people for whom it is a political cause and for them it is a rational act. For some, they are easily persuaded to join such groups. At some level, there has to be a psychological commitment to violence. There needs to be more research and sensible safeguarding. Some are psychologically vulnerable to join terrorist groups or participate in them.”15 Academic evidence suggests community and family breakdown as drivers of both Islamist and gang-related radicalisation. Public Health England’s 2015 report, The Mental Health Needs of Gang-Affiliated Young People points to the contribution of attachment insecurity and poor parental bonds to adverse

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outcomes including conduct problems and delinquency, violence and poor mental health. It is those factors “often cited as a driver of the ‘need to belong’ that attract young people with troubled backgrounds to gangs.”16 Poor mental health can be a contributory factor particularly among so-called lone wolf terrorists. A Police study of 500 cases dealt with by the Channel antiradicalisation scheme found that 44% of the individuals involved were assessed as being likely to have vulnerabilities related to mental health or psychological difficulties, with a further 15% assessed as possibly having such vulnerabilities. Similarly, gang members have significantly higher levels of mental illness than both men in the general population and non-gang affiliated violent men. Of gang members, 86% were identified as having antisocial personality disorder, 67% alcohol dependence, 59% anxiety disorder, 58% drug dependence, 34% suicide attempt, 25% psychosis and 20% depression.17 Is all this symptomatic of civilisation’s unravelling, as young people unmoored from traditions flail about in search of a social identity that gives personal significance and glory? Individuals radicalise to find firm identity in a flattened world. Scott Atran, director of research in anthropology at the CNRS, École Normale Supérieure, and a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, argued that having left their homes or become disassociated from their communities, they seek new families of friends and fellow travellers to find purpose and significance. The ability to understand the realities facing young people will determine whether the transnational scourge of violent extremism continues and surges or abates.18 Where does this take us? According to Kalsoom Bashir, the Co-Director of “Inspire,” the Muslim women anti-extremism campaign group, “They may be looking for that sense of someone wanting you particularly if it isn’t available from their family. Extremist movements tell them they have a hero husband waiting for them and they will play an important role in establishing a new country.”19

Case study 2 – Putin and the rise of Russia •

The rise and fall (and rise again) of Vladimir Putin as President of Russia provides another case study of how the drive for significance moves from the realm of what happens between people to the dynamics between nations. It could truly be said that not only is the personal political, but also the inter-personal is international. As with Adolf Hitler, Putin rose to power on the coattails of enormous national anxiety. A great power was in decline but was due to rise again. The demise of the Soviet Union was

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a colossal strategic mistake and needed to be rectified. Putin made no secret of the fact that the West had unilaterally exploited all the weaknesses and troubles that had converted a strong Soviet global power into a struggling regional player. He attacked the US for assuming the mantle of hegemony in a unipolar world. One centre of authority, one centre of force and decision making could no longer be tolerated. Humiliation had gone far enough. It was time for Russia to be respected again. I write these words after a personal trip to Russia. Commentators and visitors are agreed that Russia’s seeming role as regional trouble-maker cannot be grasped without taking on the central reality of the quest to be significant again.20 With the benefit of hindsight, Madeleine Albright accepts that the West was slow to understand that Russians felt utterly humiliated after the cold war; ready to succumb to a nationalist strongman promising to make them great again. She recalls a mood of complaint such as: “We used to be a superpower and now we’re Bangladesh with missiles. Putin has seen himself as the redeemer of that man.”21

It is worth pausing to note that, anecdotally, the lack of respect from some Russian men is the reason for Russian women to seek a romantic partner abroad. In Russia, it is expected from a male to physically defend his lady or be considered a coward. Both drinking and violence are the core reasons why there are 106 boys to 100 girls at birth in Russia, and only 86 males to 100 females in the total population. “If he hits you, that means he loves you,” quotes Diana her mother’s saying, the old-fashioned Slavic belief, which is the reason why domestic violence in Russia is still widely underreported – as well as most other forms of physical assault, making it a “norm” rather than a crime.22 There is, in short, only a zero-sum game. Competition means there is only so much significance to go round. A threat to masculinity needs to be countered with force. The social responsibility of males to provide for their females is not only materialistic in the former Soviet Union, states she, but also more alike paternal duty, where a woman is looked after by someone responsible for her, because it’s his moral obligation and delight. Rape is something that “happens,” and is accepted as a fact of life, not a social problem. For Russian men cheating on their girlfriends is not just normal, it is expected and a matter of honour. A man who never cheated on his other half is looked at with disdain, including his wife (is he not man enough?) Violence is part of the culture. In 1889, land captains were instituted as agents of control in Czarist Russia. They were given sweeping powers over the peasants, who called them “little tsars” and could order public flogging for petty

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offences. The psychological impact of this public humiliation left a legacy of traumatic memory long afterwards. One peasant asked, “What’s a poor peasant to a gentleman? Why he’s worse than a dog. At least a dog can bite, but the peasant is meek and humble and tolerates everything.”23 A generation before, Dostoyevsky had addressed the reality of a brutalised and largely docile society, dreaming of a society in which everyone, including those who are hopelessly marginalized, will be able to live whole lives. That was for the future. For now, Russian society had scant respect for the human subject.24 Within such a climate of human devaluation, life in Russian peasant villages before the Revolution was characterised by enormous brutality, especially for dissident behaviour. Adulterous wives could be dragged naked through the village tied to a horse and cart. Maxim Gorky in the essay On the Russian Peasantry asked if the Revolution had not simply brought out the cruelty of the Russian people. Such cruelty was sustained by the violence they were used to, in the humiliations ordered by the Land Captains, very public and very violent.25 A practising physician, Chekhov protested that corporal punishment: “coarsens and brutalises not only the offenders but also those who execute punishments and those who are present at it.” Is there a link with the present? Disturbing pictures of the violence that was routine within military training has often scandalised Russia. The Russian Army has been characterised by brutality towards conscripts.26 Post-communist Russia is not a kind place. Ruthlessness and police thuggery are regular features on the landscape.27 Brutalisation is a phenomenon that seems a normal way of doing things in that culture; normal to the extent that respectful communication would seem out of place; no less disturbing for being an accepted part of many ways of life. Cultures of violence are reproduced from one generation to the next. The texts of violence operate through cultures, through systems. Tempting though it is to see violent acts as the aberrations of a few rotten apples, there is much evidence to suggest that violence is not just about those who inflict it but the situations that fosters it. The famous Stanford Prison Experiment carried out by Philip Zimbardo in 1971 showed that situational thinking influences violent social behaviour more than “dispositional thinking” (character “will out”). Playing the game of “prisoners and guards” demonstrated how “guards” could become sadistic bullies within 48 hours while prisoners were cowed into impotent submission. Applying this into social and political scenarios facing the next generation, Zimbardo suggested that a bad system produces bad situations in which people act badly.28 Humans derive value in a variety of ways. Significance is key to this quest. The psychotherapist Narendra Keval writes about the “racist states of mind” to convey anxieties related to the feeling of being robbed or depleted. This sense of being written off and undermined leads to vengeful wishes to thwart and undermine the other.29

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A team at Stanford Law School investigated the effects of the “three strikes and you’re out” law in California that guarantees much tougher penalties for those who re-offend. Counties that used the law had no better results than those that did not. But the team saw human tragedies behind crime figures. Their clients had learning difficulties, mental illness, were addicted to drugs, were homeless or abused as children. What they had in common was “being forsaken” by parents, teachers, lawyers, politicians and the rest of society.30 Behind narratives of harm by men against others or themselves lurk messages such as “you’re useless as a man.”31 Competition leads to compensation’s demands.

Reading the texts of domination Violence is a slippery concept – non-linear, productive, destructive, and reproductive. Violence defies easy categorisation. It’s in the eye of the beholder.32

Violence comes in many forms. There are “violences” rather than a single phenomenon. Human violence is multi-faceted, drawing on gender roles, sociological, historical, economic, familial, biological and psychological roots for its impetus and strength. Violence surfaces, for example, in inter-personal exchanges, in domestic violence, in workplace wars, at school, for example, bullying, criminal violence, communal and racially motivated violence, gang violence, collective violence – a crowd becoming dangerous (hooliganism), political violence (genocide, revolution and mobilisation for a cause) and war. A wide range of meanings are involved. Three questions arise at the bloody gates of the 21st century. Why are humans still violent? What makes some humans violent while others do not demonstrate lethal aggression? Could we all be violent in the right circumstances? Why won’t these questions go away? Perhaps violence is part of being human. Jealousy and rage surface in traditional societies with feuds over land, grazing, water or women. In some societies such as the Tasaday Indians of the Philippines, there is not even a word for war.33 Yet for Yanamamo Indians of southern Venezuela, sex-biased infanticide is but one way the cultivation of ferocity or nurture of aggression can affect an entire culture.34 As a result of Darwin’s work, we are of the earth; to the earth we return. The difference between humanity and animals is a difference only of degree. Darwin devoted an entire chapter to the topic of hatred and anger.35 The anthropologist Konrad Lorenz spoke of a parliament of instincts – aggression is one drive amongst many.36 Freud suggested that there was an aggressive instinct, a death wish in humanity, biological in origin.37 The psychologist Anthony Storr concluded that “there is so far no convincing evidence that the aggressive response is, at a physiological level, any less instinctive than the sexual response.”38 Violence is about territoriality and ritual, much like animals and birds have to compete for survival. Hatred is about “paranoid hostility.” The fact that in human societies, anger can be transformed into hate,

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vindictiveness or permanent hostility points to acts of violence as culturally, not biologically determined, rooted in fierce competition against all rivals. Or take a recent approach, advocated by Randall Collins. His “microsociological” theory argues that people turn violent when the social dynamics of a given situation take them beyond motive and morality. Social bonds are set aside.39 But does this explain racially motivated violence or how the interplay between social forces and personal agency arise in such contexts as domestic, gendered violence? There are at least 10 forms of explanation as to why violence occurs. Each of these narratives represents a different type of map in popular debate and is situated in a different discipline. Researchers who deal with antisocial problems in children, for instance, employ different theories, concepts and terminology than those who focus attention on older adolescents and adults.40 Explanations of violence could be: Biology – it’s an instinct in the genes or exacerbated through hormones41 Temperament – “it’s someone’s personality type”42 Parenting styles – “it’s the parenting style that has shaped you”43 Gender wars – arising from the different way genders are socialised44 Learnt behaviour – “it is the culture you have downloaded!”45 Socio-economic factors – a reaction to low income and unemployment46 Inter-group hostility – competition between social groups drives violence47 Availability of triggers – for example, guns, knives, bombs, alcohol and drugs48 9 Media representation of violence – too much exposure to violence49 10 Political violence and the use of war to settle competitive goals50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Beyond these “formal causes” of violence, there is an interpretive approach to do with endeavouring to decode the meaning of violence, an attempt to read its ugly texts. What is playing under the surface when people are verbally or physically violent is laden with meaning. Violence is rarely random; context and sub-text is everything. A Rational Choice theory of crime assumes that offenders rationally calculate the costs and benefits of committing a crime.51 The 18th century Italian writer Cesare Beccaria suggested an original simple model of human choice to commit crimes.52 Crime is purposeful, the individual constructing a rational calculation of costs and benefits. The cardinal rule of rational choice theory is not to dismiss a criminal act as senseless but to try to understand the purpose of the offender.53 This approach is a limited view of human action, explaining human purposes and social deviance in rational terms based on a utilitarian analysis. It assumes that the difference between the “on-switch” or the “offswitch” to no violence is firmly under someone’s control. Michel Foucault in his book Discipline and Punish discussed the meanings that criminals and deviants have for dominant social groups and the meaning of

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actions they take to control the troublesome.54 Interpretive study of the meanings of violence to the violent is not new, witness labelling theory. In the 1930s, a writer described a series of life histories of juveniles, looking at the social worlds they inhabited and the meanings their delinquency had for them.55 This was followed by: • • • • • • •

Studies of professional thieves56 Embezzlers57 Hustlers and gangsters58 Upper class drug dealers59 Adult property offenders60 Armed robbers61 Those who rob drug dealers62

Though there has been an expansion of this type of approach63 and it raises a host of ethical and legal issues when researchers become participant observers, it has been argued that criminological research should focus more on the meaning crime has for criminals or violence has for its perpetrators.64 Criminologists traditionally explained crime in terms of background variables such as race, class, gender and social location. Some argue that it is much more important to try to understand the criminal in terms of “foreground variables” – what it feels like to commit a crime.65 One proposal is for five types of crime: passion murders, adolescent property crime, gang violence, persistent robbery and cold-blooded murder. In each case, a criminal is engaged in a project to achieve something: hence we must look under their skin. So, can a notion of human devaluation offer a fresh map of violence? Five messages it transmits might show how violence holds the interplay of value and devaluation when competition tips over: 1 2 3 4 5

“I might lose myself!” – or “don’t touch me!” – violence as desecration of identity “I want what you are!” – violence as domination and enjoying the domination “I want to be who you are!” – violence as imitation of highly prized people “This is not all of me!” – re-imaging the human landscape through Protest “You will pay for what you have done!” – violence as retribution and exchange.

“I might lose myself!” – or “don’t touch me!” – violence as desecration of identity The violent act out their particular pathology that stems from much primal wounding. Their identity has been shaped by the devaluation. It has become

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them and given them a label they must struggle to remove. The violence creates internal deficit with little in the bank of personal worth. The desecrated, devalued self responds with fear and insecurity. The violent have developed an operating system that is unconsciously looking for compensation for their own primal wounding in order to make up that internal deficit. The devalued self wants to scrape the worth off the face of another. It turns them into the hunter, not just the hunted. Behind an abusive relationship is a story of the abuser and the abused. Face and name must be scraped off someone else now. “I have been desecrated. Now you must be!” These experiences and reactions are at the heart of how devaluation shapes human experience and provokes a reaction. To conceptualise violence through this prism, we have to add the idea that violence is experienced as violation of sacred space. A similar idea is desecration. The Latin word “violentia” means vehemence or impetuosity and emerges in our English language words “violence” AND “violation.” A violation is defined as “to do violence to” or, in a softer form, “to fail to observe duty”66 but increasingly has connotations of abuse or being defiled. Violence so fundamentally structures our world that “unviolated existence” is rare.67 “Violence as violation” is helpful for three reasons. It underlines how violence is an unwelcome invasion of the sacred space of an individual or group. In achieving this, the act of violence can either be physical or verbal. Further, emphasising violence as violation of sacred space shows there must be an intentionality to human violence. A “violation” or desecration carries with it the idea of violence being unwelcome and intrusive. The assumption is that humans have a sacred space, a value, a dignity, which is being forcibly invaded and infiltrated. The definition of rape, for instance, creates a nightmare for the law: judges and juries have no idea where the boundary between rape and bad sex lies. Women can report having unwanted sex to please their partner or because their partner made them feel guilty. There is a post-modern way of defining rape. Rape is however one wishes to define it. The crucial factor seems to be that a woman has been pressed, coerced, violated.68 Violence is an act of violation, a desecration of what is sacred, the citadel of the soul. A spiral is set up, a human tornado that feeds off desecration and in turn engenders further violation. “I feel crap” is often part of the inner psychological environment that sets people up to doing things to compensate for the deficit, to relieve the pain.

“I want what you are!” – violence as domination An uncomfortable feature of narratives of violence is the stark reality that some perpetrators want to be cruel. They enjoy the infliction of cruelty on their fellows and the heady domination of others. The Austrian Josef Fritzl dubbed the cellar where he locked his daughter and his three children by incest as “my

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kingdom.”69 His own father he described as a “waster,” a “loser” who rejected him. After his mother kicked his father out, it was she who taught her son discipline. The need to dominate his two families, one by marriage, the other by incest, stemmed from a need to be controlling and controlled. He placed a high value on respect, but it was respect for authority, not for his family. Adolf Hitler was given a rapturous reception in Fritzl’s home town of Amstetten when he visited in 1938: Nazi ideals were formative in Fritzl’s career. The need to dominate has to be entered into the equation. It is a dimension of human action. The writer Joseph Raz argued, “A person who forces another to act in a certain way, and therefore one who coerces another, makes him act against his will. He subjects the will of another to his own and therefore invades his autonomy.” The person on the receiving end is, Raz suggests, “being treated as a non-autonomous agent, an animal, a baby or an imbecile.”70 In short, he or she is being devalued. A Holocaust survivor recalls a comment by the infamous Dr Josef Mengele at Auschwitz – “this time we have good material”; not subjects, people, but material.71 In short, a malign process of ontological misrecognition is at work. But is that true? Narratives of unspeakable cruelty, such as the widely reported torture of two boys aged 10 and 11 torturing two boys aged 9 and 11 at Edlington, Doncaster, in April 2009 can show a highly disturbing feature that accentuates the ugliness of the action. The perpetrators enjoyed the 90-minute orgy of violence. They wanted their victims to suffer. It was not enough that they stamped on their heads, throwing bricks at the boys, dropping a ceramic sink on them, driving a sharpened stick into one boy’s arm and inserting a lighted cigarette into the wound. They did all this and more giggling. As the Judge underlined, “This was prolonged, sadistic violence for no reason other than that you got a real kick out of hurting and humiliating them.”72 In short, the boys wanted their victims to be very much alive and alert. Their sadism would not have been half as much fun if they weren’t. On a wider canvas, slavery was practiced in the no-man’s land of the Putumayo region of Colombia into the 20th century. The rubber barons ran an Empire of unbelievable brutality. Native Indians had hands and limbs cut off if quotas were not met. To ensure the labour needed for rubber plantations continued to be extracted, children were executed and whole villages were murdered.73 The anthropologist Michael Taussig made the point that, amidst shocking de-humanisation, some humanity in the tortured is part of the bond between them and their torturers. In their human or human-like form, the wild Indians could all the better reflect back to the colonists the vast baroque projections of human wildness that the colonists needed to establish their reality as civilised people. And it was only because the wild Indians were human that they were able to serve as labour – and as subjects of torture. For it is not the victim as animal that gratifies the torturer but the fact that the victim is human, thus enabling the torturer to become the savage.74

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To de-subjectivise people, they must first be seen as subjects. Subjectivities exchange places and the tortured can become an object. It is only humans that can be enslaved – whether on the Putumayo or elsewhere. It is only a living thing that can be murdered. The Nazis did not mistake their victims; it is only humans that can be treated as subhuman. Mengele knew exactly what he was doing. Violence reminds us of what is fundamental to the human condition, that we are hunters as well as hunted. We are all of us perhaps capable under the right conditions of becoming violent, of acting as devaluers and desecrators of others. Violence as power and domination is men needing to feel powerful, to keep the upper hand at all costs in case their wives should rise up a bit. It is whites controlling the blacks, masters their slaves. It is a bully needing to keep control in case they lose it. It is a woman disrupting a marriage so that she can have a man and then discard him. Look under the surface, behind the need to dominate and control, and there often emerges insecurity about being taken over, a threat being acted upon or a reaction against being abused or disrespected. A fundamental meaning of crime for the criminal is to escape control of others and impose control.75 But there is also an aspect present with domination that is terrifyingly addictive. Through myriad acts of violation that distort the human situation, it is clear that the violent may acquire a taste for blood. The feature of all addiction is that an object of desire produces “a hit”; it registers in a way that may be disturbing but is nonetheless compelling and sought after. As in all addictive processes, perhaps violence fires neurons in a way its perpetrator wants, needs and cannot do without. Engaging in crime achieves moral dominance, generating a thrill that is experienced during the commission of the crime. The senseless act is converted to being sensual, seductive, magic, creative and deeply compelling. “There’s nowt to do” was a lamentable reason given by the Edlington boys for their torture. It could be a sense of achievement against a threat of ennui by unemployed youth. Or crowd violence that has addictive qualities by a thirst for action and a quest for repetition

“I want to be who you are!” – violence as imitation of highly prized people Cultures of violence are schools, schools where teaching and learning are routine. Narratives of violence are replete with educational experiences. Many violent protégés grew up in abusive households where they were conditioned to think that this is what you do to children or how you treat women. This is why early intervention is crucial in addressing potential offenders. Abusive households may reproduce themselves. In the case of two Edlington boys in the UK in February 2010, one only broke down and wept in the dock when his defending barrister pointed out that he had adopted his father’s exact tone of voice when he acted cruelly. The brothers were said to experience “a toxic

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childhood,” a phrase coined by an educationalist critiquing the complex web of factors disturbing well-being of children.76 Feeling disadvantaged compared with others in the same society, the violent often develop lifestyles that allow them to become someone. They are trying to get their value back through the kind of people in their world that are highly prized and to whom they are apprenticed. The violent follow a sense of who is “cool,” the kind of people they value in their micro-culture, regardless of whether that role model is a hero to anyone else. Devaluation is sustained by all sorts of messages individuals and groups download about the kind of people that are valued and prized as against those that are written down. Especially in circumstances of low social approval, people make up the deficit by staking out ways in which they can be kings and queens on their own turf. They compensate by creating a micro-culture in which they will be dominant, based on the kind of people inhabiting their world they perceive as being “cool,” someone to aspire to. The role models offer deadly education. The pattern of brutalised children visiting brutality on others is wellestablished. Investigation of adult criminality seems to show that violence is developed through a process of brutalisation, people undergoing coarse and cruel treatment at the hands of others that produces a lasting and dramatic impact on the course of their lives. Violent coaching assumes a set of learning experiences in which the subject is placed into the position of a novice. Usually an older person takes the role of a coach and teaches the proper course of action towards people who provoke them.77 Through violence, people are acting out what they have learnt from role models out of a desire to imitate. René Girard drew attention to the illusion of “attaining autonomy as we imitate our models of power and prestige.” This autonomy, however, is really nothing but a reflection of the illusions projected by our admiration for them. Girard locates this in mimetic desire. Desire for what another had originated from a child desiring what its role models desire. This leads to conflict and violence if our desire to be like a model is strong enough. We imitate rivals even as we compete with them. “The principal source of violence between human beings is mimetic rivalry, the rivalry resulting from imitation of a model who becomes a rival or of a rival who becomes a model.”78 Mimesis is individuals and groups moving in the only social world they know, reproducing patterns that have become embedded within them. They have not consciously learnt ways of being and doing appropriate to the practice they are acting out. They are apprentices, imitating because they have absorbed a violent process, internalised to the point where they approve of it. They can see it works. You have to defend yourself in order to survive. From bullying, you graduate to more violence. Violence witnessed either at home or in the media is learnt as a script to be stored and used. The script is encoded as a learning format, a way to behave.79 In his social learning model, Albert Bandura contested that people learn violent behaviour from observing aggressive role models.80 Parents model

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aggressive behaviours not unlike those they are seeking to discourage. Recipients later adopt aggressive solutions in dealing with their problems. Born the son of a Mafia hitman, Learco Chindamo seemed destined for a life of violence. His mother Paquita split from her husband Massimo after he threw her out of a window, breaking both legs. His father was later jailed for 15 years for throwing acid in someone’s face. The terrified mother brought her three sons to North London where Chindamo was soon making a name for himself in the only way he knew. By the age of 12, known at school as a cry baby, he was arming himself with a knuckle-duster. By 14, he had moved on to baseball bat and knife and followed his older brother into a gang named Venom. As an initiation, new recruits were brutally attacked by older members. The gang, which included Filipinos, Colombians and West Indians, modelled itself on the Chinese Triads. It began terrorising and robbing other children. Chindamo stabbed London Headteacher Philip Lawrence to death as he tried to stop the gang attacking a 13-yearold with a metal pole. The gang was later responsible for the merciless rape of an Austrian tourist, left for dead on a canal towpath.81 Learco was trying to act big in the only world he knew. Cultures of violence produce imitative behaviour. Aggressive modelling breeds aggression: “seed-corn for intergenerational violence.”82 Commenting some years later on the murder of her husband, Frances Lawrence said, “It’s the separation of human beings from each other, we don’t value one another in the way we used to perhaps. Everyone needs to be valued. Chindamo needs to be valued as much as my son.”83 Violence takes place in a system, a family system or a micro-culture. Researchers have come to realise just how much human beings matter to each other. Trauma is a disturbingly sudden cessation of human interaction. The link between our capacity to be violent and our need for each other is intriguing and important.84 A cycle of rejection is set up in peer interactions and with teachers. With increased rejection, a child develops a sense of himself or herself and other people as “bad.” The rubbished become rubbishers. The cycle goes round and round. Can you get off?

“This is not all of me!” – re-imaging the human landscape through the Protest Violence forcibly labels victims but need not always constrain them. “Victims need to be treated like human beings first and a piece of evidence after” – a rape victim.85 The effect of violence or aggression, verbal or physical, is that it forcibly shapes our identity. Such labels, either adopted or projected, are generated when violence occurs. Violence accomplishes the bifurcation of the interior world, marking out labels and identities, bullies and bullied, criminals and victims, winners and losers. Those who experience violence or participate in it are marked out as someone to whom violence happens, someone who inflicts violence (a macho type of persona), or someone who lives in a violent-prone

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part of the world. Human identity is shaped by the felt interior experience of the person that positions someone in a force field of relationship power. Across the world, this subjective experience is affected by violence.86 For so many, the process of forming their identity is inseparable from their experience of violence, as the abuser or the abused, dominant or the weak. An aggressor takes spray paint and paints a label on someone else, marking them out as victim. It becomes part of their story. “I am a raped woman. I am a victim of violence.” The terrifying use of rape as a weapon of war in Democratic Republic of Congo creates new identities. “My family refuse to eat from the same plate as me” says a 16-year-old girl, rejected by rape.87 The world is rudely divided into victims and perpetrators with far greater social taboo assigned to the former. A witness in Public Hearings Minneapolis, probing the links between pornography and sexual violence, observed, “Battered women are reduced to being physical objects. They are no longer people, they have no rights, no dignity. They are objects and things. Women in pornography are reduced to the level of objects and things. They don’t exist as human beings but are just there to satisfy a man’s desire.”88 Domination is heady. When you feel powerful, you think you will command respect. It is saying, “I want to be someone, I want to walk into a bar and be 9 foot tall!” Issues of value and disvaluing that arise amidst the tawdry tale of human violence come back to this – the need to restore relationships: relationships between individuals and within communities. It is when we become disconnected from each other that poverty and violence distort social bonds and spread like a virus. So, what overcomes the separation and help re-image the human landscape?

Notes 1 Hogan, T. (2015) Bone wars www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/sciencestories accessed 10th June 2015. 2 TOXIC ROWS: Bickering between rival surgeons led to rise in patient deaths at major London hospital, report reveals www.thesun.co.uk/news/6939597/st-georges-hospitallondon-rival-surgeons-row/ 3 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 4 Gay, P. (2006) Freud: A Life for Our Time. London: Max, p. 390. 5 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 6 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 7 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 8 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 9 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 10 Power, S. (2009) Sergio. New York: Penguin, p. 531. 11 Fest, J. (2002) Hitler. London: Penguin, p. 83. 12 Fest, J. (2002) Hitler. London: Penguin, p. 93. 13 Cockburn, P. (2016) The Age of Jihad. London: Verso. 14 Enough is enough: Addressing the root causes of radicalisation. Oasis Foundation 2016 https://oasis.foundation/news/national-response-youth-radicalisation-epidemic-fails-addressroot-causes-says-new-report accessed July 2018.

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15 Bhui, K., et al. (2016) Identifying pathways to sympathies for violent protest and terrorism. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 1–8. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.116.185173 16 The mental health needs of gang-affiliated young people: A briefing produced as part of the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme. Public Health England, 2015. 17 UK police study links radicalization to mental health problems https://reachmd.com/news/ uk-police-study-links-radicalization-to-mental-health-problems/305/ accessed July 2018. 18 Aeon, S. A. Alt right or Jihad? https://aeon.co/essays/radical-islam-and-the-alt-rightare-not-so-different accessed July 2018. 19 What are they looking for? Therapy Today, March 2015, 26, 2. 20 Stuermer, M. (2008) Putin and the Rise of Russia. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 6. 21 Albright, M. (2018) Fascism: A Warning. London: William Collins. 22 Russian women http://masterrussian.com/russianculture/russian_women.htm accessed July 2018. 23 Figes, O. (1996) A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924. London: Pimlico, p. 55. 24 Ruttenberg, N. (2008) Dostoyevsky’s Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 25 Figes, O. (1996) A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924. London: Pimlico, p. 96. 26 Reese, R. (2008) The Soviet Military Experience. London: Routledge. 27 Felshtinsky, Y., & Pribylovsky, V. (2008) The Age of Assassins: The Rise and Rise of Vladimir Putin. London: Gibson Square. 28 Zimbardo, P. (2007) The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil. Rider. 29 Keval, N. (2016) Racist States of Mind: Understanding the Perversion of Curiosity and Concern. London: Karnac Books. 30 The Economist, 13th June 2009. 31 Author’s client notes – used with permission. 32 Scheper-Hughes, N., & Bourgois, P. (Eds.). (2004) Violence in War and Peace. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–2. 33 Bailey, R. (1977) Violence and Aggression. New York: Time-Life Books, p. 31. 34 Changon, N. (1968) Yanamamo: The Fierce People. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 35 Darwin, C. (1872) Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: Murray. 36 Lorenz, K. (1966) On Aggression. London: Methuen. 37 Freud, S. (1927) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Chicago: Chicago Press. 38 Storr, A. (1992) Human Aggression. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, pp. 37, 126. 39 Collins, R. (2008) Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 40 Peters, M., McMahon, R., & Quinsey, P. (Eds.). (1992) Aggression & violence throughout the life span. In 21st Banff International Conference on Behavioural Science. London: Sage Publications, p. 10. 41 Wilson, E. (1975) Socio-Biology: The New Synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 42 Prior, M. (1989) The Australian temperament project. In F. Kohnstamm (Ed.), Temperament in Childhood. Chichester, UK: Wiley, pp. 537–558. Prior, M. (1990) Resilience and coping: The role of individual temperament. In E. Frydenberg (Ed.), Learning to Cope: Developing as a Person in Complex Societies (chap. 3). Oxford: Open University Press. Reiss, A. J., & Roth, J. A. (Eds.). (1993) The Development of an Individual Potential for Violence in Understanding & Preventing Violence. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, p. 357. Goldsmith, H. (1987) Roundtable: What is temperament: Four approaches. Child Development, 58, 505–529. 43 Mednick, S. A., & Christiansen, K. O. (Eds.). (1977) A Preliminary Study of Criminality Amongst Twins. New York: Gardner Press. Prentky, R. (1985) Neurochemistry and neuroendocrinology of sexual aggression. In D. P. Farrington & J. Gunn (Eds.), Aggression

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and Dangerousness (chap. 1). New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 8. Cardoret, R., et al. (1995) Genetic-environmental interaction in the genesis of aggressivity and conduct disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry, 52, 916–924. Loeber, R., & Stouthamer-Loeber, M. (1986) Family factors as correlates and predictors of juvenile conduct problems and delinquency. In N. Morris & M. Tonry (Eds.), Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research, Vol. 7. Chicago: Chicago Press, pp. 29–149. Zahn-Waxler, C. (1994) Altruism, aggression and social interactions in young children with manic depressive parents. Child Development, 55, 112–122. Bowlby, J. (1975) Separation, Anxiety and Anger. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, p. 2. Bowlby, J. (1999) Forty Four Juvenile Thieves. London: Routledge. Rutter, M. (1985) Family & school influences on behavioural development. In P. Barnes (Ed.), Personal, Social & Emotional Development of Children (chap. 1). Milton Keynes: Open University. Belsky, J. (1988) The ‘effects’ of day care reconsidered. Early Child Research Quarterly, 3, 235–272. 44 Brownmiller, S. (1975) Against Our Will: Men, Women & Rape. Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 15. Archer, J. (1994) Male Violence. London: Routledge, p. 5. Davis, M. (1993) Women and Violence: A Global Crisis. London: Zed Books. Enloe, C. (2000) Bananas, Beaches and Bases. Berkeley: University of California Press, p. 195. Farrington, D. (1994) The causes and prevention of offending, with special reference to violence. In J. Shepherd (Ed.), Coping with Violence: A Practical Handbook for Health-Care Workers (chap. 5). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 180. Giddens, A. (1993) Sociology, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hanmer, J., & Saunders, S. (1993) Women, Violence and Crime Prevention: A West Yorkshire Study. Aldershot: Avebury Press, p. 3. Kelly, L. (1988) Surviving Sexual Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 27. Stanton, A., & Gage, E. (1889) History of Women’s Suffrage. Rochester, NY: Mann, p. 79. Wiltsher, A. (1985) Most Dangerous Women: Feminine Peace Campaigners of the Great War. London: Pandora, p. 99. 45 Audit Commission. Misspent Youth (1996). Bandura, A. (1973) A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Bandura, A. (1977) Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Reiss, A. J., & Ross, J. A. (Eds.). (1993) The Development of an Individual Potential for Violence in Understanding & Preventing Violence. Washington, DC: National Academy Press, p. 357. Coie, J. D., & Underwood, M. (1991) Programmatic interventions with aggressive children in the school setting. In D. J. Pepler & K. H. Rubin (Eds.), The Development and Treatment of Childhood Aggression (chap. 5). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 389–410. Dinitz, S. (1982) Careers of the Violent: Dangerous Offender Project in Columbus, Ohio. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, pp. 216–219. Office for Standards in Education. (2002) Sex and Relationships Education. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Sutherland, E. (1949) Principles of Criminology. Chicago: Lippincott. 46 Bonger, E. (1916) Criminality and Economic Conditions. London: Heinemann, pp. 402– 405. Australian National Committee on Violence. (1990) Violence-Directions for Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, p. 96. Farrington, D. (1994) The causes and prevention of offending, with special reference to violence. In J. Shepherd (Ed.), Coping with Violence: A Practical Handbook for Health-Care Workers (chap. 5). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ch. 9 James, O. (1995) Juvenile Violence in a Winner-Loser Culture. London: Free Association Books. Murray, C. (1990) The Emerging British Underclass. London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Bettelheim. (1952) Glueck, S., & Glueck, E. (1950) Unravelling Juvenile Delinquency. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Minuchin, D. (1966) Families of the Slums. New York: Basic Books. Farrington, D. P. (1987) Early precursors of frequent offenders. In J. Q. Wilson & G. C. Loury (Eds.), From Children to Citizens, Vol. 3: Families, Schools and Delinquency Prevention (chap. 3). New York: Springer, pp. 27–51. Edgar, D. (Ed.). (1989) Child Poverty. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, p. 56. Utting, D. (Ed.). (1993) Crime and the Family: Improving Child-Rearing and Preventing Delinquency. London: Family Policy Studies Centre, p. 19.

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47 Anthias, F., & Yuval-Davis, N. (1992) Racialised Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle. London: Routledge. Jenkins, R. (1996) Social Identity. London: Routledge. Harre, R. (1986) The Social Construction of Emotions. Oxford: Blackwell. Madden, F., & Lion, H. (Eds.). (1976) Rage, Hate, Assault and Other Forms of Violence. New York: SP Books, p. 146. Merton, R. (1957) Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed. Glencoe: Free Press. Modood, T. (1997) Culture and identity. In T. Modood, et al. (Eds.), Ethnic Minorities in Britain. London: Policy Studies Institute, pp. 295–296. Oppenheimer, F. (1914) The State. Indianapolis: Gitterman. Parsons, T. (1954) Revised Analytic Approach to Social Stratification: Essays in Sociological Theory. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Rex, J. (1983) Race Relations in Sociological Theory, 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Rutherford, J. (1990) Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart. 48 American Psychological Association Commission. (1993) Violence and Youth: Psychology’s Response, Vol. 1: Summary Report. Washington, DC: Author. Australian National Committee on Violence. (1990) Violence-Directions for Australia. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, p. 86. Clinard, M. (1978) Cities with Little Crime: The Case of Switzerland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fagan, J. (1990) Intoxication and aggression. In M. Tonry & J. Wilson (Eds.), Drugs and Crime (chap. 10). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. The UK Home Office. (2005) Statistics in violent crime 2004, 20th April. 49 Buckingham, D. (1993) Children Talking Television. Lewis: Falmer Press. Gulbenkian Foundation Commission Report. (1995) Children and Violence. London: Calouste Gulbenkian, p. 72. Blackburn, R. (1993) The Psychology of Criminal Conduct: Theory, Research and Practice. Chichester: Wiley. Hampton, J. (Ed.). (1996) Preventing Violence in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Bugental, D. (1985). 50 Billington, J. H. (1980) Fire in the Minds of Men. London: Maurice Temple Smith. Giddens, A. (1993) Sociology, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 357. Kaldor, M. (1999) New and Old Wars. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lyon, D. (2000) Jesus in Disneyland. Oxford: Blackwells, p. 105. Marshall, S. L. A. (1947) Men against Fire. New York: Marrow. Richer, D. (Ed.). (1972) The Challenge of Violence. Tadworth: Ardua Press, p. 36. 51 Clarke, R., & Cornish, D. (2001) Rational choice. In R. Paternoster & R. Bachman (Eds.), Explaining Criminals and Crime. Los Angeles: Roxbury. 52 Vold, G., et al. (2002) Theoretical Criminology. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 205. 53 Meltzer, B. (1967) Mead social psychology. In J. Manis & B. Meltzer (Eds.), Symbolic Interaction. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, pp. 9–13. 54 Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage. 55 Shaw, C. (1930) The Jackroller, (1931) The Natural History of a Delinquent Career and (1938) Brothers in Crime, all published in Chicago by University of Chicago Press. 56 Sutherland, E. H. (1937) The Professional Thief. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 57 Cressey, D. (1973) Other People’s Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith. 58 Polksky, N. (1998) Hustlers, Beats and Others. New York: Lyons Press. 59 Adler, P. (1993) Wheeling and Dealing: An Ethnography of Upper Class Drug Dealing and Smuggling Community, 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. 60 Tunnell, K. (1992) Choosing Crime. Chicago: Nelson-Hall. 61 Wright, R., & Decker, S. (1994) Armed Robbers in Action: Stick-Ups and Street Culture. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 62 Jacobs, B. A. (2000) Drug Dealers: Violence beyond the Law. Hawthorne Aldine de Gruyter. 63 Adler, P., et al. (Eds.). (1998) Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research. 64 Ferrell, J. (1997) Criminological Verstehen: Inside the Immediacy of Crime. 65 Katz, J. (1988) Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books.

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66 Chambers. 20th Century Dictionary, 1977. 67 Lawrence, B. B., & Karim, A. (Eds.). (2008) On Violence: A Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 68 Bourke, J. (2007) Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present. London: Virago. 69 Newspaper accounts of the time on 9th May 2008. 70 Raz, J. (1986) The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 154–156. 71 Clarke, E. Holocaust survivor testimony. Holocaust Education Trust. 72 The London Times, Saturday 23rd January 2010. 73 Hemming, J. (2008) Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon. London: Thames and Hudson. 74 Taussig, M. (2004) Culture of terror, space of death. In N. Scheper-Hughes & P. Bourgois (Eds.), Violence in War and Peace. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, p. 46. 75 Tittle, C. (1995) Control Balance: Towards a General Theory of Deviance. Boulder. 76 Palmer, S. (2006) Toxic Childhood. London: Orion Books. 77 Cooley, G. (1962) Social Organisation. New York: Schocken Press. Pulkinnen, L. (1982) Self-control and continuity from childhood to late adolescence. In P. B. Baltes & O. G. Brim (Eds.), Life-Span Development and Behaviour, Vol. 4 (chap. 7). New York: New York Academic Press. 78 Girard, R. (2001) I Saw Satan Fall Like Lightning. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, p. 11. 79 Huesmann, L. R., & Eron, L. D. (1986) Television and the Aggressive Child: A CrossNational Comparison. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 80 Bandura, A. (1973) A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 81 London Daily Mail, 21st August 2007. 82 Browne, K. D., & Herbert, M. (1997) Preventing Family Violence. Chichester: Wiley, p. 57. 83 Frances Lawrence, Interview, Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 21st August 2007. 84 De Zulueta, F. (1993) From Pain to Violence: Traumatic Roots of Destructiveness. London: Whurr Publishers, p. 135. 85 www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 accessed 15th March 2010. 86 Das, V., & Kleinman, A. (Eds.). (2000) Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press. 87 Eshelby, K. (2008) If a woman says no, we use force. Church Times, 15th August. 88 Pornography and sexual violence; Evidence of the links, Public Hearings, 1983, State of Minnesota.

Chapter 4

Compensation Violence, transfer and scapegoats

Human violence is an ongoing phenomenon that continues to warp individuals, distort relations between people and communities and shape the destiny of nations. The way that humans so often demonstrate a knee-jerk resort to violence as a way of solving problems and meeting needs is so much a part of us that it seems normal; unwelcome and unacceptable but normal. Indeed, the history of violence is a red herring. Violence is so pervasive that it cannot be distinguished from history itself.1 We are investigating the way that human value and devaluation function as a social dynamic. This chapter explores the interplay of value and devaluation in violence. Much violence in the world is driven by the motor of devaluation. Perpetrators will often have had experiences of being denigrated and de-personalised, becoming an It in the eyes of someone who is more powerful. It is by no means the case that everyone who has experienced assaults on their value will recycle this and become perpetrators themselves. But these experiences contribute strongly to violence. We go on to address the last heading of the texts of violence and domination we are exploring here.

