THE “WHY” BEHIND ABERRANT BEHAVIOR
In DOLF psychology there are two types of cognition. We are born with the Mind Of A Child where thoughts, decisions and behavior come from the Emotions or “gut”. At the beginning of life when Emotions dominate, raw Anger, Depression and Anxiety are abundant, but Intellectual constraints are not yet developed. The result is behavior that is uncontrolled, immature or inappropriate, and may even be deviant by our social standards. By later in life, around our teenage years, Emotions become more fully integrated with our high level of human Intelligence and we develop an Adult Mind. We arrive at our more familiar type of thinking where decisions and behavior are more Intellectually determined and our thoughts and the “choices” we make for our actions are generated from the head where they are mainly governed by reasoned thinking and logic. With age too, through a natural and universal process, we gradually lose touch with our Emotions and become less aware of the deeper, more Emotionally-sourced motivations behind our actions.
When we look at decision-making and behavior or the “choices” we make about how to behave, it is important to emphasize and fully appreciate the enormous rift between Child and Adult thinking. Bearing this difference in mind, we soon gain insight into the reasons WHY child-centered or immature behavior takes place and understand WHY it is lacking in logic and leads to bad behavior or bad “choices”. Moreover, recognizing this difference equalizes and humbles us as human beings. It helps us consider that ALL humans are the same in that there was a time for each one of us when we were ALL children and ALL our thoughts and behaviors were governed exclusively by our Emotions. Therefore, in a situation where we cannot understand our own or another person’s actions, we learn that nobody’s behavior should be considered outside the context of their how their own childhood took place, how their Emotions became integrated into their Intellectual functions and how they personally experienced it to finally give rise to their behavior and the “choices” they made in their lives about how they would conduct themselves. For it was the thoughts and feelings of their time in their particular environment as they were raised that created their personality structure, their patterns of behavior and who they look like to us now.
For example, if during childhood a person experienced a constant barrage of internal feelings of Anger with Anxiety as a result of events such as feelings of Disfavor, abuse or bullying, we may expect to see negative or socially maladaptive thinking and behavior patterns that developed in response to these experiences. Such feelings, thoughts and behavior patterns would be signs of a “hardening” of the personality structure that will show up as acting out, lying, stealing, making excuses, refusing to admit their guilt and so on. Or, if the child’s reaction to their early life circumstances was Depression with Anxiety, the behavioral responses expressed throughout their lives will be observed through depressive behaviors such as self seclusion, sadness, tearfulness, lack of motivation, social withdrawal, etc. Both the (a) Anger plus Anxiety and (b) Depression plus Anxiety styles of irrational thinking and behavior make no sense if not considered within the context of that person’s earlier experiences that formed their personality. Their behavior and reactions now reflect a person who is still largely influenced by their raw instincts, Emotions and urges rather than the social rules of propriety. This is a person whose negative experiences interrupted and disrupted the smooth integration of their Intellectual functions with their Emotions. So they appear to us either as a person who has problems controlling feelings of Anxiety, Depression and Anger or as a person with a generally poor social adaptation.
Trying to “Get Away with Murder”
In an immature person, when Emotions take over and lead to irrational behavior such as stealing or hurting others on the one hand (Anger), or withdrawal or self harm on the other hand (Depression), human Intellectual resources of creativity and ingenuity are, as with all human beings, integrally involved. The person, or SELF, must resort to using their Intellectual power to defend and make sense of their aberrant behavior, both to themselves and others. But the behavior, as well as the reasons, decisions, and conclusions that are reached using the faulty thinking process will lack rationality because there was insufficient policing or Intellectual control over the thoughts and feelings that spurred the behavior in the first place. Successful socialization would have integrated the Intellectual functions that could have censored the thoughts and feelings and prevented the behavior, but in the absence of sufficient Intellectual control, the Emotions broke through. As the behavior unfolded, the person became immersed in the murky waters of trying to use their Intellectual power to rationalize their irrational behavior. Like a short circuit, they begin to offer dubious, nonsensical Intellectual-sounding or pseudo-Intellectual explanations for the behavior. This is the reason that, when we ask them WHY they misbehaved, we get excuses for how the behavior came about such as “She deserved to be raped”, and faulty reasoning such as “The watch was just lying there so I took it”. The process of proper integration of the Emotions with Intellectual functions, the process that would have created adequate control of the Emotions and should have been put in place during childhood, had been sabotaged. Now these Emotions are too powerful a force for the person to resist. They continue to break through to influence their behavior and must somehow be justified.
