THE “WHY” BEHIND ABERRANT BEHAVIOR
In DOLIF 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 our “gut feelings”. 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 socially deviant. But later in life, by our teenage years when our Emotions are more fully integrated with our human Intelligence, we develop an Adult Mind. We arrive at our more familiar type of thinking where decisions and behavior are more Intellectually determined. Rather than coming from the gut, 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 become less aware of the deeper, more Emotionally-sourced motivations behind our actions, gradually losing touch with the Emotions that created them.
When we look at decision-making and behavior and 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. We understand WHY it is lacking in logic and leads to erratic or “bad behavior”, or what we might consider “bad choices”. Recognizing this difference equalizes and humbles us as human beings. It helps us consider that there was a time for each 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. We learn that every person is a product of 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 and decide to conduct themselves today. 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 what they look like to us now.
For example, if during childhood a person experienced a constant barrage of internal feelings of Anger combined with Anxiety as a result of events such as feelings of Disfavor compared with a sibling, 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 combined with Anxiety, the behavioral responses expressed throughout their lives will be observed through their 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. When their behavior and reactions are out of line now, they 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 such as criminal or defiant behavior (Anger + Anxiety), mental illness (Depression + Anxiety), substance abuse (Depression + Anxiety), and such.
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, which is indicative of Anger on the one hand, or withdrawal, self harm or suicide which indicates Depression on the other, human Intellectual resources of creativity and ingenuity become, 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 break through. As the behavior unfolded, the person became immersed in the murky waters of trying to use their Intellectual power to rationalize their Emotionally-motivated 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 was asking for it. She deserved (or wanted) to be raped”, Or, we might be faced with faulty reasoning such as “The watch was just lying there so I took it. I need it more than they do”. The process of proper integration of the Emotions with Intellectual functions, the process that should have been put in place during childhood and would have created adequate control of the Emotions, was sabotaged. Now these unresolved Emotions are still too raw and too powerful a force for the person to resist. They continue to break through to influence the individual’s behavior and must somehow be justified using the Intellectual powers.
The overwhelming reason and motivating source behind this type of malfunction is the trauma of Disfavor or lack of access to the precious commodity of LOVE from the PLG during that sacred time of interaction 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 wondering and 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. Most irritatingly to us, they respond with the all-too-familiar “I don’t know”. Though it baffles us we should understand that they themselves are truly baffled too. 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 at the time they committed the actions, which were suspended or NOT operative at that moment. As professionals, parents and superiors, we should realize that they are in fact telling the truth when they say “I don’t know WHY I did it”, because they really don’t ‘know’ or have no 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 of course from a legal standpoint, 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 one way or another in a court of law. All we can say for sure though is that at the time of the act the perpetrator was not using their Intellectual ability to think through their acts. They were thinking neither about the price they would have to pay in the end, nor the effect it would have on others, nor the explanations they would eventually have to give for the brief moment of gratification of their impulse that felt so good and relieved their Emotional tension at the time.
So the question of whether or not they “chose” to act this way can be answered when we consider their state of mind at the time, during which their Intellectual power was temporarily suspended and their actions were taken over by their Emotions. 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. (For more explanation see the two blogs about Ted Kaczynski.)
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 truly intended to kill his entire family, is moot. The answer actually lies with the rest of us and in the society that raised the perpetrator. So the conclusion must be that the onus rests with us and with the social environment we created that raised misbehavers, 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. That is, what we call in this context the Distribution Of the precious commodity of Love in the perpetrator’s Family. Alternately, in cases where there is no apparent PLG or the PLG has been somehow lost by death or alienation, this would be the LOSS OF LOVE and/or other serious LOSSES that laid the foundation for the aberrant behavior. This is especially true in cases of serious maladjustment such as criminal behavior or suicide.