“You will pay for what you have done!” – violence as retribution and exchange The American psychologist Rollo May saw violence as a bid for significance by the powerless: “an explosion into violence may be the only way individuals or groups can get release from unbearable tension and achieve a sense of significance.”2 It is the essence of violence that it engenders statements of an intrinsic worth being assaulted. In narratives of violence, victims report feeling stripped of their worth and dignity. Progress comes when a client can say, “This is part of me; it is not all of me!”3 Identities need to be de-constructed, the alien element removed. Forgiveness becomes a powerful approach that unfreezes the past. The Protest can then be liberated to emerge and revalue the wounded self. Latent or patent, bidden or unsolicited, the Protest is there, reacting against the mocking crudity of injustice, the shame of indignity, the shudder of contamination, the

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violation of rape or the presence of a burglar, a bully. It is vital to recovery that the victim can come to declare that they are worth more than what happened to them and that it was wrong. 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will experience domestic abuse within their lifetime. 50% of stalking victims curtailed or stopped work due to stalking. Half of British women and a fifth of men have been sexually harassed at work or a place of study. According to the Domestic Violence Safe Space Consultancy, domestic abuse and stalking costs businesses alone in the UK £2.3bn per year.4 Violence may well be as old as humanity, but its impact within highly technological societies, its saturation in the media and its presence in our daily lives, is new. It is becoming more and more common and customary. It is not just in a situation of social and political fragility such as post-invasion Iraq that “violence here is as normal as the weather.”5 Violence has become an everyday, natural trivial event, a banal trifle. We are already insensible that it needs a significant escalation of violence or especially dramatic acts of brutality to rouse us out of dull indifference. We read that one in four UK teachers have experienced aggression from parents.6

Payback time! “It’s payback time!” The proposition here is that violence is often reproduced by those who are bereft of any sense of worth through abusive experiences, then try to scrape it off the face of victims as compensation to recover their value or to protect their own value (honour). The tortured landscape of human violence often discloses a significant reality. Where there has been a cost, there must be a payment. These are associated in degree though demand for payment may or may not be proportionate. Familiar reactions crowd the stage which may be more easily explained through some form of exchange system and relationship trade to make up the deficit. Losing name or status results in compensation being needed. Comfort eating may well be a human response to this loss. Or the individual may indulge in the blame game – “I’ll make them pay.” Unconsciously, the plan is how to act on it so as to stop feeling this way so the pain can be relieved. Authority figures such as Police forces are often accused of attracting those who have an inferiority complex and who then need to compensate by throwing their weight around or by reacting unpredictably. This is perhaps a strategy for the recovery of their value. The traumatic roots of violence lie in harm visited upon us resulting in an injured psyche that looks for redress. A terrifying reality then confronts us. These strategies to revalue ourselves are transactions at the expense of another. It is a competitive marketplace in which my sense of worth can be gained only if yours is denied. The violent thus engage in a form of monetary calculation in which they assume there is only so much to go round. When it comes

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to intimate love, land and scarce resources, they may be right. Some sort of exchange mechanism needs to be envisaged by which we are driven to seek compensation somewhere and from someone. Retribution will ensure that my depleted bank account of value is filled again at your expense. The impetus to make up the deficit is then relieved. The warp drive to claw back a sense of worth or esteem is played out in many inter-personal dramas. It emerges in tragic narratives of traumatised women identifying with their own violent mothers and projecting all their dark feelings on to their child. It is most obvious in situations of gang culture and honour killings. Urban warfare between two gangs in Liverpool – the Croxteth Crew and the Strand Gang – terrorised the neighbourhood. Dressed in either balaclavas or hooded tops, the young people go about on quad bikes, BMX bicycles or even high-performance cars. Their weapons of choice are pistols, sawn-off rifles and sub-machine guns. While they deal in cocaine and cannabis, the violence perpetrated by their mainly white members is no longer fuelled by drugs. Instead, they were prepared to wound and kill for power or just the simple respect of their peers. As one former member of the Croxteth Crew said, “It’s not about drugs anymore; all anyone wants is respect – that’s what it’s all about.”7 The notion that violence can be understood as a bid for respect is argued by James Gilligan.8 He suggests that the mechanism by which unemployment and economic inequality stimulate violence is because both trigger feelings of shame, of inferiority. Some violent acts may be a reaction against perceived humiliation or loss of status. In acts of violence, its actors feel lack of respect – “he disrespected me.” Forms of disrespect might lie in a perceived look, a verbal insult or a territorial claim. Violence is an assertion of self-respect. Here we are exploring the idea that violence is a forcible exchange of value, recovering someone’s value through a dehumanising reduction of another. This also stands out in honour killings.

Honour culture “Dawn will come and the girls will ask about her, ‘Where is she?’ And the monster will answer: ‘We killed her.’ A mark of shame was on our foreheads and we washed it off” [a female Iraqi perspective on honour crimes].9 – Sana al-Khayyat

Honour and shame are parallel labels used to describe either physical conditions or human behaviour of which a culture approves or disapproves. Westerners find it very difficult to appreciate a face-saving or honour culture. The self is a cultural production. In the West, freedom of the individual, the right to selfexpression, security, the adventure of love, efficiency and wealth-creation are all prized. Natural though these values seem to be to those who live in societies of this kind, human individuality is but one way of constructing the self. Other

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cultures function very differently. Differing roles for men and women, interaction between the individual and family (“I”/“we”), honour and shame and the place of hospitality constitute a very different frame of reference. In the Middle East and central Asia, a major objective is to accumulate honour and avoid anything that could deplete it. Honour can be eroded through shame. Shame brings disgrace down on one’s head and dishonours the family. It must be avoided at all costs. To prevent letting the side down, people will preserve appearances. Honour comes from age, from family connections and from hard work and success. In Islamic societies, honour is inseparable from religion. In mechanisms that correspond to older forms of honour in the West, notions of “sharif ” and “shame” both controls and disciplines behaviour. “Honour . . . provides a nexus between the ideals of a society and their reproduction in the individual through his aspiration to personify them.”10 Dishonour flows from breaking the honour code and responding with insufficient vigour to an insult or an injury. In Ecuador and Mexico, abortion was illegal, but infanticide was committed for reasons of family honour in the first eight days of life. In these cultures, honour must be upheld with violence. Honour is the moral code that maintains the power structure of oppression. In many societies, the patriarchal code of honour and shame both generates and obligates male violence. The way people derive their sense of worth is expressed very differently. For men, it is publicly proving oneself a man. Men demonstrate socially constructed ideals and appoint themselves to defend culturally agreed feminine ideals. Honour for men means success in competing with other men, assertiveness, control or protection of family. How do we move in those societies to a situation where masculinity and femininity are de-constructed? Gender is so intertwined in our concepts of self-worth and, therefore, to honour and shame that we cannot avoid discussing it, but recognising that gender is a social construct or that our concepts of gender are problematic for the pursuit of peace and justice is not a feminist issue but rather a question about the human condition. Honour is a dynamic and relational concept. On the one hand, an individual can think of himself or herself as honourable on the basis of his or her conviction that he or she has embodied those actions and qualities that the group values as “honourable,” as the marks of a valuable person. This aspect of honour is really “self-respect.” On the other hand, honour is also the esteem in which a person is held by the person’s group that he or she is a valuable member of that group. It is having the respect of others. It was a problematic experience when one’s self-respect was not matched by corresponding respect from others, but strategies could be developed to cope with the discrepancy. When the powerful and the masses, the philosophers and the Jews, the pagans and the Christians all regarded honour and dishonour as their primary axis of value, each group would fill out the picture of what constituted honourable behaviour or

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character in terms of its own distinctive sets of beliefs and values, and would evaluate people both inside and outside that group accordingly.11 Shame, by contrast, signifies being seen as less than valuable because one has behaved in ways that run contrary to the values of the group. Someone who puts personal safety above the city’s well-being, fleeing from battle, loses the respect of society. His worth is impugned, he “loses face,” he is disgraced and viewed as a disgrace. Out of shame as well though a woman refuses an adulterous invitation; a soldier refuses to flee from battle. The anthropologist Julian Pitt-Rivers examined how honour and shame is attached to the body.12 Honour is inherited through blood. The shedding of blood is a stain of honour. Private parts are the seat of shame. They are vulnerable. The right hand is the hand of honour, the left the hand of shame. The head is to be honoured. In court, no one’s head should be higher than the ruler’s. The head of the ruler is crowned. The defilement of dead bodies, by severing heads, tends to increase the violent response. It is a sort of taunt. Proper burial is a matter of showing honour and respect. A corpse left in the open is a shameful thing. Those who have been dishonoured can reclaim honour only through violence. War is a matter of honour and shame; the battle ground is the field of honour. To the victor goes the spoils of war. He can rape the women of the vanquished for the vanquished have no honour to defend. In antiquity, slaves were the vanquished. Competition is a means of winning or gaining honour. Titles and trophies are symbols of such honour. In our society, the greatest honour tends to be given to athletes and to those who defeat others and win. Someone must know the “agony of defeat” in order for the other to know the honour of victory. In Oedipus Rex, the pollution of the city caused by the incestuous relationship of Oedipus and his mother and murder of his father requires that Oedipus be killed or banished. He must be expunged from the city. Cultural honour in the West meant defending your good name. It was worked out differently between genders. For a man, it meant a reputation for courage; for a woman, it was about chastity.13 The emblematic figure of an English gentleman combined resolute sense of fair play with class consciousness. The First World War destroyed the highly developed Victorian honour culture in and the idea of the hero. As Wilfred Owen said, men die like cattle. Shame and weakness were re-cast by psychoanalysis as personality problems, a sickness. In tracking the formation of a post-honour society in the West, James Bowman suggests that honour is rooted in the murky reflective instinct that if you get somebody, you must expect them to pay you back.14

Transfer and payback This leads us to pointing out that the concept of payment is a way of conceiving the relationship between violence and the value of personhood.

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At issue is the problem of how people negotiate the space between us. Perpetrators of violence often consider that they are responding to situations in which inter-personal space has been threatened or a perceived injustice. In France in 1608, Lord Herbert of Cherbury reported that there was “scarce any man thought worth looking on that had not killed some other in a duel.”15 A case can be made that it is rooted in the concept of social value: the means by which one is esteemed and the perverted sense that honour must be reclaimed and compensation extracted. The notion of a transfer of value can be pressed in another direction. Violence can be conceived as an exchange of symbolic value. Anarchists in the 19th century developed what they called “the theory of the deed,” extending the circle of those involved to convert spectators into participants. (There was no neutrality either with the Holocaust!) The violent seek to scrape the value off the face of another in order to compensate for their previous devalued identity. In Christian terms, this applies to the violence of the cross. The atonement can be seen in terms transformation of humanity from shame to honour and value. Notions of sacrifices in many religions can be framed in this way. Powerlessness is a strong theme in discourses of racial violence. Research on suicide amongst young blacks in New York City found a combination of self-hatred and homicidal rage directed against a society that made them feel helpless. “Among blacks who engaged in hostile activities was found an angry diffuse reaction to the frustrations of unrealised expectations and a loss of hope.”16 Angry white protest against immigration and other enemies often arises because of perceived devaluation of the white tribe. Sometimes, this maps on to individual experiences of devaluation through aggressive role models. This idea lay behind Adorno’s study of “The Authoritarian Personality” and its role in forming fascist societies.17 Scapegoating fell out of fashion in the wake of the cognitive revolution in psychology that rejected Freudian concepts of drives and defence mechanisms in favour of seeing stereotyping as an extension of normal processes of dramatising people and events – though there was a subsequent attempt to revive the theory.18 Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment may have contributed;19 most people, he concluded, can be recruited to become reluctant perpetrators given a destructive authority.20 Emphasising the need for respect and assertion of dignity might contribute to a re-conceptualisation of classic scapegoating ideas. The devalued self requires compensation. Displacement by the ego allows for uncomfortable feelings such as anger, frustration, envy and guilt to be projected onto another, often more vulnerable, person or group. The scapegoated target is then a target. The one doing the scapegoating has a target for his or her uncomfortable feelings, but also with piety and self-righteous indignation. A villain necessarily implies a hero. Human scapegoats are to varying degrees dehumanised and objectified, like the witches in mediaeval Europe who were demonised. The dynamics of scapegoating can apply to non-human entities such as physical objects, animals, or demons; some,

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such. The dehumanisation of the scapegoat makes the scapegoating more potent and less guilt inducing. René Girard suggested that envy poses an existential threat to the society and gradually builds up until order and reason give place to rule by the mob, to chaos and violence. A vulnerable person or group is singled out as a container for the growing bad feeling to quell this “madness of the crowds.” The exercise of prejudice and projection towards a group in order to vent their anger means that the group is a vent for all of their anger. Here is a contemporary example: five people were killed in June 2018 in a shooting at a local newspaper office in the state of Maryland. Two others were injured, officials in Annapolis said. The suspect was identified as Jarrod Ramos. The problem with the paper was due, as he saw it, to defamation of character. That had led him to sue the paper. Jarrod Ramos had been crossed. His personal worth had been infringed. Now it needed compensating. Payment by violence was required!21 When Keynes wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money during the years of the Great Depression, his new architecture of an economy led to him losing former friends at Cambridge University. It is a curious synchronicity that writing about prices resulted in a great personal cost to relationships.22 Economic activity can sound as if it takes place in a realm beyond the human which exerts its power and to which we are subject. The notion of the economy over-heating and then behaving in unpredictable ways that no one fully understood confers upon it the aura of some alien entity. Yet the economy is constituted by material transactions; it describes what is traded between people, between what is produced and what is consumed or saved. Interaction between people is an endless series of contracts, however temporary. The name of this game is “value.” Each transaction reflects a value placed by seller and purchaser. This is why Francis Fukuyama can argue that fundamental to capitalism is “trust.”23 I ask for a local tyre service to come out to render roadside assistance when I have a blow-out. They take the car away and effect repairs. I return later to collect and pay. The whole transaction has been based on assumption. You are expected to honour the transaction. Behind many if not all contracts lie the power of trust, a temporary relationship between two people that shapes an economic activity. Another approach might be minimalistic, that the relationship between the exchange system of the world – the markets – is a metaphor of human relationships and an extension of them into the economic sphere. Money has a utilitarian, imperialistic effect. Everything happens for its sake. There are limits. Why should human beings never be the object of commercialisation and industrialisation (the embryo as a marketable article and an object of trade)? Economics shapes and structures human transactions in a particular way. We can speak about people becoming commodities; objects not subjects, becoming a means to an end and re-defined as a target. Emotional labour such as this represents unpaid caring work.

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Between these two poles is an approach that sees the economic system as a department of human life and society, one aspect of it from which important concerns such as the arts, films and love are excluded. It is but one aspect, albeit highly influential, of human exchanges generally. The important difference is that the currency of exchange is money rather than transactions that are not related to pieces of metal, pieces of paper or credit that can conjure them up. The psychological country between and within people often conceals a quasi-economic statement – “I’m worth more than that!” It is as if a grave mistake has been made about a valuation. This, however, is no car, house or share. The world is a marketplace. Rather than being a single market, the global economy is a place of exchange for everything that is bought and sold. A network of myriad interlocking markets in every conceivable product exercises an invisible hand of daily influence in our lives. In countless, contractual exchanges, money changes hands. Money is the medium of exchange for human interactions. There is an exchange system that takes place every time you go to the shops, buy a car or get a pay cheque in return for your labour. In using money to make money, the world of signs not only has been emancipated from the reality of which it speaks but also dominates it. It is no coincidence that philosophy was born in Greek Ionia which was the first monetised state. Money has fascinated humanity since Aristotle wrote about the arbitrariness of the money sign and its translation into a world of aspiration. Why should that piece of metal or paper buy products and influence? The unlimited has defeated limit. In Aristotle’s ethical world, that was against the principle of moderation in all things.24 The monetary value of the currency enables buying and selling to be separated. It avoids the double-bind of barter; having to find something of equivalent value to trade.25 The money system of planet Earth rests on trust. These pieces of metal or paper are valuable because a buyer and seller thinks that they are. It is a convention that everyone accepts because experience shows that everyone else will accept it too. As John Stuart Mill argued in his Principles of Political Economy, money is “a machinery for doing quickly and commodiously what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously without it and like many other kinds of machinery, it only exerts a distinct and independent influence of its own when it gets out of order.”26 There is a wider exchange system in all human interactions. The system of economic exchange in our material culture is a metaphor for what happens between people in everyday transactions. Seeing human interaction as a kind of market immediately implies some “goods” that are bought and sold with money. Yet the idea of an exchange system is a cipher for human transactions. The word “credit” reflects this, deriving from the idea of “credo” or “trust.” The inter-personal world is a market, a site of relationship trade as surely as any stall in the markets of town and cities anywhere. Someone does something that has a knock-on effect on others. Maybe it is something relatively small such as obliging them to cancel a night out they were planning. Or it could be

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a longer-term injury and larger impact. Where there is hurt, there is cost. The person who has been affected may well feel there is “a price to pay” for this action or even that the perpetrator owes them. If relationships fail or there is tension and strain, there is a cost involved. “Let me make it up to you,” someone might say to an aggrieved party. “How can I repay you for your kindness?” “Make Germany pay” was the demand in the British “khaki” general election of 1918 at the end of the First World War. Within the practice of law, many forms of injury – for example, slander – require compensatory recognition. In the prison service, tariffs are imposed to exact reparation. It may be approval, it may be the narrative of respect that comes up so often in gang violence or it may be honour amongst those who feel social disgrace keenly enough to kill. In the interplay of value and disvalue in everyday transactions, a relationship trade results in certain products being exchanged to extract a response. This is exacerbated in exchanges involving violence. Someone has something you want; there is a prize worth having and a price worth paying. To that end, a perpetrator “locks on,” sometimes to strangers and passers-by. A force field of relational power is set up; a conspiracy of the willing and the unwilling. It may be the terrorist who recruits unwilling passers-by into the drama he is acting out in this “propaganda of the deed.” That there is a dynamic, a system of trade in experiences of violence, does not mean the victims are giving willingly. Indifference is unacceptable. It is their human response that is sought, not their acquiescence. Worlds are in collision. The exchange system is based on payment. Where there has been cost, payment must be exacted. The violent need something to happen. It cannot be “un-happened” or denied. A transaction is set up requiring compensation and relief to overcome the deficit. Much as a booth at an airport may function as a place of exchange, it is within the parameters of an exchange system that certain products are traded in relationships. The link between economic valuing and human value, between the relational sphere and the material realm of things emerges in the language people use to speak of human action. Transactions in society often reflect an idea of social responsibility that entails those who are better off “owe” something to vulnerable members of society.27 “I owe it to you . . . or to myself.” “You will pay for this.” “I will make them pay,” we think (consciously or not) when we have been negatively affected or hurt by something. A deficit arises which needs compensation if only an acknowledgement. Two people meet and interact. In the exchange system of human interaction, a kind of force field is set up. There is one, there is the other and there is the space between them – the relationship. Sometimes people try to separate the person they relate to from the dynamics between them – “it’s not you, it’s the relationship” – as if a dynamic but silent entity exists between them. In developmental psychology, this may have its origins in what the psychoanalyst Winnicott dubbed a “transitional object.”28 It is difficult, but not impossible, to separate two people in a pattern of action and reaction from the way they

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are interacting. People speak about their friendship as a third party. Intimate partners discuss their sex life as if it has a life of its own and is a not-so-silent partner. The power of intimacy itself is so strong as to set up obligations and a sense of easy betrayal if what is owed is not paid. In the laden world of intimacy, we expect to be in a monopoly position rather than a free market. Voices are often heard saying that at the heart of sex and relationships education in schools should not be an emphasis on “advanced plumbing” but on the individual so they feel they are worth something rather than jumping into bed and selling themselves too cheaply.29 Through adding a veneer of respectability to sexual titillation, the kind of Playboy philosophy promoted by Hugh Hefner normalised the objectification of women and made it respectable.30 Neo-classical economists have studied the way that people feel exploited or engage in exploitation in the non-economic “good” of human relationships.31 People fall in and out of love. Exchange patterns shaped traditional marriage involving male providers and female domestic labour.32 It is worth remembering that until the First World War, most children in the UK were not getting much more than two hours of education a day. They were part of the workforce. Children were commodities. In individual life, we may feel used when someone has milked us for what they can get out of it, as an instrument to meet their needs. We become a “thing.” In the labour market, life is contractual. We give work in exchange for reward. Nevertheless, in circumstances of exploitation, we can be utterly taken advantage of; reduced to an automaton. There are to be sure very few completely altruistic and mutual relationships. Balance of power marks personal landscapes like shifting sands. But unless we are consenting adults for a time, most of us would know what that feels like and dislike it. Someone to whom people in his or her world are means to an end we label “manipulative.” Using people for what you can get out of it means not paying attention to their needs. It means doing what I can to get what I want; valuing someone for their utility to me. The Austrian philosopher Martin Buber describes “I-Thou” relationships we can have with another, opened via the door of empathy.33 This contrasts with “I-It” relationships, which stay on the surface. The emotional indifference of an I-It relationship has a very different feel from the connection made with an “I-Thou” mode. The boundary between them though is fluid. Even in close relationships, we slip into the “I-It” mode when we are busy. The “Thou” can become an “It” to me. The land between “I” and “Thou” constitutes personhood. The economic simile is intriguing. “You will pay for this” we say, as if payment of a monetary sum can assuage the debt. A perfectionist could be said to consider that the marginal labour in a project is worth it in order to add the value that will command approval. By contrast, the “good enough” style does not consider the marginal effort is needed. Those engaging in a “blame game” do so in order to exact payment if what someone has done does not come up to scratch. A sensitive person carrying out an action that is likely to hurt another may then have to act so as not to create a deficit; the kind of deficit that arises

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from having caused an open wound. In that situation, we might feel we must make it up to them. The French poet Paul Valéry had a kind of arranged marriage with Jeannie Gobillard. It was, by all accounts, both affectionate and faithful amongst the relationships Valéry constructed in his dualistic view of the world. Nevertheless, it left much missing – sexual and emotional intensity, intellectual companionship and a spiritual longing that was never met. These were, in the view of Valéry’s biographer, significant deficits. Something(s) were felt to be owed that were left unmet.34 The hidden world of the quantum genius Paul Dirac highlights this kind of exchange. Working himself up into an angry state against his father, a disciplinarian bully and principal actor in an unhappy childhood, Dirac’s verdict was “I owe him nothing!”35

Compensation and transfer – a case study in atonement How do you find the value of the cross when life has given its fair share of life? I was born in an African country where Christianity is the majority religion/faith and my first memories of being a Christian is going to church with my great-grandmother who I spent my first few years with. My great-grandmother and I did not have much and at times her and I went without and although I now I recognise that that’s where my first signs of anxiety made an appearance, she loved God and she always said that tomorrow will be better. Her hope in a better tomorrow is something that I have always admired and most definitely rubbed off on me. My next encounters with church are perhaps somewhat so hopeful as at Sunday school I was often made to feel that I was not good enough and treat as such and upon reflection these experiences carried on at boarding school where the leader of the Christian Union again made me feel that I was not worthy of Christ and very ostracised. Being protestant I took the steps of going through catechism so that I can be confirmed and therefore able to take communion however upon taking on this task lead up to asking for my baptism certificate that led the discussion that I had to have a designated baptism due to the fact that I was born out of wedlock horrified as I was and seeing it as rejection by Christ, As the church was a representation of Christ and I would not argue with that I continued on my quest to confirmation as I had no other choice and not having a religion was not a choice . I moved to the UK at 15 years old to join my biological mother and I joined a church however I struggled a lot as they was a lot of changes and I did not feel like

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I fitted in although I made an effort to join the girls brigade of my local church I had no outlet and before long I stopped going to church I did not feel worthy or accepted. At 20 years old I become homeless due to mental health and over the next year I tried hard to get an accommodation however there was nowhere for me, until tried to commit suicide however I was unsuccessful and then in my final quest I found a leaflet that offered a rent deposit scheme for young people from the area lived upon ringing them they invited me to go to their offices, it was the first time that I had been listened to and they contacted a local emergency service and my host happened to be Christian and looking back I know that God was really looking out for me, and it was the beginning of a relationship with God that led me to where I am now. Though the last few years my relationship with Christ was sporadic at those times I needed something with it waiting for a job offer or something else the last 18 months have been the most amazing. At the age of 29 years whilst at University I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and that led me to a path with God that I would never have imagined. It is a path that has revealed how much he really loved and how that when I was hurting that he was hurting with me, a journey of healing and forgiveness and being renewed. God has taken on a journey that has revealed to me that I grew up way before I had to and that the feelings of feeling unworthy were not just in my head but that was my environment and that I never really had a chance but it is through his grace that I am still alive. The journey of forgiveness is a process that is very teary and joyful at time. It is also complex for the survivor of human tragedies.

The dynamics of inter-personal forgiveness are such that something needs to be done with the cost. When something has happened that has generated hurt and damage, what will be done with it? The cost cannot be wished away, for it is real. The damage has eroded economic or asset value but also the personal worth of the victims. “Bullying left me with no self-esteem. I felt bad about myself. My confidence was on the floor.”36 Forgiveness cannot come cheap or easy since what someone on the receiving end is holding on to is that they or a loved one have been diminished or trashed. To deny the affront feels like betrayal. Forgiveness cannot mean that something has not happened. The cost must be either internalised or externalised. This is surely where atonement is vital, where the price is paid or a scapegoat that represents the sacrifice provides somewhere to take the affront. We have noted in Chapter 4 and also in Chapter 9 the notion of a symbolic exchange market. Some sort of exchange mechanism needs to be envisaged by which we are driven to seek compensation somewhere and from someone. A familiar enough scene is that of a boy or girl, subject to verbal and physical abuse; they lash out subsequently with bottled up anger. The sub-text of those violent exchanges is a transaction in the emotional marketplace. Something has

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been breached in our depths. It is core material, primal wounding. It evokes a primal cry of “I’m worth more than that!” Someone must pay. The same desecration that has been inflicted on us must be visited upon others. Retribution will ensure that my depleted bank account of value is filled again at your expense. The impetus to make up the deficit is then relieved. In everyday life, we find that letting someone down or hurting someone matters. “You will pay for this” is an instinctive response either spoken or unspoken. This is not tribal or antiquated but a fact of psychological life. Either we make others pay in some way or we demand payment from ourselves. It is called guilt. We go cool with those who annoy us. We cut people up on the road. The value of persons means that infringement sets up a deficit. Something happens that can be discounted only at the expense of denial of the value that someone has. Some sort of exchange is set up, a form of market in which there has been a perceived breach of a sense of collective or individual identity. But because of the role that honour and disrespect play in the dynamics of violence, this breach functions as a feeling of devaluation, an insult that needs compensating for. It is not a drive reduction like hunger or sex. It is because of the strong impulse towards value and respect in the human psyche that there is now a deficit. Therefore, I will take it from you. A forcible exchange is set up. The only way I can re-gain value and honour is to scrape it from your face. Something has happened that will only be compensated for through violence. Recompense will ensure that my depleted bank account of debt is met. This is what makes forgiveness hard work. “Forgive us our debt” is a way of articulating the need to cover the aggrieving by the aggrieved. Atonement theology is usually expressed in terms of the law courts, sacrificial language or that of the slave market and its overtones of redemption. But the demand for compensation is utterly true to life. It pursues us across the years. A judge sentencing an offender will work with a scale of tariffs. We have to pay; we always have to pay. Impaired relationships require reconciliation and compensation, restitution or even prison (depending on the seriousness). An understanding of the atonement cannot be separated from notions of guilt and forgiveness. This is why the Old Testament background is important. The sacrificial system is embedded within a moral framework that later came to be highly developed. Sacrifice was of course not just about offering compensation for guilt and wrongdoing, but clearly that concept plays a central role. There was to be sure a differentiation between sins committed unknowingly and sins committed “with a high hand.”37 Nevertheless, an offence has been set up – whether intentionally or unintentionally. It needs compensating, for otherwise the value of persons, whether on an inter-personal level or the divine-human dynamic, is denied rather than affirmed. The guilt was objectively present whether the person failed to realise it or not. If I go over the speed limit, professing ignorance that there were restrictions on that road will not be an allowable defence.

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Saying someone is guilty affirms that they owe something to the person they have wronged. Richard Swinburne develops this aspect in his defence of a substitutionary atonement on philosophical grounds. “By hurting you, I put myself in a moral situation somewhat like the legal situation of a debtor who has failed to repay money borrowed from a bank.”38 Swinburne stresses that there is even more to the problem of moral guilt than past failure or present debt. The guilty one has acquired a stain that needs to be removed.39 Swinburne’s account emphasises the need for atonement, that it is impermissible to ignore the offence or go on as if nothing happened. To take an extreme case, if a spouse is murdered, any attitude that tries to say “the past is the past, let’s not nurse a grievance” simply will not do. “That attitude trivialises human life, you love for your wife and the importance of right action. And it involves you failing to treat me seriously, to take seriously my attitude towards you expressed in my action.”40 In the New Testament, James Dunn makes the point that paralleling “sinless/ made sin” in the Corinthian correspondence (2 Corinthians 5v21) indicates that Paul had in mind the ritual sin offering – very likely the Day of Atonement’s scapegoat.41 He goes on to observe that the process by which Jesus’ death deals with sin as an atoning sacrifice is akin to the sin offering ritual. The death of the sacrificial animal is the death of the sinner. “As the sin was transferred one way, bringing death to the sacrificial animal, so its purity and on-going life were in effect transferred in reverse.”42 A glance at versions of the atonement in Christian theology may be helpful. •

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First, the idea of Jesus winning an overwhelming victory for us on the battlefield. Origen thought in terms of a miscalculation by the devil, who thereby deceived himself. In the way Gregory of Nyssa developed victory theme, we are set free from slavery to the devil because in his death Christ paid our ransom. God “tricked” the devil, the hook of deity was covered by the bait of flesh. Others found the idea of God deceiving the devil morally dubious. Did the devil really have some legitimate rights over man? Though it had fallen out of favour, in the 20th century, the battlefield metaphor was re-visited by Gustav Aulen in Christus Victor.43 The second main line of interpretation has been to see the cross as primarily intended to influence humanity. This is the moral inspiration theory, associated with Peter Abelard in 12th century France. The basis of the Moral Influence theory was that the cross is a demonstration of the extent of God’s love. Because lack of repentance is what needs to be overcome, the cross moves us and wins our hearts far more than punishment can. As a modern translation of one of his hymns says: Our sins, not thine, thou bearest, Lord; make us thy sorrow feel, Till through our pity and our shame love answers love’s appeal. (F Bland Tucker). Like many writers since, for Abelard, the cross was not essential for sins to be forgiven. Jesus pronounces forgiveness before his crucifixion. The purpose of the cross then was not to change anything in God but was designed to draw man to

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respond to him. The subjective nature of the atonement is what it crucial, what it does in us. The third approach has been to see the death of Christ as some kind of substitution intended to take the place of the sinning man or woman. Rather than people bearing the consequence of their own sinfulness, Jesus steps up to the plate and offers himself instead. Very far from being a Reformation invention, this understanding has been associated with the 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm. The key idea is that of satisfaction. Honour and justice are satisfied when something is done to make reparation. Yet Irenaeus wrote about it with his doctrine of recapitulation and the idea is there in Ignatius (Trallians 2.1 and the Letter of Barnabas).44 The cross was a major theme in Justin Martyr, Eusebius of Caesarea, Hilary of Poitiers, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, Gelasius of Cyzicus and Gregory the Great.45 Athanasius and Augustine are both keen to defend the notion of God, in his love as not being contradictory with God propitiating his own wrath by sending his own Son. The teaching was developed by Thomas Aquinas, Luther and Calvin, all of whom were sophisticated commentators and very far from the simplistic “dumbed-down” version that often substitutes for substitution. Luther and Calvin clearly presented the penal theory, in common with Zwingli and Melanthcon. They certainly did not originate the idea but that there was an intrinsic connection between the death of Christ and the forgiveness of human sin was common currency amongst the Reformers.46 These main lines of interpretation are sometimes presented as being a choice of “A”s – Aulen, Abelard or Anselm. There was of course a fourth “A” who is much less well known amongst Protestant Christians. Thomas Aquinas carefully argued that the death of Christ had two functions. The cross was intended to make satisfaction. But it was also intended to merit grace. The first was to deal with what had happened already; the second corresponds to the inevitability of sinning in the future. Aquinas is quite clear that “Christ willed to suffer that he might make satisfaction for our sins . . . so that by himself, without any fault of his own bearing the penalty we owed, he might free us from the sentence of death, in the way that anyone would be freed from a penalty he owed if another person undertook the penalty for him.”47 As the philosopher Eleanor Stump carefully argues, Aquinas’ account of satisfaction for sin rests on a different notion than God being a sort of supreme accountant, a debt of guilt being registered that must be balanced on the other side of the ledger by exacting a corresponding amount. God is rather a parent concerned to restore harmony. So as long as the sinner is genuinely willing to make reparation, it does not matter so much who pays for the damage (as, for instance, if her son damages a mother’s flower bed).48 Human sinfulness is not just about individuals doing the sort of evil that we recognise, it is perpetrated and sustained through cultures and systems

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that run our lives unseen. Some kind of payment is needed to acknowledge that this matters. Everyday inter-personal tensions demonstrate this. Impaired relationships require reconciliation and compensation. Ancient wisdom recognised this connection. The Greek word “katallasso” meant to change and exchange, a compound of “allos,” or “other.” Something is given in exchange. Yet it came to be applied to people changing from enmity to friendship. Human transactions are a site of relationship trade whereby people move from one state of being to another. In the New Testament it carries the meaning of “to reconcile,” signifying how humans can be reconciled to God and to each other.49 It has its roots in the idea of atonement, paying something for an act of wrongdoing. In terms of Christian theology, Jesus makes a one-off representative payment. It is compensation paid to the victim of injustice, whether by financial award or by sentencing of the perpetrator.

Giving and forgiving Someone, somewhere must pay. They always do. Guilt is about acknowledging inside that the debt is owing and simply will not go away. The endless payment is exacted internally. Or payment can be visited on to others as demonstrated by the “tariffs” that a court may impose for given crimes. Examples of the moral and personal value that is breached when an offence is committed arise all the time. Just in the process of writing these paragraphs, on a far more serious register than trashing someone’s garden, a conviction was secured against a couple who had caused the most horrendous cruelty imaginable against a 4-year-old boy. Vulnerable little Daniel Pelka had suffered beatings, attempted drownings, deliberate starvation and a monstrous regime of neglect. His mother and stepfather, her violent partner, both received a 30-year sentence. To have taken no action against the perpetrators would have been to demonstrate no regard that here was a vulnerable innocent boy who deserved far, far better. It would have been saying that Daniel had no value and his life did not count. The sentence was the highest tariff that could be accorded. The unimaginable and systematic cruelty by an evil stepfather and selfish, indifferent mother, was made worse and certainly not reduced in any way by the complete absence of remorse. Mrs Justice Cox said that Daniel Pelka had been starved so badly that his condition on his death, weighing just 11kg, was unprecedented, and yet the couple had shown no sign of remorse.50 On the news the same day, when four years afterwards, the London Metropolitan Police gave an unconditional apology for the death of a bystander at an anti-capitalist protest in 2009, the spokesperson for the family was jubilant. This was the nearest to justice they were likely to get. What was needed all along was recognition, recognition that their loved one was someone of high value. Such recognition was more important to them than financial compensation. It

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demonstrated that their loved one was someone of high moral status to whom obligation is owed. Deficits here mean that some kind of payment was needed but it was a payment in the moral economy of worth and human value. I am using the economy as a cipher to show that someone atoning for their sins. The day before, a senior Roman Catholic Bishop had acknowledged a legacy of abuse of children. The Bishop of Aberdeen, Hugh Gilbert, issued an unreserved apology with his unequivocal declaration that allegations surrounding Fort Augustus Abbey in the Highlands had shamed the church. “It is a most bitter, shaming and distressing thing that in this former Abbey School a small number of baptised, consecrated and ordained Christian men physically or sexually abused those in their care.” This was in marked contrast to the way the church had dismissed such claims. That had been saying in effect that victims do not matter or matter less than an institution we must protect at all costs.51 In his classic work The Gift, Mauss argued that gifts are never free. Mauss’ argument is that solidarity is achieved through the social bonds created by gift exchange. Human history is full of examples that gifts give rise to reciprocal exchange. The famous question that drove his inquiry into the anthropology of the gift was “What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?”52 The answer is simple: the gift is a “total prestation” (social fact) imbued with “spiritual mechanisms,” engaging the honour of both giver and receiver. The giver does not merely give an object but part of himself. An object is indissolubly tied to the giver: “the objects are never completely separated from the men who exchange them.”53 Because of this bond between giver and gift, the act of giving creates a social bond with an obligation to reciprocate on part of the recipient. An important element in Mauss’ conceptualisation of a gift exchange is what Gregory describes as “inalienability.” In a commodity economy, there is a strong distinction between objects and persons through the notion of private property. When objects are sold, ownership rights are fully transferred to the new owner. The object has become “alienated” from its original owner. By contrast, in a gift economy, objects are “inalienated” from the givers; loaned rather than sold. It is because the identity of the giver is bound up with the object given that causes the gift to have a power. The recipient must reciprocate. Gifts are inalienable. They must be returned; giving creates a gift-debt that has to be repaid. Expected return of the gift creates a relationship over time between two individuals.54 This raises interesting questions which we cannot explore here. At the time of writing, the author is involved with the growing movement of timebanking, which we have set up locally. Time-banking is a form of reciprocal gift exchange based not on commodity exchange and money but time.55An obligation is set up when someone donates an hour of their time which can be banked and “traded” for reciprocal acts of giving. This perhaps echoes Derrida’s work on time as counterfeit money.56 Following Durkheim, Mauss’ approach was a way of understanding social cohesion through the concept of solidarity. The “free” gift that is not returned

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is a contradiction because it cannot create social ties. This economic anthropology has been criticised. French anthropologist Alain Testart argues that there are free gifts, such as passers-by giving money to those who beg who do not know each other and are unlikely to ever meet again. The donation certainly creates no obligation on the side of a beggar to reciprocate. Mauss overstated the obligation created by social pressures. It does, however, provide an intriguing lens on the notion of social exchange.57 “The economy” is a cipher for human transactions. I am arguing that human violence takes place in the marketplace of inter-personal transactions, the space between us that becomes a focus of emotional trade. Violence is reproduced by those trying to extract their value and how devaluing others is combined lethally with love of domination. Issues of value and devaluation also emerge in the way violence creates apprentices who see dangerous role models as worthy of emulation. Emmanuel Levinas, who emphasised that psychology was about recognition, not just cognition, cites Cain’s response to God in Genesis as the primitive act of violence. “Ontologically, each one of us is separate from any other . . . something must happen to bring us together, into a kind of relationship in which the question, ‘where is your brother?’ will sound natural.”58 So where, it might be asked, do the dynamics of forgiveness fit into the symbolic exchange model? There has been a growing body of research into forgiveness. Internalising anger is destructive to our spiritual and physical health and can destroy families and couple relationships. After thorough medical, theological and sociological research and clinical experience at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Barry offered evidence to show that the immune system and forgiveness are very much connected.59 Exline and Baumeister argued that forgiveness has both internal (emotional) and external (behavioural) elements. We might not be angry anymore, but we might not want to tell the offending person this so they do not think they have a license to walk all over us.60 McCullough, and Worthington et al. proposed a “Transgression Related Interpersonal Motivations Inventory” (TRIM).61 This focuses on forgiveness in relationships between people. The TRIM asks participants to remember a specific offence in which someone harmed them. The TRIM asks people several questions about their motives for revenge and for avoiding the perpetrator. “When an offended relationship partner reports that he or she has not forgiven a close relationship partner for a hurtful action, the offended partner’s perception of the offense is stimulating relationship-destructive levels of the two motivational states; that is, (a) high motivation to avoid contact with the offending partner and (b) high motivation to seek revenge or see harm come to the offending partner.”62 The environmental threat aside, the great questions of the day are to do with the way humans devalue each other. Perhaps we are learning that these two spheres are not disconnected. In any field of human relationships, there is ME, there is YOU and there is the space between us. The environment is a space that is not just between us but around us, enfolding us. Nevertheless,

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the value of persons is a concept that deserves to be placed much higher in our thinking as a major player in the social and personal worlds. It has not been a significant content area for human knowledge. There is a case for saying this must change. Experiences of devaluation seem to be the motor of many significant experiences yet “value” as a meaning environment for humans has been under-theorised. It is to this challenge that we must now turn.

Notes 1 Lawrence, B. B., & Karim, A. (Eds.). (2008) On Violence: A Reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2 May, R. (1976) Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence. London: Fontana, p. 44. 3 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 4 https://safespaceconsultancy.org accessed July 2018. 5 An Iraqi, interviewed for the BBC on the eve of the 2010 elections www.bbc.co.uk/ radio4 accessed 5th March 2010. 6 Association of Teachers and Lecturer’s Conference 6th April 2009. 7 As reported in the London Daily Mail, 25th August 2007. 8 Gilligan, J. (2001) Preventing Violence. London: Thames and Hudson. Ch. 2. See also Blau, P. M. (1964) Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: Wiley. 9 al-Khayyat, S. (1990) Honour and Shame: Women in Modern Iraq. London: Saqi Books, p. 35. 10 Pit-Rivers, J. (1977) The Fate of Shechem or the Politics of Sex: Essays in the Anthropology of the Mediterranean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 1. 11 De Silva, D. A. (2000) Honour, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture. Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, p. 25. 12 Honour. In D. L. Sills (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social Science, Vol. 6. McMillan 1968, pp. 503–510. 13 Bowman, J. (2006) Honour: A History. New York: Encounter Books. 14 Bowman, J. (2006) Honour: A History. New York: Encounter Books. 15 De Botton, A. (2005) Status Anxiety. London: Penguin, p. 115. 16 Madden, F., & Lion, H. (Eds.). (1976) Rage, Hate, Assault and Other Forms of Violence. New York: SP Books, p. 146. 17 Adorno, T. W., et al. (1950) The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper. 18 Altmeyer, B. (1981) Right Wing Authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. 19 Milgram, S. (1974) Obedience to Authority. New York: Harper & Row. 20 Staub, E. (1989) The Roots of Evil: The Origin of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 21 www.cbsnews.com/news/annapolis-shooting-five-dead-in-shooting-at-capital-gazettenewspaper-in-maryland-suspect-in-custody-2018-06-28-live-updates/ accessed 28th June 2018. 22 Skiddelsky, R. (2003) John Maynard Keynes: 1883–1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman. London: Pan Books, p. 550. 23 Fukuyama, F. (1995) Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. London: Penguin. 24 Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics. 25 Patinkon, D. (1965) Money, Interest and Prices: An Integration of Monetary and Value Theory, 2nd ed. 26 Mill, J. S. (1909) Principles of Political Economy. Ed. by W. J. Ashley, p. 488. 27 Etzioni, A. (1990) Towards a New Economics. New York: The Free Press, p. 83.