The overwhelming reason behind this type of malfunction is the trauma of Disfavor or lack of access to the precious commodity of LOVE from the PLG during the precious interactions within the first Family of Origin. The result is “breakthrough” behavior that feels unwanted, inexplicable and perhaps even foreign to the perpetrator her/himself. Yet it is acted out as if by compulsion. As mentioned in another context, the person truly does not know or have an Intellectual grasp or understanding of where or how the ideas behind their cognition and actions originated. These urges came directly from their drives, instincts or “gut” – that unsocialized or under-socialized storehouse of Emotions that had lacked sufficient Intellectual censorship.
So it is that when WE observe the negative behavior, respond to it with our own Anger and persist in asking an immature, poorly socialized or socially deviant individual such as a child, criminal, substance abuser or mentally ill person WHY a certain unacceptable act such as hitting someone or going on a binge took place, they respond either with crazy excuses, or with lame, unreasonable excuses or the all-too-familiar “I don’t know”. Though it baffles us we should understand that they themselves are truly baffled. Such is the situation when a child grabs another child’s toy, a teenager steals a car, an adult commits a heinous crime, a drug addict or gambler is unable to give up their addiction, an anorexic seemingly cannot bear to eat, an overeater cannot resist temptation, a hoarder cannot separate from their belongings, and so on. It is a problem of impulse control. Actually knowing WHY they did it, or understanding their own motivations would have engaged their Intellectual functions, which were NOT operative at the time they took their actions. As professionals, parents and superiors, we should realize that they are in fact telling the truth when they say they don’t know WHY they did it, because they really don’t ‘know’ or have any Intellectual knowledge about where their urge or motivation came from. They just acted impulsively as their Emotions drove them to do or as they “felt” they must do, following the dictates of their drives, instincts and Emotions of the moment. No doubt they did so to answer to their innermost urges without thought or concern about the consequences of their actions. And yes, it begs the question of whether there was any actual intent behind the actions, or whether the action was automatic / robotic, as we might be required to prove in a court of law. However, what we can say for sure is that at the time of the act the perpetrator thought neither about the price they would have to pay in the end, the effect it would have on others, nor the explanations they would eventually have to give for the brief gratification of their impulse that felt so good and relieved their Emotional tension at the time. A prime example of this type of faulty reasoning is Ted Kaczynski, an accomplished mathematician who saw fit to anonymously kill people, and attempt to rationalize his actions both to himself and to society by offering a pseudo-Intellectual, anti-government “manifesto” as support.
So our question to those who behave badly about WHY they did their deed, which was the first question that interviewer Lisa Ling posed to Bart Whitaker who shot and intended to kill his entire family, is moot. The answer in fact lies with the rest of us and in the society that raised them. And the conclusion must be that the onus lies with us and with the social environment we created that raised them, and what we could or should have done when they were still under our tutelage as our children. And finally, after nearly half a century of investigating, researching and pondering numerous cases of both normal and abnormal behavior, this author reached the conclusion that the most salient and influential reason for such behavior is undoubtedly the hidden and undiscovered SIBLING RIVALRY and the feeling of Disfavor as compared with an adjacent sibling. Hence the root cause of the problem behavior is the Distribution Of the precious commodity of Love in every Family.
