Emerging from an extensive repertoire of case studies gathered over 40 years and through 4 generations, DOLF, the Distribution Of Love in Families, is a theory that focuses on the Mind of a Child, and is built around the critical factor of parental Favoritism. Although it contradicts both accepted knowledge and our natural intuition that we should punish bad behavior, based on my extensive experience as a Doctor of Psychology, practitioner and mother, and aware of the void in our knowledge about mental health and the simultaneous suffering of many, I felt the need to rethink our practices and our current reliance on Behavioral methods. In contrast to theories that were hatched in laboratories and academic circles, DOLF was derived from my observations of how people really interact in their families behind closed doors. The test sample went from my home to relatives, friends, colleagues and patients, and eventually expanded to cover historical and biographical accounts. Finally, I began to observe Favoritism and its Emotional consequences everywhere I looked – in restaurants, malls, airports, art, literature, movies and more. In every walk of life I became attuned to siblings in competition and their opposing behaviors.
To be perfectly honest, over time I discovered that DOLF, despite its unmistakable validity in practice, is so upsetting to parents, educators and mental health professionals that sadly, they argue about it relentlessly, challenging both the theory and myself personally! Their main objection can be summed up in the standard question: Where’s your research??, demanding that it should be “evidence-based”. But in reality, parents object to DOLF’s focus on Favoritism because it insults their sensibilities and intuitive feeling that they know their children best. It puts into stark view their gratuitous presumption that their children are opposite and oppositional because of their genes and heredity factors, rather than the way they treat them. The thought that they may themselves be complicit in the Favoritism and Sibling Rivalry paradigm elicits their shame and guilt. The general public is also perturbed. They object to the DOLF emphasis on rivalry, jealousy, competition and envy. These are traits that are considered socially undesirable and ones that conjure up defensiveness, denial superstition and suspicion when it comes to applying the tenets to their personal family life!
I could answer the question about research simply by saying: “DOLF is all around you – just take a close look!” However I will deal with matters of proof of the theory in another blog. Suffice it to say at this point that the mother or originator of all research is theory. For without theory, you get precisely the messy scenario we see today – research that is scattered in all directions with no home basis or source. Accordingly, most therapists label their choice of applied methodology “eclectic”, meaning that in their professional opinion, they pick and choose bits of popular theories to incorporate into their practice, but have no allegiance to any one theory. To make matters worse, due to the hunger of the general population for answers to the dilemma of current psychology, at any point in time one can read ten different news tabloids and find ten different topics that fall under the umbrella of psychology and offer their varying perspectives on it. Today’s practice and research in psychology goes from meditation, mindfulness and yoga that germinated around the 1980’s from Eastern religions, to happiness psychology and positive psychology that is designed to make you think only about good things so you can, supposedly, become convinced to lead a better life.
DOLF is a theory, and as its creator, I am unable to provide all the research necessary to prove or disprove all the aspects of its enormous scope. So I must leave it to others to try to verify the theory, or not. But it also means that, as a trained professional who has seen much of the evolution and practice of the trade of psychology/psychiatry as it stands, I have observed enough evidence of DOLF theory’s truthfulness that I feel it must be put forward for the sake of furthering knowledge and research in the field.
In this context, I can mention at least two areas of proof. One is identical twins and the enormous differences we find in their personalities and behavior, despite the common DNA they share. How could they be so different in character if their genetic makeup is exactly the same? We find identical twins where one is criminal and the other law-abiding, and others where one is of one sexual orientation and the sibling is of another. A second source of proof draws from basic statistics: How can it be that every time we have two next born siblings they reliably develop opposite and opposing personalities? This finding is in fact is so pervasive that we can actually predict our children’s personalities – one will turn out Favored with a warm, easy-going, compliant personality, and the other will be Disfavored with either an Anger-based aggressive personality and become a sales person, lawyer, criminal or other sort of social manipulator, or a Depression-based personality that is prone to self-isolation and social withdrawal. The only possible explanation is that something undetected such as human instinct is at play. DOLF theory maintains these differences are due to the family dynamics of Favoritism and Sibling Rivalry, in combination with another active force we designate as the Instinct to be Opposite!