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28 Winnicott, D. (1971) Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock. 29 For example, the unanimous reactions of the panel on Question Time, BBC 1, 26th March 2009. 30 Watts, S. (2009) Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream. London: Wiley. 31 Walster, E., Walster, G. W., & Berscheid, E. (1978) Equity: Theory and Research. Rockleigh, NJ: Allyn & Bacon. 32 Becker, G. (1981) A Treatise on the Family. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 33 Buber, M. (1937) I and Thou. Trans. by W. Kaufman. New York: Simon & Schuster. 34 Jarrety, M. (2008) Paul Valéry. Paris: Fayard. 35 Farmello, G. (2009) The Strangest Man. London: Faber. 36 Women’s Hour Sarah Gordy BBC Radio 4, 12th July 2018 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ b0b90pyp 37 Numbers 15v28–31. 38 Swinburne, R. (2009) The Christian scheme of salvation. In M. Rea (Ed.), Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 295. 39 Anselm argued this in Cur Deus Homo 1.19. 40 Neblett, W. (1974) The ethics of guilt. Journal of Philosophy, 71, 652–663. 41 Dunn, J. D. G. (1998) The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, p. 217. 42 Dunn, J. D. G. (1998) The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, p. 222. 43 Aulen, G. (1931) Christus Victor. London: SPCK. 44 Ignatius. Letter to Barnabas 5.1f., quoting Isaiah 53; Barnabas 7 (on the scapegoat) 8 (on the sacrificial heifer). 45 Ovey, M., Jeffrey, S., & Sach, A. (2007) Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution. IVP. 46 MacDonald, H. D. (1992) Models of the atonement in reformed theology. In D. K. McKim (Ed.), Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, pp. 117–131. 47 Summa Theologica 111, q 46, a, 1. See also Summa contra Gentiles 1V, ch 55. 48 Stump, E. (2009) Atonement according to Aquinas. In M. Rea (Ed.), Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 275. 49 Brown, C. (Ed.). (1986) Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 3. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, p. 166. 50 www.independent.co.uk accessed 5th August 2013. 51 www.heraldscotland.com accessed 5th August 2013. 52 Mauss, M. (1990) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge. 53 Mauss, M. (1990) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge, p. 31. 54 Gregory, C. A. (1982) Gifts and Commodities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 55 www.timebanking.co.uk accessed July 2018. 56 Derrida, J. (1992) Given Time I: Counterfeit Money. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 57 Testart, A. (1998) Uncertainties of the ‘obligation to reciprocate’: A critique of Mauss. In W. James & N. J. Allen (Eds.), Marcel Mauss: A Centenary Tribute. New York: Berghahn Books. 58 Levinas, E. (1985) Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo. Trans. by F. Cohen. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. (Original work published 1985), p. 100. 59 Barry, M. (2010) The Forgiveness Project. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel. 60 Exline, J. J., & Baumeister, R. (2000) Expressing forgiveness and repentance: Benefits and barriers. In M. E. McCullough, K. I. Pargament, & C. E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, Research and Practice. New York: Guilford Press, pp. 133–155.

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61 McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K., Sandage, S. J., Worthington, E. L., Brown, S. W., & Hight, T. L. (1998) Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships: II. Theoretical elaboration and measurement. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 75, 1586–1603. 62 Berry, J. W., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Parrot, I. L., O’Connor, L. E., & Wade, N. G. (2001) Dispositional forgiveness: Development and construct validity of the Transgression Narrative Test of Forgiveness (TNTF). Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1277–1290.

Part 2

Notes on a theory of value

Chapter 5

A discourse on method and the dog that didn’t bark

We have looked at issues that raise profound questions of our worth as human beings through arenas of contemporary anxiety: Companion – the search to redress our aloneness that otherwise results in losing the point of oneself. Comparison – the intensified social anxiety that exacerbates the social psychology of inequality and poses such harm for young people. Competition – the way that conflicted lives and competitive relationships can either go on to achieve highly and/or dominate others and bring violence. The search for significance leads to international tensions as on a national scale, leaders seek to recover from humiliation. Compensation – transfers and scapegoats are relevant to the social exchange marketplace of everyday life in which the search for respect and validation to bolster a frail sense of worth leads to scraping it off the lives and faces of others. Someone, somewhere must pay. Described in many forms, the impetus towards a high value for oneself and one’s group is a motivating influence that is strongly load-bearing yet surprisingly under-theorised. It discloses itself as “value-in-oneself ” as a driver especially in response to narratives of being devalued. The suggestion I want to advocate is that amidst the multi-dimensional complexity of human behaviour, we are motivated at least in part by the pursuit of worth. The psychology of the unconscious should derive from mental forces which must include the impulse towards high value. A motivational driver to be of worth by all strategies open to us is overwhelming, either in its presence or absence. It is rooted in “value-in-oneself.” With it we flourish; without it, we wither. This perspective arose during client work some 10 years ago when, in the course of therapy sessions, clients would unexpectedly a comment about their reaction to certain experiences. This would be framed in terms of their value as people. Repeatedly, comments would be such as “I’m worth more than that!” It struck me afresh as intriguing how often clients would make statements to do with their personal value, an entity that had been breached in some way

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and that seemed to call for response; at the least the response of recognition. They felt devalued. During the course of subsequent journey of “research as reflection,” it stood out how much clients reported experiences of devaluation in various ways but also how little this had been theorised as a content area. What follows offers an attempt to develop a unified theory of the role that devaluation plays in inter-personal and social processes. The struggle for human value and worth is a working assumption in contemporary life. This is evident in the demand for human rights and equality as more and more groups of people have been passed through the wall of equal value that has been breached since the Second World War. The call for dignity and respect that became insistent clamour in the political upheaval has become essential to what many in the West have come to expect from organisations and communal life. There has been an historic shift, for instance, away from a robust style of borderline management which was abusive and ended up devaluing and belittling people. Much contemporary life assumes or works with the value of persons. Democratisation assumes equal value for citizen voters. In the West, narratives of exploited, bullied workers subject to verbal and physical abuse are increasingly considered relics of practices you can no longer get away with. Although consumers object to paying too much more for the resultant products, there is often a tsunami of outrage when virtual slave labour in garment factories is associated with tragic accidents. What seems to be important in this account of the social world is not the many statements people have made about the importance of pursuing value in their own lives but the lived experience, illuminated by therapeutic encounters, of when that is denied. The push back against human devaluation and humiliation is deeply illuminating. What is also a new feature in the account of the social world presented here is a framework in which to assemble these different aspects of lived experience. It is important to “draw up the dots” between various domains of life and thought. Contested sites of struggle for the value and worth of participants are at the heart of such global issues. Acting with dignity and acting ethically are some of the ways that contemporary life works with some notion of human value. As we will explore, disvalue is generated through such factors as: • Indifference • Indignity • Inferiority and Inequality By contrast, the political and social policy significance of human value can be seen through: • Addressing indifference and disengagement by giving voice and promoting involvement • Addressing indignity by upholding honour plus the need to act humanely, ethically and against violation of sacred life of persons (e.g., human rights discourse)

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• Addressing lack of respect for individuals and groups by protecting minorities, promoting equality and through the respect and diversity agenda. No one should be left behind.

A challenge to theory? It is such experiences of reaction against being put down and made to feel insignificant that are highly instructive. These experiences serve as data; a window on what is going on in the psyche that reveal the way that humans are wired up. The question is what is the pathway to the inner world that experiences of being insignificant and devalued illuminate? There are broadly five main schools of psychology that provide formats into which data could fit: • Biological – explaining human behaviour in terms of physiology (the body) that ultimately shapes our psychology (the mind) • Psychodynamic – explaining human behaviour in terms of subconscious processes such as desires and fears, of which we are not consciously aware • Behavioural – explaining human behaviour in terms of bring determined by the environment, by conditioning • Cognitive – explaining human behaviour in terms of rational processes, that our thoughts determine feelings and behaviours • Humanistic – explaining human behaviour in terms of “what is it like to be this person?” the self-actualisation needs to be fulfilled The driver to be of high value (in the teeth of its opposite) needs either to fit within approaches such as these or be situated in a new psychological model for which an account needs to be given.

Developing a theory On being repeatedly struck by how many clients spoke of experiences of devaluation, I was being drawn to the power of a simple idea, how the concept of human value functions as a social dynamic. In therapeutic encounters and in post-doctoral study, I set up a number of trip-wires, statements that would alert me to the value of a person being under attack, I wanted to reflect on the conditions that generated them. I lean to the qualitative paradigm that endeavours to make sense of the world in terms of a map of meaning. I have always felt that to try to get an exact intellectual grasp of the field of human action by measuring is misplaced. So, my restless question was, how could meaning be created from the patterns that seemed to emerge? Observational evidence witnessed life situations in the consulting room that generated statements of value or its deficit arising in five domains: 1 2

The psychological effects of unemployment and economic recession Organisational practice in the workplace

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3 4 5

Inter-personal transactions from childhood and in ongoing private worlds Social pressures regarding the construction of difference The effects of human violence

Reactions to such experiences often took the form of a protest, a response that either shouted or whispered, “I count . . . I matter . . . I am worth more than that!” “I won’t be spoken to like that!” What stood out was that psychological mechanisms that were well known in themselves were generating statements about human value or its erosion. The result of direct surveys of other audiences who would indicate “I feel valued when . . .” or “I feel devalued when . . .” resonated with the voices of many clients. There was no therapeutic intent; rather I was attempting to test a conceptual framework in the light of the intrigue. Why were people keen to tell me about their worth, as if reporting falling share prices? There is of course nothing new about these psychological reactions. What claimed attention, however, was the way that these experiences generated an issue of personal worth. They seemed species of a devaluation that invited its opposite; a slow but unmistakable reflex or a spring-loaded ambiguity pointing towards how pursuing value drives a good deal of human action. Did the way in which a sense of a valuable self is an environment in which we flourish instinctively point to a construct of devaluation/value acting as psychosocial fuel for this dynamic? There was no coherent theory that seemed to provide an account of the interplay of devaluation and value, the reaction to the former and the holy pursuit of the latter. To be sure, there is considerable focus on ethical frameworks that affirm the value of personhood. Such statements very clearly invoke the value of the person that the counsellor is working with. However, the role of human worth and value in everyday life is less commonly brought into the theory structure of the various therapeutic approaches. Scattered observations are not brought together under the same conceptual roof or theorised.

The dog that didn’t bark An officer is a miserable creature. Each envies his colleagues, bullies his subordinates, and is afraid of his superiors: the higher up he is, the more he fears them. I detest the idea of having inscribed on my collar how much I am worth, as if I were a sample of some goods.1

The writer is the young Sigmund Freud, complaining to his colleague and mentor Josef Breuer about compulsory national service in the Austrian Army, in a “filthy hole working on black and yellow” as he put it, black and yellow being the Austrian colours. It is intriguing to ponder what would have been the outcome of pursuing this line of thought and bringing the struggle to realise our value into Freudian psychodynamics. The reaction – against how

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much he is worth being inscribed on his collar – is a strong one. He detests it. It is the Protest. Libido came first. The theory of drivers of inter-personal and social processes was given contemporary shape by Freud giving primary importance to the sexual drive. Psychoanalysis, and with it, the 20th century edifice of talking therapy, was based on the idea that surface phenomena were insufficient on which to build a theory of human behaviour. The “Interpretation of Dreams” marked the beginning of the psychological century. Through exploring the logic of dreams, Freud had proposed to investigate the inner workings of the human mind. From this starting point in 1899, Freud constructed nothing less than a biology of the mind that signified a revolution in the way we saw ourselves. The archaeology of the drives, the dark underworld of conflicted human emotion and, above all, human sexuality became ingredients of a new orientation in our thinking. Amidst the myriad of remedies put forward and practiced to relieve the human condition there was, however, a strange omission. The dog that didn’t bark in the night seemed to be missing in the classic accounts of human motivation. The experience that Sigmund Freud had in the Austrian Army was not taken up as part of his new conceptual architecture; the interplay of value/ devaluation not adopted as a mechanism in the psychopathology of everyday life. It seems unlikely that you can explain the dynamic of human value and its counterpoint – devaluation – within existing frameworks. Yet private as well as public worlds demonstrate that humans are not just interest-led. We are motivated by the desire to pursue our value and protest when it is breeched. What the energy is for this is a question with profound consequences. The impetus to be valued and to feel valuable, the need to feel one is worth something is central to what it means to be human. Organisational or interpersonal approaches that give value to people rather than devalue them tap into an aspect of the human psyche that responds to a sense of worth. Understanding how valuing or disvaluing is communicated is a vital insight in many areas of social life and it is this we are noting in this paper. Grasping the dynamics of what makes for disvaluing people or groups is particularly rich in offering a lens through which to make sense of responses. Arguably, the common root is the inner need to be valued. What seems beyond dispute is that we have an impetus to feel worthwhile. How far that is grounded in being someone of worth is a question to be asked and a challenge. The dominant pursuit of value-in-oneself may seem obvious yet it is not up there amidst the panoply of mental driving forces that form the seed-bed of psychodynamics. Neither is it a regular topic in social psychology. After all, one could have a sense of self in which identity subsists, without that being grounded in value and worth. The two categories are not coterminous. Are we psychologically structured so as to require a strong sense of value within which to live and move and have our being and do our best work? What would it mean to say that human subjects are formed amidst a dynamic struggle for

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human value against a constant litany of devaluing factors? What does it mean for human action that we seem compelled to live as if we had high value or we wither in its absence? Where can we locate in the psychological literature the role that issues of value or a sense of a valuable self play in the architecture of the mind? Psychotherapy is now a common item on the agenda of life in late modernity. In 1959, Harper identified 36 distinct systems of psychotherapy. By 1979, Time magazine was reporting more than 200 therapies.2 Today the list is bewildering and vast. The 20th century was the psychological century, replete with attempts to change people and bring peace and transformation. Therapy after therapy unfolded in the West. Different psychologies offered their own brand of liberation based on a diagnosis of the human condition and a desire to understand how the interior world worked. What did they have to say about the pursuit of worth? There were at least four main waves of psychotherapy in the 20th century.

The first wave – psychoanalysis As the curtain opened on the psychological century, Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” was a drum roll, not just for a method of psychological treatment but also as a new way of looking at human beings. As his hagiographer Ernest Jones remarks, “Starting as a theory of certain illnesses of the mind, it went on to become a radically new and momentous theory of mind itself.” We have to become aware of how our neurotic responses derive from the inner depths. Life is about managing two major dynamic forces motivating human personality from the Unconscious, the urge to love (libido – Eros) and the urge to hate (Thanatos). Before we can respond to life, we have to become aware of how our neurotic responses derive from unconscious primary processes in the inner depths. We recognise that we are in ourselves a site of resistance as well as a building site. Norman Brown, in Life against Death, observed that we are nothing but body; the core of human neurosis was our incapacity to live in the body, that is, to live is to be sexual and to die. Freud chose to use the word “sex” when he meant “body.” We are not “body vs mind” as Descartes argued. This is to deny death and, therefore, life. To remember is to be liberated.3 The effect psychoanalysis had on the culture of the West is incalculable, “offering a kind of secular salvation, comparable in its totality to that which had been offered in the literal sense.”4 Psychodynamics focus on unconscious processes that bypass conscious activity. The task of Freudian psychoanalysis is to uncover unconscious drives and bring them to the surface. Although the idea of the unconscious came to be superseded by research into how the brain functioned,5 key assumptions became part of the currency of our time. The unconscious nature of mental processes, the peculiar mechanisms they obey and the instinctual forces that are expressed in them6 are concepts that became taken as read. We later came to grasp that matter and energy are not to be put into different boxes

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as Freud had supposed.7 Nevertheless, “it does provide a roadmap of all the right questions, the kind of questions personality psychologists have been asking ever since.”8 But if psychodynamics offer a mind-map of the human, where is the need to be heard, to feel worthwhile, to be taken seriously? And where are their opposites and the Protest that funnels humiliation and the put-downs into mental defiance? What is the mechanism that can explain what happens in the mysterious depths when it is we who seem to be attacked and not just what we do that is on the line? Does such a recognisable peculiarity attach itself to the noisy unconscious world or the landscape of conscious existence and its meanings? “Self-esteem has not been a major content area for psychoanalysis. . . . Lack of genuine self-esteem is the result of personality problems, however, not the cause of such problems and analysts do not treat esteem problems directly.”9 Psychoanalysis did nothing to value females. Freud indeed famously characterised women as being subject to envy; damaged creatures with a lack instead of whole persons in their own right. Karen Horney disagreed. If some women want to be like men, it is because they perceive men as being freer to act.10 Early psychoanalysis is riven with envy, jealousy, paranoia and ambition – surprising for those who claimed that to experience their therapy was to embrace a more exalted state of being!11 The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan proposed a rather different formulation of our psychic structure, the real (roughly corresponding to Freud’s “id”), the symbolic (superego) and the imaginary (ego).12 The “name of the father” is an entity that separates a baby from its mother and knots these psychic processes together in a way that achieves the birth of a child’s own subjectivity. In the Lacanian orientation, a concept of “ordinary psychosis,” the kind you can just about live with, is key. Ordinary psychosis is characterised by the absence or erosion of the “name of the father” so there is no separating principle and the membrane between a sense of self and the outside world is very porous. In such a formulation too there is little scope for a role played by “value” in the dramatis personae of psychic forces. The approach taken by Freud’s one-time associate, Alfred Adler, carves out a little more space for the value of other human beings as well as oneself.13 It was configured as a problem of inferiority. Adler argued that individuals are motivated to attain equality or superiority over other people to compensate for organ inferiority. The typically male need to act and become powerful to compensate for feeling inadequate was termed by Adler the Masculine Protest.14 Jungian depth psychology – Freud’s one-time colleague C. G. Jung proposed a rather different approach, urging us to get in touch with our unconscious. Through dreams or intuition, we get in touch with our real needs and listen to what our unconscious is saying to us. Freud’s approach was that the human situation can be analysed in terms of what constrains us, be it class, gender, ethnicity or psychology. Jung, with his depth psychology, went beyond this analysis, seeing human problems as essentially spiritual blockages. Struggles of people over the age of 35 were almost always of this nature.15 Jung counselled

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clients to listen to their unconscious and pursue integration. Symbolic or religious archetypes embedded in the collective unconscious were useful categories in this healing agenda. So was love! Jung said, “Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”16 Does this imply a valuing of self? Jung developed a theory of “individuation,” that is, how personality develops over time and how an individual is split between the “I” of conscious existence and the “self ” – the total personality including the unconscious. A recent book documents Jung’s own journey of individuation in search of the structure of human personality.17 The search for the deep level of the mind that is common to all humanity – the collective unconscious – looms large in this journey. But the concept of value does not assume any position amongst the components of personality Jung describes.

The second wave – modifying behaviour One of the most influential psychologies of the 20th century was Behaviourism: the idea that we could re-shape behaviour and responses. Like Pavlov’s dogs and Skinner’s pigeons, we have been wrongly conditioned. Alter reflexes, and we can change the way people function. As John Watson, the founding father, proclaimed, “Learn methods by which behaviour may be controlled. . . . If this is done, work . . . on the human being will be directly comparable with the work on animals.”18 Never mind creativity, aspiration, love, imagination! We are reduced to a set of responses. B. F. Skinner sought a technology of behaviour to meet human problems. The dignity of autonomous people is simply the product of reinforcement.19 A concert pianist who has a standing ovation, receiving an endorsement of her worth, will repeat the performance with encores. Humans are merely machines.

The third wave – the humanistic and existential approach Client-centred therapy – Carl Rogers, the psychotherapist who emphasised person-centred counselling, proclaimed the importance of “unconditional positive regard.”20 This was respect for the client,21 aiming to maintain a relationship that is as free as possible from value judgements. The client should not be blamed or condemned. While they may not be helping themselves, the strategies they have adopted are an effort to manage their lives and emotions. This does not mean that clients cannot change or that the therapist should collude with self-destructive behaviour. Clients should be given respect; their experiences should be given credence and their emotions validated. We should distinguish carefully between the behaviour of the clients and clients themselves, who are “valuable because they are human.”22 Existential psychology emphasises that we are meaning-seeking creatures and what is really interesting about us is not some unconscious arena that we

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can access only in a glass darkly but the meanings we attach to things. Some notion of human meaning emerges in Sartre’s discussion about what it means to live in bad faith. We could, he observed, simply stop worrying about what life means. Get a job, get a car, get a house and advance your social status! Don’t think about the fundamental issues yourself. Simply do as you are told by your peers, society, advertising. You could lead the unexamined life! But there are three problems with this approach he says. Ignoring the troubling facts of existence is to surrender your sense of self and we give it away if we refuse to examine the substance and meaning of that experience. Second, we will still not be happy. We will wake up at night and ponder. Even the most smug person realises they will be dead one day without having done anything more in life beyond acquiring material possessions. There is a third problem. Choosing not to think about the big issues is itself a choice. You might as well create a life from the unpromising materials to hand. Create your own sense of value!23 Through doing what is right for us, we define ourselves and become human. Existentialism in the hands of one of its forefathers was a recipe for pessimism. “Human existence for Schopenhauer is less grand tragedy than squalid farce . . . a mistake which should have long ago have been called off.”24 Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychotherapist who went to Auschwitz, contended that psychotherapy denied the spiritual side of our humanity. He quotes, with approval, the aphorism of Goethe – “If we take people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as if they were what they ought to be, we help them to become what they are capable of becoming.”25 The awful trinity of human existence – pain, guilt and death – is fought by the power of hope he discovered in the hell-hole of Auschwitz. Hope is not A tool but THE tool in a survival kit to keep the human spirit going.26

The fourth wave – transpersonal psychology Self-actualising individuals enjoy a reasonable feeling of worth and respect and do not for long have crippling feelings of inferiority or worthlessness.27 By the end of his journey, Maslow sought to reach beyond our own hierarchy of needs. The self can be realised only through encounter with something bigger than we are. Without rapturous moments to be awed by or to commit ourselves to, we get sick, violent, nihilistic, hopeless or apathetic.28 Psychologists of this type were less concerned with reducing tension in the human psyche to achieve equilibrium; more alive to an idea that a human system can grow. His hierarchy has been criticised as being for men only but it does open some space for human value. To these psychologies we could add: • Gestalt therapy – based at Ersalen in California, the Human Potential Movement connected with the 1980s and 1990s in a big way. Self-help books were very popular. Fritz Perls had been a key figure in the 1960s,

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a pioneer in applying to psychotherapy the approach worked out in psychology at the Berlin Gestalt School by Wertheimer et al. “Each person is a complex arrangement of figure-ground relationships.”29 When our sense of self is subsumed within a relationship of studied predictability, for instance, we lose a sharper identity. It is distinction between emerging figures and receding grounds that brings excitement and growth.30 Through creative experimentation and “aha” moments, past and future can be brought into the “here and now” which connects with the current emphasis on mindfulness and living in the moment. Perhaps this is why, though there is no explicit sense of human value in this project, a statement regarding the assumptions in Gestalt is instructive: “a dialogic relationship [the ever-shifting relationship between people, life-spaces, fellow human beings] is one in which the uniqueness of each person is valued.”31 • Transactional analysis – highlighting the dramas played out in everyday life. Berne said his triad of ego states was far more observable in everyday life than the theoretical construct of ego, superego and id proposed by Herr Doctor Freud.32 In contemporary psychotherapy, Transactional Analysis (TA) has taken a “relational turn” amongst more recent generations who are moving the conversation on in new and creative ways. Some are part of a relational turn in TA that involves re-enactments (games) of archaic material.33 A key philosophical foundation of TA relates to the worth of human beings. The best-selling practical guide to TA suggests, “I’m OK – you’re OK.”34 According to a standard training text, “The most fundamental assumption of TA is that people are OK. This means: you and I both have worth, value and dignity as people. I accept myself as me and I accept you as you.” This is said to be a statement of essence rather than behaviour. The basis for the assumption is not clear. The authors say: At times, I may not like nor accept what you do. But always, always, I accept what you are. Your essence as a human being is OK with me, though your behaviour may not be. . . . I am not one-up to you, and you are not one-up to me.35 • Cognitive Behaviour Therapy – a notion of human value and worth is assumed in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), widely practiced today. Initially it was instrumental, a strategy to help people cope with life. Increasingly, CBT has a relational aspect and has clearly gone deeper in its quest to facilitate resolution of human distress. It is contested territory – some arguing that the evidence for long-term benefit is simply not there, that it does nothing to address the cause of psychological problems, portraying unhappiness as an issue to be fixed. An issue such as unemployment is treated as an individualised problem, not to be slowly unravelled. It is seen as a reflection of client’s inner life rather than

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rooted in the system. Others argue that it does deal with the effects that negative experiences have on your thinking patterns and it is up to the client to internalise reflection about this into more permanent results – the short-term evidence base being at least as impressive as other therapies. One CBT manual argues that disturbing feelings of depression, anxiety, shame, guilt, anger, envy and jealousy are often rooted in your view of self. Low self-esteem shows your estimate of your value is low. But you have worth because you’re human; an individual, too complex to measure, more than the sum of your parts. Learn to change negative thinking patterns, value your uniqueness. Improve the attitude you hold towards yourself!36 CBT is not without its problems or critics. It has been rolled out as Government policy necessitating relevant counsellors to re-train and work with six sessions and deploy a standard sequence and script to be followed for each client with homework at the end.37 Where though is any attempt to listen with warmth to the client, to meld into their concerns and how they see the world? Why are feelings clients have being brushed aside and told they shouldn’t even be having them? The struggle for our value is an important dimension that is under-theorised in most psychological and sociological descriptions of the world. It presents a challenge to theory. Why has this dimension not been an active dynamic in accounts of human action? Can we carve out a conceptual space for this aspect of our existence? And, crucially, can we draw up the dots between a wide range of experiences and subjects to present a coherent, interdisciplinary theory of human devaluation?

A common assumption Extending a sense of value gradually became an important concern to what it meant to operate ethically as a psychotherapist. The idea that people should not be subjected to certain forms of treatment or practice became essential to talking therapy. Humans were to be given dignity. They should not be violated. Not only was life sacred if that meant our bodily existence should be carefully guarded but also there was a sacred quality to the human psyche. Practitioners, doctors and nurses should join the client on sentry duty and guard the dignity of the individual. The citadel of the soul needs to be opened from the inside. “The more the therapist perceives the client as a person rather than an object, the more the client will perceive himself as a person rather than an object.”38 There is a growing trend within psychotherapeutic practice to assume some notion of human value. But because it seems to say something fundamental about how human beings function, the idea of human value also goes to the heart of therapy; how personal problems are configured and analysed as well as what is practiced. The old way of thinking about social systems is no longer in

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vogue. Social analysis stresses actors or participants; people not systems. There is a question though about how far social analysis can borrow from biology the contemporary notion of complex systems. Through feedback loops, a system is usually self-righting; positive feedback is now emphasised more than negative feedbacks.39 Yet it is clear that in applying a systems approach to family therapy, many clients experience considerable distress arising from alliances and power struggles between siblings or siblings and parents.40 Distress is located within the pattern of exchange, in the kinetic between them. The effect of dysfunctional interaction was to demean her, to erode her self-belief and bequeath her a legacy of not feeling worthwhile. The system was causal; the effect a devalued self. It is strange that what seems to be instantly recognisable human experience features so little as a discussion topic within frameworks for understanding psychological distress. It may be re-configuring under a different name what is well-described in the psychological literature. Yet does this contain the seed of an important idea in psychotherapy? Psychological literature discusses the drives we have and their status. What about an impulse to be heard, to feel that we matter, we count somehow and ought not to be trampled on or greeted with indifference? Does it matter if I kick you or put an arm round your shoulder? Most of us would agree. The impetus to feel that we count or that we matter runs deep. It could be egotistical bluster that rails against the denial of self-importance. However, we would deploy such accusations only against others. Our own self-knowledge protests otherwise. There are welcome signs that best practice is taking on board a concept of human worth. To be a health-care revolutionary and actually try to understand the person in pain in front of us rather than just check their medication is to treat them with respect. Some assumptions and most practice in psychotherapy reflect this. The proposal here goes further and places far more weight on value as describing a psychological habitat for our psyche. It is a fundamental drive in human experience rather than having a status of an aspiration – something that “ought” to be. A successful theory about this should bring together three factors under one roof: 1 2 3

Various ideas in assumptions and best practice that are scattered on the psychological landscape relating to the sense of a valuable self The role that human devaluation plays in everyday life The response to experiences of being devalued that I label, “the Protest,” the energy of which is the classic statement – “I’m worth more than that!”

A former client writes of her personal experience in failing to communicate with her therapist. Her first therapy saw her descend into personal chaos. Problems were compounded by the way her therapist would not allow himself to be authentic with her. All she wanted was to encounter a human being and to connect person-to-person rather than encounter a blank screen. Her strong

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reaction to being treated as a patient rather than a person amounted at times to a hatred. It was the Protest against being objectified, being de-personalised.41 Another client is ascending into a new sense of self after years of the “putdowns” and persistent denigration. “I’m growing into feeling valuable,” she proclaims. “And I’m enjoying it!”42 Across the room sits a young woman, a sallow young woman with a pasty complexion and hair that never got up in the morning. She has ME, a condition that drains her of energy and leaves the battery with just enough juice to last for a few carefully chosen activities – as long as she chooses with care and manages with caution. “I never thought I was good enough,” she says. “I’m always having to run the extra mile and left feeling I never caught myself up.”43 What stands out in the narrative of how she arrived in this condition is a dynamic, a process of devaluation. This is self that devalued itself, a self that relies on working harder for its value. Most people react profoundly to being treated in a way that feels depersonalising. When there is a greater degree of self-disclosure needed, it matters more. Emotionally sensitive material is especially prone to perceptions of devaluation. We cry out to be heard, to be taken seriously, given our dignity, to encounter an authentic human being, especially when they come into our intimate country.

In search of empirical evidence – reflection as research In a ménage of impressions and memories, a particular client expressed his gutwrenching experiences when she left him. It was shattering, it was flattening, it was visceral betrayal; it was as if she had punched him, kicked him and he lay, winded on the floor in disbelief and fraught astonishment. If only it had been limited to a quick rough and tumble between the sheets. But from the way he had seen them out together, he knew it went far deeper.44 A piece of commentary is volunteered that deserves pondering. It was his use of what is now a common term, “she disrespected me . . . she dis’d the family.” Slowly, there came a reaction that was whispered. In time, the whisper became a shout. “I’m worth more than that!” Freud regarded dreams as the royal road to the infernal realms of unconscious life. Within this crie de couer there lurked something of potential significance about human action. A profound layer of motivation and reaction was evoked. The construct we have explored in engaging with management literature is this: social participants flourish when, under right conditions, the inner value they live out in the workplace is converted into external, added value. Quantification, the incessant default to generate the metrics, does not capture this perspective that is best discerned through its opposite. When the wrong conditions are present, or have been embedded systemically in the culture of how an organisation or society operates, participants will not be so productive; both quality and probably quantity will suffer. The question is, “what are those conditions?”

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Over a period of some five years, the author had constant and regular opportunities to witness the impact of human devaluation on many subjects. The experience of being disvalued emerged strongly following moments of insight into client reports of their distress. Some of these reports by clients were of their experiences in everyday life; sometimes of difficult circumstances of violence, abuse or self-harm. Nearly half of the experiences of clients were of those in the workplace. Being under stress in organisations gave rise to particularly striking reports of what it means to be devalued. Organisational cultures can become toxic through leaders devaluing their staff. This is not necessarily conscious games of power and control by managers acting as narcissistic individuals. Human experience in the workplace is shaped by valuing environments (or their lack). These concerns become sharply accentuated as computers take over routine brain jobs and despatch countless people to the dole queue. Whether in inter-personal exchanges or in organisations, not being in a valuing environment gave rise to various reactions. What follows is an attempt to categorise those responses and make sense of them. Client work is a minefield ethically as a basis for investigation and to draw conclusions. Within the Guidelines, for example, of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, ethical issues are vitally important in any journey of reflection as research in client experiences. We do not normally regard clients as impersonal “subjects” only to be mined for data. My own BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy) stipulates that all members commit to complying with this framework as part of their terms and conditions of membership. It is the main point of reference for decisions in professional conduct hearings. Commitment to putting clients first relies on commitment to: • • • • • •

Respecting human rights and dignity Alleviating symptoms of personal distress and suffering Enhancing people’s well-being and capabilities Improving the quality of relationships between people Increasing personal resilience and effectiveness Facilitating a sense of self that is meaningful to the person(s) concerned within their personal and cultural context • Appreciating the variety of human experience and culture45 There were two research lenses that were brought to bear on how to make sense of client reports about the life and times of contemporary organisations. The first was auto-ethnography. The second was a relational constructionist methodology, rooted in co-construction of meaning. Auto-ethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience in order to understand wider cultural or psychological experience.46 A researcher uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to do and write auto-ethnography, which becomes in effect both process and product.47 There is growing recognition that research cannot

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be done from a neutral, impersonal and objective stance; that it is not valuefree. Working with stories and everyday lives, the auto-ethnographer is hearing these analytically, deploying a set of theoretical and methodological tools and a research literature.48 The methods are those of writing accounts based on participant’s stories, fieldwork and notes from interactive interviews that provide an in-depth and intimate understanding of people’s experiences with emotionally charged and sensitive topics.49 Various moves allow researchers working with this approach to analyse, categorise and draw conclusions.50 The second lens was that of a relational constructionist approach. Research is always a process of inquiry; we are all engaged in research. Within the scientific community there are various philosophies. The constitutive nature of all forms of inquiry implies that theory and method are not independent; that a method is not necessarily what it is regardless of context. As a process, research is an inquiry into everyday activity, open to complexity and multiplicity of relational processes as opposed to pre-existing social structures and forms of knowledge. In this case, “reality” is co-constructed though dialogue, iterative discussion in the context of client experiences within various organisations and at the boundary of living persons, organisational entities and workplace environment. It is “what people do together and what their doing makes.”51 As Foster and Bochner observe, inquiry embraces “the details of lived experience, the reflexive relationship between personal interaction and cultural contexts, and the dialogic and dialectical complexity of relationships and communities.”52 This is a process of “engaged unfolding” in which collaborative practice comes to the fore. Clients were helping create a social reality through the client-therapist relationship. What began a period of sustained reflection in client observation was noticing how, in various domains, issues of worth were being constantly generated when people were facing its erosion. On being repeatedly struck by how many clients spoke of experiences of devaluation and how they languaged their indignation in terms of value – “I’m worth more than that!” I wanted to examine the role that worth and value play in everyday life. This then is the author’s personal journey, working with clients in a way that began to provoke sustained reflection on the usual accounts of the motivational drivers and a likely deficit. More important, it is interleaved with clients’ personal relationship to the realities of their organisation, inter-personal dynamics and their own responses. There is a danger in seemingly being able to explain things without bothering to try to prove them; it is the classic fallacy known by its Latin tag, “post hoc ergo propter” – arguing from how we act to infer why we act as we do. So given the difficulties of verifying inter-subjective experience and without empirical tests using survey data, reported experiences about this have to be approached with care. In client observation, I began to look into the statements people made which implied that issues of personal value were being generated along the power lines of human exchanges. The question I set out to answer stemmed from intrigue. Why were client narratives, often of distress arising from their experiences generating statements about human value or its erosion?

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Every attempt was made to inform clients that in sharing their experiences, some points were being noted in a non-attributable way. With client permission, I began to note such statements and gradually attempt to generalise in order to develop theory to explain why it was that human subjects have responses to being devalued. I began to listen out for client reports to do with 12 perceptions of feeling: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Belittled or put down Diminished Bullied “Trashed” Useless Disrespected Not noticed or regarded Not heard Passed over Rejected Discriminated against Insulted

Various statements that seemed to be generating such reports were then grouped together as “meaning units,” to be analysed according to the canons of qualitative research.53 This journey was accompanied by research both into the motivational drivers but also psychosocial processes in the public domain where issues about the worth of people were generated including experiences in the workplace as well as forms of distress or of inequality more widely. So how might a concept of human value as a psychological driver be theorised?

Notes 1 Letter, Freud to Breuer. Jones, E. (1964) The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 181. 2 Prochaska, J. O., & Norcross, J. C. (1994) Systems of Psychotherapy: A Transtheoretical Perspective. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks & Cole Publishing Co., p. 1. 3 Brown, N. (1985) Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. 4 Gellner, E. (1993) The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason. London: Fontana, p. xiii. 5 See, for example, Damasio, A. (1999) The Feeling of What Happens. San Diego: Harvest (Harcourt). 6 Freud, S. (1974) Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, p. 278. 7 Fairbairn, R. (1952) An Object Relations Theory of the Personality. New York: Basic Books. 8 Funder, D. C. (1997) The Personality Puzzle. New York: W. W. Norton, p. 257. 9 Prochaska, J. O., & Norcross, J. C. (1994) Systems of Psychotherapy: A Trans-Theoretical Perspective. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks & Cole Publishing Co., p. 39. 10 Horney, K. (1950) Neurosis and Human Growth. New York: Norton. 11 Makari, G. (2008) Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psycho-Analysis. London: Duckworth.

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12 Lacan, J. (1988) The Ego in Freud’s Theory and the Techniques of Psychoanalysis. Ed. by J.-A. Miller. New York: Norton. 13 Prochaska, J. O., & Norcross, J. C. (1994) Systems of Psychotherapy: A Trans-Theoretical Perspective. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks & Cole Publishing Co., p. 81. 14 Adler, A. (1939) Social Interest. New York: Putnam. 15 Storr, A. (1973) Jung. Glasgow: Collins. 16 Jung, C. (1961) Modern Man in Search of a Soul. London: RKP Press. 17 Jung, C. J. (2009) The Red Book. New York: W. W. Norton. 18 Woodworth, R. S. (1951) Contemporary Schools of Psychology. London: Methuen, p. 51. See also Watson, J. B. (1925) Behaviourism. New York: Keegan Paul. 19 Skinner, B. F. (1973) Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 20 Rogers, C. (2004) On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. London: Constable. 21 Egan, G. (1986) Skilled Helpers: A Systemic Approach to Effective Helping, 3rd ed. Monterey, CA: Brooks & Cole. 22 Culley, S. (1991) Integrative Counselling Skills in Action. London: Sage Publications, p. 13. 23 Sartre, J. P. (1958) Being and Nothingness. London: Methuen. 24 Eagelton, T. (1990) The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 155. 25 Frankl, V. (1973) The Doctor and the Soul. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, p. 27. 26 Frankl, V. (1959) Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press. 27 Maslow, A. (1977) A theory of metamotivation: The biological rooting of the value life. In H.-M. Chiang & A. Maslow (Eds.), The Healthy Personality. New York: D. Van Nostrund Co., p. 28. 28 Maslow, A. (1968) Towards a Psychology of Being. New York: Van Nostrand. 29 Van De Riet, V., et al. (1980) Gestalt Therapy: An Introduction. New York: Pergamon Press, p. 6. 30 Perls, F., et al. (1972) Gestalt Therapy: Excitement & Growth in the Human Personality. Souvenir Press, p. 25. 31 Mackewan, J. (1997) Developing Gestalt Counselling. London: Sage Publications, ch. 2. 32 Berne, E. (1968) Games People Play. Harmondsworth: Penguin. 33 Erskine, R. G. (Ed.). (2015) Transactional Analysis in Contemporary Psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books. 34 Harris, T. (1995) I’m OK – You’re OK. London: Arrow Books. See also, Clarkson, P. (1992) Transactional Analysis: An Integrated Approach. London: Routledge. 35 Stewart, I., & Joines, V. (1987). TA Today: A New Introduction to Transactional Analysis. Nottingham: Lifespace Publishing, p. 7. 36 Willson, R., & Branch, R. (2006) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Chichester: John Wiley, p. 166. 37 Beck, J. S. (2011) Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: Basics and beyond. New York: Guildford. 38 Rogers, C. (2004) On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. London: Constable, p. 207. 39 Walby, S. (2009) Globalisation and Inequality: Complex and Contested Modernities. London: Sage Publications. 40 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 41 Sands, A. (2000) Falling for Therapy: Psychotherapy from a Client’s Point of View. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 42 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 43 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 44 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 45 www.bacp.co.uk/events-and-resources/ethics-and-standards/ethical-framework-forthe-counselling-professions/ July 2018. 46 Forum of Qualitative Research: Volume 12, No. 1, Art. 10 – January 2011 Autoethnography: An Overview 1. Carolyn Ellis, Tony E. Adams & Arthur P. Bochner. See also www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095

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47 Ellis, C. (2004). The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Auto-Ethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. 48 Holman Jones, S. (2005). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 763–791. 49 Ellis, C., Kiesinger, C. E., & Tillmann-Healy, L. M. (1997). Interactive interviewing: Talking about emotional experience. In R. Hertz (Ed.), Reflexivity and Voice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 119–149. 50 Fine, G. A. (2003). Towards a people ethnography: Developing a theory from group life. Ethnography, 4(1), 41–60. 51 MacNamee, S., & Hosking, D. M. (2012) Research and Social Change: A Relational Constructionist Approach. London: Routledge, p. 1. 52 Foster, E., & Buchner, A. P. (2008) Social constructionist perspectives in communication research. In J. A Holstein and J. F. Gubrium (Eds.), Handbook of Constructionist Research. New York: Guilford Press. 53 Bryman, A. (2016) Social Research Methods. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 6

Re-setting the personality drivers

A client goes into a downward spiral, triggered by an incident that day to do with money. “I know I’m useless with money,” she says. The incident generated a collapse of value that mirrors the financial loss she has incurred. Her words are significant. She articulates her distress in terms of being written off, complete loss of value – “it made me feel totally rubbish!”1 Is it surprising she resorts to her tried-and-tested response to anger-self-harm using the weapon of choice? Humans derive value in a variety of ways. Significance is key to this quest. Here is a client who takes things personally, to whom any action is an insult if not worthy. It is a personal slight – another category mistake. It was not the action but their very selves being threatened. An absolute sense of worth is under fire. What is the fuel causing magnification of a slight in such a way that it sits in judgement not just over a fragmentary action or speech but instead over our whole being? Sometimes, people get into attack-mode, developing a sharp capacity to ascend from the particular to the general – “this is typical!” It wounds the soul. Social processes or organisational practices that give value to people –through either engagement or listening – are those giving a positive environment that cultivates the welfare of staff or customers and communicate “I am worth listening to!” Clients often report being devalued and disgruntled in the workplace. “I was not just re-cycled, I was binned, they got rid of me”2 as if the self is now a waste product. Issues of value are not just aspirational but are key narratives in human functioning. It is often observed that the whole purpose of making money is to put yourself on a pedestal. What statement about worth implied in a professional lament such as this? “I don’t feel I’m doing a worthwhile job.”3 The impetus to realise our worth is neglected in the content area of social psychology or psychodynamics. It is a “taken-for-granted” assumption yet to be factored into theory. In contemporary life, value is accorded to individuals and groups in a way that is unrelated to inner value or “value-in-oneself.” What someone is worth is awarded to social participants on the basis of the wage economy (economic value), identity badges (status value such as ownership or appearance) or identity boundaries (social value; being the right sort of person).

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Again and again, human subjects give voice to an intriguing question, a question that in the arena of battle comes across as completely baffling. It might be because the individual has been recruited to act in settings of racism in which devaluing social inferiors seems normal behaviour. Later, perhaps, and only with reflexive insight, someone might come to see their earlier stance as being deeply perplexing. Why on earth did they think like that? Before feminist critique became normal, how did we come to be shaped by attitudes and behaviours that were deeply patriarchal or misogynistic? However did ageing or disability come to be labelled with unconscious disdain? Or why is it that individuals can be overwhelmed with unsuspecting personal forces? It may be stepchildren behaving like monsters when Mum forms a new relationship; somebody falling in forbidden love or a flood of emotions coming from nowhere that is deeply disruptive. A client encounters a strong resistance to admitting hostile feelings towards a dead parent or indeed verbalise feelings at all. The prohibitions around deep-seated material can be forbidding indeed! Invariably, there are two sets of reasons that can be given for the dramas being played out in people’s lives. One is the explanations that can be framed in terms of the culture; the system-level explanation if you will. The other set is to do with unconscious or vaguely repressed thoughts and feelings that undergird mental events.4 One way of framing such issues is in terms of “the unconscious”; the unnamed and untamed unconscious releasing its unbidden fury and emerging from the shadows of invisibility into the full glare of social scrutiny. But systems of social life in which the subject is embedded constrain subjectivity just as much if not more. Distress arises from both directions that cripples and assigns scales of importance. Subjectivity is thus inextricable linked with valuein-oneself or its deficit. Between the waves above and the stormy seas beneath, human subjects attempt to garner value in their world; all the time convinced they are in control. The illusion of free-wheeling autonomy is maintained, until the next time we are overwhelmed. Baffled as to the source, social or psychodynamic forces do mighty battle on the surface of the unsuspecting. “I simply cannot understand why I react as I do” said the old man. His words were a Morse code for what he had no wish to reveal to casual acquaintances, the story of a restless soul, blown hither and thither by the wind, an unsolid, immaterial existence, ephemeral and ghostly. Even at school, he would work his long socks off and obtain the best reports of which he was capable. When people visit hurts upon him, the visitors take up residence. His very soul cries out in indignation though he cannot give it a voice. Why do those around him witness the same visit but the visitors do not seem to enter the house for long?5 This kind of report resonates with what the Labour politician Denis Healey called his father’s “brutal facetiousness.” There is a sound that is both a sigh and a cry. At times, it howls in the night. Human value seems all too obvious and

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familiar. But when we look instead at experiences of devaluation, the issue is sharper. A lens through which we see the motor of human value vs devaluation, how it hums away through many experiences people have – both in their own lives and through being part of things. It is a thread linking the icy blast of indifference with the tropical storms that difference so often whips up across the face of the world. Disaffection manifesting itself in a negative culture within an organisation will generate an issue of value – not the value of assets, product or service initially but of the people involved. The reaction of Police in the UK is relevant, who, in reaction to whether pay should be backdated to the previous September said that refusal to do this in order not to breach public pay policy was “absolutely disgusting, showing the whole feeling of how we are valued by the Government . . . totally devaluing the work we do on the ground. . . . People feel extraordinarily undervalued, they feel very undervalued in terms of their worth.”6 Although monetary value was the focus, that quickly keyed into a personal or collective sense of worth. What is the effect on human personality of having to contend with a low worth? Often, someone who is bullied has no confidence left, no self-value. Are there very few that cannot somehow and somewhere dig down and find (or be imparted to) an inkling that they count, they matter? Behind the many problems clients are working through lie experiences of devaluation. Again and again, statements will surface that pose a question for psychological science such as: I felt so betrayed! How could he do this to me! . . . him of all people. . . . And me of all people! I wanted a simple acknowledgement that I had been heard, that I was struggling with a feeling I wanted understood but what I got back all the time was something different so I felt all the time that my needs were not actually being heard.7 They make me feel worthless A lot of family stuff is sarcasm, which could get quite nasty Most of us feel we are treated with respect by others Being told “I’m not as clever as my sister” locks you into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who have a sense of their own value don’t belittle other people. . . . When one puts the other down, it is because they have been devalued Start valuing yourself more I’m important. she disrespected me . . . she dis’d the family. “I’m not going to be spoken to like that” – a sign of valuing yourself more Talking about the power of ‘I’m worth now growing into feeling valuable He treated me horribly but deep down I didn’t think I deserved the respect, not feeling worth it 15 years of marriage, being treated like dirt on the floor and not liking myself When you’re not heard, you’re devalued

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He got the exact result that he intended – to put me down. . . . He leaves me deflated. She talks to him as if he was stupid. . . . He makes me feel I’m not worth very much “I am tired of a whole string of relationships where I feel used,” a lady complains. “All I end up doing is feeling crap after.” I was fifteen years married, treated like dirt on the floor. No more! (says a woman with spirit that betokens a new sense of a valuable self). My point is that these everyday experiences, the stuff of everyday psychodramas, are highly revealing about the inner reactions to distressing experiences, that are a window on the soul.

Re-framing the drivers of personality Much of the history of psychology has been an exercise in taxonomy. The classification of the drivers has proved to be such a storm centre in the swirl of debate because on it, so much depends. The taxonomy of the drivers illustrates the point made by Foucault about the archaeology of knowledge. It is not just that knowledge is power: arbiters of the status of knowledge and who is normal hold huge power in their hands. Those who classify decide the fate of human beings.8 The point is amply illustrated by the immensely loaded battles about diagnostic manuals in American psychiatry. Health insurance companies rely on definitions provided by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) to determine what counts as sickness. The most recent edition – DSM5 – lists some 300 mental illnesses. Diagnosis and thence treatment of afflictions of the mind is shaped by definition.9 The psychodynamic drivers can be labelled in various ways. Kahler identified five common drivers that motivate humans and can lead to dysfunctionality.10 These translate into messages that strongly influence behaviour: • • • • •

Be Perfect Be Strong Hurry Up Please Others Try Hard

Amidst the complexities of the interior world, the unconscious activities of the mind should include the desire to be valuable, to count and be of worth. Distorted neuroses may be a lot to do with blocked attempts to extract significance and value from our world. Repression may or may not be a factor in disguise of pathways towards fulfilment, but rejection is an experience that bites people to the core. Core challenges reveal the strength of unconscious influences in human action as the subject is often in the grip of forces that are past all understanding.

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In the preface to “The Interpretation of Dreams” (the drum roll for the psychological century), Freud quoted Virgil – “If I cannot bend the gods above, then I will move the Infernal regions.”11 It was to uncover the “infernal regions” that Freud’s theory of the unconscious was developed. Unconscious motivations – “the gods above” – are often present in social processes analysed by sociologists. Ideas that explain constraints in terms of individual development and those that explain problems in terms of relations between groups and institutions are usually in tension, however. They tend to belong to different domains. Alternatively, psychology may be the inner logic of sociology! The proposal is that the impetus towards being of high value and the response is a fundamental driver by an energy that is embedded in our psyche. It is, in short, a motivational driver. But what would it mean to describe that need in those terms? The hypothesis is that we are hard-wired for it. Freud’s own theory of the drives went through profound evolution. He sought to differentiate two ways that the mind worked. One was the strong and imperious impulse towards gratification: the pleasure principle. The other was the subsequent developmental process by which the ego postpones wants and wishes: the reality principle. Maturity followed this path most of the time.12 Such was developmental experience. But how did these trade-offs between conscious and unconscious demands relate to the content of these contrasting domains? A key concept was that of “narcissism.” In a key 1914 paper, Freud defines it as infatuation with one’s own person, the adoration someone accords themselves as an object of sexual desire. He views auto-eroticism and narcissism as some sort of neurosis. Yet everyone has a level of narcissism throughout their developmental course. In his paper, Freud differentiates between two types of narcissism, primary and secondary narcissism. Primary narcissism is latent in all human beings by which narcissism stirs the affection of individuals towards an object. It is the same type of energy evident in young children who believe themselves to be super beings worthy of adulation. Then comes love for others. As Freud observes, whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have pawned a part of their narcissism. Freud suggested that secondary narcissism develops when individuals turn this object affection back on themselves. As a result, an individual is cut off from society, pre-occupied with itself and disinterested in others. The inability to express love to others and have it reciprocated causes an individual to seek self-preservation. Paradoxically, narcissists given to self-adoration often have low self-esteem, are full of shame, guilt and are very defensive.13 Introducing narcissism into the range of libido became part of a project to re-classifying the drives into those aimed at self-preservation and those aimed at sexual satisfaction. Narcissism muddied the waters. Love of self and love of others differ in their objects, not their nature. Freud hesitated for a long time to elevate aggressiveness into a rival to libido.14 He endeavoured to re-classify the drives into those aimed at self-preservation and those aimed at sexual satisfaction

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(subsequently elevating aggressiveness into a rival to libido in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle).15,16 Psychology’s story is replete with projects to categorise mental structure. Once the structure and mode of the unconscious had been explored, psychoanalysis could attempt to provide a picture of the whole mind. The primary instincts were labelled sex instincts, the aggressive instincts but also the ego ideal that served to protect the conscious self from unwelcome intrusion from below.17 Yet ambivalence is a common emotion. Love and rage for the same object occurs in the same person. However, thus began the analytic pre-occupation with destructiveness, returning to a dualistic scheme as outlined in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Two warring drives henceforth became Freudian orthodoxy. What lives wants to die again. Psychological activity is essentially pervaded by conflict. There is a fundamental division in mental operations, repressing energies from repressed material. The new map of mental structure included the ego, that is, the province of mental activity. In his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud sought to define his terms. A drive was, he supposed, a psychical representation of stimuli arising from within the body, to produce pressure towards something, usually gratification.18 Freud’s contemporary William James described an instinctive theory of motivation – an inborn pattern of behaviour around play, shame, anger, fear, shyness, attachment, modesty and love. That was its limitation; the theory was descriptive rather than explanatory. Though the drive theory of motivation seemed successful, achieving certain goals to assuage unmet needs did not account for why we might eat even when we are not hungry. By way of contrast, David McClelland’s needs-based model pioneered workplace motivational thinking, developing achievement-based motivational theory and promoting improvements in employee assessment methods, advocating competency-based assessments and tests, arguing them to be better than traditional IQ and personality-based tests. His ideas have been widely adopted across the piece. The three types of motivational need in The Achieving Society are:19 1

2

3

Achievement motivation (n-ach) – seeking achievement, realistic but challenging goals and advancement in the job. There is a strong need for feedback as to achievement and progress, and a need for a sense of accomplishment. Authority/power motivation (n-pow) – a need to be influential, effective and to make an impact. There is a strong need to lead and for their ideas to prevail. There is also motivation and need towards increasing personal status and prestige. Affiliation motivation (n-affil) – a driver towards friendly relationships and is motivated towards interaction with other people. The affiliation driver produces motivation and need to be liked and held in popular regard. These people are team players.

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These needs are found to varying degrees in all workers and managers, and this mix of motivational needs characterises a person’s or manager’s style and behaviour, both in terms of being motivated and in the management and motivation of others. Human subjects have cognitive reasons to pursue certain actions. Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of needs moving with graduated steps from security towards self-actualisation is one such as is Freudian theory amongst other psychodynamic approaches that focus on drives towards libido (creativity) or death. His was a model of growth motivation (in contrast to deficit motivation characteristic of much psychology). After basic needs that must be met (conditions of work) we progress to higher needs – job fulfilment, successful relationships, values, beauty and a capacity for genuine love. Self-actualising individuals, he said, enjoy a reasonable feeling of worth and respect.20 But what degree of valuing is achievable for human functioning? Freud said he could catalyse neurosis into ordinary unhappiness as a pessimistic norm. By contrast, Abraham Maslow argued that psychology should also include the study of healthy personalities. Self-actualising individuals enjoy a reasonable feeling of worth and respect and do not for long have crippling feelings of inferiority or worthlessness.21 How much value is the psyche endeavouring to realise? This is both personally and culturally dependent. The drive is to establish a stasis of a valuable self. That will assume various shapes, often expressed as a status quo of respect, dignity and significance. A valuable self is accrued through significance (affirmation as a contrast to diminishing and being made to feel inferior); being seen and heard (attention as a contrast to indifference) and assertion of sacred space (in contrast to indignity). Such are the strategies of the pursuit of value in everyday life. Amidst the complexities of the interior world, the unconscious activities of the mind should include the desire to be valuable, to count and be of worth. Distorted neuroses may be a lot to do with blocked attempts to extract significance and value from our world. Repression may or may not be a factor in disguise of pathways towards fulfilment, but rejection is an experience that bites people to the core. Core challenges reveal the strength of unconscious influences in human action as the subject is often in the grip of forces that are past all understanding.

Case study – Len and Sharon 22 A client is losing himself. His mental health is slipping. He has been embroiled in a safeguarding matter. Everything is going wrong. His children are turning their backs; his wife will have grave difficulty supporting him. She has, she says, a self-worth close to zero. She feels he has walked over her once too often.Will she get there? First, she has to recover her self-respect.

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How did things get to that? The client refers to his fragile self in terms of ego strength that seems to be dwindling. He can speak the language. Behind this awareness, however, Len has a sense of his own value that is under fierce assault. It was never strong to begin with. His father was a son of an artisan; a working boy who grew in confidence as career progressed but whose surface composure masked the anxiety within – the struggle for survival.Value and worth were not part of the legacies he was to bequeath. Class and social positioning run deep into the psyche. His unconfident mother egged him on to achieve. She didn’t want to feel she had married beneath the position in life to which she laid claim. Len, their firstborn, was heir to these insecurities. He never went to high school, unlike his more talented sister. He never passed his “eleven-plus” exam that was supposed to winnow boys and girls who were clearly going places. The three-quarters of the population that remained had to take their chances. Chip? What chip? A sense of inferiority and needing to pursue approval was laid in. Len was never to feel he measured up. Bad choices followed. Depression and anxiety were regular visitors.

We are exploring the way that the interplay of value and experiences of devaluation, far from being an aspiration, are descriptive of inter-personal life. We have considered elsewhere the way that the value/devaluation dynamic plays in organisational life and in the way subjects are shaped in society. The pursuit of value, a driver in some psychological processes, is a content area psychology has yet to conceptualise adequately. Best practice both in medical and psychotherapy models recognises, for the most part, the importance of respect for the patient/client. The interplay of pursuing our worth against lived experience that denies or frustrates offers a lens on human action and inter-action that is different to usual accounts of contemporary life. The idea of human worth is a fundamental theme in social and cultural life and the motor behind many psychological and social processes. In suggesting that issues of value arise repeatedly along the power lines of everyday transactions, it is important to remember that “value” is here employed as a neutral term; entities can be accorded high or low value. The notion of the (high) value of persons is associated with human rights discourse, but these proposals indicate that it goes beyond the merely aspirational: value-in-oneself is fundamental to human functioning and motivation. This essay is endeavouring to promote the theory that the struggle to be of high value is a core challenge and fundamental driver of social processes. It seems to be written into our constitution. Issues of human value are constantly being generated along the power lines of its opposite – human devaluation – which is crucial for the social transmission of difference.

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The struggle for a high value for people is a key driver in social life. This stands out: a)

through many issues on the contemporary agenda in which valuing the human is a working assumption; b) through the significance of significance and worth in personal life as well as in organisations in which people seem to look for high value to be accorded them. 2

3

The struggle for a high value for people emerges especially against the dark foil of its opposite – devaluation. Much social experience is shaped by the value placed on people and groups. The economy is the major field of activity which assigns worth to people and clusters of people. Responses to systemic pressures and oppressive constraints which operate continually in social life are often framed in terms of loss of value. The struggle for value is key to the social transmission of difference. These factors collide with certain effects. Devaluation generates certain reactions at the collision of social valuing and “value-in-oneself,” which point to the need for value – either to what happens when in its absence or to the response of Protest.

To investigate this subject, I invoke the notion of polarisation, that a concept would stand out most clearly through its opposite. Experiences of devaluation seemed to offer clear signposts to the role that a notion of value played in human action. The contrast pole opens up greater theoretical space because it overcomes the problem of the apparently familiar. Devaluation is a perspectival turn that helps move the discussion away from human value as an aspiration to its role in the psychic structure; away from human value as an obvious categorical comment about “of course we value people” or “of course people should be valued” to a key role both in intra-personal and inter-personal dynamics. Human value and its pursuit stand out in its breach. I have suggested elsewhere that much social and personal life is shaped by the value society places on individuals and groups. Society thus conceived is a conflict between different forms of value. Economic, financial, social and personal value are in dynamic flux.23 “I’m not here to be pushed around,” says a client,24 experiencing being belittled but reacting against it. This reflex does not happen automatically in interpersonal life any more than it does in social or political life. People do not always and inevitably react with indignation against the erosion of their value. Clients often collude with the endemic devaluation, embark on self-destructive behaviour or have low self-esteem. There is, however, that which can be mobilised, a capacity to respond to being valued which can be aroused into a heightened sense of consciousness. Recent thinking is showing how the personality is interactive within itself. We are polyphonic. Our selves incorporate different voices in dialogue, voices

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that need to be heard in order for integration to be realised. This used to be characterised as someone having “different sides” or a side that had not been seen before when they go off the rails. Person-centred therapy, for instance, has begun to use the idea of configurations of self, including the negative parts – “the ‘me’ that just wants to curl up and do absolutely nothing,’ the ‘part that wants to go back;’ and ‘the bit of me that wants to destroy this therapist’.”25 This is important for how a valuable self emerges. She sat the opposite side of the consulting room, her sullen face enlivened periodically with flashes of hot indignation. “I wish he could just tell me what he wanted,” she said in exasperation about the way her new partner had dumped her. “He gives me the run-around,” she complained, puzzled about the “missingyou” texts that belied the thrust of his conversation. “I’m worth more than that,” she said. It became clear how the sense of a valuable self that had been growing in recent months was, as she put it, “something to grab hold of.”26 There was that lady who spoke of how devalued she felt in the court battle to obtain custody of her children and what it meant to her that someone finally believed her that her partner was cruel to the children and manipulating the authorities. She was no longer discredited. She had been heard. And with that hearing came a value. “I’m worth more than that!” – the strategy of the devalued, a Protest of hot indignation claiming dignity, those written down stating their worth. Within that sense of powering up, there lies an eruption of value. Or there was a client who came from a difficult background. “Stop misbehaving,” was the daily news until his late teens. “Don’t do this!” in a way that seemed to flatten him. He went on to become MD of a company. Against an indifferent world, he must have found self-belief from somewhere.27 “I had very controlling parents,” reports one interviewee. “Even when you’re right, you’re wrong!” “There were a lot of rough edges in our family” reports another. “The sarcasm could get quite nasty.”28 “I was fifteen years married, treated like dirt on the floor. No more!” says a woman with spirit that betokens a new sense of a valuable self. “I didn’t mean anything to him. I can see that now!”29 What is the connection between being treated “like dirt on the floor” and a subsequent statement of worth –“I’m not going to be treated like that!”? Here is the actress Kate Winslet: “I’ve always been very, very aware of wanting to be understood as being the person that I really am,” she said, not wanting to be dismissed as an arrogant young actor which would be devaluing.30 What would it mean to say that the impetus towards high value is fundamental? Should the inner world be re-configured? The hypothesis is this: we have an inbuilt psychosocial need to be worthwhile people engaged in worthwhile projects, and therefore active in garnering worth from our world. In contemporary life, value is accorded to individuals and groups in a way that is unrelated to inner value or “value-in-oneself.” What someone is worth is awarded to social participants on the basis of the wage economy (economic value), identity badges (status value such as ownership or appearance) or identity boundaries (social value; being the right sort of person).

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These considerations constitute a signpost that the impetus for being of worth is deeply rooted. The signpost is downwards. Yet there is a lacuna. Mainstream psychology has, for the most part, still to regard the struggle to realise our sense of a valuable self as being a major content area in its agenda. The impetus towards high value is not usually seen as embedded psychodynamically within.

A different map of the drivers Where does this take us? In a short essay written in 1936, C. G. Jung outlined his position on human instincts.31 He categorises five main groups: hunger, sexuality, reflection, activity and creativity. With all this in mind, we could theorise as follows. A map of the ego drivers should encompass: • • •

Desire Belonging (with its generation of security) High value and worth – broken down into the need to be seen and heard (not disregarded), affirmed and accorded significance (not written off) and dignity

I propose that the drivers are broadly subsumed within this categorisation. “Thanatos,” or aggression, is the result when these needs are thwarted (as per Chapter 4). Desire is an immensely powerful driver. It is all encompassing. The object of the grip that desire exercises over human beings varies considerably. It is not just a question of sexual desire, of libido. Some will indeed take that to be the all-pervasive energy of life that suffuses through creativity. Yet definitions are important. Is the desire to possess another and take them into oneself, the same as the desire to have power over them? Is desire for sex the same as the urge to reproduce or nurture? As Freud and others have made central to their scheme, desire (in the sense of self-gratification) is a powerful urge when it is thwarted. A wide range of human problems stem from this. The neurotic tangles people get into invariably are the result of seeking to fulfil desire in complex ways. There are also belonging needs. Humans are inveterately sociable, wanting security. Inclusion and belonging are friendly to each other. Being out in the cold is damaging. Developing a sense of well-being and belonging is vital to education. It affects the mental health of children and the staff who work in and support schools. Belonging is crucial for cultivating a sense of participation in a community, family or couple relationship. Love and belonging go together like a horse and carriage. We must posit the importance of the imperative towards high value in the human personality. The ego needs to pursue a high degree of worth. This impulse is closely integrated with the need to belong. It is in inter-dependence

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that a high worth flourishes. Significance and status are realised only if they are performed in relationship with others. The proposal that human beings are motivated by the pursuit of worth cannot be contained within “self-actualisation” as an ego need. These matters have been, to some extent, the province of existential psychology, an approach that is concerned with self-authentication and the search for meaning. Its remit is you rather than on the symptom. Human beings have a capacity for self-awareness, to make rational choices and to develop to their maximum potential. In line with most existential philosophers, we must continually re-create ourselves: the meaning of things constantly changes. Responsibility and freedom are its main concerns. A therapist such as Yalom will point the way to life-enhancing experiences against the backcloth of ultimate concerns of life: death, freedom, meaninglessness and existential isolation.32 “Try to grasp something by which to live. Feel something, find something and you will be someone.” This is not rooted in the inherent value of the human. The question of how I exist in the face of uncertainty, conflict or death does not focus on external devaluing forces but one’s inner choices. Humans are meaning-seeking creatures. Meaning-making is central to human concerns and projects. Ego psychologists suggested that the Freudian map of mental functioning failed to describe our capacity for such things as achievement or the need for security. Yet when we speak of the drive towards high worth, an ego need it must be. Becoming a worthwhile human being is central to “how we tick.” It is not a need arising from the body. Our physicality is not met through it though there are physical consequences of being written off. “I developed a slouch” reports a demoralised client.33 Behaviour always moves towards a goal. Fulfilment beckons to us; its purpose I suggest as to establish a valuable self. The diminished self must meet its need to be noticed and listened to rather than written off, to be significant rather than reduced and to be given dignity rather than trashed or rejected. A culture like ours which regards people as less important than things or which relegates them to the scrap heap offers little basis for being worthwhile. A culture will not be a secure base for the self in which young people face a barrage of insults about the pictures they post on social media and what we look like is the basis for being made to feel “worthless” or “inadequate.”34 A culture that seeks to generate mental well-being will not be one where loneliness of the contemporary self is nearly so prevalent.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Freud, S. (1950) Totem and Taboo. London: Routledge, pp. 64–65. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, December 12th 2007.

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7 Moore, J. (1995) Person-Central Psychotherapy. In Walker, M. (Ed.), Peta: A Feminist’s Problem with Men. Buckingham: Open University, p. 15. 8 Foucault, M. (2002) The Order of Things. London: Routledge. 9 Davies, J. (2013) Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good. London: Icon Books. 10 Kahler, T. (1975) Drivers: The key to the process script. Transactional Analysis Journal, 5(3). 11 Freud, S. (1900) The Interpretation of Dreams. Motto on the Title page. 12 Freud, S. (1991) Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. In A. Richards (Ed.), On Meta-Psychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Trans. J. Strachey. London: Penguin Books, pp. 29–44. 13 Freud, S. (2014) On Narcissism. London: White Press. 14 Gay, P. (2006) Freud: A Life for Our Time. London: Max, p. 390. 15 Freud, S. (1922) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. London: Hogarth Press. 16 Gay, P. (2006) Freud: A Life for Our Time. London: Max, p. 390. 17 Freud, S. (1927) The Ego and the Id. London: Hogarth Press. 18 Freud, S. (1991) Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In The Essentials of PsychoAnalysis. London: Penguin. 19 McClelland, D. C. (2010) The Achieving Society. Eastford, CT: Martino Fine Books. 20 Maslow, A. (1977) A theory of metamotivation: The biological rooting of the value life. In H.-M. Chiang & A. Maslow (Eds.), The Healthy Personality. New York: D. Van Nostrund Co., p. 28. 21 Maslow, A. (1977) A theory of metamotivation: The biological rooting of the value life. In H.-M. Chiang & A. Maslow (Eds.), The Healthy Personality. New York: D. Van Nostrund Co., p. 28. 22 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 23 Steed, C. D. (2018) A Question of Inequality and Why It Matters. London: I B Tauris. 24 Author’s client notes-name withheld and used with permission. 25 Mearns, D., & Thorne, B. (2000) Person-Centred Therapy Today: New Frontiers in Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 26 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 27 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 28 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 29 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 30 Time magazine – 2nd March 2009. 31 Jung, C. G. (1974) Psychological factors in human behavior. In Collected Works, 8, para 232–262. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 114–125. 32 Yalom, I. (1980) Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books. 33 Author’s client notes – used with permission. 34 www.youtube.com/c/DioceseofGloucester ‘Change the Message’ Diocese of Gloucester twitter campaign July 2018.

Chapter 7

Markers of devaluation Difference and indifference

Locating the effect of experiences of devaluation – or the notion of human value – is problematic. Devaluation or issues of value do not appear in the contents list of a textbook or as a focus for research studies. Anger, fear and love are routinely described as forces that motivate humanity. The drive to be autonomous seems to be fundamental.1 Of the impetus to realise our value or worth, however, there is very little. Beyond some newer psychotherapies, the growing trend of drawing on some concept of human value in best practice has yet to be embedded within the body of theory as a psychological project. Even there, assumptions about the unique value of an individual have yet to be worked systematically into overall theory. The dominant thrust of the conceptual architecture proposed here is that negative circumstances that devalue people and communicate erosion of worth is about: Indifference – not being seen or heard Inferiority and Inequality – difference, strategies of reduction, differential treatment and so forth that lead to diminishing of self and psychodramas of insult Indignity – rejection, invasion and circumstances that create indignation and generate psychodramas of assault In response to these disvaluing circumstances, people tend to react in one (or more) of three ways: Demoralisation – when they give up and just accept a negative view of themselves Collusion – when they go along with it for a time but a stronger/healthier reaction is latent Protest – when there is a definite reaction of “I’m worth more than that!” We have explored these factors in the psychosocial dynamics of inequality.2 The question is, what enables some people to react in different ways in order to pursue their worth? Once a negative self-concept has been imbibed, under what circumstances can a healthier self-belief be mobilised (even when it has

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not been there at all perhaps under the influence of poor attachments)? Is this gendered? Is it constant across the life course? Where personal and social worlds intertwine, people are crippled by a devalued self. They may find it an uphill struggle against those who have greater internal resources. Indeed, it is the accumulation of internal resources that marks out someone who has “voice,” the ability to respond to life positively as a person of worth. For many, the capacity to exercise the choice that seems so obvious to others is not there. Internal resources need building up first. Almost always, growth in confidence is related to growth in a sense of a valuable self. Presumably, this is why, in principle, teachers seek to promote the worth of each pupil, so as to find areas of attainment in which they can shine. Crucial to this strategy is giving voice, in contrast to its removal. It is removing blindness so that social participants see with fresh gaze. Rooted in client work, to investigate the way issues of human value arise along the power lines of social and personal life, I propose a new conceptual category; namely devaluation. A concept of “human devaluation” as an analytical lens through which to view internal and social worlds is a move that invokes the contrast pole of value-in-oneself. Devaluation drives many social processes and underlies many social evils. This is because its polar opposite plugs into the sense of a valuable self that humans need in order to flourish. Experiences of devaluation crop up all the time – in the inter-personal sphere, in the field of economics, in the sordid transactions of human violence, in the public square and in the kind of extreme politics that assault the sanctity of life. Devaluation shapes the negotiation of social differences and provides the resonance between experiences of class, gender, race, ageism, colonialism, homophobia or prejudice due to disability. Borrowing the idea of enhancing conceptual clarity by means of polarisation, it is through noting and discussing experiences of devaluation that human value is most clearly seen as a driver in contemporary society. The moral practice of human value can be determined negatively and indirectly, by assessing the extent of the erosion of the worth of human beings. Negative experiences of disrespect and de-humanisation people endure translate the goal of securing human value into a compensatory driving force in society and world history. These reactions I am terming “the Protest.” I dignify this term both with capitalisation of a definite article and attempt a unified theory about this, the psychosocial dynamics of human value.

On gazing and the emporium of the senses: indifference (the need to be heard and taken seriously) Arthur Miller’s plea in Death of a Salesman has often been noticed: attention must be paid – even to a salesman.3 “Please pay me some attention,” says the vulnerable. “Notice me.” It is a basic human given. The need to be loved is like a thirst. Without this being met, a

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child will get thirstier and thirstier and do so in more subtle and complex ways. Attention-seeking behaviour makes sense. It’s like replacing a water supply. Instead of looking for people who expand us rather than diminish us, we will go for dirty and murky water. We are wired up to get attached to someone. If you don’t get attached, you die inside. In May 2015, the newly elected Prime Minister David Cameron announced that more doctors would be recruited to meet future needs. This had to be set against many doctors in General Practice leaving the profession in droves. Doctors spoke of being on the hamster wheel, 10 minutes maximum to sort out the problems of their patients. There was simply not enough time to deal with patients as people and give them quality time. “We need person care” said a Doctor. “GPs need to feel they are valued. It is the first thing they say puts them off.”4 To what part of our psychic structure does the deep-seated wistfulness of Ennio Morricone belong? Though a famed Italian writer of legendary film scores, he never felt he made the grade amongst classical musicians in his own country. “All he wants is to be taken seriously as a musician.”5 Someone leaving the Army with a fine military record will derive a far greater sense of value than someone who left with a dishonourable discharge. This is social esteem, social status yet it digs deep into whether those concerned will feel valuable and worthwhile in themselves. Reputation matters so profoundly to most people. It is threatened by indifference. A soldier leaving the British Army with a serious injury is incredibly frustrated with the lack of attention from either public or the State. “We’re not getting listened to. It’s not being noticed after all we’ve done, not getting the respect we deserve.”6 A client reports feeling de-skilled by her partner, her independence now but a memory.7 This may exemplify the social forces of gender construction shaping the dynamic between them or inter-personal dynamics per se (as if these could somehow be separated). Yet the point is that subversion of this minisocial order within the family (resulting in her having not felt she was worth very much) began with fresh perception of herself (based on prior recognition of worth). Foucault described the techniques of surveillance whereby the technology of power operates through visibility. In feudal society, to be powerful was to announce one’s presence or publicly demonstrate the cost of deviance.8 Today, everyone’s life is scrutinised. Devaluation is closely bound up with the gaze. Someone who does not think they are worthy of respect does so because they do not see themselves in that light. Value and worth are accorded through acts of vision. The gaze communicates either value or disvalue. The act of seeing transmits because it triggers. It reproduces what is perceived. The other rarely looks at the self from the perspective from which it sees. The first pivotal point in which human value is either eroded or enhanced is through not being heard, seen or given voice. This is a strategy of persistent lack of sensory response by those without eyes or ears. To be heard rather than ignored; to be seen rather than disregarded are actions that generate strong positive feelings of personal value rather than a denial of our full humanity.

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The gaze is devaluing because it is cyclical, interactive. It not only sees what is there, but also, for better or worse, it transforms what it sees. The human situation is one where the self is able to see itself. Projectors all, we take up a position outside of ourselves (or so we think) and look at ourselves. The problem is that such reflexivity (which is the essence of self-reflection) can reproduce false images. We see ourselves in the mirror. The capacity to be selfregarding is essential to the human condition yet, sometimes, the gaze is too intense. A characteristic of some psychological conditions such as being bipolar or paranoid is that sufferers are all too aware of the gaze to the point where eyes are everywhere, even to the point of being re-located in a split self. In a condition such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), every action comes under the most intense scrutiny. A sufferer of OCD comes to realise that his intense scrutiny of the body is greatly exacerbated by a fear of how others will see him as a contaminated person. Fear of dirt is fear of scrutiny. A dearth of smiling eyes and regular criticism has generated panic about how he is seen. In turn, his self-regard has hijacked the vision of how he thinks others will perceive him. Distorted vision communicated by not feeling up to the mark has become a circular problem and a channel for transmission of disvaluing of self.9 This is the kind of raw human experience that has aroused considerable philosophical speculation. Hegel emphasised that we need acceptance by others as we work out our identity. If there is a Me for whom the Other is an object, this is because there is an Other for whom the Me is an object. “The Other cannot act on my being by means of his being, the only way of that he can reveal himself to me is by appearing as an object to my knowledge.”10 Two self-consciousnesses collide. A master-slave relationship, for instance, is colonised by power. It is not just the underdog that is affected. The master sees himself as the oppressor. Recognition leads to the bifurcation of the world. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida comments that the “I” is never at home in the world, never at one with itself. The self includes the sense of a turning or swivelling mirror.11 To locate oneself in the world requires the experience of a “kind of vertigo of place,” everything related to everything else (as in Derrida’s “distracted theory,” there is no saturation of context). Power is a fluid concept. It does not just arise from formal social relations but flows around them. Often the river is reversed. A client reports feeling de-skilled by her partner, her independence now but a memory.12 This may exemplify the social forces of gender construction shaping the dynamic between them or inter-personal dynamics per se (as if these could somehow be separated). Yet the point is that subversion of this mini-social order within the family (resulting in her having not felt she was worth very much) began with fresh perception of herself (based on prior recognition of worth). The problem of recognition of our value, what in philosophical terms is a question of anthropology, emerges too in discussions about shame. Shame is, Sartre argues, by nature recognition. I recognise that I am as the Other sees me. “The human being is not only the being by which negatives are disclosed in the world;

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he is also the one who can take negative attitudes with respect to himself.”13 The Other has not only revealed to me what I was, but also he has established in me a new modality of being which was not in me potentially before the appearance of the Other. I need the Other to realise fully all the structures of my being. Sartre considers the phenomenon of shame, a mode of consciousness which is “a shameful apprehension of something and this something is me. I am ashamed of what I am. Shame therefore realises an intimate relation of myself to myself. Through shame, I have just discovered an aspect of my being.”14 Shame is important for what it reveals about ourselves. The gaze triggers a reaction. Sartre insisted that a shared gaze generates a struggle over who is to be subject and who is to be object. “I felt I was repulsive” says someone, who complains of being treated with disrespect.15 His sense of himself as shameful arises because he perceives himself in the eye of those who disrespect him. It was an act of seeing – or so they thought – that triggered a temporary self-loathing. The client now sees himself in a certain way; that act of vision is intrusive. It rapes, it molests, until the self is seen as worth-less or even worthless. The reciprocal relation of “being seen by another” and “seeing the other” is an irreducible relation in consciousness. How we try to control the inherent negation of these relations generates existential anxiety.16 In The Struggle for Recognition, Honneth argued that there are three distinct kinds of recognition, which support three distinct stages in the development of individuals, each with quite different social and political implications. Critics have pointed to his failure to even consider the significance of the dominant relationship of modernity, the commodity relationship.17 Wanted: recognition! This is recruitment of the eye or ear in social life. We need to be noticed, to be seen, not taken for granted. As we will see, one major reason why people experience organisations as de-personalising places to encounter or to work in is because of the recurrent complaint of not being heard. To be ignored is distressing for humans. It drives anxiety because it plugs into the need to be handled as a valuable self. Not being heard is profoundly devaluing. In the political sphere, it sets up too many avoidable problems. In organisations, employees who are not consulted quickly feel a sense of existential angst precisely because of the reflex we have against indifference. To affirm we count, that we matter, is crucial for the human self to flourish. To encounter indifference and being neither seen nor heard (as with loneliness) seems to belie this. Perhaps this is why so many people go in for conspicuous consumption in the West. “I acquire these symbols of material sophistication – you give me more respect . . . I acquire status – you give me greater worth.” It becomes a symbolic transaction around notions of worth and value. This transaction has its roots in the discontent that arises from the unbearable possibility of being greeted by a yawn. As William James wrote, No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed

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by all the members thereof. If no one turned around when we entered, answered when we spoke, or minded what we did, but if every person we met “cut us dead,” and acted as if we were non-existent things, a kind of rage and impotent despair would before long well up, from which cruellest bodily torture would be relief.18 Behind a prison manual on the risk of abuse, lurks the dread power of indifference. “Being desired can seem like a tempting alternative to being ignored all your life. Intimacy itself can be very powerfully attractive if you feel isolated and lonely.”19 And here are some offenders on an anger management course, trying to give expression through art of how they react against being worthless scum, the kind other people looked down on (or so they’ve been told).20 Sartre’s phenomenology of vision is not the last word on the subject. A shared gaze can establish shared humanity rather struggle and resistance, an ambiguity that confronts us in this essay.21 Yet the sensorium of disvaluing is only one social arena where issues of value are generated. There is a curious quality in selfrespect. It has the ability to somersault to the social gaze of others so they come to witness (celebrate or be threatened by) this move. The act of self-valuing commandeers the vision of the other. Diminishing, however, goes beyond the gaze of unseeing indifference we have just noted: it is about how the “putdowns” of everyday life reduce and dwarf how others see us and how we see ourselves. Humans need to accept themselves as at least adequate before they feel they are worthwhile people. The somersault of self-respect means that when the act of seeing ourselves is performed through the eyes of significant others, the magic of self-acceptance is offered to ourselves by ourselves. Although everyday life involves us with numerous acts of indifference, those who have felt the prior power of positive gaze will surely handle them more effectively. “Please validate me, hear me,” cries a young lady constrained by mental illness. “Say it’s ok to feel like this.”22 It echoes the vital need to be heard, to be seen. The emporium of the senses runs deep.

Difference and diminishing – inferiority and inequality If I cut my hand and you cut yours, we both have red blood . . . Do you not use the same bananas my caste grows to offer to your gods? Do you not use the flower garlands our women make to dress your deities?23

The effect of human devaluation as a window on the psyche is disclosed by the Protest against diminishing and reduction. This is about seeking appropriate respect for a valuable self. The inner sense of self-worth is inseparable from the value society places on people. In the UK, half of Bangladeshi men earn less than £8 an hour. Violence against migrants, Jews and Muslims is rising and the entire Muslim

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population is treated as a fifth column. White students are three times more likely to get a First at University than black students. Of white students, 20% are in jobs that they did not need to go to university for, but this rises to 40% for black students.24 Significantly for our concerns here, programmes aimed at tackling domestic violence through instilling Respect are showing promise. “Respect” supports a network of domestic violence prevention services that focus on changing perpetrator’s behaviour and reducing their risk to partners and children. Most men completed the programme: sexual coercion dropped from 30% to zero, use of weapons against a partner dropped to zero; physical injury dropped from 61% to 2%.25 I have explored the issue of inequality and why it matters elsewhere.26 The point to note here is that such social pressures have huge implications for the sense of self-worth people have. Indeed, these domains are inseparable. It is not just that humans are relationally oriented towards other inter-personally structured beings, we are structured internally by the systems of society. Systemic issues such as racism, poverty or inequality have massive impact on well-being. The causes of clients’ distress are usually configured as intrapsychic. The aetiology of emotional disturbance is conceived as primarily from within. Cognitive behavioural therapy attempts to correct the bias in information processing.27 Person-centred therapy looks at the client’s alienation from authentic experiencing. These are intra-psychic models. Although the psychological literature is well aware of social and economic difficulties, these are usually cast as outside core theories and formulations. Traditionally, psychoanalysis has offered little by way of social criticism; therapy generally fails to take a broader view of distress.28 Approaches that do look at broader issues tend to restrict themselves to the immediate family environment. Yet the wider social environment shapes us. Uncovering the mysteries is the task of the psychotherapist to root out the archaeology of mental forces and emotional chains as it is the task of sociological imagination to discern the invisible external and through reflection, emancipate. Therapy is not just about the trials of interiority. Why is it, for instance, that black Caribbean and South Asian older people are at higher risk of depression – indeed almost twice the incidence in the population. Research published in the journal Psychological Medicine drew on data from a 20-year follow-up study of 632 European, 476 South Asian and 181 Black Caribbean men and women aged 59–88 living in West London. The researchers considered that social disadvantage was a key risk factor for black Caribbean people. It indicates that racism contributed to poorer mental health.29 This is played out in the experience of indigenous peoples in Australia. As Susan Sontag wrote in Against Interpretation and Other Essays, “Psychological treatment does not normally challenge society – it returns us to the world only a little bit better able to bear it, and without hope.”30 Psychoanalysis evidenced marked inability to be transferred into social criticism.

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So it needs to be done. Freud’s analysis did not emphasise the social dimension of inequalities. Marx left out the psychic economy. Yet false consciousness was a major theme of neo-Marxists. The Frankfurt School was concerned with malleability; why workers were deceived about their own oppression. It was, therefore, necessary to understand culture as well as the economy. Erich Fromm sought to develop an analytical social psychology that based its instinctual and largely unconscious apparatus in its socio-economic structure.31 Differing in many aspects, Horkheimer nevertheless agreed that an individual psychology must complement the sociological analysis offered by Marx.32 How the social and the psychological are entwined was much discussed in the inter-war period, the heyday for “Freudo-Marxism. Talcott Parsons was a strong advocate of psychosocial integration as was the Frankfurt School of social analysis.” Before them, arguably, Durkheim’s analysis of crime in “The Normal and the Pathological” assumed some concept of social unconsciousness. Fundamental social problems such as racism, gender bias and inequality (including Marx’s account of class struggle) involved unconscious factors that were brought to the surface. The analysis of Protest as a reaction to seemingly intractable social forces led to a move away from earlier psychological theories that had focussed on the individual pathology of protesters towards the political and rational aspects of mobilisation.33 Yet although subjective factors have tended to be marginalised, they belong together with analyses and descriptions of what is going on in social settings. An integrated approach will look at invisible forces, both internal and external. It cannot just be held that the world is the way it is because people are the way they are. This constitutes too sharp a distinction between the psychological and the sociological, between the individual and society. Sloan’s notion of the “frozen traces of oppressive social relations”34 means that fixed personality problems are open to being re-interpreted as being social in origin. Above us are systems of social life that devalue us and in which we lie unbidden; systems to do with the economy and culture. These are often perceived as impersonal forces beyond the level of the individual that bear down on the human subject. Underneath us are psychodynamic forces arising from frozen relics of previous experience and from relationships. How to relate the social world with inner world has been the quest of sociologists and psychologists for 200 years. It is not unlike the quest in science for ways of describing the interaction of the very small (quantum mechanics) and the physical universe (the sphere of relativity). It used to be a human conceit that we were somehow equidistant between these two arenas. The human world was thought to be poised between the vastness and the unfathomable. What is perhaps more certain is that the surface of human experience is the scene for dynamic forces. It is commonplace for human subjects to experience and report on the invisibility of forces; forces of surprise that catch people out minute by minute. These invisible forces arise from the larger dimensions of social systems that structure human experience.

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Or they arise from the volcanic depths which have been shaped and moulded but which have a life of their own that leave people wondering where on earth (or under the earth) that came from! Carving out a space for both the exercise and existence of value conceived dynamically inevitably raises questions of human freedom. Inhibiting factors in social relationships arise from deeply ingrained habits. As Merleau-Ponty argued, we acquire schemas of perception and preferences from our past experiences and which reflect the social world from which they arose. Consciousness arises from embodied engagement with the world and is constrained by it.35 Marx made class-structure the driving force in his conceptualisation. Freud took a different route. It was not correct, he argued, to see class and property relations as the engine of conflict.36 It assumed that there was no innate destructiveness within humanity, once class relations were resolved. One of Freud’s most significant contributions to the understanding of how modern societies operate lies in his insight into the way that cultural heritage operates for the most part unconsciously in people yet affects their connections with society.37 Both social and personal dynamics have to be seen with reference to the invisibility of forces. Hidden psychological forces are of a piece with hidden external forces that constrain people at the level of social systems. We are most definitely not equal. Everyone has different cultural resources to draw on. How then do you create equality in the world? Equality has various dimensions – equality of resources, of working and learning opportunities or of power relations. But amongst the strength of reaction against the forms inequality takes, the demand for respect and recognition is significant. This essay brings together under the same roof our sense of a valuable self and experiences of devaluation. The category of “value-in-oneself ” acts as a helpful lens through which to observe human action and human reactions – both to difference and indifference. It has been well-understood that prejudice affects an individual’s sense of identity and self-worth.38 The sense of self is also a familiar face in psychology. But I am calling attention to the role that a sense, not just of self, but of a valuable self plays. “I am going to prove you wrong – they are not going to get away with this. I will not be put down” – behind the Susan Boyle story is a mother who believed in her strongly against life experiences that had conspired to reduce and diminish.39 Munir is an Egyptian who yearns to be respected, “as a human, not because I am gay.”40 Diminishing in any form is a strategy of reduction by those with power. Experiences of being belittled, put down, pushed down, insulted or disrespected lead readily to a sense of lost value. It is also the case that when people lose respect either by their own actions or the actions of others, to that extent they are diminished. By contrast, self-respect sets up a virtuous circle. Respect is sought and usually granted. Journalist Stephen Kinzer criticised the US approach to Iran for provoking face-saving ripostes. Those in the West simply had little conception of

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what they were really after – respect, dignity and the restoration of Persian pride.41 A client is keenly aware that he is operating in a social environment where many customers and acquaintances are on a higher plane. It is in the background behind many of the statements and practices about how he sees himself in relation to others. This is languaged as “they are above me” or “they won’t want to mix with me.” Identity surfaces as being a working man. Yet behind this narrative, another story is playing; one arising from personal worlds. This person suffers from a strong sense of inferiority. His father systematically put him down and belittled him.42 Appropriate respect alters through time. Social honour is hardly of concern to a baby. A young child has little awareness of its reputation. How one will be remembered in our different projects and the legacy we leave is not an issue to a teenager. Yet it would plug into an outraged sense of self if grown-ups greeted other people by tousling their hands through their hair. The adult self is now larger. It Protests against reduction. From contemporary literature, here is a lady writing about her marriage. Christmas Day 1943. I looked at William (my husband) and I thought, ‘over 32 years of slavery, patience beyond belief, your house kept a home, whatever happens your meals ready always perfectly cooked and on time, yet I am treated with less consideration than the average man would dare to treat a servant; not a flower, a card or a sweet though you had sweet coupons in your pocket thereby preventing me from having any myself!”43 “I am treated with less consideration.” As if to say, “I deserve respect.” “I am going to prove you wrong – they are not going to get away with this. I will not be put down” – Diminishing is a strategy of reduction by those with power. Disvaluing people is closely bound up with a strategy of reduction. “He or she makes me feel small” is a complaint that often surfaces in client reports. Such careless talk or action is profoundly reductionist; it is belittling. The essence of power-laden denigration is being made small, an erosion of value. Those who diminish are moving in their native territory after experiencing it themselves.

Case study – Jennifer’s story Jennifer is a fairly bright young lady from a middle-class home. Through some dreadful experiences, she has been crippled emotionally and regularly signs on for benefits, with the agreement of the doctor, who is aware there is a psychiatrist on the scene. Her friend Sue would say that Jennifer doesn’t help herself. She points out that in her working-class family, “we were respectable . . . we were taught to look down on those who weren’t prepared to earn your crust.” Jennifer doesn’t

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seem to do anything for herself. She lies in bed until noon, shows up for voluntary work every so often for a month to show willing but claims benefit when she doesn’t want to work anymore. Compounding her problems, her circle of friends, many of whom are on drugs, are in the same position. They drag her down and reinforce her behaviour.44

Hell’s Kitchen TV star Marco Pierre White has laid down the law for that year’s intake of celebrity wannabe chefs. The one thing he won’t tolerate is a lack of respect. A lack of respect is the biggest crime the contestants could commit in his kitchen. “Because I would never disrespect them. If, for example, there is a failure or a mistake and they start to back answer, the failure and mistake is not an issue anymore is it? It’s the fact that they back answer me in front of everyone else.”45 “He put me down a lot, often running me down in front of my friends. He brought me low so I wouldn’t leave.”46 A game of power and control has devalued another casualty. Humiliations or being patronised leaves its mark. There is to be sure a wide spectrum of put-downs. Demeaning talk, sarcasm as unrelenting as the Arctic tundra or an atmosphere of occasional denigration is, sadly, the environment within which many human plants struggle to grow. A client experienced being belittled by his parents at a party when he was a boy or made fun of in the playground. This is humiliation, a respect issue. It is not so much an affront to dignity as a lowering in size of that person. This perpetuates what can best be described as a “category mistake,” responding to a different issue. Belittling someone often triggers this sort of reaction. It is important to remember that there are inequalities generated through social forces that shape lives but there are also differences that arise through emotional experiences, in the affective system of social life. The idea of affective inequality highlights the relational character of humans as being of huge importance alongside material factors. Value is communicated through positive parenting that produces a new generation of well-adjusted, happy adults. The alternative may be to perpetuate a cycle where 10% of children under the age of 16 have a diagnosable mental health disorder.47 Inferiority matters because it gets under the skin. Discussion about social anxiety and status syndrome become core issues because they dig into the role that our sense of value plays in human action. It is a strategy of switching positions. Under various oppressive regimes, social actors move from disvaluing actions or words relative to everyone else to an absolute sense of identity. It is they themselves who are on the line. Inequality provokes a reaction about our sense of value and worth. Yet collision between social pressures, and internal perspective can, under certain circumstances, result in self-revaluation through “the Protest.” At question here are issues of value and its operation in social and psychological space.

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Amongst the reasons I have discussed elsewhere about why inequality matters is the argument from intensified social comparison: in an age of anxiety, is harmful to those who cannot keep up. Social status has always been a feature of competitive societies where participants do not simply accept the status quo. It is internet social media that has extended comparative status to such issues of looks and body image where people do not only go third class but are trashed. The psychodynamic argument is linked with this: inequality impacts the person. Consciousness of relative position engenders a counter-reaction that will manifest in various ways. It is this awareness of inferior status relative to others that makes inequality socially corrosive. Is this the dynamic behind the politics of that highly contested phrase “the white working class?” This is a sociologically meaningless term regularly trotted out to discuss angry reactions about nationalism or benefits. It does not mean there are no working-class people who are white, just in the sense that, since society has been multicultural, the working-class has been multiracial. There is no distinct category of working-class people who are white and face fundamentally different structural conditions from working-class people who are not white.48 Yet the real power behind the lazy phrase is due to the way those who in this particular social gaze are regarded and diminished. It is deeply problematic. The reification of “the white working class” since Brexit and Trump is a particular feature of the political lexicography. But are not people in the West looking at themselves in the wrong way? Francis Fukuyama argues that the tradition casts a long tail from ancient Athens where (privileged) people saw themselves as deserving respect and recognition (they called it “thymos”).49 Enlightenment philosophers mixed in the notion that everyone deserved dignity (the focus of the next chapter). Fukuyama concluded that the pre-dominant notion today is that society does not adequately value their inner worth. This is society’s fault. The world needs to grant them respect. Spiced with grievance, the result is a “politics of resentment”; intolerant identity on the rise. Outsider status always begs the question of who is the insider, the observer who has the stance of discriminatory power behind an apparent neutrality? The dialectic between inferiority and superiority is just too compelling: the politics of reduction just too endemic in human transactions.

Notes 1 Allport, G. W. (1977) Personality: Normal and abnormal. In H.-M. Chiang & A. Maslow (Eds.), The Healthy Personality. New York: D. Van Nostrund Co., p. 4. 2 Steed, C. (2018) A Question of Inequality and Why It Matters. London: I B Tauris. 3 Miller, A. (2000) Death of a Salesman. Harmondsworth: Penguin Plays. 4 www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/todayprogramme accessed 12th May 2015. 5 The Morricone Affair, BBC Radio 4, 29th January 2009. 6 www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 Today Programme accessed 21st April 2010. 7 Author’s client notes – used with permission.

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Foucault, M. (1979) Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Sartre ibid. p. 231. Derrida, J. (2008) Psyche: Inventions of the Other. Ed. by P. Kamuf & E. Rottenberg. Stanford University Press. Author’s client notes – used with permission. Sartre, J. P. (1958) Being and Nothingness. London: Methuen, p. 47. Sartre, J. P. (1958) Being and Nothingness. London: Methuen, p. 221. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. See also Spence, J. (1988) Putting Myself in the Picture. London: Real Comet Press. Sartre, J. P. (1956) Being and Nothingness. Trans. by H. Barnes. New York: Philosophical Library, pp. 252–302. Honneth, A. (1995) The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity. James, W. (1890) The Principles of Psychology. Boston. Donaldson, S. (2004) Hooking Up: Protective Pairing for Punks. Article written to advise male survivors of prisoner rape. From Scheper-Hughes, N., & Bourgois, P. (Eds.). (2004) Violence in War and Peace. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, p. 353. Leibmann, M. (Ed.) (1994) Art Therapy with Offenders. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Tallis, R. (2009) The Kingdom of Infinite Space: A Fantastical Journey Round Your Head. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Sarah’s Bubble www.timetochange.org.uk March 2010. Dalrymple, W. (2009) Nine Lives. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, p. 40. Address by Dr Omar Khan. British Sociological Association annual conference 2018. http://respect.uk.net/highlights-mirabal-research-findings-respect-accrediteddomestic-violence-perpetrator-programmes-work/ February 2015. Steed, C. D. (2018) A Question of Inequality and Why It Matters. London: Tauris. Cooper, M. (2006) Socialist humanism: A progressive politics for the twenty-first century. In G. Proctor, et al. (Eds.), Politicising the Person-Centred Approach: An Agenda for Social Change. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books. Baluch, S. P., et al. (2004) Counselling psychology and social justice: Houston . . . we have a problem. Counselling Psychologist, 32, 89–98. Quoted in Therapy Today June 2015 vol 26 issue 5 ‘Black older people at higher risk of depression’. Sontag, S. (2009) Against Interpretation and Other Essays. London: Penguin Classics, p. 256. Fromm, E. (1970) The Crisis of Psychoanalysis. Greenwich, CT, p. 144. Jay, M. (1973) The Dialectical Imagination. London, p. 101. I am indebted for the thoughts in this paragraph to a panel at the British Sociological Conference in April 2013 led by L. Chancer, G. Zwerman, G. Cavalleto, C. Silver, A. Stein and J. Andrews. Sloan, T. (1995) Damaged Life: The Crises of the Modern Psyche. London: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1965) The Structure of Behaviour. London: Methuen. Freud, S. (1963) Civilisation and Its Discontents. London, p. 80. Bocock, R. (1976) Freud and Modern Society. London: Van Nostrand Reinhold, p. 84. Jones, M. (2002) The Social Psychology of Prejudice. NJ: Prentice Hall. Piers Morgan Lives – ITV documentary. 7th November 2010. El Feki, S. (2013) Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World. New York: Chatto & Windus. Kinzer, S. (2010) Reset: Iran, Turkey and America’s Future. New York: Times Books. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Broad, R., & Fleming, S. (Eds.). (2007) Nella’s Last War: Second World War Diaries of Housewife 49. London: Profile Books. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission.

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45 www.mirror.co.uk/tv/8/4/09. 46 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 47 Briers, S. (2008) Superpowers for Parents: The Psychology of Great Parenting and Happy Children. Prentice Hall Life. 48 Zoe Williams in conversation with Brendan McGeever www.anothereurope.org/podcast/ July 2018. 49 Fukuyama, F. (2018) Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Chapter 8

Dignity, indignity and the anger of a valuable self

Is the notion of the “valuable self ” a social and historical construction built up out of a self-indulgent age? What kind of drive or impetus is reflected in what a BBC correspondent imprisoned in Gaza in 2007 demonstrated? “I wanted to preserve some dignity if this would be my final hours.” Just as people who had cancer faced their end with dignity, he too would face his end with grace. In turn, he was glad to see his parents respond with dignity.1 What kind of theory might emerge about human identity from considering statements like these? There are a number of concepts that seem to relate to valuing ourselves such as self-respect, self-esteem or feeling good about ourselves. Another is to do with maintaining dignity. What is this invasion or dignity that generates such a strong sense of indignity? Respect and dignity are quests of modernity, but we are looking here at how they dig into the interiority and need of human beings. Dignity has a strong part to play in formulations of poverty. Research conducted for the World Bank highlighted that the poor see their problem as fundamentally social, to do with being written off (shame and humiliation) and not just material.2 Social circumstances and systems are culpable, not just the actions of individuals. In modernity, dignity is cherished as a fundamental human right; the focus of our thinking about law and human rights. Its meaning is contested. The idea of dignity as the foundation for the universal entitlement to human rights represented the coming together after the Second World War of two extremely powerful traditions: Christian theology and Kantian philosophy. Schopenhauer castigated Kant for the vacuity of the notion; a criticism that continued to be echoed by sceptics such as Nietzsche who saw the “Dignity of Labour” and the “Dignity of Man” as fool’s gold, “the needy products of slavedom hiding from itself.” Not only is dignity as an “inner transcendental kernel” behind human rights problematic, but also it draws attention away from the right to be treated with dignity. In contrast, Kateb asks what human dignity is and why it matters for the claim to rights. He proposes that dignity is an “existential” value that pertains to the identity of a person as a human being. To injure or even to try to efface

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someone’s dignity is to treat that person as not human or less than human – as a thing or instrument or subhuman creature. Kateb does not limit the notion of dignity to individuals but extends it to the human species.3 Yet topics in social philosophy such as dignity cannot be discussed in abstraction from their contexts. Dignity plays out in many social transactions. A male doctor examines a female patient; a male security guard checks a woman at an airport. This is an affront to dignity, not belittling per se but a violation of something that is sacred to the recipient. At the interplay of indignation and dignity is a struggle for assertion of a valuable self.

Case study – bullying It is my belief that people bully others in response to having been bullied themselves. I worked with a lady who claimed to have been bullied but was stronger now and wouldn’t ever let it happen again.This was a shared confidence early on in the working relationship of bullying that we had both experienced. Did she then take advantage of that shared information and decide to bully me, attacking a perceived weakness? I think so or was she someone who looked to dominate and belittle any showing a passive/submissive personality. Every day you go to work there is a dark cloud over it when you know that you will be seeing your tormentor that day as the unpredictability of what they will say manifests itself as a tangible fear. If they are off on holiday – there is relief and momentary joy at being able to be yourself without being observed and criticised. I had been doing the job efficiently and effectively for five years before this new boss arrived. However, they chose to micro-manage every aspect of my job. All autonomy was taken away. It only applied to me. Two other people being managed were not treated like this. If anything was pending or unresolved – I was asked to chase it – making a nuisance and a nag with other users who were not able to resolve it – as I well knew – until the next day. Criticism was levelled at me through loud comments in the office to another so that I could clearly overhear – like “the filing is in a disgusting state – I learnt my alphabet in primary school – I thought everyone did” “I know that there was only one person doing the filing that day and it wasn’t you or me . . . ” and also directly “you’re supposed to be doing invoicing” to which I replied that I was! The filing I knew full well had been done by the Receptionist but what was I supposed to say? The filing was often disassembled and reassembled by others so we had little control over it anyway. Additionally, I was not greeted in the morning or talked to even though everyone else was. I was excluded from invitation to social events and also on essential work information. If I worked extra to help out when someone was off sick – I was not

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thanked even though I explained I had done it to help out the team – I was told “I didn’t ask you to.” I would be sitting there feeling hot and cold – sweating and feeling that my heart was about to explode in my chest. I had numerous headaches.The Receptionist and I would be exchanging looks of dread. At times we even felt at odds with one another as it felt like a blame game. I began to feel hateful to the person who was making me feel like this. I feared turning into someone I was never meant to be – full of ill-feeling, snappy and irritated with the family or just tired and withdrawn, my self-confidence ebbing away before me day-by-day. I was told in a review that “I know I’ve been treating you like a child but I found it necessary.” I was too shocked to ask why at the time but cited it as a reason for leaving to the Finance Director who was sad to see me go. I was right. The Receptionist handed in her resignation and left before me without working her notice – saying she wasn’t going to be treated like that any longer.

At the interplay of indignation and dignity there stands the struggle for assertion of a valuable self. An affront to sacredness often generates anger. Anger is liable to being misinterpreted. There are forms of anger that involve lashing out. But anger can often be far more than someone losing their self-control. Often, wrapped in its stormy packaging lies concealed a reflexive paradox. Here is a client saying in connection with an unexpected and unwarranted negative appraisal by management – “it’s a good job I was angry. I wouldn’t have been able to stick up for myself . . . I would have fallen apart . . . But I’m not going to be treated like that!”4 Some – though not all – of the anger people hold stems from the inner Protest, a response to the put-downs or to an environment perhaps where emotions were not validated. It is curious that powering up the indignation in a situation such as this raises levels of self-respect rather than experiencing the depressing effect of inadvertent collusion by going along with it. It raises a question about the relationship between power and value. Why is it that feeling disempowered lowers a sense of worth? For many people, receiving power raises confidence levels and imparts value. It brings career benefits. Psychiatrists at the Harvard Medical School measured how the careers of 824 individuals had progressed in relation to their personality profiles and coping strategies. Those who expressed frustrations tactfully and constructively were less likely to complain they had hit a glass ceiling.5 In contrast, a client suffered from a long-term depression that barely concealed a lifetime of being dumped upon. Suppressed anger raged under the waters of the deep. Anger is hugely illuminating about what is troubling someone deep down.6 Reports of being downtrodden conceal a Protest; a strong

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reaction against going through life second or even third class. To throw off the chains is to move from a subject position of “being someone whom others do things to.” The journey they must make in order to flourish is a voyage of discovery to find their true worth. Paradoxically, the way that a negation of someone’s subjectivity occurs in order to bolster a flawed identity reveals scope for healing and recovery. The Recovery and revaluation of the self becomes possible when individuals or minority groups can declare “this isn’t the only truth about who we are.” Violence shrinks identity by circumscribing the victim to the act of desecration. Recovery is the widening of horizons so a self is no longer defined by an act, by “propaganda of the deed” as it were.

Case study – how did a fourth mastectomy affect my sense of self-worth? I felt O.K. on leaving hospital with my comfy (stuffing used before a prosthesis is fitted). I’d lost my femininity and apart from the soreness of a nine inch scar I felt not part of the human race, not belonging. After the anger subsided and I went without a bra, it was too painful; all the feelings began to “rain in” I felt ugly and ashamed to go out and hoped nobody would look at me if they did I became distressed and pulled my voluminous blouse around me, saying in my head “please don’t look at me.” But still I managed to carry on a conversation. On one particular instance I remember feeling ashamed. It took the five year healing time in which I felt alone and abandoned. It was a very dark place. If it had been a limb amputation or other visible body part I guess I would have been spoken to. I just felt forgotten. I was just unable to carry on my life as before.

Similarly, abuse and the violence of others erode the capacity to value oneself. Says a client in an abusive situation with a violent partner, pouring bleach into her bath to self-harm, “I was always being told how worthless and useless I am.”7 Yet she has now come through those experiences with flying colours. A revaluation has taken place leading to growth in self-belief, rejection of inferiority and reaction to devaluation that asserts, “I’m worth more than that!” It is the Protest. There are several strategies by which the Protest that comes steaming from the molten core below can be channelled productively so that self can be re-valued: strategies such as reflexive renewal and therapy, restorative justice, recognition strategies and reconciliation and forgiveness. These strategies of Protest lie outside the scope of this book. One might be mentioned here, reflexive renewal. Amidst the forces that shape the human subject, making us

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a site of struggle and contest, we are nevertheless free to create our own story, free to make of ourselves what we will. This is the capacity to author our own narrative that is the essence of our humanity.8 We are capable of self-awareness, reflexivity and choice. The discourse that frames people’s lives can be critically analysed. Human agency involves an ability to manipulate or use discourse and narrative and place ourselves in the driving seat. This is liberating, holding out as it does the possibility of change and alternative options for the exercise of power and violence. Reflexive self-awareness enables people to look inside themselves and ask, “who am I?” and “why am I doing this?”9 Through it, repeat cycles can be subjected to increasingly sharp personal interrogation and chains can be broken. The same strategy is in constant evidence when the internal territory of the human psyche is surveyed. Consider this personal response, a cry of the heart from a client in pain: I have a low opinion of myself, which makes me feel that I am worthless and a waste of space. I feel I am worthless because I have been through a lot, which has left me feeling very used and abused. And very dirty! This is all my fault. I feel very lowself-confidence and low self-esteem. I am fat and ugly. I am very worthless because of rejection as a child by parents, bullying by my brother and by my peers at school. The past issues of sexual abuse and rape all plug into the voices which shout at me twenty-four hours a day that I am worthless and a waste of space. I have to believe those voices. A lot of the time I have to put on a brave face and pretend to people I am fine when I really feel like I’m being torn apart inside my head!10 People’s sense of themselves, their subjectivity, is shaped by the stances or subject positions they take up in the force field of relational power.11 This subject position can change through reflexive learning that engenders discovery moments.12 On this building site, a deep layer transformative project takes place where human actors are free to understand themselves and build alternatives. The capacity for putting oneself in the place of another and attempting to communicate with them is an imaginative capacity that needs to be aroused to see oneself through the medium of narrative. Nelson Mandela told of how he tried to reach out to his jailer, who supplied him with too much food for lunch, not enough for an evening.13 A hotplate to heat up lunch leftovers would be a very helpful addition to the prison regime. To win him round, Mandela started reading about and then talking about rugby, a sport the Afrikaner jailer adored. The jailer was won over. A hotplate arrived shortly. Therapy is one way that the personal landscape that has been brutalised through violence can be re-imaged. It offers a way by which the original experience of violence and its ongoing enslavement can be represented differently to help drain the swamps of distress that a particular memory is generating. One route towards re-imaging and resolution is EMDR (eye-movement de-sensitisation re-programming), an approach conspicuously successful with

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many traumatic experiences.14 Arguably, it also taps into not just mental health but also an instinctive tendency to move towards an environment of value. Trauma generates negative beliefs heavily laden with emotion and guilt – “I’m bad,” “I’m disgusting.” Invariably, the self feels devalued, desecrated, soiled and spoiled. Accessing the memory brings about a re-valuing of self, much as a property is re-valued and priced higher. The self perceives itself as having a value that was either interrupted or buried. Maybe approaches such as EMDR allow the mind to move towards restoration precisely because it taps into the underlying dimension of value that is built into our constitution and part of the human operating system.

Case study – how do you find your self-esteem when life has thrown its fair share at you? I was born in African country, to a wedlock single 20 year-old woman, my birth brought a lot of societal/familial problem to her family, which meant that she was disowned and from the age of 3 I was brought up by my great mother and then at about 8 yrs I went to live with my biological mother’s family and then at 15 years moved to the UK to be reunited with my biological mother. My father does not know about my existence and I have been fed a lot of lies in regards to him from he did not want to you, he does not care and I do not know the truth and I have come to the conclusion that it is okay. I have had psychological distress in one form or another since I can remember and 10 years old I attempted my first suicide with Dettol and then at 14 years I become a mute and after thorough tests it come back that it was not physical rather than psychological although being from a country that you hear the word psychological problem, you immediately think that, am I mad? I was 16 and just told my biological mother that during her absence in my childhood I had been raped as a child. Her initial reaction was to send me to the cinema; the movie was Maid in Manhattan. In the weeks and months that followed I was made to feel like it was my fault that this had happened. Then I had an appointment for counselling with a youth provision but what I needed most of the unconditional support of my biological mother. When I was 18, I was referred to the mental health services by my then GP after she had diagnosed me with chronic depression after I had locked myself in my flat and dropped out of college because I had not been dealing with life. A lot of rapid changes had happened in my life and I did not have the emotional or practical support that I needed. On reflection these are key tools that had been missing ALL of my life. This encounter with a statutory mental health provider has lasted until now. Perhaps I feel it is only just giving plasterers upon plasterers that only last for a while before the next crisis. At times I felt like I was sabotaging my own life and therefore

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saw myself as the cause of my own pain. Over the years I have been given a lot of diagnosis on the mental health spectrum and in my naiveté at times I thought if I have a clear diagnosis that would come with a practical tool to help manage.Whilst I had the depression/anxiety diagnosis the longest I was offered six sessions of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). I felt that it was very victim blaming and on a deeper reflection I feel that perhaps to tell someone to change a behaviour that they have no understanding of and because of the environment that they have grown they not got the emotional tools to do so. Moreover, are six sessions of CBT adequate to deal with issues of trauma, rejection and abandonment or does that just minimise the severe emotional anguish that individual has endured? I have also attended Talk Therapy sessions which were so vital in dealing with the current crisis whether it was the pressure of my studies however this was short lived and not enough time to delve into the core issues that plagued my life. In 2015 I was given a diagnosis of Paranoid Schizophrenia though this diagnosis threw me a curveball. I knew that I had to get to the bottom of my own mental health illness. Over the last 18 months I had a very unconventional journey of finding out my truth and though painful and my journey has provided me with vital answers and moving forward, there are perhaps ways that we can help survivors of trauma.Whilst I am aware that the financial resources within the mental health and General Health services are at an all-time low, with the little [we have] we do what we can. Survivors of childhood traumas may not have had the tools to know what is right or wrong in most aspects of life. But life for them has never been rational and therefore the therapies that they access have to valid their pain otherwise they will see whatever else that happens to them or around them as their fault. It is vital to let survivors of trauma like me know that there is life after trauma and this achievable by providing long-term, empathetic tools. Short-term tools are detrimental for their overall life. Only providing support whilst they are in a crisis only deals with that crisis.The crisis is pitch black and the next phase is perhaps is their normal where dark clouds still roam. So, the task should always to get them to sunshine where they may never have been.Then the journey from survivor to thriver begins.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5

Johnstone, A. (2007) From our own correspondent. BBC Radio 4, 25th October. Corbett, S., & Fikkert, B. (2009) When Helping Hurts. Chicago: Moody, pp. 51–54. Kateb, G. (2011) Human Dignity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Vaillant, G. (2009) Harvard Study of Adult Development. www.escience.news.com accessed 1st March 2009.

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6 Bond, M., & Vaillant, G. (1992) Ego Mechanisms of Defence: A Guide for Clinicians and Researchers. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, Inc. 7 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 8 Reed-Danahay, D. (1997) Auto-Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social. Oxford: Berg. 9 Wingard, B., & Lester, J. (2001) Telling our Stories in Ways That Make Us Stronger. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications. 10 Author’s case notes; statement offered by client. 28 November 2007. Used with permission. 11 Das, V., & Kleinman, A. (Eds.). (2000). Violence and Subjectivity. Berkeley: University of California Press. 12 Reinharz, S. (1997) Who am I? The need for a variety of selves in the field. In R. Hertz (Ed.), Reflexivity and Voice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 13 Carlin, J. (2008) Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation. London: Penguin. 14 Shapiro, F., & Forrest, M. S. (2004) EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress & Trauma. New York: Basic Books.

Chapter 9

The relational turn Self-esteem and self-actualisation

Value is a foundational principle of human action. Conveying worth is not merely an aspiration but a dimension of the human operating system; an ineradicable trait. Without a sense of value, we are cramped and constrained. Or we wither. With a rising sense of a valuable self, we function at our optimum and offer pathways of hope, combining significance with belonging and bringing out the best in people. Ego is about self-interest. Ego on its own and in itself is the ultimate in selfishness. The self in itself cannot be a container for a valuable self which must be held relationally. We will explore here the notion that self-esteem is an inadequate container for the view of human personality proposed. People are not individual entities but inter-dependent and inherently relational. This is surely why loneliness matters. With the withdrawal of significant human contact, as with forced retirement from work, a major source of validation is lost. Such issues are to do not just with the external phenomena of prejudice or oppression but with their internalising impact and representation. In other words, they concern subjectivity; how external states of affairs become states of mind. The term “sociology of the unconscious” was first coined by Wilhelm Reich in The Sexual Revolution in the context of his programme for the emancipation of sexuality and society.1 The phrase points towards the role that hidden emotional processes play in creating certain types of society and how social change takes place through social control. Freud did not discover the unconscious. The hidden realm of the mind had been known though little explored. He saw dreams as the route to access the inaccessible but was not alone in that – his contemporary Henry James referred to the “unconscious cerebration of sleep.”2 Freud’s favourite literary giant Goethe looked to the unconscious realm as the source of creative inspiration. With so many Enlightenment figures such as Rousseau and Kierkegaard, the mind had become acutely aware of itself. Inwardness reigned. Yet Freud’s formulation of the “id” as a wild west of largely sexual desire that needed to be repressed broke new ground. His was a dualistic scheme (or with the addition of the superego, a tripartite one) to parallel the dualism of mind and body arising from us being Descartes’ children.

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In modernity, then, it became fashionable to discover ourselves through looking inwards. From about the 1960s onward, this became the basis of the self-esteem industry. It is, however, in relationship that we discover ourselves since that provides the experiences that sustain our sense of who we are. People attend to basics first and progressively deal with more complex needs later. Maslow noted two versions of esteem needs, a lower one and a higher one. The need for the respect of others is lower – the need for status, fame, glory, recognition, attention, reputation, appreciation, dignity, even dominance. The higher form involves the need for self-respect, including such feelings as confidence, competence, achievement, mastery, independence and freedom. The negative version of these needs is low self-esteem and inferiority complexes. Maslow agreed with Adler’s proposal that these were at the roots of many of our psychological problems. These needs were, Maslow contended, important for survival. Even love and esteem are needed in order to survive. Maslow objected to criticism that he had merely invented the self-actualiser syndrome – the great souls characteristic of perhaps 2% of the population. But the objection was not easily dismissed. He never presented data to prove that his lists of characteristics of self-actualisers were accurate. It was deemed to be obvious, or that every healthy person he knew was motivated in this way. His opinions were not validated in the normal scientific method. He admitted he had read about the great souls and derived his psychology from seeking to distil how they met their needs. But the main reason for re-visiting Maslow is not so much the methodology of study but the unit of study. Maslow seems to be positing the needs of a self-contained individual, a human actor on his or her own. It is not a relational model of personhood. What happens when the unit of analysis becomes not “an individual” but “an individual in relationship?” Human beings are inherently social. The hierarchy of needs reflects a particular cultural moment, the US of the second half of the 20th century; an individualist culture where middle-class people worry about their personal needs more than any collective needs. What about staff being concerned about colleagues or employees being tense on the shop floor or in the office because their children are having problems? A more relational view of motivation was developed by Elton Mayo (1880– 1949). Mayo argued that workers are not just concerned with money but also are motivated more as they have their social needs met in the workplace. Mayo introduced the Human Relation School of thought, which emphasised managers taking more of an interest in the workers, treating them as people who have worthwhile opinions and realising that workers enjoy interacting together.3 I argue elsewhere that you cannot understand contemporary life without some concept of the struggle to realise our value.4 It plugs into the felt worth people have. The world of contemporary organisations is a human landscape

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to be read through the lens of human devaluation. Companies, public services and management styles often evoke statements of personal worth by their employees – either because they value them or the opposite – because they practice devaluation. Value is a foundational principle of human action. Conveying worth is not merely an aspiration but a dimension of the human operating system; an ineradicable trait. Without a sense of value, we are cramped and constrained. Or we wither. With a rising sense of a valuable self, we function at our optimum and offer pathways of hope.

Self-esteem research Self-esteem equals success divided by pretensions. – William James5

It is well known that the most important influences on young people’s levels of self-esteem are their parents – partly as a result of genetic inheritance and partly through the degree of love, concern, acceptance and interest that they show to their children. “How do I know if I have low self-esteem?” asks a self-help guide using Cognitive Behavioural techniques. If you do not see yourself as having intrinsic worth, then you have negative beliefs. Maybe this came through negative experiences such as rejection, neglect, abuse, criticism and punishment, lack of praise, being the odd one out. It feeds an estimate of worth and value as a person. “I’m worthless, stupid.”6 Swann asks why are so many of us unable to attain higher self-esteem despite our best efforts to do so? Pursuing it, he argues, takes many into “self-traps,” out of a deeply rooted human desire for self-verification.7 It is, he suggests, mistaken to conceptualise self-esteem as “a structure” that lies within the person akin to a heart and lung system. Self-esteem is more about the way people respond to their world and relate to it. It is a belief system that is woven throughout the interactions we have with our world. Self-esteem, or its lack, is not a thing but an ingrained mode of thinking. Self-views are rooted in our social circumstances but dig down into the complex interior. Those with low value will often pay more attention to negative evaluations. Yet they gravitate towards partners who evaluate them negatively, thus sabotaging improvement in self-views. Swann endeavours to explode myths about the nature of selfesteem. No one is born with qualities that lead inevitably to the development of low self-esteem. Many of the practices that are commonly thought to increase self-esteem may, in reality, promote its opposite. Strategies for raising self-esteem often engender the opposite effect. A woman’s experience of partners who put her down may lead her to find those

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who this time she hopes will be different except that it reinforces her previous impressions. It is paradoxical, raising false hopes. The theory that deficits in self-esteem lead to a broad array of dysfunctional behaviours has run a long distance. As Brandon puts it in Six Pillars of Self-Esteem: I cannot think of a single psychological problem – from anxiety to depression, to under-achievement at school or at work, to fear of intimacy, happiness or success, to alcohol or drug abuse, to spouse battering or child molestation, to co-dependency and sexual disorders, to passivity and chronic aimlessness, to suicide and crimes of violence – that is not traceable, at least in part, to the problem of deficient self-esteem.8 There have been, however, strong critics of the self-esteem movement. According to Brown University Psychologist William Damon, the growing reluctance of teachers to deliver corrective feedback to students was misdirected.9 If a school produced an atmosphere where the word “bad” was never spoken, where everyone was chosen for the football team and where everyone got a prize, that would not prepare their pupils for the world outside. The California’s Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem and Personal and State Responsibility generated unabashed missionary zeal in the cause of high selfesteem. However, researchers who evaluated its objectives concluded that there was no obvious causality or connection between self-esteem and variables such as academic failure or welfare dependency.10 The self-esteem movement was rooted in certain assumptions, such as a strongly held view that people feel entitled to praise and affirmation or that people are motivated to think well of themselves. The problem seems to be that external commentary is received in relation to how far it conforms to existing views of the self. These tend to be reinforced or must be preserved rather than seriously challenged. It is circular. We need each other to recognise the identities we have negotiated before. It is those that do not conform to the identities expected of them that will come in for social criticism.11 Yet despite concerns such as these, that doesn’t mean there is no connection between how people see themselves, their performance or well-being. Worthlessness does seem to be the backcloth for clinical depression or suicide.12 Those who have negative self-views will tend to downplay it when others praise them or silently assent when negative comment is offered. Those with negative self-views often gravitate towards acceptance of denigration as their lot in life; indeed, often abuse. They will often wind up in relationships that attract further abuse, thus confirming negative self-views. On the face of it, this runs counter to the deep-seated emotional response we are exploring here as a social driver – the need to be valued through selfconfirmation. It often evokes “strong, vigorous, tenacious resistance” characteristic of repression, Freud said.13

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What seems to happen so often is that people do indeed long for praise, but they are also drawn down towards views that confirm their deeply held views of themselves. Those with negative self-views framed by being put down or written off are caught in a trap, distressingly caught between the desire to be praised and affirmed and previous experiences of being devalued. They seem to want both; to be valued but also have their existing self-views corroborated. Swann nicely uses the term “Groucho’s Paradox” to describe this when the famous humorist was explaining why he was dropping out of the Hollywood Chapter of the Friars Club – “I just don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”14 Or as the US psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan expressed it, people work at stabilising their self-views (whether positive or negative) because they need such stability through identity formation to ensure social relations with others are manageable.15 Charles Cooley and George Herbert Mead theorised that we do not know who we are instinctively; we infer self-knowledge from our experiences with others. We know who we are through social contexts.16 As Mead put it, No hard and fast line can be drawn between our own selves and the selves of others, since our own selves exists and enter as such into our experience only insofar as the selves of others exist and enter as such into our experience also.17 It has become widely accepted that the reactions of others provide the foundations for our own self-perception and also that parents shape the self-views of children. This provides the basis for self-verification or its lack. Social actors tend to align their self-perception with impressions that significant others seem to have of them. Strongly held self-views have become very entrenched. Consider the basic ingredients of self-perception; a feeling of being loveable and a feeling of being competent. Both are sustained through relationships with others yet constitute different strategies and provide different routes towards acceptance either through close relationships or through the workplace. As Martin Buber wrote, self-confirmation is fundamental to being human: The basis of man’s life with man is two-fold, and it is one – the wish of every man to be confirmed as what he is . . . and the innate capacity of man to be confirm his fellow man in this way.18 The drive to sustain self-esteem is a massive concern in the West. Widespread belief in “raising self-esteem” as an all-purpose cure for social problems has created a huge market for self-help manuals and educational programmes. In the US, the state of California even went so far as to invest significant public funds in trying to raise the self-esteem of its citizens. Self-esteem is often promoted to be a major cause of dysfunctional behaviour ranging from youth involvement

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in crime to adult failure to succeed in life, the root of all the problems in the world. Yet a review of the literature commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that many of the most commonly held beliefs about low self-esteem are myths. Individuals who have an unjustifiably high opinion of themselves can, in many cases, pose a far greater threat to those around them than people whose sense of self-worth is unusually low. Much of the published research is inadequate for deciding whether low self-esteem is a causal influence on behaviour. Longitudinal studies following the fortunes of children and young people over time, show that low self-esteem is not a risk factor for delinquency, violence towards others (including child and partner abuse), drug use, alcohol abuse, educational under-attainment or racism. Relatively low self-esteem is a risk factor for suicide, suicide attempts, depression, teenage pregnancy and victimisation by bullies. However, in each case, it is only one among several related risk factors. Although causal mechanisms remain unclear, relatively low childhood self-esteem seems to be associated with adolescent eating disorders and among males with low earnings.19 Where many of the biggest and most expensive social problems are concerned – crime, violence, alcohol abuse and racism – there is no warrant that low self-esteem plays a significant part. In personal relationships, “liking the ones who are not really good for you” is common. So is the experience of feeling used in inter-personal relationships. Healthy couple relationships provide an important source of personal value. Sex is a very complex experience. It has many aspects which have nothing to do with lust. Being penetrated is an intense experience being touched can be a pleasant experience . . . being held has been a comforting experience for most people since they were babies. Being desired can seem like a tempting alternative to being ignored all your life. Intimacy itself can be very powerfully attractive if you feel isolated and lonely.20

A human exchange system I found that no objections were ever raised as long as what appeared to be in the Evening Standard Diary ministered to the subject’s self-esteem. – the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge21

Self-esteem is, however, too self-focussed as a container category for human value/devaluation. By itself, it breeds narcissism and disregard of what others make or do. In short, it is too selfish. By this light, people can and often do value themselves too highly. Whether the construct of realising our worth and

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experiences of devaluation can be subsumed within discussion of self-esteem or self-worth must be questioned sharply. The concept of value is far more elastic. First, it impinges on experiences of both difference and indifference, stretching across social and inter-personal worlds. Second, value is inherently “other” oriented; it requires a valuer and who or what is valued as well as the act of valuing. Concepts of value in personal and inter-personal psychology lead to the importance of recognition, not just cognition. A theme of this essay has been that of human exchange as the means by which value/disvaluing is transmitted. That is why “self-worth” or “selfesteem” cannot contain the notion of value. Transactions constantly take place between people and it is in human interaction and social exchanges that high or low value is accorded. We noted this in Chapter 4. In family systems, relationships exchange certain goods as if they were products – especially love, security and approval, or their lack. In return, children may want to do well for their parent’s sake. Organisations are also a force field of relational transactions; the returns are monetary but more than monetary. The concept of a hierarchy of needs shows that. Economics provides templates for human exchanges. Regulated by the price mechanism, contractual arrangements are continually being entered into in order to meet mutual needs for supply and demand. People sell what they have added value to – be it goods or services – in order to earn cash. However, as we also noted in Chapter 4, violent encounters are a vehicle in which products are exchanged. Someone stares at you; the gaze has been switched on. He or she means to do you harm. Aggression boils over. A force field of relational power has been established. The victim is faced with an unnerving choice. Does he or she give what is demanded? Will perpetrators, often reacting to being devalued and rubbished (victims turned victimisers) seek to redress the balance by engaging in violent transactions so as to scrape what they need off the face of someone else? Britons have been boozers and scrappers for centuries but self-destructive behaviour today in part reflects perception that their lives are not worth very much.22 Perhaps a sense of value in which humans can flourish and do their best work provides a link between self-respect and respect for others that goes beyond self-esteem. Human valuing is located not just in an individual but also in interaction with others. Being self-regarding without reference to others and by itself is dangerous. Arguably, the construct of value/devaluation bears more freight than self-esteem. It is the essence of inflation that it devalues everything it touches. Where there is an inflated sense of ego, a valuable self is not being held in relation to others. Those around are being devalued and the bearer of this heavy freight devalues himself. A focus on self-esteem assumes that the games people play to extract their value are a zero-sum game in which there

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is only so much to go round. By definition, winners and losers compete for a scarce resource. Hey! If someone treats you like crap, just remember there is something wrong with them, not you. Normal people don’t go around destroying other human beings.23 Value is an assessment of importance. What is valued in the marketplace depends on relative importance and the cultural meanings assigned in systems of symbolic exchange. When applied to people, value is a measure of how important, how “valuable” they are. But to whom? The suggestion is that the impetus to be valued, to be of significance, pursued through many avenues and multiple openings, is a key motivator in personal life. In wider society, it is a social driver. With a high value, we flourish; without it, we wither. Hence issues of value arise within the realm of subjectivity. Subjectivity is to do with the personal and the psychological; the inner landscape of social ecology. We read sociological data but do not always grasp their psychological significance, which is their interiorised logic. As we will see, the impact of human devaluation is a key border country where unconscious meets society. The problem of the unconscious relates to that deep-seated hinterland, the site of mental forces struggling for expression that engage with the social world. The unconscious is not as Freud supposed – a dark, primaeval place of unruly impulses; it is rather more sophisticated. For every problem such as eating disorders there is a new symptom, a proliferation of different diagnoses. Scholars in different fields have called for a reformulation of “honour” and shame as a window on social problems. Could responses to human devaluation be acting as a driver in many instances?

Recognition, not just cognition We have an inbuilt psychosocial need to be worthwhile people engaged in worthwhile projects, and therefore active in garnering worth from our world. The psychodynamics of this motivating driver seems to be that it is “instinctive,” rooted in unconscious life as well as conscious action. It is a psychosocial drive strengthening in many people even when libido is ebbing. A strong force in social life, it is an impetus that has to find expression somehow. When blocked in one key area, the demoralised self looks for fresh avenues as means by which value may be gathered. The pursuit of a high value is relational; not “a thing” but cohering in the space within and between. The concept of inner value must, therefore, be subverted. Is the very idea of human value something which does not in fact exist in and by itself but only through interaction with other valuers? The very notion of value might point us in this direction. Value is not normally self-referencing. Value implies a valuer, something (or someone) that is valued and the link

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between the two, that is, the attitude someone has thinking something is a valuable good. A relational view of the self underlies the notion that a high value is a social driver. The sense of oneself as a valuable self is socially acquired. It is their social environment that shapes how people are recognised and addressed. From those foundations, a unique personal identity is laid down. The self becomes not so much what one is but what one does in social interaction. Individuality is not the product of a moment but a structured process “sedimented” from significant interaction moments. As Reformed theologian LeRon Shults acutely observes, “Human existence is characterised by a trembling fascination, a passionate longing for secure relation with the other . . . the human longing for beauty in its broadest sense involves a desire for belonging in a pattern of peaceful reality.”24 The concept of relationality is important for the traditional focus of individual psychology. It is a profound challenge for many versions of the self. Personhood is no longer understood as constituted by an autonomous subject. Relations between individuals and their spheres of belonging are now seen to be constitutive. The ethical project of Emmanuel Levinas illustrates this well. It is through face-to-face relations that we find ourselves called by and obligated to the other. Through these relations, we are also confronted with the presence of the Infinite, who is absolutely Other.25 The problem is deriving a sense of individual identity from engaging in a particular set of transactions. How is continuity to be accounted for that underlies many relationships? A sense of value is born as an individual is called into being by significant others. Our sense of subjectivity is socially acquired, born of interaction. Social codes and structures are not simply objective givens but layers of previous personal exchanges; inter-subjective realities. Relationships are a primary structure; the secondary structure regulating the economy and social status make that primary structuring a concrete reality. In the space between us, particular locations are not of equal distance because the particularity of social and inter-personal locations in that matrix are structured in particular ways. Individuals are internally structured through being members of a public world. The exchange of everyday life is constituted as communication. Meanings are forged in encounters between people. Interiority and the experience of value and devaluation are played out amidst the contested politics of interpretation and perception. What is important to one person or group against another will generate different evaluations that in turn rub off against how internalised value is experienced. Factors in social or personal life that are put-downs or relegation to one person may hold different meanings to another. An interpretive view of the world is fundamental to experiences of being devalued that are, in part, culturally determined.

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In social theory, symbolic interactionism is the claim that humans act towards things and people on the basis of the meanings they have for us. The meanings we construct arise out of the process of social interaction, modified through an interpretive process. Humans create worlds of experience in which they live, the meaning of which comes from an interaction, shaped by the selfreflection that people bring to their experiences. This level of self-interaction is interwoven with social interaction and influences that social interaction.26 This mode of cognition and awareness of self as a person of value is of major importance if we are to understand our own personal history as well as the social realm. The way that stretching out towards a high value is strong motivator stands out particularly against the dark forces that surround the ego. No biography can be separated from its social context and the systems that serve to constrain that life, within which it is embedded. The ego need only survive – the pursuit of a valuable self is the icing on the cake and begs many questions. A valuable self is accrued through significance (a contrast to diminishing), being seen and heard (attention as a contrast to indifference) and assertion of sacred space (in contrast to indignity). Such are the strategies of the pursuit of value in everyday life. A concept of human nature that refers to internal properties does not take full account of external, environmental constraints, and it assumes that humans begin their biographies endowed with such properties. Furthermore, the notion that we can gain access to a pristine human core is deeply problematical. Humans are culturally embedded, and cultures are embedded in universally shared features of human experience. “To be human is to belong both to a common species and to a distinct culture and the one only because of the other.”27 The notion of the self being cradled in concert with other subjectivities is raised by Husserl in his proposals. On the assumption that consciousness can be known only from the inside, the question was how an individual consciousness knows that others are conscious subjective beings and know the contents of their conscious subjective lives. Husserl argued that our very sense of objectivity and what it means to be rational depends on inter-subjectivity. The very notion of something being there objectively must mean that others can experience it too. We live in a shared world.28 Durkheim has sometimes been thought to represent the view that sociology must have nothing to do with psychological explanations. It is the social that constrains. Yet while concerned to show that social association was the central aspect of human society, Durkheim was well aware that there is a psychical life which emanates from that greater sociability.29 The whole sociology project is an endeavour to account for the ways that humans co-operate, that is, linking the social system with the cognitive dimension of human action. What people are doing when they interact has been a focus of functionalism in social theory,30 but the paradigm has also been influential in linking a social system with

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the cognitive dimension of human action. Goffman, for instance, proposed models of organising social reality – what he called frames – “an interaction order” of things akin to rules of engagement.31 Inter-subjective recognition lies at the core of our humanity. Cries for human recognition are ultimately based on core and common humanity. The very quest for emancipation or reaction against human devaluation conceals a protest, that we are worth more than this, that we have a claim to be treated with justice and equity. This very claim and protest is ultimately rooted in human value. There must be a deeper layer by which human recognition is to be accorded, that we are dealing with a human subject who has a claim on justice. In short, the social order continually perpetrates a category mistake. Valuing people for what they do is relative value. Valuing people for what they are is intrinsic value. This is what human devaluation breaches through its violation. Personal centring is crucial for cultivating a sense of value. To move from a personal centre of being and communication is what makes self-direction possible. Consciousness, experience and interaction with the world are internally centred.32 Yet as McFayden asks, how does such personal centring come about? Is it rooted in some internal organ or stem from natural constitution as a human being? If so, it would be difficult to account for cultural variations in the way that persons centre themselves or for the way different cultures yield different senses of the self and identity. It would also be difficult to resist the notion that individualistic conceptions of the self were pre-social. Social life would not be able to add much to a personal centre that was essentially private. Realising oneself through social interaction would take second place to bringing an identity already realised. A relational view of the self underlies the notion that the sense of oneself as a valuable self is socially acquired. It is their social environment that shapes how people are recognised and addressed. From those foundations, a unique personal identity is “sedimented” to use McFayden’s suggestive phrase. The self becomes not so much what one is but what one does in social interaction. Individuality is not the product of a moment but a structured process sedimented from many significant interaction moments. The problem is deriving a sense of individual identity from engaging in a particular set of transactions. How is continuity to be accounted for which will underlie many relationships? Nevertheless, it seems clear that a sense of value is born as an individual is called into being by significant others. Our sense of subjectivity is socially acquired, born of interaction. Social codes and structures are not simply objective givens but layers of previous personal exchanges; inter-subjective realities. This is a primary structure; the secondary structure regulating the economy and social status make that primary structuring a concrete reality. In the space between us, particular locations are not of equal distance because the particularity of social and inter-personal locations in that matrix are structured in particular ways. Individuals are internally structured through being members of a public world. Everyday exchange is constituted as communication. Individuals

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become less than worthwhile subjects or alternatively possessing a totalitarian subject with an over mighty self-esteem at the expense of others. This is the channel for value. Maybe Freud had it right that the one who loves has, so to speak, forfeited part of his narcissism!33

Notes 1 Reich, W. (1929) The Sexual Revolution. London, 1951, p. 18. 2 James, H. (2012) The Aspern Papers. London: Empire Books. 3 Mayo, E. (2018) The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization. London: Forgotten Books. 4 Steed, C. D. (2017) Smart Leadership, Wise Leadership: Environments of Value in an Emerging Future. London: Routledge. 5 James, W. (1890) The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1. New York: Dover, p. 310. 6 Fennell, M. (1999) Overcoming Low Self-Esteem. London: Robinson Publishing Ltd., p. 5. 7 Swann, W. (1996) Self, Relationships, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Basic Books. 8 Brandon, N. (1994) Six Pillars of Self-Esteem. New York: Bantam Books, p. 95. 9 Damon, W. (1995) Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence in America’ Homes and Schools. New York: The Free Press. 10 Mecca, A. M., Smelser, N. J., & Vasconcellos, J. (Eds.). (1989) The Social Importance of Self-Esteem. Berkeley: University of California Press. 11 Swann, W. (1996) Self, Relationships, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Basic Books, p. 11. 12 Tennen, H., & Affleck, G. (1993) The puzzles of self-esteem: A clinical perspective. In R. Baummeister (Ed.), Self-Esteem: The Puzzle of Low Self-Regard. New York: Plenum. 13 Freud, S. (1917) Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: Norton, p. 248. 14 Swann, W. (1996) Self, Relationships, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Basic Books, p. 18. 15 Sullivan, H. S. (1953) The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: Norton. 16 Cooley, C. H. (1902) Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: G. Scribner’s Sons. 17 Mead, G. H. (1935) Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 18 Buber, M. (1951) Distance and relation. The Hibbert Journal: Quarterly Review of Religion, Theology and Philosophy, 49, 105–113 quoted in Swann, W. (1996) Self, Relationships, and the Construction of Social Reality. New York: Basic Books, p. 30. 19 www.jrf.org.uk/node/893 20 Donaldson, S. (2004) Hooking Up: Protective Pairing for Punks. Article written to advise male survivors of prisoner rape. From Scheper-Hughes, N., & Bourgois, P. (Eds.). (2004) Violence in War and Peace. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, p. 353. 21 Wolfe, G. (1995) Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 22 The Economist, 6th February 2010. 23 www.daveswordsofwisdom.com accessed April 2015. 24 LeRon Shults, F. (2003) Reforming Theological Anthropology. Grand Rapids, MI: William B Eerdmans, p. 6. 25 Levinas, E. (1996) Basic Philosophical Writings. Ed. by A. T. Peperzak, et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 26 Blumer, H. (1969) Symbolic Interactionism. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. 27 Parekh, B. (2000). Report of the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain. London: Runnymede Trust, p. 124. 28 Husserl, E. (1991) Cartesian Meditations. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

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29 Durkheim, E. (1960) The Division of Labour in Society. New York, p. 346. 30 Parsons, T. (1954). Revised Analytic Approach to Social Stratification: Essays in Sociological Theory. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. 31 Goffman, I. (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organisation of Experience. New York: Harper & Row. 32 McFayden, A. (1990) The Call to Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 69. 33 From Freud’s studies of narcissism, quoted in Aktar, S. (2018) A Web of Sorrow: Mistrust, Jealousy, Lovelessness, Shamelessness, Regret, Hopelessness. London: Karnac Books.

Chapter 10

Like a sailboat in the harbour Collision and collusion

Here are two more voices. The first a psychotherapist, the second a client. Everyone is born ok . . . there is a profound difference between the intimate worth of our existence and any evaluation of our behaviour. Our being is unquestionable, our actions may not be. . . . Whatever we do, every life has its own unique value. Clients are helped to restore this belief in themselves as intrinsically worthwhile.1 My Dad abused me in every way possible. It was constant, violent, never stopped. I grew up believing I was not worth anything. My husband helped me to get the self-respect I had never had.2 This essay endeavours to re-locate the notion of human value as the site of a dynamic struggle at work in society and in everyday life in exchanges between people. It suggests there is a social dynamic that operates in the interplay of being devalued by those with power and in the reflex response – latent or patent – reacting against it. The proposal is that the impetus towards being of high value and the response is a fundamental driver by an energy that is embedded in our psyche. It is, in short, a motivational driver. But what would it mean to describe that need in those terms? A reactive model of inter-personal change is inherent in the social psychology of G. H. Mead. The intuitive sense of human individuation is a developing process by which the person can form an identity through interaction with others who recognise that identity and offer approval and the means for expansion of the circle of social environment. As consciousness of human identity grows, the subject is dependent on conditions for recognition afforded in that social environment. It is because every individual needs constant re-assurance by significant others that the experience of disrespect threatens an injury that could cause the identity of the individual to be at risk or even to collapse.3 The self is compelled to reassure itself that it is autonomous and a distinct individual, forced to assume the standpoint of a “generalised other” from whom intersubjective approval is needed. Such dynamics are illuminated in personal life again from client observation. “Being a dutiful daughter with my critical Mother,

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I just went along with it. Then, through counselling, came a glimpse of what life could be. I had a right to live. I had alternatives!”4 So how do human beings respond to the put-downs of everyday life? The role that value plays as a serious and constitutive factor in society is underlined primarily through its opposite. As we will argue, the impetus towards a high value is a core issue. There would seem to be three reactions to the operation of social or inter-personal devaluing which trigger a core challenge: 1

2

3

Demoralisation – the effects of social and personal factors which convey absence of any sense that an individual or social group counts, perception that a sense of worth and dignity has gone and which often throws up desperation and depression. Feeling pointless and bleak, people give up! They can no longer see the point of themselves Collusion (resignation) – a lowering of value characterised by collusion – going along with the state of things, acting out the scripts handed to you carrying potential rather than absence. Protest – a rising up to affirm worth and discovery that you could be what you wanted to be.

These responses translate into identity – who we are. They constitute a core challenge since relative social and economic valuing is experienced as an absolute sense of identity – a form of category error. In effect, society inflicts a category mistake on many people. As we have seen, the way human subjects are constructed is bound up with processes of being devalued. At one level, this is social labelling. But the point is that it “digs into” a layer of personal worth whereby what people are is called into question. A relative statement is thus converted into an absolute sense of core challenge. I explored strategies of switching positions elsewhere in the context of why inequality matters.5

Demoralisation and the shape of shame It is worth stating that human resilience, like any animal instinct, is strong and enduring. From prisoners of war to street kids to those growing up and trying to thrive in the most difficult circumstances, the survival instinct to live by one’s wits is both strong and enduring. Is this a God-given instinct? Maybe so, but what Victor Frankl showed us is that, unlike animals, human beings in concentration camps cannot live without hope, whatever other adversity is against them. Some just fold up and can no longer see the point of themselves.6 Put-downs of everyday life are par for the course of the project of living. Belittling (or reduction) is routinely experienced – whether sarcastic comments, a difficult working environment characterised by occasional humiliation, being ignored or treated as if we had little to offer. One case of an academic put-down that attracted considerable publicity involved a leading historian writing reviews praising his own work as fascinating whilst rubbishing

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that of his opponents.7 Demeaning words and actions often arise in the context of family conflict which, research shows, is a significant cause of unhappiness in children.8 All such experiences diminish people. She had taken that diminishing deep into herself by inglorious self-appointment. For many years she held this status with hallowed memory, then grew weary of it.9 Arguably, it is “value-in-oneself ” that has been assaulted in experiences such as these as it is in the range of psychosocial impact of relative effects such as unemployment, anorexia or status anxiety. Effects relative to others’ place in social life are being experienced as an absolute threat to our being. They may purport to be about how we look, what we do or what we are not now able to do. Yet it is far more serious than that. Such experiences threaten us, rob us and mug an inherent sense of a valuable self rendering us “worth-less,” or even “worthless.” Factors in social life that seem to assault the absolute sense of value-in-oneself will often accomplish demoralisation. An effect relative to others is experienced as an absolute threat. A core challenge has been triggered. It may be as a result of labouring under the pressure of expectations about the life led as a woman in a developing country, as a member of an ethnic minority group or someone subject to class.

Case study 10 What was the impact on me of feeling rubbish? I was inherently an evil person, a bad person.There was a physical manifestation in terms of slouching. I wasn’t worthy of food, of security. The effect that this had on me was not only emotional. All aspects of my life had been impacted. In my education I was labelled as dumb and too stupid and that somehow I needed brain surgery, it was hard for me to have friends as I did not behave like a “normal child” as well balanced because that was not available from an early childhood and because of the “bastard” aspect of birth the immediate family that lived within my great grandmother’s compound did not care for me and so being ostracised was not new for me. It is just that much harder when you are in boarding school. I was often caned because of not reaching the desired marks or because I had perhaps retaliated when verbally abused so they received justice and I was not whilst I was not the instigator. In most of my adulthood I have lived alone, not because I wanted to but because I was living a physical manifestation of what I was feeling. Moreover, being made to feel like I was rubbish and a burden has had adverse effects such as not being able to ask for help and this is very obvious in my interactions with my education establishments in the UK as well as service providers as I have often felt that I was the problem.

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On personal relationships I often had relations with people that did not value me and did not respect me and felt that it was acceptable to swear at me and at its worst hit me and even spit at me and therefore I would say that an elements felt that I deserved that and that it was my fault that had happened to me.This only added to the element that I was unlovable and unworthy of love. And that love was finite and came with terms and conditions that I perhaps was not adhering to. In a state of profound depression, I resorted to a self-harming tactic. “I’m suffering and I need someone to listen,” it was saying.The only things of worth in my life would have a monetary value. I withered inside; dried up. I became a mute, closing down completely in order to survive. My great-grandmother was a carer for me from the age of 3 but yearned that one day I would join my mother. I grew up thinking she would come for me.When I eventually did join her, my fantasy exploded within hours. Mum would give me the silent treatment. It was all “passive-aggression” rather than communicating what I had ever done wrong. When you feel like that, you have nothing. I was an empty shell. I was feeling the trauma every day. “That’s all I’m worth” I believed.The toxicity I grew up with was going to have an impact on any relationship.

A good deal of depression is caused by feeling worthless. Demoralising effects arise because they go beyond relative comparison. Relative effects translate into an absolute sense of self being weighed in the scales and wanting. Take performance anxiety in children generated by high-earning, high-achieving parents who want their offspring to be outstanding. Average is just not good enough. Performance is valued by the parents because at stake is the deadly business of status symbols. The impact on their highly pressured sons and daughters can be demoralising. Children from affluent homes are three times more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression than the average teenager. This places them at greater risk from drug abuse, eating disorders and self-harm.11 Children who are not allowed to express themselves or be themselves will rarely believe they are loved for themselves. Demoralisation can take the shape of shame. Shame can be severely debilitating and feel eternal. Growing evidence suggests shame can underlie a number of presenting issues in counselling.12 Eating disorders are often linked with low self-worth. As with anorexic girls, it is “where I stand in relation to others doing ok” that can exacerbate demoralisation and constitute a profound challenge to one’s personal value. People give up and accept that a lowered sense of a valuable self is here to stay. The effect of ageing or unemployment often brings this kind of reaction. The client reports feeling written off and that is intensely de-stabilising, contributing often to depression amongst the elderly or newly retired. These effects are more than

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social evaluation. They arouse an underlying sense of self that feels devalued relative to others, affecting negatively a sense of value-in-oneself. A key question for analysis is why people can’t see the chains that bind them. Why do they participate in their own oppression? Freud never forgot that his father had submitted without protest to anti-Semitic insults. Steve Biko, the black South African leader and founder of Black Consciousness in South Africa, who died under Apartheid-era police brutality, diagnosed a submissive state of mind and lack of self-respect as illness. We collude with the definition of ourselves that others impose upon us. He defined its ideology: Evil-doers have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine black man who is man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of de-humanisation has advanced. . . . All in all the black man has become a shell, a shadow of a man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing a yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity.13 The sorry litany of people who give up must include those with a history of abuse or maltreatment during childhood who are over twice as likely to have recurrent episodes of depression in adult life. Data from more than 26,000 people was pooled in a 2011 study which used various markers of maltreatment – rejection from a mother, harsh discipline, unstable care-giving and self-reports of harsh physical or sexual abuse. Those who had experiences one or more of such markers were 2.27 times as likely to develop recurring depression than those who had not been maltreated.14 Arguably, previous erosion of their worth has left them with a tendency towards life demoralisation. Frank Lake, one of the founders of pre- and perinatal psychology, wrote about a state that some may descend into. In “trans-marginal stress,” a client has become thoroughly demoralised, overwhelmed, pushed beyond the margins of what can be coped with, cast into a state of non-being that is devoid of hope and meaning. In his magnum opus Clinical Theology, Frank Lake described how this lies at the root of suicidal states, creating anxiety and depression.15 Much of this could originate in the womb, Lake believed. Umbilical affect provided an influx of material through that connection that led to secure and well-defended personality systems and a basic trust in the world. By contrast, negative affect might cast the infant into disconnection, disassociation and loss. Therapy work can provide a safe space within which a client can rest in safety and a secure environment.16 A client is keenly aware that he is operating in a social environment where many customers and acquaintances are on a higher plane. Outsider status is in the background behind many of the statements and practices about how he sees himself in relation to others. This is languaged as “they are above me” or “they won’t want to mix with me.” Identity surfaces as being a working man. Yet behind this narrative, another story is playing, one arising from personal

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worlds. This person suffers from a strong sense of inferiority. His father systematically put him down and belittled him. The point is, how do you separate the inequality apparently resulting from class from personal factors? Either they collide or collude, thus reinforcing each other. My parents never felt I measured up or made the grade. They couldn’t believe I had amounted to something. A secondary modern school was right for me, they believed. A complete lack of value has plagued me all my life.17 Carving out a space for the role of devaluation in inter-personal processes is well illustrated by films. In the film Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts plays a prostitute named Vivian who is picked up by millionaire Edward (Richard Gere) to be a temporary escort. Adorned with attention, clothes and a lifestyle beyond the dreams of avarice, something within her has been woken up. She is being treated like a lady for the first time. The dénouement of the film, however, arises from the way she is mistreated by Edward’s lawyer as rubbish. He sees me as less than a person, she complains. Before Edward leaves, he says, in effect, “I’ve never treated you like a prostitute.” After he’s gone, she whispers to herself that he just did – a scene that leads to the romantic culmination.18 It is the Protest against devaluation concealing an impetus towards a valuable self, an impetus that is both a sigh and a cry. In pursuing self-respect and self-value, there’s a shift in the balance of power. A good deal of depression is caused by feeling worthless, or demoralised. Here is a middle-aged woman describing how she has often felt unloved and unwanted. Experiences now seem to reinforce beliefs that she is not “worth anything.” A familiar enough report conceals a curiosity. Why does the notion of “worth” come into her narrative, without which she feels hemmed in with wistfulness? A young woman greets me across the consulting room, eyes lighting up with sad indignation. “I am tired of a whole string of relationships where I feel used,” she complains. “All I end up doing is feeling crap after.” As she tells her story, what stands out is that being taken advantage of again and again results in a burden of worth that is steadily diminishing. It is at its most profound, an experience of devaluation though a series of such experiences, of being written off little by little.

Resignation Resignation is a different response from demoralisation. Those who accept their lot in life in a passive sense seem capable of making life-affirming responses that negate miserable circumstances. This too is an affirmation of value-in-oneself. For millions, social life is heavily constrained by systemic patterns that assign a place in the social structure from which little escape seems possible. Reflecting on the few options available to him in his life as an agricultural labourer in 19th century Kent, someone pointed out, “People say why did you put up with

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it? Because you bloody well had to, that’s why!”19 The experience of millions surely is that they greet their lot in life with resignation. They cannot see any way out of their situation and it rarely occurs to change the conditions of life. The subject accepts the version of life in which it is formed. The inspiration behind the Indian Independence movement, Gandhi believed India’s shackles were self-made. He tried to instil new consciousness in the people. “Prisoner, tell me who it was who wrought this unbreakable chain? It was I, said the prisoner, who forged this chain very carefully.”20 Where the borders are between resignation and Protest are contended. Martin Luther King Jr referred to the ominous clouds of inferiority in the mental sky of black people. Amidst contemporary hagiography, it is easy to forget that Martin Luther King Jr, colossus as he was, was a controversial figure, even amongst black communities. For some, it was the rhetoric of Malcolm X “who seemed to speak with unabashed pride about blackness,” that resonated more than Luther King’s apparent acquiescence and non-violence.21 Steve Biko’s narrative shows the extent to which there is unintended collusion between devalued and devaluers. It shows how human identity is created attitudinally, in dialogue and in symbolic interaction with others. The Protest is emancipation of the mind, the freedom to be who you are. Whites must be made to realise they are only human, not superior. The same with blacks. They must be made to realise they are also human, not inferior . . . Blacks have had their noses rubbed in the dust by white racism, de-personalising them to the extent that they have . . . come to doubt the reality of their own personhood and humanity. They came to believe that denigration of their humanity by those who oppress them is the truth about themselves.22 The essay has come to the core proposition, crucial to how identities are shaped and re-moulded. Whether it features in narratives of minorities or the marginalised feeling they can join the mainstream or whether it is an individual freshly empowered to rise above the script handed to them, the Protest summons a prominent energy in social life. Devaluation triggers demoralisation when the absolute sense of a valuable self is assaulted. Without value, we wither. There is another reaction, however. Devaluing forces engender their opposite. Such a sense of latent Protest has deep roots not only in the personality, but also in literature and history. Here is a lady in waiting in 18th century Britain, conscious that she is completely dependent on “the compulsory Attendance and obligatory Dependence” that comes with her role.23 The condescension of George III and Queen Charlotte is replete with a kindness that arouses the gratitude of Frances Burney but also tightens her velvet chains. But it is the Keeper of the Robes who is the real tyrant, a redoubtable woman who leaves Burney vulnerable to being “No body.” Yet despite a constant attempt to subjugate her and punish resistance, tattered pride remains. Frances Burney has a secret knowledge that she is entitled to consideration and respect.

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Psychoanalysis documented the idea of resistance, that the client is affected by unconscious mental processes that block integration. Freud made someone clinging on to their illness a central plank of his approach. “The discovery of the unconscious and the introduction of it into consciousness are performed in the face of a continuous resistance on the part of the patient. Psychoanalytic treatment may in general be conceived of as such as a re-education in overcoming internal resistances.”24 Here we are looking at the idea of resistance rather differently; the capacity to revalue interiority.

The Protest The pursuit of a high value for people is a load-bearing driver in human action. Much social experience and inter-personal life is shaped by value. Social value, the labels placed by society on people, is value by significant others. It runs up against and evokes “value in oneself.” The proposition being advocated here is that we are psychologically structured towards realising our value. We pursue this drive to be valued in ways that cultivate it extrinsically or intrinsically. If we pursue it externally, in appearance and so forth, within the conditions of post-modern life, it will be unstable. We are exploring the way that the interplay of value and experiences of devaluation, far from being an aspiration are descriptive of inter-personal life. We will discuss how the value/devaluation dynamic plays in organisational life and in the way subjects are shaped in society. “Value,” a driver in some psychological processes, is a content area psychology has yet to conceptualise adequately. Best practice both in medical and psychotherapy models recognises, for the most part, the importance of respect for the patient/client. Some of newer psychotherapies too hold the value of the person as being a key assumption to their paradigm. Lacking is a conceptual formulation that can draw up the dots of important human experiences, experiences that are recognisable yet which do not fit easily into the psychological lexicography. Behind narratives of depression often lies a suppressed energy of protest that can be released cathartically; the latent capacity to affirm that “I am” or “we are worth more than you say” marks the reflex reaction that seems to be embedded within our psychic structure. The lady who re-gains self-respect by learning to say no is learning to value herself. Discovering that she can say “no” for the first time in 50 years and being prepared to risk relationship has given her a liberation that is palpable. She wants to run and leap! Paradoxically, saying no has increased the respect people have for her as well as finding a well of self-respect that had lain deep underground. This is not just about self-esteem, self-belief only, but value as an environment within which humans can flourish. It is powerful, heady stuff, guaranteed to evict toxic messages we have download. From nowhere, someone has made a glad and welcome discovery; their own subjectivity. It may happen slowly; it may take place with a sudden rush of heightened sensation. But in and through

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that discovery is a rising of confidence. With that ascension comes a discovery – a new valuing of self. “I was fifteen years married, treated like dirt on the floor. No more!” says a woman with spirit that betokens a new sense of a valuable self. “I didn’t mean anything to him. I can see that now!”25 What is the connection between being treated “like dirt on the floor” and a subsequent statement of worth – “I’m not going to be treated like that!”? “I had very controlling parents,” reports a client. “Even when you’re right, you’re wrong!” “There were a lot of rough edges in our family,” reports another. “The sarcasm could get quite nasty.”26 A grown woman has had a major issue of anger, a simmering volcano against always perceiving herself as a spare part.27 Now she is learning a different narrative – “I am valuable,” she dares to say. In the meantime, what has happened to the volcano? “Vesuvius dissipated” is the new story emerging. The client who is experiencing a panic attack may say something like, “I know I can do this but I’m on the firing line, I am observed.”28 The stress highlights the dilemma. They cannot react easily from a position of relative worth in comparison to others. They themselves are under threat. Freud famously characterised grief as in terms of mourning and melancholia – an act of narcissism. Maybe grief at the loss of loved ones exhibits outrage; outrage that someone treasured is being taken. Facing one’s own demise can be accompanied by anger amongst the terminally ill that wants to shout – “I count . . . I matter.” Dylan Thomas’ protest of rage against the inevitable has often been noted. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.29 This can be misinterpreted as being unhealthy, a sign of ill-preparation for the inevitable demise that will endanger the grieving process over one’s own departure. But acceptance can wait. “I refuse to go quietly into the good night or the night .  .  . I matter!” First cometh the Protest. In a sharp critique of the vogue of positive thinking, a breast cancer sufferer inveighs against what she terms “an ideological force in American culture.” Encouragement to deny reality and submit cheerfully to misfortune she saw as “the tyranny of positive thinking.” She rages in Protest against this contemporary industry. It is the heart-cry of a worthwhile soul who refuses to go quietly into the night! “I matter!”30 The Protest emerges in the affront to sacredness that often generates the outrage that makes us human. Anger is liable to being misinterpreted. There are forms of anger that involve lashing out. But anger can often be far more than someone losing their self-control. Some – though not all – of the anger people hold, stems from the inner Protest, a response to the put-downs or to an environment perhaps where emotions were not validated. It is curious that powering up the indignation in a situation such as this raises levels of selfrespect rather than experiencing the depressing effect of inadvertent collusion

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by going along with it. It raises a question about the relationship between power and value. Why is it that feeling disempowered lowers a sense of worth? For many people, receiving power raises confidence levels and imparts value. It brings career benefits. Psychiatrists at the Harvard Medical School measured how the careers of 824 individuals had progressed in relation to their personality profiles and coping strategies. Those who could express frustrations tactfully and constructively were less likely to complain they had hit a glass ceiling in the workplace.31 The interplay of pursuing our worth against lived experience that denies or frustrates that offers a lens on human action and inter-action that is different to usual accounts of contemporary life.

Will the valuable self please stand up! In the post-modern age, obsession with domination and subordination is beginning to be challenged by a wider imagination, hungry for encouragement, for someone who will listen, for loyalty and trust, and above all, for respect.32 Is self-respect and self-acceptance (valuing oneself) part of the environment necessary for us to function? A sense of self is par for the course in social psychology but how are we to speak of a sense of a valuable self? But which self? When someone makes the strategic advance of declaring “this is not all of me,” he or she is opening up a different subject position. In coming to repudiate the claws that have been firmly fixed in their lives, a different self is emerging which can put distance between them and the condition that has seemed so total. A client wears a top adorned with an intriguing logo, a logo that is an advert for the new valuable self who is emerging after months of emotional labour. “Look at me in the mirror – what do you see”33 the logo invites – except that the latter statement is in reverse and can be read only in a mirror. The implication is that the client is the one who can see the valuable self in a gaze that sets the stage for others to see her in a different perspective. But who is the one who is speaking?

Case study 34 “I struggled with mental health issues before, but being unemployed made things 10 times worse. My confidence and self-esteem spiralled downwards, and I spent days at home feeling hopeless and isolated. The hardest thing is seeing other people get on with their lives and do the things you wish you could be doing. Seeing friends talk about their jobs and social lives on Facebook made me feel like there was something wrong with me. I was stuck in a rut and desperate to get out of it, but I didn’t know how. Luckily, I decided to turn to The Prince’s Trust for help. I’d always been interested in art and design, so the charity helped me to set up my own design business.

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Having something to focus on made such a difference, and with support from The Prince’s Trust, my confidence came on in leaps and bounds. I had goals to work towards – like writing my business plan – and I felt excited about the future for the first time in ages. I started my company and I’m enjoying running my own business. Succeeding in business has had a ripple effect in all areas of my life, and I’m now happier than I’ve ever been.”

We have different subject positions we take up. To put it differently, we hear various voices within ourselves. Furthermore, we can switch into a different “I-position” – and be in different modes. Career changes, perspective shifts in different disciplines or differing styles and preferences open up a new voice within. This goes deeper than play different roles or wear different hats. The hats are not some extension and independently disposable position but an extension of the polyphonic self or selves. It is perhaps significant that recent thinking has been emerging about the concept of multiple selves. Hubert Hermans, for instance, from Nijmegen University in the Netherlands, has put on the map the notion of the dialogical self and sparked international conferences on the issue. Widely accepted has been the use of such terms as sub-selves or ego states. The problem with this is that it seemed to imply these were solid entities. A new vocabulary is taking shape based on the language of “I-positions,” different parts of us in dialogue rather than a static self. “The notion of the ‘dialogical self deviates from these associations and considers the self as a multiplicity of parts (voices, characters, positions) that have the potential of entertaining dialogical relationships with each other. The self functions as a society,” Hermans goes on, “being at the same time part of the broader society in which the self participates.”35 Useful though this language can be, there is presumably only one of us! We have seen how the Protest, the spring-loaded capacity for re-valuing, can emerge from what Amartya Sen calls capability, that is, finding a voice. The same can be true internally. Sometimes, clients (or nations) on the way to transformative moments need to encounter different voices within themselves. Clients may need to learn to listen to their bodies. Someone struggling with impotence in certain settings may need to allow its voice to emerge. We can, if we tune in, hear the emergence of different voices within a person. Each voice represents an “I-position.” Discussion of the mind has moved on in psychoanalytic circles. “The mind is a configuration of shifting, non-linear, discontinuous states of consciousness in on-going dialectic with the healthy illusion of unitary selfhood.”36 Transactional Analysis speaks to different parts of us as does Gestalt with its empty chair or two-chair work which focusses on different positions a client takes up. The therapist instructs

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a client to switch chairs as they enact different sides and talk to the person, the character who represents the problem.37 Newer directions in psychotherapy have begun to work with these ideas. For example, a child psychologist has noted that “the developing human mind is dialogically constituted.”38 Infants speak in different voices from early on. Some person-centred therapy speaks of configurations of the self. Assimilation theory is working with the idea of listening to different voices emerging during therapeutic healing.39 Narrative therapy uses personification to bring to light different problems within the human situation, for example, “Sugar” (to represent diabetes).40 This emphasis is akin to social constructionism in social theory. We saw too that movements of Protest were movements of social groups coming into enhanced consciousness, not just self-awareness but awareness of their value. Multiplicity carves out a space for an internal conversation. It is the analogue to a world of connectedness in which we hear the voice of others. The forces by which we move towards re-valuing that which has been edited out begin with a linguistic turn by which we move from a passive voice to an active voice. Who is it that can assert, “I’m worth more than that!”? Who is this interpreter of our own situation who sponsors reflexivity, who dares allow the voice of a valuable self to emerge? The impetus towards a valuable self is a voice that can be strengthened. Where, however, shall we situate the impulse to be valued within the inner landscape of psychological theory? The existential psychologist Rollo May writes of a lady brought up illegitimate in the southwest US. In periods of anger, her mother threw in her face that she had tried to abort her or other relatives shouted at the child, “You should have been choked the day you were born!” The client recounts a dream in which she is walking amidst a group of people and feeling, “I am an illegitimate child.” She woke. Then it came to her that she was no longer a child and only born illegitimate. “I Am! This act of contact and acceptance with ‘I am’ once gotten hold of me, gave me (for what I think was for me the first time) the experience ‘Since I am, I have the right to be.’ What is this experience like? It is a primary feeling – it feels like receiving the deed to my house. . . . It is like a sailboat in the harbour being given its anchor. . . . It is my saying to Descartes, ‘I am, therefore I think, I feel, I do’.”41 Maybe that is what neuro-plasticity can signify; the private claiming its own space and affirming that we can dance to new tunes. Maybe it was a kindly neighbour who smiled on them, maybe it was a teacher who took an interest but there seems to be something that can be aroused, a slender base to keep the human spirit intact. Its persistence seems to point to such resilience being innate, as if a faint heart-beat of “I’m worth something to someone” can be resuscitated even when not heard for many years. The inspiration of a Catholic priest, Gregory Boyl, “Homeboy” has become the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry programme in the world, and it employs and trains gang members and felons in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women each year who walk through its doors seeking a better life. This is the power

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of radical kinship; turning lives round through warm acceptance that communicates value and love.42 A spark, a native essential spark, is fanned into flame by the warm wind of positive nurturing amongst the fortunate but still functioning as the pilot light of the soul. How though is this embedded within our psychic structure? There is a capacity, a latent resource of the soul which seems to be more deeply instantiated than the legacy of positive nurturing experiences. A gaze of kindness or worthwhile purpose and the capacity has been converted into imaginative sight, a vision of a different world. It is from such slender fortunes that many have to construct a worthwhile life.

Notes 1 Whitton, E. (2003) Humanistic Approach to Psychotherapy. London: Whurr Publishers, p. 39. See also Thorne, B. (2001) Therapeutic and Spiritual Dimensions. London: Whurr Publishers. 2 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 3 Mead, G. H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 4 Author’s client notes – used with permission. 5 Steed, C. D. (2018) A Question of Inequality and Why It Matters. London: I B Tauris. 6 Frankl, V. (1964) Man’s Search for Meaning. London: Hodder and Stoughton. 7 The case of Orlando Figes who had issued a string of legal threats to academic colleagues, literary journals and newspapers that suggested he might have written reviews posted on Amazon.co.uk. Guardian, 24th April 2010. 8 www.childrenssociety.net January 2010 reporting its study of happiness levels in children. 9 Steed, C. D. (2009) The Peaceweaver. New York: Raider Int. Publishing. 10 Author’s client notes – used with permission. 11 Levine, M. (2006) The Price of Privilege. 12 Tangney, J. P., Wagner, P. E., Hill-Barlow, D., & Gramzow, R. (1992) Proneness to shame, guilt and psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 101, 469–478. 13 Biko, S. (1986) I Write What I Like. San Francisco: Harper & Row. 14 Uher, R. (2011) Genes, environment, and individual differences in responding to treatment for depression. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, May–Jun, 19(3), 109–124. 15 Lake, F. (1986) Clinical Theology. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. 16 Sills, F. (2008) Being and Becoming: Psychodynamics, Buddhism and the Origin of Selfhood. North Atlantic Books. 17 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 18 Pretty Woman (1990) Distributed by Touchstone Pictures. 19 Reay, B. (2004) Rural England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 145. 20 Fischer, L. (1997) The Life of Mahatma Gandhi. London: HarperCollins, p. 163. 21 Reddie, R. (2012) Martin Luther King Jr: History Maker. Lion Publishing. 22 Tutu, D. (1977) From K. Appiah-Kubi & S. Torres (Eds.), African Theology en route Papers from the Pan-African Conference of Third World Theologians, 17th–23rd December, Accra, Ghana & London: Orbis. 23 Burney, F. (2012) The Court Journals and Letters of Frances Burney, Vol. 1 Ed. by P. Sabor; Vol. 2 Ed. by S. Cooke. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 24 Freud, S. (1959) Freud’s psycho-analytic procedure. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 7. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 249–270, 261–262. 25 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission.

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Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. From The Poems of Dylan Thomas. New York: New Directions Publishing Corp. Ehrenreich, B. (2010) Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. London: Granta Books. Vaillant, G. (2009) Harvard Study of Adult Development. Quoted in www.escience.news. com accessed 1st March 2009. Zeldin, T. (1998) An Intimate History of Humanity. London: Vintage Books, p. 135. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. Hermans, H. J. M. (2004) The dialogical self: Between exchange and power. In H. J. M. Hermans & G. Dimaggio (Eds.), The Dialogical Self in Psychotherapy. Hove: Brunner-Routledge. Bromberg, P. M. (1998) Standing in the Spaces: Essays in Clinical Practice, Trauma and Disassociation. London: The Analytic Press. Watson, J. C., Greenberg, L. S., & Lietaer, G. (1998) The experiential paradigm unfolding: Relationship and experiencing in therapy. In J. C. Watson, L. S. Greenberg, & G. Lietaer (Eds.), Handbook of Experiential Psycho-Therapy. New York: Guilford Press. Rommetveit, R. (1992) Outline of a dialogically-based social cognitive approach to human cognition and communication. In A. H. World (Ed.), The Dialogical Alternative. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stiles, W. B., & Glick, M. J. (2002) Client-centred-therapy with multi-voiced clients: Empathy with whom? In J. C. Watson, R. N. Goldman, &M. S. Warner (Eds.), ClientCentred and Experiential Psychotherapy in the 21st Century: Advances in Theory, Research and Practice. Llangarron: PCCS Books. Freedman, J., & Combs, G. (1996) Narrative Therapy: The Social Construction of Preferred Realities. New York: Norton. May, R. (1977) To be and not to be. In H.-M. Chiang & A. Maslow (Eds.), The Healthy Personality. New York: D. Van Nostrund Co., p. 66. Boyl, G. (2017) Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Chapter 11

Through the life course

Psychological theory needs to take into account an insatiable thirst to be recognised, to be noticed. We are gripped by an unaccountable sense that we matter, that we have dignity. The status of a sense of valuable self is difficult to assign. Is it an impetus adhering to the conscious, experiencing mind, a drive emanating from the hidden, unconscious realms? The less we value and accept ourselves, the more we are driven to work hard to ensure other people’s affection, approval and acceptance. If you have not learnt to value yourself, you have to work hard all the time to be good enough in people’s estimation.1 Where, however, do we acquire such knowledge?

Explosive being and acts of gazing It begins with a gaze. To be seen (noticed) and heard communicates that I am worth listening to. Winnicott proposed the concept of the “good enough mother,” who looks her baby in the eye and by mirroring the child’s face shows the child that he or she is known, safe and seen. The most essential parenting psychological function, Winnicott suggested, is “eye-love.”2 “The good-enough mother . . . starts off with an almost complete adaptation to her infant’s needs, and as time proceeds she adapts less and less completely, gradually, according to the infant’s growing ability to deal with her failure.” Winnicott said it must be communicated that your baby is worth getting to know as a person; for gradually, the baby IS becoming a person. It seems that to be worthwhile and be able to cultivate self-respect, we have to be worth something to someone – if not parents then grandparents or carer. If one does not feel worth very much, it is because uncertain messages have been downloaded from when your inner computer was switched on. The mysterious, daring feeling that we are worth something is the foundation of accepting yourself. As young children, we start to pick up messages that tell us we cannot be ourselves

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because we are not good enough. When we come to construct the awareness of a self, these messages have a strong influence on foundations of who we are. The loving eyes of healthy parents enable us to see ourselves as wonderful, special and worthwhile individuals, while the distressed eyes of dysfunctional parents create feelings of shame and worthlessness.3 Disvalue and value are communicated by acts of gazing. How we treat someone results from how we see them. The unformed self is called into explosive and exhilarating being through parental gaze – whether smiling eyes that sustain secure attachment or indifferent eyes that disappoint a baby looking up. It is a century since Charles Cooley formulated the idea of a “looking glass self.”4 Neuroscience has since confirmed that we are made in the mirror. The new-born infant endeavours to re-gain eye-to-eye connection with its mother. It becomes expert in scanning facial expressions.5 Language comes later – and with it the ability to name the world. A whole new branch of neuroscience grew, dedicated to exploring how people come to know the minds of others and their own minds. Elegant studies indicate that infants know something about other minds by making inferences from their own experiences and their experience of others.6

Getting attached Secure attachments are one obvious candidate for the inculcation of a sense of value. John Bowlby suggested that early separations from the mother, or mother-substitute, provoke anxiety and in some extreme cases, “de-activation of attachment behavior” or persistent lack of feeling for others. “Whenever young children, who have had an opportunity to develop an attachment to a mother-figure are separated from her unwillingly, they show distress: and should they also be placed in a strange environment and cared for by strange people, such distress is likely to be intense.”7 Bowlby’s proposals about attachment theory were shaped by psychoanalysis and a retrospective examination he carried out into the childhood experiences of delinquent adolescent boys. The study showed that these young people had commonly experienced a history of being taken into care and passing from one substitute mother figure to another. A subsequent report about homeless children underlined that for mental health, “an infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate and continuous relationship with his mother (or permanent mother-substitute).”8 In his original research about security of attachments, 17 of “Forty Four Juvenile Thieves” had suffered maternal deprivation for six months or more during the first five years of life compared with only two members of a control group. Fourteen of the juvenile thieves had what he termed “affectionless” personalities. Ages differed as did their crimes. Other factors could have been involved. Bowlby’s conclusion was unequivocal though: “prolonged separation of

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a child from his mother (or mother-substitute) during the first five years of life stands foremost among causes of delinquent character-development and persistent misbehaviour.”9 Michael Rutter’s review of maternal deprivation theory in relation to attachment patterns concluded that there were no persistent effects of separation distress but that patterns of response are established that influence the way the individual reacts to some later stress or adversity.10 In short, it is the way children learn to cope with life rather than separation itself that causes delinquency. Psychologists gradually abandoned the notion of maternal deprivation leading to delinquency and violence, but the importance of a pattern of dependable attachments has remained. The literature points towards the need for attachments but the possibility of attachments being met by other significant people. It does not have to be the mother who provides the primary attachment bond. Rutter suggested that a substitute will be an acceptable equivalent as long as a mother figure is almost always available in the perception of the child. This is good news for families who have experienced the loss of the mother. The children need not grow up delinquent! To evaluate the role of attachment theory on this theory of violence, the case for attachment theory, as amended by Rutter, seems to be strong. Infants do form attachments that require a caregiver to be available to a young child in the first year. But it is the quality of the relationship, the sensitivity and interaction with the child that is paramount. “When parents tune in to and respond to their children’s needs and are a dependable source of comfort, those children learn how to manage their own feeling and behaviours,” reported the lead researcher Sophie Moulin of Princeton University. “These secure attachments to their mothers and fathers provide these children with a base from which they can thrive.” Researchers combed through over 100 academic papers and data on 14,000 children born in 2001 collected by a US longitudinal study. Their analysis showed that about 60% of children develop strong attachments to their parents, which are formed through simple actions, such as holding a baby lovingly and responding to the baby’s needs. Such actions support children’s social and emotional development, which in turn strengthens their cognitive development. These children are more likely to be resilient to poverty, family instability, parental stress and depression. If boys growing up in poverty have strong parental attachments, they are two and a half times less likely to display behaviour problems at school. By contrast, the approximately 40% who lack secure attachments, on the other hand, are more likely to have poorer language and behaviour before entering school. This effect continues throughout the children’s lives, and such children are more likely to leave school without further education, employment or training, the researchers write. Among children growing up in poverty, poor parental care and insecure attachment before age 4 strongly predicted a failure to complete school. Of the 40% who lack secure attachments, 25% avoid their parents when they are upset (because their parents are ignoring their needs), and 15% resist their parents because their parents cause them distress. “This report clearly identifies the fundamental role secure attachment could have in

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narrowing that school readiness gap and improving children’s life chances. More support from health visitors, children’s centres and local authorities in helping parents improve how they bond with young children could play a role in narrowing the education gap,” said the Director of Research at the London-based Sutton Trust which published the research.11 Secure attachment patterns – those who find it easy to get on with others, comfortable depending on them, those who have no worry about being abandoned or someone getting too close12 – arise from home environments where they were sure of the support from their care-giver and do not worry about it. This positive attitude carries over into other relationships in their lives. Avoidant patterns are those who are uncomfortable being close to others, who develop sometimes an angry self-reliance and cold distant attitudes to others, find it difficult to trust them and difficult to allow oneself to get too close. They are nervous when anyone gets too close and often, love partners want greater intimacy that they feel comfortable giving. These come from homes where they have been repeatedly rebuffed in their efforts to enjoy contact, where mothers were not consistent in their affection or attention.13 Alternatively, those who find that others are reluctant to get as close as they would like, worry that their partner doesn’t love them or won’t want to stay, who can scare someone away, these come from home environments where care-givers’ behaviour is inconsistent or chaotic. They are perhaps victimised at school and attempt to cling on to teachers and friends in a way that leads to further hurt feelings. Recent studies have charted the similarity of patterns of relating between mother and baby – the need to provide protection, security and consistency – and intimate adult relationships.14 Parents with secure attachment tend to have preschoolers who are similarly secure in their attachments. Parents who are insecure-dismissing, insecurepreoccupied and insecure-unresolved are most likely to have children who show excessive aggression and conduct problems. There is a robust link in the literature between intergenerational repetition of parenting style, how a parent was parented and attachment patterns of their children.15 Strong associations between adult attachment deficits and those of their children have been found; for example, the work of psychologists such as Main and Goldwyn who sought to measure attachment patterns across the lifespan using the AAI (adult attachment interviews). “Cross cultural and inter-country comparisons of attachment patterns confirm that the modal type is that of secure attachment, typically around 55–60% infant-mother dyads showing the pattern.”16 This suggests that the incidence of children who could be growing up without experiencing a secure foothold on life is 40–45% of children in a given population! Do we wonder why there is an epidemic of depression, suicide and substance abuse in our culture! There is a complex inter-relationship of factors that shape the experience of childhood. When the infant consolidates its attachment in the second half

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of the first year of life, it experiences “stranger anxiety” that enables it to distinguish between its personal entourage and the tense world out there. Infants need other minds to develop normally. Without healthy emotional attachments at this juncture, it will be unable to form emotional attachments later.17 In short, John Bowlby’s work showed that the way infants learn to bond is a psychological process of connection. Nature is very economical. Children develop a working model of how life is. This schema shapes what they can expect and whether the world will be a secure environment where they will feel at home or bequeath to them an insecure foothold on life. Neuro-scientific research, which has advanced very rapidly over several decades due to new technologies, has confirmed this picture.18 Attention and affirmation – the very factors that generate a sense of value – are not luxury goods but a vital developmental need. Research on Romanian orphans left in their cot and deprived of responsive contact had a “virtual black hole” where their orbito-frontal cortex should be.19 Studies show that positive looks from parents are a crucial stimulus to growth of a social brain.20 Through positive messages written across the face of the significant Other, pleasurable biochemicals help brain development.21 It is here we build a valuable self.22 Someone lights up when we are around. There is a both a caution and a question here. It is to do with the relationship of biology and culture.23 Can you reduce adult interaction to neurobiology; do mental events translate into images of the brain? Brain circuitry cannot be understood surely without reference to one’s environment and the forces that shape our lives. Just because nothing happens without a brain does not mean our psychology is fixed by early events.24 The dynamic flux of connection with our world shapes, for example, the way self-esteem becomes influenced by gender in a growing female. We are an island chain, not separate from other islands. In short, a sense of value must be successfully internalised for it to grow within personal life. This is vital for social connection and indeed provides its template. Attachments plug into the need for value in our psychic structure that is vital to a positive meaning environment needed to work and function at our best. They are the channel through which attention and affirmation generate the capacity of the infant self to assert its identity safely and the adult to feel valued in the world.25 Emotions are vital ingredients of secure those attachments necessary to bond with givers of care.26 Emotions are vital to the development of not only empathy27 but also creativity.28 The ability to regulate emotional responses so they are less intense and not so overwhelming is an important part of healthy development. A child’s ability to regulate emotions is crucial in building resilience, coping and social competence. The idea that early attachments shape a working model of subsequent relationships has been a vital component in attachment theory. The literature seems to confirm that experiencing positive affect or emotions from significant care-givers helps to forge strong secure base

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from which to explore life. Positive experiences, especially of play, are vital for emotional regulation and the development of a healthy sense of a valuable self.

Parenting styles Parenting style matters hugely. A considerable body of research literature as well as practice points to the quality of the relationship between parents and children that is vital for positive development. The role of parents in responding sensitively to the need for soothing or stimulation enables a child to learn the fine art of self-regulation.29 A responsive, warm parent-child relationship evidently fosters self-worth and social responsibility. Such responsiveness and support for the developing child will vary in its expression as the child grows; the parenting style needs to be modified and in any case varies across cultures, but the value and importance of engaged parenting cannot be denied.30 Warm, responsive relationships between parents and adolescent children help to foster the kind of positive outcomes that will be important for society generally – such as the formation of identity and pro-social behaviour. Attention and effective monitoring of a child’s whereabouts is important as ineffective monitoring seems to be linked with antisocial behaviour in middle childhood.31 Attention is a crucial conduit of value – especially the loving gaze of a biological mother, a “valuer,” the face of one who is pleased to see you and calls you by name. This is a vital part of affirmation, which also has the elements of touch and play. These factors connect emotional circuits that are fundamental to the wiring of a healthy self. The capacity to assert a valuable self may depend on how much affirmation and attention has been paid. Such affirmation leads to the child and then the adult feeling that a secure place in the world is deserved. Supportive nurturing results in positive brain chemistry that continues into adult life.32 By contrast, deficits in self-worth may stem from a lack of valuing in developmental phases. What counts is a nurturing relationship. Where an infant scans facial expressions of care-givers and learns to read fear, anxiety or depression, circuits are connected that will bequeath an insecure foothold on life. The child and the child within the adult responds to the world with an anxious or an avoidant pattern. This shapes not only adult styles of relating but also capacity to believe one is valuable.33 The quality of a child’s social experience flows from the mental property in which value is internalised. Here lies the origin of much dysfunction. There are many walking wounded who have experienced a lack of warm contact and real understanding, or alternatively a parent who is violent, emotionally or physically. Such early relational trauma has impregnated any sense of worth they may have with pain.34 It can lead to women handing themselves over to their fate as submission in the hope of protection or care.35 Their spirit is all but annihilated yet still they persevere because it seems right. Much domestic abuse appears to emanate from men who are disempowered and have been cradled in low self-worth. Their quality of social interaction is

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poor. Depression and poor quality relationships are partners in crime: lowering the barriers to poor health and lowering life expectancy. Lack of self-respect, compulsive engagement in relationships that wound us yet leave us hungering for further wounding are manifestations of a devalued self. We end up devaluing ourselves. Sometimes we look for people who put us down sexually rather than build us up – and this can be both damning for the soul but keep us coming back for more as moths are drawn to the light. Self-harming can be an ugly, dangerous infliction that gives us a buzz paradoxically and energises us as we take back control of our own lives and write our own scripts on our bodies. Often it stems from an empty place within associated with a poor valuing of self. Effective parenting as a reinforcer of healthy development evoking a sense of worth has been fundamental to the debate around early intervention. This has been brought into policy debates about child poverty. There has been a growing acceptance of the idea that outcomes for children are exacerbated by weak parenting styles which help to reproduce poverty. For a strong sense of value and worth to grow, affirmation and attention must be linked with boundaries. In Adam Philips’ study psychoanalytical study of excess, On Balance, he explains excess as a desperate search for limitations by a parental figure who will say “no.” Exaggeration is a strategy for gaining attention, to know that somewhere there is a restraining hand; someone to care for us.36 A study by Demos found that parental effectiveness is mediated by parents’ perceptions of their ability, their self-confidence and their self-esteem. Their quantitative analysis found that these factors could actually cancel out the effects of socio-economic disadvantage.37 Character counts. The endeavours that make up a good life – developing caring, positive relationships; learning and educating ourselves; planning for the future – are underpinned by character capabilities such as empathy, application and emotional control. Far from being “soft” skills, the capabilities that make up our character are vital for social mobility. The critical years are the early ones. Parents, then, are the primary character builders in society. Parents who combine warmth and consistency – a style described in this report as “tough love” – are the most successful in developing character capabilities in their children. But this kind of parenting is unevenly distributed across society, and parents with low levels of confidence, support or income are less likely to use this approach. Moreover, recent social and economic change has put a premium on character capabilities; they are more important than ever before to success. But to the extent that character impacts on equality, opportunity and fairness, it ought to be a concern for policymakers, observed the Demos report.38 There is something to this. The breakdown of the social order may be related to the absence of society that engenders breakdown in the trust, empathy and reciprocity among individuals which are crucial to our sense of interdependency. In this way, lack of internalised value is acted out pathologically. At around 12 months, fathers start to become important. Attachment patterns begin to form with Dad. Positive experiences, especially of play, are vital

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for emotional regulation and the development of a healthy sense of a valuable self. “My father never showed the least affection for any of us” recalled the son of the Iron Duke, First Duke of Wellington and hero of Waterloo. Little wonder that both boys grew up lacking in confidence and had to fight many personal battles.39 The writer William Styron was at times cutting and remote, often inspiring fear and loathing in his children.40 Without their mother’s restorative good nature, no one would have been able to endure it. Styron said it stemmed from depression arising from the death of his mother. The contrast is illustrated well in a statement by Bill Gates senior about the secret of family success. He reported that he and the mother of the founder of Microsoft went on “effective parent training” at the church they attended. “The thing that the people there taught us and emphasised, which is so central and so significant is that you should never demean your child.”41 The words of The Help capture well the ideal, “You’s smart, you’s beautiful, you’s important.”42 It would be pleasant to think of messy family life as cosy places where they are happy to take you in. Yet the internal landscapes of our time often show a different reality – huddled masses living with low self-worth.43 As a child, how you think of yourself is crucial – whether you have a positive sense of a valuable self rather than a negative view. Adults become skilled in a strategy whereby a statement is made that seems denigrating but is wistfully ambiguous in looking for a loud rejoinder to the contrary. The very act of apparent collusion conceals its hopeful opposite. A Mum lays into her son, nagging him left, right and centre. Then he goes to school, white-hot. Surprise, surprise, he gets into trouble from hard-pressed educators! The fact that she had negative life experiences and an over-bearing father who shouted at her all the time means Mum is participating in an unhealthy re-cycling project. “There are days when the memory of my father’s criticism starts to sink me and I lack the energy to rise above it.”44 The daughter of the writer William Golding recounted how his children were put in second place to their parents’ projects and had to work twice as hard for their parents’ attention and approval. “I did love you,” her mother said. “I just couldn’t show it.”45 In a study about the well-being of children, the UK was at the bottom of three dimensions, those of Subjective Well-being, Behaviours and Risk and crucially, Family and Peer Relationships: The true measure of a nation’s standing is how well it attends to its children – their health and safety, their material security, their education and socialization, and their sense of being loved, valued, and included in the families and societies into which they are born.46 (emphasis mine)

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UNICEF UK then commissioned an ethnographic study to explore some of the reasons behind these statistics by comparing children’s experiences in the UK with those of children in Spain and Sweden. The result of a research project using accepted canons of qualitative methodology47 showed that children feel trapped in a “materialistic culture” and do not have time with their families. This research paid particular attention to the role of materialism and inequality in children’s well-being, as there is a growing consensus in the literature that these three concepts are inextricably linked – materialism is thought to be a cause as well as an effect of negative well-being, and countries that have higher levels of inequality are known to score lower on subjective well-being indicators. Overall, however, there had been relatively little qualitative research exploring how children themselves experience the interplay between materialism, inequality and their own subjective well-being. It was specifically this gap which this research sought to fill. The message from them all was “simple, clear and unanimous: their wellbeing centres on time with a happy, stable family, having good friends and plenty of things to do, especially outdoors.” The report found that: behind the statistics we found British families struggling, pushed to find the time their children want, something exacerbated by the uncertainty about the rules and roles operating within the family household. And we found less participation in outdoor and creative activities amongst older and more deprived children.48 “Children learn what they live. . . . If a child learns to live with criticism, he learns to condemn.”49 That is a commonplace observation and arises because a sense of a valuable self has been breached but not embedded. Children thrive with a sense of a valuable self. Without such internalisation, a child may also grow up learning to collude with the put-downs and criticism. This is the strategy of self-denigration, the subject position that a child and then the child within the adult learns to adopt with regard to its own subjectivity. With a reduced sense of worth, someone will not feel worthwhile. It can be a cause of depression. And it does not of course arise just in adult-child transactions. Children can be very rough on each other. The playground – or the rough-and-tumble of sibling rivalry can be basic training for the put-downs of life – as long as there is a capacity for robust response bequeathed by a valuable self. This is not to say that routine put-downs are harmless. They can be cumulative and destructive. Children who do not fit into the academic mould can all too quickly learn to see themselves as failures, writing themselves off. “Being told I’m not as clever as my sister locks you into a selffulfilling prophecy.”50 They may grow up to have little grasp of the connection between work and reward. Lack of respect from the outside world is paralleled by lack of internal expectation. With added components of verbal or physical violence, this can become the cradle of a dysfunctional life. For well-being, you have to be connected. Research is showing how far we are creatures of interaction. It confirms previous sociological and psychological theory. The regulation of emotion is

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central to brain development and thereby giving to attachment theory the neurological basis it needed to show how it instantiates itself into the brain and becomes part of our emotional operating system.51 It is well-documented that these emotional circuits being wired up in the brain give rise to particular attachment styles (how anxious or avoidant we are in relationships) that affect the quality and capacity for adult relationships.52 Memory of relationship events affect attachments, how couples recall or represent their history.53 A sense of a valuable self is formed relationally, internalised into self-respect and held relationally. The feeling of being valuable – “I am a valuable person” – is essential to mental health and is a cornerstone of self-discipline. It is a direct product of parental love. Such a conviction must be gained in childhood; it is extremely difficult to acquire it during adulthood. Conversely, when children learn through love of their parents to feel valuable, it’s almost impossible for vicissitudes of adulthood to destroy their spirit.54 Perhaps a sense of value in which humans can flourish and do their best work provides a link between self-respect and respect for others that goes beyond selfesteem. Human valuing is not just located in an individual but in interaction with others. Being self-regarding without reference to others and by itself is dangerous.55 Arguably, the construct of value/devaluation bears more freight than selfesteem. It is the essence of inflation that it devalues everything it touches. Where there is an inflated sense of ego, a valuable self is not being held in relation to others. Those around are being devalued and the bearer of this heavy freight writes his or her self off. A focus on self-esteem assumes that the games people play to extract their value are a zero-sum game in which there is only so much to go round. By definition, winners and losers are in competition for a scarce resource. Often, however, destructive behaviours become patterned into the psyche as people act out their dysfunctional experiences and move in the only world they know. Their lack of worth becomes manifested in ways to fill up the deficit and compensate through putting others down and bullying. Value must be held distributively rather than located in the individual. An over-inflated sense of one’s worth is a zero-sum game when played out in competitive relationships, in self-esteem wars or within narratives of violence. Born out of social interaction and psychological attachments, “value-in-oneself ” seems to flourish best in those conditions.

Gendered? A sense of value as a psychological driver emerges through the life course as the developing child learns confidence and self-belief. It does, however, express itself in different ways at different times and in different people in response to different circumstances. Self-respect looks different in the life of a 3-year-old

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than a 23-year-old though the family resemblance is there. What it means to live a good life has to be caught, taught and learnt. As the adult matures, early learning helps ensure value is accrued where worthwhile people invest themselves into worthwhile projects. A valuable self is embodied. A friendly smile, an anxious face and the stoop of low-self-worth – these are expressed through the body. Nick Totton argues that the time has come for body psychotherapy to take its place as the ground of psychotherapy. Human experience is embodied and relational.56 As an example, the way that the numbers of “fat people” worldwide is expressed as an obesity epidemic says something about how certain body shapes are carriers of value and worth while others are denigrated. Yet while words like “obese” or “overweight” are heavily laden terms, “fat” has been reclaimed by some. The “Fat Acceptance” movement started in the 1960s concurrent with social protest movements and the interdisciplinary field of study enshrined in “Fat Studies.”57 There are indeed multiple truths about body shapes. Internalising fat oppression is a uniquely difficult task.58 As an integrative counsellor wrote about her own journey, “Therapy helped me find a sense of self-acceptance and selfworth that I never had before. I had believed that being slim would mean I could start to enjoy life because I would be acceptable and therefore confident enough to do anything I wanted to do: suddenly this was possible with the body I had.”59 Many men are driven to try to make themselves physically bigger. Sometimes this is because a man felt physically frail: the skinny boy they loathed. Painful as that was, now pain still creeps through the very need for people to be in awe of them.60 In an image culture, the fitness industry has mushroomed. A valuable self is also gendered. Women’s experiences are fraught with putdowns and forms of violence in a way that men do not share. Traditionally, women often felt they had to ask permission to be themselves, succeeding in major roles but more prone to the imposter effect. Social differentiation is shaped by messages about who are highly valued people and who are of lesser worth. This comes against “value in oneself ” from which individuals and groups react. Despite many peers they know being witty, intelligent, articulate and outwardly confident, many women treat themselves with a lack of respect. Women fail to rule the world because of worry about what other people think. A chapter in a contemporary challenge to the sexualisation and commercialisation of young girls suggests, “How self-esteem and communication are your daughter’s best defence” – When a little girl feels that being sexy is the reason she is valued, she will spend more time and energy on what she looks like instead of other areas of her life such as education.61 Different cultures and social groups want to be valued in different ways. When men get together, the relationship trade is often characterised by exchanging tokens of significance – specifically things that might impress; achievements in the workplace or in sport. Invariably, this is gendered and culturally specific;

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women will garner value differently. It is not just about social value. It impinges on “value-in-oneself.” So much of this is culturally conditioned. Body language is a visual cue by which disvaluing is communicated. Hand-shakes, arm signals, smiling, laughter, folding legs, nose-blowing have different meanings in different cultures. “Japanese people bow on first meeting, the person with the highest status bowing the least and the one with the least status bowing the most.”62 Universalist views are sometimes suspected of being a projection of male views on to women. The feminist writer Saiving Goldstein suggested that women’s experiences often involves struggle with “an under-development or negation of the self” or dependence on others for one’s own self-definition.63 Yet the issue of dependence on others for one’s own self-definition haunts us throughout this essay. Are we waiting for others to impart inter-subjective recognition without which we fail to emerge into the heightened consciousness of selfdiscovery? In developmental psychology, there is little doubt that positive recognition structures affective regulation. A young child is crucially dependent on smiling eyes for emotional well-being. But that is positive recognition, not to be confused with recognition itself.

On the trail of an intrigue. . . . In summary, value is a dimension of our existence that needs to be embedded and successfully located in oneself as a result of significant care-givers but is sustained through positive interaction in dynamic systems. This contrasts with the opposite experience, that of family systems or organisational cultures that are not benign. The pursuit of worth and value is a psychological motivator in personal life grounded in early attachments that generate psychological connection carrying over in to social relationships. “Value-in-oneself ” is a nebulous concept, but the results become part of psychodynamic structure and human action. How does one move on from this? An intriguing question arises: if a sense of a valuable self is engendered only by experiences of positive nurturing, how is it that, despite its deprivation, many people can cling on to a shred of worth or value they have been given, somewhere along the line? Against all the odds, a client can find it in herself to say wistfully, “There’s more to me than that; don’t write me off!”64 Is there a deeper sense of being worthwhile located not just in a particular part of the brain, as the canons of neuroscience might require or within the left- or right-hand brain? Is some kind of interpreter behind these two hemispheres, the “I” that is asking the question and which can protest its significance? The really interesting aspect of human value is that often there is the anger of indignation in narratives of distress, even where there has been little positive input into someone’s life and the emotional geography is barren. Two reports from client observation illustrate this.

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Being a dutiful daughter with my critical Mother, I just went along with it. Then, through counselling, came a glimpse of what life could be. I had a right to live. I had alternatives! Trembling and then learning to say “no” has led to a re-valuing of her worth. Here is another client, discovering a sense of a valuable self. Instead of being humiliated or patronised, “feeling it’s completely unfair what my ex is saying; now it’s not getting to me. Those comments belong to him, they are his problem, his inability to communicate.”65 For there is a response that can be stirred, a response of “I’m worth more than that!” which asserts a valuable self in the teeth of demoralisation. This mechanism switches position back to a stance relative compared with others which enables people to cope with the slings and arrows of outrageous life. It reverses the assault. So where is the valuable self? Where indeed is the self? Is it everywhere in the brain, or the body? A clinical psychologist who has worked with clients who have experienced severe brain damage noted that many clients held to a strong sense of self, regardless of the parts of their brain affected.66 Reports of distress are often portrayed in terms of erosion of value. “I can’t describe it. It’s just like, it is like, the end of the world. I’m not ready for retirement; there is still a lot of work in me. There’s nothing here for me personally. I feel betrayed. Nobody seems to care. There’s no one to blame. It’s just gone. That’s it. Thrown on the scrap heap at 53.”67 Often, wrapped in anger’s stormy packaging lies a reflexive paradox. A client protests an unexpected and unwarranted negative management appraisal – “it’s a good job I was angry. I wouldn’t have stuck up for myself . . . I would have fallen apart. . . . But I’m not going to be treated like that!”68 In personal life, clients come with deep problems around attachment and vulnerability to the vicissitudes of core challenges in everyday life that so often generate issues of worth and value. We are talking about something which is inherently relational, forged in interaction with other humans, especially significant others. Value is an elusive concept but is part of the web of meaning we wrap over our own lives if we have learnt to do so. It is an image we have of ourselves, the mental picture of our own identity. Value is also an environment we respond to with a mysterious sense of being somebody. What a strange anomaly is posed by the riddle of the human condition. We are subtly caught between cosmic insignificance and our own internal marker; a sigh, a cry that we count.69 On and on we go, compelled to act as if we were worth something. Even those who espouse a principled stand against human significance find it unravelling if they are insulted or put down. So what is it that protests? And where is this sense of value located? This essay has sought to describe and offer a starting point for a theorisation of value as the foundation for human action, not as an aspiration but as a dimension of the human operating system. It is an ineradicable trait, written into the human situation. Without it, we wither. With a rising sense of a valuable self, we function at our optimum and offer pathways of hope.

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There is a question lying begging. Whence comes the rage? How is that an infant can protest against the withdrawal of presence? What is it about the nascent human self that will lead it to rage, rage, rage, not just against the dying of the light but the fear of loss and threats to itself? The rage screams out because the child is being treated as not worth anyone being around it, not worth affirming or giving attention to. Why should it be any different? When the Protest emerges in adult life, permission to be angry is often a pre-cursor to feeling “I am valuable after all!” Who is it that can assert, “I’m worth more than that!”? The Protest brings a capacity to reveal oneself to oneself. But who is this interpreter of our own situation who sponsors reflexivity, who dares allow the voice of a valuable self to emerge? The impetus towards value in oneself is a voice that can be recruited, mobilised and strengthened. It is vital to understand the routes through which cultures of devaluation are triggered in psychosocial worlds. There are, I propose, essentially three: 1

2 3

Indifference – not being seen or heard or given attention; being disregarded, set aside or left behind. The social sensorium renders people as invisible products, dependent on recognition Indignity – the politics of invasion, of violation of sacred space that is the essence of violence Inferiority (diminishing) – the politics of reduction, of insult, of a denial of a full measure of humanity. Being belittled or placed in a passive position sustains dependence and vitiates against holding heads up high as a free and equal participant in social relations.

There may be a correlation between attachment systems that are patterned into the developing brain and the psychosocial reactions to indifference, diminishing and indignity. It can be argued that attachment systems form a template, not only of adult styles of relationships but of the way people react to issues of value and devaluation.70 Indeed, the construct of value/disvaluing which seems to play an important role in social and personal life may well be grounded in attachments – or their lack. As we noted, attachment theory suggests that the first relationship is the progenitor of all relationships. Recent studies have charted the similarity of adult love relationships and between mother and baby – the need to provide protection, security and consistency. To flourish psychologically, the human infant needs to form positive relationships early on. The neuroscience of attachments show how patterns are embedded in the emotional circuitry that shape us for life. These are circuits that are instantiated into the brain and provide an emotional system that responds to the world. Yet is there a deeper sense of being worthwhile located not just in a particular part of the brain, as the canons of neuroscience might require or within left or right-hand brain? Is some kind of

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interpreter behind these two hemispheres, the “I” that is asking the question and can protest its significance? Especially marked in narratives of bipolar and other disorders is that the voice of scrutiny is turned right up in volume. This is a magnification of a voice that can be heard in everyday life by which one doubts one’s own action and thoughts and feeling subject to inspection and assessment. Yet there is a third position that the self takes up that is a reflexive self capable of asking what on earth one is doing examining one’s own actions and thoughts so closely. It is here, perhaps, from which comes the sigh and cry of Protest and the bold bid for personal worth in a contradictory world. We are most obviously talking about the elusive self – or perhaps the slippery spiritual. In truth, we cannot point to a part of mind or brain and say “this is where the self resides in entirety.” Does the self lie within instinctive reactions or that of situational reflexivity? If there is no self, what is it we are but a fragmented, un-centred thing? If there is no valuable self imprinted into our mental furniture and structures of the soul, whence the resources to mobilise it? There seem to be six main routes towards filling up the deficit in personal value: 1

2 3

4 5

Consistent friendship or partnering – being there, remaining in a stable subject position that is not threatening relationship with withdrawal. “By contrast, uncritical and unqualified love from family members gives us a sufficient sense of self-worth to enable us to be a survivor.”71 Teachers and youth workers help to turn round the experience of devaluation – “she gave us the kind of attention that made each one of us feel special?”72 Counselling relationships – perhaps this is why the quality of relationship is crucial in therapeutic counselling – when studies have been made to assess the effectiveness of different therapies, each has been found to be broadly as effective as the other. They key contribution made by therapists is neither training nor orientation. This has marginal impact. What matters is how clients relate to therapists, accounting for up to 30% of variance in outcomes.73 Engaged parenting – positive, non-exploitative relationships can roll back the years of the plague. If relationships forged by professionals can do this, how much more attention of persistent, consistent partners and foster parents? Creative tasks that empower (anything from qualifications, doing something well, a job where one is contributes or generates non-passive involvement). “It never occurred to me to value myself. I have a sense of valuing myself that is not tied up with my work. I am no longer slave to wondering all the time ‘do they like me?’ The only thing that is now constant is how I feel about myself. . . . People used to say to me, ‘you’re worth so much more than that’ but it would fall on deaf ears and in practice, feel like an undiscovered country. . . . I find that the more I value myself, more people like me. This gives more confidence!”74

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An inspiring environment – a case can be made that we are moulded and shaped not just by social interaction but by our environment. Building a sense of place helps people feel good about themselves. “The physical and emotional environment of the Centre is designed to reflect the high value on the people who use it and is based on creativity and excellence.”75

The curious aspect of narratives of distress is the resilience of the human spirit in the face of enormous adversity. Trial after trial can come in destructive wave after wave. An unfortunate soul endures these hammer blows and can lose the point of themselves. “What is the point of carrying on?” people wonder – and then somehow find strength to do just that. Even more curious is how this resilience seems to lie deeper than the attachment patterns that have been so formative. For in the absence of secure attachments that bequeath a firm foothold on life and a resultant sense of worth, a strange persistence frames our wavering efforts to fight back. The surprise is that dignity can be recovered even when there is nothing there to recover. The experience of finding new dignity even amongst those with damaged pathways (the disturbed of the earth), suggests there is a layer of the psyche that can be brought into play even when it was absent. This essay has sought to describe and offer a starting point for a theorisation of value as the foundation for human action, not as an aspiration but as a dimension of the human operating system. It is an ineradicable trait. Theists would say it is “God-given.” Without it, we wither. With a rising sense of a valuable self, we function at our optimum and offer pathways of hope. The Protest is a life-affirming response of re-discovery of value in which people are free to be themselves and take part in their own formation. This is the opposite of passivity. Yet if a sense of a valuable self is engendered only by experiences of positive nurturing, how is it that, despite its absence, many people can cling on to a shred of worth or value they were given somewhere? Against all the odds, a client finds it in herself to say, “There’s more to me than that, don’t write me off!”76 The lens of human value discloses to us that the place of possible devaluation is a site of resistance, a site of ambiguity. The same space that de-personalises can be a place where people can be empowered. The social and inter-personal gaze communicates value or disvalue. Whether as a social group or as an individual, our worth depends on how we are seen. Yet we can see ourselves differently through a process of emancipation. The Protest is multi-sensory. It mobilises sight, speaking, the naming of the world and hearing. How we are valued or not by society “digs into” our sense of intrinsic worth. There is something to be mobilised, a capacity to respond to worth. The struggle for human value is a conceptual necessity for understanding social dynamics. “Value-in-oneself ” is vital for human action to flourish at optimum. Despite ever-present threats of tribalism, also rooted in ineradicable human traits, it is a working assumption behind much contemporary life. What is it about us that we are psychologically structured in this way? What is it that Protests?

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Notes 1 Rowe, D. (1993) The Successful Self. London: HarperCollins, p. 192. 2 Winnicott, D. (1953) Transitional objects and transitional phenomena. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34, 89–97. 3 Graber, K. (1991) Ghosts in the Bedroom: A Guide for Partners of Incest Survivors. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, Inc., p. 34. 4 Cooley, C. H. (1902) Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner. 5 Feyneyhough, C. (2008) The Baby in the Mirror: A Child’s World from Birth to Three. London: Granta Books. 6 Reddy, V. (2008) How Infants Know Minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 7 Bowlby, J. (1975) Separation, Anxiety and Anger. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books, p. 2. 8 Bowlby, J. (1953) Child Care and the Growth of Love. Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 13. 9 Bowlby, J. (1999) Forty Four Juvenile Thieves. London: Routledge. 10 Rutter, M. (1985) Family & school influences on behavioural development. In P. Barnes (Ed.), Personal, Social & Emotional Development of Children (chap. 1). Milton Keynes: Open University. 11 Moullin, S., Waldfogel, J., & Washbrook, E. (2014) Baby Bonds: Parenting, Attachment and a Secure Base for Children. London: Sutton Trust. 12 Shaver, P. R., & Clark, C. L. (1994) The psychodynamics of adult romantic attachment. In J. M. Masling & R. F. Bornstein (Eds.), Empirical Perspectives on Object Relations Theory. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 105–156. 13 Main, M. (1990) The effect of experience on signals of security with respect to attachment. In K. E. Barnard & T. B. Brazelton (Eds.), Touch: The Foundation of Experience. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, pp. 461–495. 14 Shaver, P. R., & Clark, C. L. (1994) The psychodynamics of adult romantic attachment. In J. M. Masling & R. F. Bornstein (Eds.), Empirical Perspectives on Object Relations Theory. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, pp. 105–156. 15 Main, M., & Hesse, E. (1990) Parents’ unresolved traumatic experiences related to infant disorganised attachment status. In M. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment in the Pre-School Years (chap. 7). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 16 Main, M. (1996) Introduction to the special section on attachment and psychopathology. In D. Howe (1999), Attachment Theory: Child Maltreatment and Family Support (chap. 2). Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, p. 37. 17 Konner, M. (2010) The Evolution of Childhood: Reason, Emotion, Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 18 Schore, A. N. (2003) Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. New York: Norton. Schore, A. N. (2003) Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self. New York: Norton. Siegal, D. J. (2001) The Developing Mind. New York: Norton. 19 Chugani, et al. (2001) Local brain functional activity following early deprivation: A study of institutionalised Romanian orphans. Neuroimage, 14. 20 Trevarthen, C. (1993) The self born in inter-subjectivity: The psychology of infant communicating. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The Perceived Self: Ecological and Inter-Personal Sources of Self-Knowledge. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 121–173. 21 Schore, A. Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 22 Gerhardt, S. (2004) Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby’s Brain. London: Routledge. 23 Wexler, B. (2007) Brain and Culture: Neurology, Ideology and Social Change. Cambridge: MIT Press. 24 Tallis, R. (2011) Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. London: Acumen. 25 Howe, D., et al. (1999) Attachment Theory, Child Maltreatment and Family Support. London: Macmillan.

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26 Saarni, C. (1990) The Development of Emotional Competence. New York: Guilford Press. 27 Hoffman, M. (1984) Empathy: Its limitations and role in a comprehensive moral theory. In W. Kurtines & J. Gerwitz (Eds.), Morality, Moral Behaviour and Moral Development. New York: Wiley, pp. 283–302. 28 Larson, R. W. (1990) Emotions and the creative process: Anxiety, boredom and enjoyment as predictors of creative writing. Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9, 275–292. 29 Sroufe, L. A. (1990) Emotional Development: The Organisation of Emotional Life in the Early Years. New York: Cambridge University Press. 30 Collins, W. A., Harris, M. L., & Susman, A. (1995) Parenting during middle childhood. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Handbook of Parenting, Vol. 1: Children and Parenting. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 65–89. 31 Tolan, P. A., & Loeber, R. (1993) Antisocial behaviour. In P. H. Tolan & B. Cohler (Eds.), Handbook of Clinical Research and Practice with Adolescents. New York: Wiley, pp. 307–331. 32 Gilbert, P. (2009) The Compassionate Mind. London: Constable. 33 Lieberman, A. (1992) Infant-parent psychotherapy with toddlers. Development and Psychopathology, 4, 559–574. 34 Joseph, B. (1982) Addiction to near-death. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 63, 449–456. 35 West, M. (2016) Into the Darkest Places: Early Relational Trauma and Borderline States of Mind. London: Karnac Books. 36 Philipps, A. (2010) On Balance. London: Hamish Hamilton. 37 Lexmond, J., & Reeves, R. (2009) Building Character. Demos. 38 Lexmond, J., & Reeves, R. (2009) Building Character. Demos. 39 Wellesley, J. (2008) Wellington: A Journey through My Family. London: Orion. 40 See Alexandra Styron’s memoir of her father in The New Yorker, December 2007. Also Styron, W. (2009) Letters to My Father. Louisiana State University Press and Styron’s own autobiographical Darkness Visible. 41 The best advice I ever got: Gates on Gates. (2009) Fortune Magazine, 6th July. 42 Stockett, K. (2009) The Help. New York: Fig Tree. 43 House, R., & Loewenthal, D. (Eds.). (2009) Childhood, Well-Being & Therapeutic Ethos. London: Karnac Books. 44 Paretsky, S. (2007) Writing in an Age of Silence. London: Verso. 45 Golding, J. (2011) The Children of Lovers: The Memoir of William Golding by His Daughter. London: Faber. 46 UNICEF. (2007) Child poverty in perspective: An overview of child well-being in rich countries. Innocenti Report Card 7, UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, p. 1. 47 Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985) Naturalistic Inquiry. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 48 Children’s Well-Being in UK, Sweden and Spain: The Role of Inequality and Materialism: A Qualitative Study June 2011. Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute. In conjunction with Dr Agnes Nairn. 49 A popular card used in parenting courses. Source unknown. 50 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 51 Schore, A. N. (2003) Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self. New York: Norton. Schore, A. N. (2003) Affect Dysregulation and Disorders of the Self. New York: Norton. Siegal, D. J. (2001) The Developing Mind. New York: Norton. 52 Cozolino, L. (2006) The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. New York: Norton. 53 Jeffry Simpson from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus; W. Steven Rholes of Texas A&M University; and Heike A. Winterheld from California State University, East Bay in Psychological Science, APA January 2010. 54 Scott Peck, M. (1990) The Road Less Travelled. London: Arrow Books, p. 23.

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55 Drake, K. E., Bull, R., & Boon, J. (2008) Interrogative suggestibility, self-esteem and the influence of negative life-events. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 13(2), 299–307. 56 Totton, N. (2015) Embodied Relating: The Ground of Psychotherapy. London: Karnac Books. 57 Rothblum, E., & Solovay, S. (2009) The Fat Studies Reader. New York: New York University Press. 58 Brown, L. S. (1989) Oppressive attitudes and the feminist therapist: Directions for change. Women and Therapy, 8(3), 19–30. 59 Reader, J. (2014) Challenging fat oppression. Therapy Today, 25(10). 60 Pope, H., Phillips, K., & Olivardia, R. (2002) The Adonis Complex: How to Identify, Treat and Prevent Body Obsession in Men and Boys. New York: Touchstone. 61 Carey, T. (2011) Where Has My Little Girl Gone? Lion Publishing. 62 Pease, A., & Pease, B. (2005) The Definitive Book of Body Language. London: Orion, p. 116. 63 Goldstein, S. (1960) The human situation: A feminine view. Journal of Religion, 40, 100–112. 64 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 65 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 66 Broks, P. (2003) Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology. New York: Atlantic Books. 67 Rawlings, B. A life without work. BBC2 Documentary 29th October 2010. 68 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 69 Flangan, O. (2008) The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 70 Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 257 See also Main, M., & Hesse, E. (1990) Parents’ unresolved traumatic experiences related to infant disorganised attachment status. In M. Greenberg, D. Cicchetti, & E. Cummings (Eds.), Attachment in the Pre-School Years (chap. 7). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Main, M. (1996) Introduction to the special section on attachment and psychopathology. In D. Howe (1999), Attachment Theory: Child Maltreatment and Family Support (chap. 2). Basingstoke: Macmillan Press. 71 Rowe, D. (1993) The Successful Self. London: HarperCollins, p. 192. 72 Billington, R. (2008) The teacher who inspired me. The Tablet, 3rd May 2008. 73 Asay, T. P., & Lambert, M. J. (1999) The empirical case for the common factors in therapy: Quantitative findings. In M. Hubble, B. L. Duncan, & S. D. Miller (Eds.), The Heart and Soul of Change: What Works in Therapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. 74 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 75 Mawson, A. (2008) The Social Entrepreneur: Making Communities Work. London: Atlantic Books, p. 113. 76 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission.

Part 3

A positive psychology

Chapter 12

Transformative change and positive places

Our psychological habitat We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one destiny affects all indirectly. – Martin Luther King Jr1

Much of the focus of this book has been viewing the interior world through the lens of negative experiences. The contrast polarity helps give analytic clarity. If we just looked at what makes for human valuing in positive terms, it would be the equivalent of apple pie and motherhood. No one would be against it, and it would strike no one as an unusual proposition. So we look first through a negative lens and what that tells us about human functioning. Through this perspective, responses to experiences that disvalue reveal how strongly we are motivated by the drive towards high value. The notion of human flourishing has had a strong running since existential psychologists argued that we should look at the positive dimensions of human behaviour. It is not enough to look at the world through distorted neuroses. A much greater focus should take its place on what happens when things go right for people, not when things go wrong. A powerful contemporary exposition of this is that of Martin Seligman’s Flourish. The task of increasing wellbeing, resilience and happiness for all is the province of a remarkable positive psychology that has a dynamic of human flourishing. The US Army took up this approach to apply its concepts to mental fitness. Resilience training is now common. Asking “what went well?” is routine practice in school life and in numerous organisations. Seligman proposed the mnemonic “PERMA” as summary of his project:2 • • • • •

Positive emotion Engagement in a task Relationships Meaning and purpose to life Accomplishment

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The motivation towards being of high value goes to the focal core of the human situation. The dynamic of human value is a serious and constitutive factor in society. It seems unlikely that you can explain it and its counterpoint – devaluation – within existing frameworks simply because it drills into an existential project about the self. Yet private as well as public worlds demonstrate that humans are not just interest-led. We are motivated by the desire to pursue our value and protest when it is breeched. Understanding the role that worth and value play as a driving force is crucial in both social dynamics and interpersonal relationships; their lack plays out in a range of social problems. A sense of value is an environment that promotes human flourishing. The impetus to realise our value and protest in its breach seems to be a fundamental drive. There are many things people do to try to discover a sense of value and then negotiate it throughout life. We are miners, working at the lead mines to uncover the silver of recognition so that value can be extracted. We are hunters, in pursuit of social value from others and “value-in-oneself ” internally. Sometimes, these are opposed. Experiences of devaluation can trigger a range of demoralising psychosocial effects that are sacred wounds. Worth or its lack is associated with a range of psychological conditions. “It was like every eye was on me,” says an agoraphobic in a manner reminiscent of the paranoiac with scrutiny turned up to a high pitch. Then came curious consequence. “I felt completely worthless.”3 It is not just what others do to us. The possibilities of becoming “devaluers” and not just the devalued are always present arising from the bifurcation of the interior world. Fundamental to the elements of social and emotional well-being are a strong self-concept and self-esteem. These are foundational to the formation of empathy and positive relationships with siblings, parents and peers.4 It is fundamentally about value – receiving and nurturing it and being able to show that others are important to the self and not just fodder for one’s own interests. Yet by itself, a focus on self-esteem only builds up a sense of entitlement. The classic study in the field of values was that of Allport and Vernon, endeavouring to build up value profiles based on personality types.5 A value was subsequently defined by Milton Rokeach, a leading figure in the field, as “a single belief of a very specific kind . . . guiding actions, attitudes, judgements and comparisons across specific objects and situations beyond immediate goals to more ultimate goals.”6 “Values” are perhaps cultural practices that express how different segments of society and different mini-cultures seek to be valued. Social attitudes can generate a perceived lack of respect surrounding bodily gestures, inappropriate words or actions. They dig down into a substratum of the value of persons. The result is a taking of offence that evokes an absolute sense of a valuable self being trashed. An insult, a non-negotiable affront has been made. Sources of value and significance are primarily to do with human relationships and performing at work, sports or hobbies. Arguably, the common root is the inner need to be valued, grounded in someone feeling that they are

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of worth, which deserves to be noticed. The quest for “respicere” continues throughout life. In the West, people increasingly expect courtesy from public services. “Respect” is inculcated in schools – as if civility is the basis of citizenship. Perhaps this is what is commonly called “good manners” amounts to, taking the principle of value and casting it into the thousand shapes of everyday transactions. “Gran’s first rule: teach your child always to think what the other person will feel.”7 What seems to be a safe working assumption, however, is that people seem to respond to manners and equality of respect as an environment conducive to their flourishing. It applies in different ways throughout the life course. Funerals represent the finale on the quest for valuing a life with cultural mores strongly against lack of respect. Even if the curtain-closure has to be postponed through inquest or trial, this too is a way of asserting that the individual life counts and is to be valued because it is significant. Value is relational in orientation. The problem with versions of subjectivity that roam across contemporary psychology is that, for the most part, they posit the subject as a lone individual, ensconced within social networks to be sure but delimiting the solitary person as the field of study. The focus on the individual often results in “most social psychologists thinking of people as largely selfcontained units.”8 As Levinas saw, psychology should be about recognition, not just cognition. What is proposed here is that a sense of value – or its lack – is a legacy of attachment systems yet goes beyond it. The dynamics of having worth provides the template for particular and recognisable responses either to valuing or being devalued. The reaction against indifference, indignity and inferiority are three ways in which human value seeps through the cracks of an adult. They have their counterpart in the need for attention, affirmation and assertion of a valuable self – the essential ingredients in secure attachments. Indifference – attention Inferiority – affirmation and significance Indignity – assertion of a valuable self Arguably, these imperatives are largely unconscious responses to devaluing circumstances. They emanate from the human constitution, yet they are also gendered and situational in the way they find expression. Without these needs being met, we will wither as people, much in the same way that we will wither without desires being met or not function very well if belonging needs go unmet. It is important for the realisation and unlocking of value if people are to have purpose. It enables a sense of being worthwhile to translate into worthwhile tasks. This is surely why dependence in any form should be temporary. People need a reason to get out of bed! We have proposed that human devaluation occurs within contexts of indifference, indignity and inferiority or diminishing. These negative experiences

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are a window on the psyche, disclosing a driver of human personality. The purpose of the driver is to re-establish dignity, attention and significance as fundamental responses to social life in which a valuable self is instantiated. Having “value-in-oneself ” is vital to human flourishing. Yet the concept must be de-constructed. Value is distributive, not just located within the individual. It is distributed across many projects from which we garner significance. The value of personhood as a social dynamic is a shared experience. We will look at this briefly in two distinct fields – the workplace and the loneliness we feel when we leave it, when we close our front door, cut off from its validation or feel condemned to enforced isolation. In both spheres, there is considerable scope for society to promote positive places; valuing environments that give us a heady sense of being worthwhile.

Valuing environments and transformative change The theme of the second Global Conference on Positive Change in 2018 was building positive organisations. How do we re-imagine and re-purpose organisations to meet the challenges and opportunities to work for a more positive world? It was an exercise in Appreciative Enquiry. My notes for the conference included the following ideas. We’re going to talk about what positive places look like, especially when it comes to organisations. According to Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork, the trick to the phenomenon of a zombie workforce is to give yourself a firm assessment. Ask yourself: are my skills still in demand? What’s the outlook for them? What skills could I work on today that would increase my income potential in the coming years? “Do this exercise every few years. If the half-life of a job skill is about five years, you want to get ahead of that decline in value.”9 So what are enduring qualities and not just transient skills? How do societies nurture the empathy and creativity that industry leaders say will survive the technological weather? Extend the question. What is a good place to work or be in? What does it mean to be a good person? Freud taught that a healthy human being was one capable of love and work. Becoming a person is the greatest challenge that most face. Being a good person is to find meaning and love, not happiness. Being a good person is to understand that responsibility must balance rights. Crucial economic decisions over issues such as fair tax rates can never be arrived at by either market or the State (which aligns itself to the managerial). Neither the market nor the State can determine the qualities of character we want to inculcate in our children. What a difference there is between a skill-set of the kind you would want on your CV and the kind of qualities you would want spoken about at your funeral: the kind of integrity and love (let’s call it that) you find in a leader who is a good person, a good teacher, a good friend, a good parent and person.

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For millions with mental health problems, the modern workplace is an insult to body and soul. If you can’t handle the stress of working in a low-pay world, it is always and only your fault. It’s time that presumption changed. Whose fault is it if you can’t cope with the stress of work? The answer used to be simple – “it’s yours, and you’re probably a shiftless weakling for even asking the question.” But a landmark case in France might soon change public opinion. Following an inquiry into the suicides of more than 30 employees at France Télécom (now Orange) between 2008 and 2009, prosecutors in Paris have recommended that Didier Lombard, a former chief executive of the company, and six other senior managers be put on trial for psychological harassment. Union officials and prosecutors have suggested that France Télécom’s strategy may have been designed to nudge employees into quitting of their own accord, sparing the company the expense and bad publicity of laying them off: workers were shunted from office to office, forced to work long, impractical hours and subjected to conditions that few employers would risk in a nation with relatively easy access to firearms. Instead, facing unemployment in a recession, employees continued to work and dozens killed themselves. These managers saw little wrong in pushing their employees to the brink of breakdown in the name of profit. That this case may be taken to a criminal court is far more shocking than it should be.10 Culture is fundamental. Businesses with positive cultures enjoy larger profits, better performance and happier employees. And thriving employees are more committed and satisfied with their jobs. But how do you create this kind of culture? Meet the zombie workforce: an army of employees who are failing to find inspiration at work. These are the “working dead.” There are many of them. According to a 2016 study by the consultancy Aon Hewitt, less than onequarter of the world’s employees are classified as “highly” engaged in their jobs, while only 39% admit to being “moderately so.” This leaves an awful lot of the five million people Aon surveyed “unengaged, which the more gruesomeminded of us might take to mean haunting office corridors like reanimated corpses” where once they might have been valuable staff members, full of life and great ideas. Disengagement among workers seeps out to infect society at large. When engagement levels among employees are low, businesses report a higher turnover of staff, more absenteeism and lower customer satisfaction.11 The wider economic ramifications of this are easy to anticipate: weakness in the business sector leads to a decline in national prosperity, and with that comes a drop in people’s collective living standards. Engagement leads to fairer, happier societies. Along with rapid advances in technology that are increasingly threatening job security, fewer employees are engaged, and this trend will continue. Or the concept of “the Conversational Firm” might be cited. TechCo uses multiple communication channels (chat forums, a wiki, large open meetings) to leverage collective wisdom from its hundreds of employees to confront market and internal challenges. A vocal culture pervades TechCo, in which employees

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feel emboldened to speak out. This is most notably demonstrated in employees posting ideas and critiquing others’ thoughts on the company’s collaborative web-based forum (the wiki). Lowest-rung employees comment on executives’ posts and proposals; high echelons reciprocate.12 Equipping organisations to tackle the future will require a management revolution no less momentous than the one that spawned modern industry. As Gary Hamel described in “Moon Shots for Management,” most of the fundamental breakthroughs in management occurred decades ago.13 Work flow design, annual budgeting, return-on-investment analysis, project management, divisionalisation, brand management – these and a host of other indispensable tools were all part of the application of scientific principles to management. How in a creative economy where entrepreneurial genius is the secret to success do you inspire employees to bring the gifts of initiative, imagination and passion to work every day? To address these problems, executives and experts must first admit that they have reached the limits of the industrial age paradigm built atop the principles of standardisation, specialisation, hierarchy, control and primacy of shareholder interests. New perspectives on creating positive organisational changes are much needed. An organisation that stresses industrial scale quantity, not quality is not thinking deeply enough. Through client work and post-doctoral research as well as management practice, it began to emerge what a valuing environment looked and smelt like. Discerning negative factors for disvaluing environments leads to turning these back on their head “to lift the LID” on an organisation, release dynamism and address disengagement through a positive workplace culture: • • •

Honouring our humanity – Look, learn and listen Engage with purpose – Involve and include so as to elicit significance Set up a non-intrusive environment – Dignify

Signposted elsewhere,14 I have proposed a new conceptual structure relevant to environments of value and the shape of things to come in a fourth industrial revolution. The theory is: • •

That there is a strong association between the sense of inner world value held by staff or workers as they participate in an organisation AND the added, external value they generate that furthers its purpose That smart leaders understand it is in the interests of the organisation to optimise those factors that enable a valuing environment to translate inner value into added value

It is, however, wise leaders who will grasp how vital it is to create what we will call “environments of value” as positive places for transformative global change. Rooted in the well-rehearsed notion that organisational success or competitive advantage is achieved through its workforce, the proposition for a new

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construct is this. Human activity in organisations flourishes at its optimum in a valuing environment where the link between inner value and external, added value is optimised. Wherever a human community has a task at its heart and there are jobs to do, this can be expressed as “significance with belonging” (in line with the drivers referred to in Chapter 7). Making organisations and the workplace more humane places – with the internet already organising economy and society in a different way, a premium will be placed on factors to do with the human “touch” such as creativity, empathy and entrepreneurial flair that cannot be replicated by algorithms. There is a vital association between inner value and external, added value that is there to draw out under optimum conditions. Leaders are often unsure how to mobilise the participation and engagement of their people so they are productive and contribute effectively. That is true anytime, anywhere but in the fourth Industrial Revolution even more so if it deprives us of our heart and soul. Perhaps a sense of value in which humans can flourish and do their best work provides a link between self-respect and respect for others that goes beyond self-esteem. Human valuing is not just rooted in individuals but in interaction with others. The workplace is one important sphere where the validation of our worth is performed. This brings us to our second candidate for positive places and valuing environments; community action to tackle loneliness in society.

Tackling loneliness No one knows what’s it like to be lonely. It’s horrible. It can be a week without seeing someone. I thought I was going mad. I can’t expect someone to come here. They’ve got their own life.15

We looked in Chapter 1 at the existential challenge that loneliness poses. Our aloneness and erosion of social connection leaves us with a profound emptiness and absence. The world seems indifferent to our fate. Within the terms of this essay, we are neither seen nor heard. Loneliness is linked with health problems and life expectancy. The effects on mortality arising from a lack of social relationship is significant. Loneliness is a public health menace in advanced societies. How then do we create positive places in the community that help to tackle this major issue? There are growing numbers of good practice that are markers to valuing environments and transformative change. Progressively, the rise of social disconnection is paralleled with the rise in technology becoming more human. Robots that mimic company are some sort of substitute for human relationships. Anything that offers human contact to the lonely will thrive. In Japan, people can rent a family or a friend – a girlfriend for a singleton, a funeral mourner, or a companion to watch TV with.

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It is a curious extension of the market and contract. The UK charity “Silverline” takes nearly 500,000 calls a year. Staff in their Blackpool headquarters are supported by volunteers across the country offering regular, pre-arranged calls between a volunteer and an old person that last for about 15 minutes.16 Then there are platforms such as Nesterly, founded in 2016. Its mission is designed to make it easier for older singletons with spare rooms to rent them to young people who help round the house. Currently operating in Boston, Massachusetts, Nesterly helps make intergenerational home-sharing safe, transparent and easy by providing screening, customisable home-sharing agreements and ongoing support.17 Homeshare, a network of charities, operate in 16 countries. “CareMore” is an integrated health plan and care delivery system for Medicare and Medicaid patients that has launched a dedicated scheme to tackle loneliness. “We’re trying to reframe loneliness as a treatable medical condition,” according to Sachin Jain, its president. Its 150,000 patients are screened for loneliness. Those at risk are asked if they want to enrol in a “Togetherness Programme.” “Connectors” make phone calls and help with transport to events and ideas for socialising. Patients are encouraged to visit clinics, even when not especially ill, to play games, attend a “seniors’ gym” and just chat.18 Elsewhere, policymakers are experimenting with incentives to encourage old and young to mix. In cities such as Lyon, France, Deventer, Netherlands and Cleveland, Ohio, nursing homes or local authorities are offering students free or cheap rent in exchange for helping out with housework. As experiments such as the St Monica’s Trust in Bristol demonstrate, intergenerational activity is seen as a very promising approach to social disconnection.19 It helps that so many social innovation companies want to “disrupt” loneliness. But most of the burden will have to be shouldered by statutory providers.

Case study In Frome, Somerset, UK, a GP-led approach set out to do something about loneliness. As the lead GP, Dr Helen Kingston, observed, if it could work, the approach has huge implications. 1 2

3

GPs ask about needs in a holistic way to enquire about social relationships. A network of paid health connectors see individuals on a one-to-one basis. They map out what services and organisations are available and put them in touch with activities using a database of access. The approach is one of social prescribing. Pulling all this together is a network of unpaid citizens called Community connectors who are the eyes and ears of the project in the community.

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The success of this approach relies on a cumulative network effect of doing things all at once. It is systematic, rooted in and part of primary care and based on a clinical assessment of need.The project is aimed at a whole population in a Clinical Commissioning Group Practice area of 115,000 not a given cohort. There are no inclusion or exclusion criteria. There are benefits to be had of improving patient care and improving working lives. Building community resources that involve those concerned is a strengths-based approach rather than rooted in neediness and vulnerability. It is solutions focused.The result of building networks of resilient support is increased depth of social connection and friendship that will last for years. There is no overall tier of management in the CCG project. Clinician time is the basis of it. That is the strength but also weakness. Nevertheless, it is impressive. Over a four-year period, there was a 21% drop in emergency admissions to hospital.

Projects such as this need to be evaluated. The UK National Health Service is increasingly using “social prescribing,” sending patients to social activities rather than giving them drugs. More than 100 such programmes are running in Britain. Yet reviews have concluded that evidence to date was too weak to support any conclusions about the programmes’ effectiveness.

Case study – a national plan to tackle loneliness It started as Arches at St Wins – a church-led community approach to tackling social isolation through regenerating a large church in Totton, on the edge of Southampton into a community hub using arts and music for well-being and social connection. A considerable amount of local engagement went into this from the beginning of 2016 including an extensive survey on the streets of Totton in the summer of 2017 (sample size N = 450).The immediate impact has been three-fold: •

•

•

A children’s role-play centre which promotes social learning amongst children and connection amongst their parents, many of whom are lone parents A community choir to promote well-being through creativity and social connection and which is beginning to draw on social prescribing via the West Hampshire CCG Facilitating a community time-bank which has been assembled through a strong team of statutory bodies and representatives of the local town Council

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A community choir is especially helpful to draw people out.They join a group to belong to. The choral score means you are standing next to someone making the same mistakes. “I was so scared when I was singing at school. Now I am singing and it is because I am with this lot.”20 To continue this work, we formed a social enterprise aimed at developing community solutions to tackling the growing problem of loneliness in society. It is developing best practice in mobilising a wide range of both voluntary and statutory groups in a whole-systems approach to isolation and community renewal. Backed up by theory and practice, we have proposed the following, to be trialled and evaluated: 1

2 3 4

5 6

7

Enabling and resourcing community hubs and networks: joining together in all the ways in which different providers exist and act within a community to tackle this issue. Social prescribing from GPs should be to such hubs. This is a fundamental component. Human connection is an antidote to loneliness – promoting connection should be a policy aim. Society’s current focus on person-centred care and independent living needs to be complemented by relationship-centred care and promoting intergenerational connection. Share and promote best practice through a Local Champion. Befriending schemes, time-banking and Good Neighbours all have a part to play – we have formed a time-bank here with local CCG as important drivers. Why not bring domains together that are normally separate? Creative industries and social issues, in this case isolation can be brought together very fruitfully. Long Spoon has been incubating this approach on the edge of Southampton as a faith-based initiative and, through a catalyst grant from Royal Society of Arts, has developed a model that can be applied elsewhere. This is a national challenge. New thinking is required.

Our project name is Long Spoon (drawing on the parable of social connection) We seek to build a virtual hub and network of community organisations and activists coordinated by a community Social Enterprise, which will create a coordinated community response to loneliness, isolation and the disintegration of community. It is a two-year project. Our aim is quite simple. Is there value in a joined up, whole-systems approach to tackling loneliness, and can an integrated, model offer greater social capital than an uncoordinated approach of relying on awareness of what is on offer to local people? Will it work? It needs to be

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evaluated. The state of thinking about loneliness is problematic. The evidence for its association with health is clear. But firm evidence about which remedies work is lacking. In this way, we are looking to explore whether there is scale-ability through this social innovation whereby a strengths-based deployment of community assets can be drawn together as intentional social policy. Can the elements we propose based on our experience be extrapolated more widely into a National Plan for Loneliness? After all, it is the national web of love and dependence – that makes our society strong. Where those relationships are weak, we are weak.

In summary, valuing environments are positive places that are crucial for human flourishing. The impetus towards “companion” is that our very core sense of being worthwhile as a human is at stake. Without it, we wither. The metaphysical question that requires explanation lies just here. What is it that Protests?

Notes 1 King, M. L. Jr. (1963) Letter from Birmingham City Jail 16th April bit.ly/PzYolh accessed August 2018. 2 Seligman, M. (2001) Flourish. London: Nicholas Brealey. 3 Author’s client notes – used with permission. 4 Zaff, J. F. (2003) Holistic well-being and the developing child. In M. H. Bornstein, et al. (Eds.), Well-Being: Positive Development across the Life Course. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 5 Allport, G. W., & Veronon, P. E., & Lindzey, G. (1960) A Study of Values. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 6 Rokeach, M. (1973) The Nature of Human Values. New York: Free Press, p. 18. 7 Fraser, L. (2009) A Spoonful of Sugar: Old Fashioned Wisdom for Modern Day Mothers. 8 Baumeister, R. F. (1995) Self and identity: An introduction. In A. Tesser (Ed.), Advanced Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 51–98. 9 www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/is-your-colleague-a-zombie-worker accessed 6th October 2017. Anna Bruce-Lockhart Editor, World Economic Forum. 10 Penny, L. New Statesman www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2016/09/millionsmental-health-problems-modern-workplace-insult-body-and-soul accessed 9th September 2016. 11 Hewitt, A. (2017) Trends in global employee engagement www.aon.com/attachments/ thought-leadership/Trends_Global_Employee_Engagement_Final.pdf accessed August 2018. 12 Turco, C. (2016)The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media. New York: Columbia University Press. 13 https://hbr.org/2009/02/moon-shots-for-management/ Harvard Business Review February 2009. 14 Steed, C. D. (2017) Smart Leadership, Wise Leadership: Environments of Value in an Emerging Future. London: Routledge.

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15 Reading, S. The town trying to cure loneliness www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cswvqw accessed Tuesday 10th April 2018. 16 www.thesilverline.org.uk/ accessed August 2018. 17 www.nesterly.io/how-it-works accessed August 2018. 18 www.facebook.com/CareMoreHealth accessed August 2018. 19 www.stmonicatrust.org.uk/ accessed August 2018. 20 Loneliness Hotspot BCC Radio 4 27th August 2018.

Postscript What is it that Protests?

From whence does it come? A client growing up in the second half of the 20th century laments how the world seems to be ordered is confounded by possession of secret knowledge. He knows things could be different, that acts of injustice militate against what should or shouldn’t be. Such deep down Protest will be a precarious foothold through much of life. Later, the client dares to believe it. The Protest is a capacity for this daring belief. Then came the day when April sun was bursting out all over. It felt like an entitlement suddenly received, as if a will had been opened and gracious discovery made. “I am valuable,” proclaimed a client. “I am now no longer just useful!” “I AM VALUABLE!”1 It is easy to dismiss reports like this as being a product of the self-important West. Yet here is a slave girl in 1831 called Mary Prince disclosing secret knowledge 150 years before that resonates with this kind of reaction. “My heart tells me! She exclaims.” “I was not permitted to see my mother or father or poor sisters and brothers to say goodbye, though going to a strange land and might never see them again. The people who keep slaves think black people are like cattle, without natural affection. But my heart tells me it is far otherwise.”2 I am arguing that the pursuit of value is rooted in ineradicable traits, part of the human operating system. The notion that humans have worth is inseparable from the moral practice of conferring worth on them. In theology, a construct that has had considerable running across the centuries was whether the human soul could do anything towards its own salvation. Could we haul ourselves up by our own bootstraps and make a contribution to remedy our human dilemma? This was the debate surrounding Pelagius in the 5th century against his more famous protagonist, Augustine. In the16th century, the importance of grace became emphasised and synergism, as it was called, the idea of being in partnership with God towards human salvation, was disavowed by most Reformers. This is relevant to our theme. I argue that when human concerns focus on unlocking and releasing the pent up sense of value that has been suppressed or dented, contribution or participation is key.

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Recalling that one of the principles by which disvaluing is communicated in human interaction is indifference, the notion of synergism has special relevance. At stake is how the subject relates to the world and plays a role within it. Distorted neuroses may be a lot to do with blocked attempts to extract significance and value from our world. With a reduced sense of worth, someone will not feel worthwhile. Purpose is needed. Value-in-oneself is an image we have of ourselves, the mental picture of our own identity. The forces by which we move towards re-valuing that which has been edited out begin with a linguistic turn by which we move from a passive voice to an active voice. In “Environments of Value,” we explored the relevance of this to organisational life and culture. “I was only worthwhile if I was useful,” laments a client.3 Valuable only if useful? That is what “conditions of worth” amount to; a quasi-economic statement, implying contract and dependent love, not “value-in oneself.” “Value-in-oneself ” is magic gold – value not in a utilitarian, conditional mode of life and performance but as aspect of personal existence, of being and not just performance. It is neither instrumental nor contractual – “if you do this, I will do that” (typical of monetary economic relationships). Instead, it is covenantal, not contractual. That is problematic when sources of significance are under threat. Talk of people finding meaning in their lives and how that translates into pursuits and projects being of objective worth is the focus of philosophical analysis. Wolf characterises meaning in life as having a subjective grounding in a feeling of fulfilment as well as an object worthy of vital engagement. The latter is a vital component. In pursuing our projects, we are doing more than pursuing good feelings we might expect; we are apprehending the worth of our pursuits and objective worth they reflect.4 The psychodynamics of this impetus seems to be that it is “instinctive,” rooted in unconscious life as well as conscious action. It is a psychosocial drive strengthening in many people concerned about significance even when libido is ebbing. A strong force in social life, it is an impetus that has to find expression somehow. When blocked in one key area, the demoralised self looks for fresh avenues as means by which value may be gathered. There is a case for saying that this impetus is God-given.

Case study There has always been an innate power/hope that it would get better, I feel like that is within each and every one that as long as your heart is beating you have a purpose however I disagree with the notion that in order to love others we have to learn to love ourselves. In my case I would say that it has been the other way. Somebody taking it upon themselves to give me a voice when I was homeless that action led to other many actions that led me to where I am now. As I was undertaking my qualification

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in Youth Work my supervisor and now best friend was forthright but also fair she was interested in my progress and could see the potential and therefore took it upon child herself to ensure that a process that I was finding difficult due to my need for it to be perfect that it become fun and enjoyable.This first celebration of achievement was one of the many ways that helped me understands that could and that I can. There was various goals setting that give me a bit more worth and a standing in society such as completing my Gold Duke of Edinburgh and Access into Higher Education and Finally into University to do a BA in Sociology however it was here that I discovered that no matter how much I achieved that I was never going to be good enough for my biological mother and nature in what’s own way took over and provided me with the answers to the pain I would not pinpoint that was complex that sometimes I was just empty and other times I was just tired, I discovered that my soul was tired but moreover it had been tired all my life and I remember the first time at the end of last summer waking up and I felt somewhat rejuvenated and excited about the future and learning that since the age of 3 I had never had a healthy mental health. I find my healing and resolution and restoration as complex as the illness itself however with the healing/recovering there is unfathomable peace and joy that my security is no longer dependent on what my biological relatives think of me but on what my truth is and by the amazing people who I can now refer to my family as they have stood with me and by me at my lowest darkest ebb. My value to them is not defined by what I can do for them but by who I am. A creation worthy of love and capable of love. Over the course of my journey that honour respect and love have to be present from a young age for a child to know of those and what they are the carer/parent have to express it with their actions as well as language those interactions are crucial in providing a stability as well as an identity. For these to be absent then for them to be asked of the child then it is blind obedience and toxic for said, it imprints fear and a numbing of their spirit.

It must be acknowledged that in the case of this particular client, faith played a major role. For many, being fully in a totality of being involves a spiritual dimension. This extends to those without an explicit commitment to a faith tradition or spiritual practice who still encounter human experiences that would be described as spiritual. The problem is that counselling psychology is built on a view of the world reflecting secular modernity that has no room for religion and the spirit.5 Rogers and Freud were both heirs and propagators of this secular and indeed atheist perspective of human growth – though Freud was clearly trying to decipher the puzzle of religion in his penultimate book Moses and Monotheism.6 As Ross elaborates, a spirituality of the sacred contrasts with a more overt spirituality of the self through recognition of an ultimate

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being, a desire to pray and meditate, sacred moments, nourishment of the spirit and use of a sacred text.7 Mainstream psychology has, for the most part, still to regard the struggle to realise our sense of a valuable self as being a major content area in its agenda. The impetus towards high value is not usually seen as embedded psychodynamically within the psyche. This essay is arguing for the theory that the pursuit of a high value for people is a load-bearing driver in human action. The proposition being advocated here is that we are psychologically structured towards realising our value. We pursue this drive to be valued in ways that cultivate it extrinsically or intrinsically. If we pursue it externally, in appearance and so forth, within the conditions of post-modern life, it will be unstable. This is the significance of significance.

Notes 1 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 2 Ferguson, M. (Ed.). (1993) The History of Mary Prince, a West Indian Slave, Related by Herself. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 60–63. 3 Author’s client notes – name withheld and used with permission. 4 Wolf, S. (2011) Meaning in Life: And Why It Matters. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 5 West, W. (2004) Spiritual Issues in Therapy: Relating Theory to Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 6 Ginsburg, R., & Pardes, I. (2006) New Perspectives on Freud’s Moses and Monotheism. 7 Ross, A. (2016) Identifying the categories of spiritual experience encountered by therapists in their clinical work. British Journal of Guidance and Counselling.

Index

aloneness 4, 6, 11–12, 16–17, 81, 189 anxiety 1, 6–7, 9, 81, 91, 106, 116, 122–123, 132, 137, 149–151, 162, 165–166 belonging 18, 37, 40, 109, 129, 134, 142, 185, 189 bullying 27, 29, 31, 44, 50, 68, 127, 130, 170 collusion 112, 128, 147–148, 153, 155, 168 de-humanisation 48, 113, 151 demoralisation 112, 148–153, 173 depressed 1, 25, 31–32 depression 8, 12–14, 18, 23–26, 28, 63, 91, 128, 131–132, 137, 139, 148, 150–152, 154, 163–164, 166–169 desecration 46–47, 69, 129 devaluation 6–7, 38, 46–47, 50, 57, 62, 69, 74–75, 82–85, 91–95, 101, 106–107, 112, 136, 140, 142, 152–154, 170, 174–176, 184 diminishing 3, 105, 112, 117, 120–121, 143, 149, 152, 174, 185 disability 16, 100, 113 displacement 62 distress 1, 2, 28–29, 73, 90, 92, 94–96, 99–100, 102, 116, 118, 129–131, 162–163, 172–173, 176 domination 44, 46–47, 49, 52, 57, 74, 156 economics 63, 113, 140 emotional states 2, 31 extremism 36, 40–41 Freud, S. 37, 44, 62, 84–87, 90, 93, 103–106, 109–110, 119–120, 134, 137, 141–145, 151, 154–155, 186, 197 Fritz, J. 47–48

Girard, R. 50, 63 globalisation 36 human devaluation 3, 43, 46, 57, 139, 141, 144, 185 humiliation 6, 36, 38–39, 42–43, 59, 81–82, 87, 122, 126, 148 indifference 3–4, 7, 58, 65–66, 82, 92, 101, 105, 112, 120, 140, 143, 174, 185, 196 indignity 3–4, 7, 57, 82, 105, 126, 143, 174, 185 inferiority 7, 58–59, 82, 87, 89, 105–106, 112, 117, 121–123, 129, 135, 152–153, 174, 185 injustice 36, 57, 62, 72 insignificance 2, 4, 173 intergenerational violence 51 isolation 2, 4, 11, 16, 18–19, 110, 186, 192 Jung, C.G. 87–88, 109 loneliness 1–22, 23, 25, 110, 116, 134, 186, 189 Marx, Karl 119–120 mental health 1–2, 6, 12–14, 23–29, 31, 40–41, 68, 105, 109, 118, 131, 156, 162, 170, 187 mental illness 1, 41, 44, 102 political community 4, 6 poverty 5, 18, 28, 68, 52, 118, 126, 163, 167 prejudice 63, 113, 120, 134 Prince’s Trust 1, 156–157 psychopathology 1, 85 psychotherapy 1, 3, 86, 89–90, 92, 94, 154, 158, 171

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racism 6, 40, 100, 118–119, 139, 153 radicalisation 7, 37–41, 52 rational choice 45, 110 rejection 51, 67, 102, 105, 112, 129–130, 132, 136, 151 relationality 15, 19, 142 religion 11–12, 39, 60, 62, 67, 197 resignation 128, 148, 152–153 retribution 46, 57, 59, 69 Rogers, Carl 88, 197

social media 1, 5, 16, 23, 25–27, 29–32, 110, 122 social pressure 3, 74, 84, 118, 123 social toxins 23, 29 stress 1, 14, 24, 29, 32, 94, 151, 155, 163, 187, 188

scapegoating 62–63 self-actualisation 83, 105, 110, 134 self-awareness 110, 130, 158 self-expression 26–27 self-harming 1, 5, 150, 167 social bonds 4, 16, 45, 52, 73 social isolation 13, 16, 19, 191

unemployment 40, 45, 59, 83, 90, 149–150, 187

transactional analysis 90, 157 transfer 5–6, 57, 61–62, 67, 70, 73, 81, 118 transformative change 183, 186, 189

violation 4, 47, 49, 58, 82, 127, 144, 174 vulnerability 2, 25, 173, 191 Wednesday society 37