In DOLIF psychology there are 3 essential negative Emotions: Anxiety, Depression and Anger. These three Emotions are built into every person and ready to be used and expressed from the time of birth. The human endowment that complements Emotions is Intellectual potential. This Intellectual power is also immediately available at birth. However, it differs from our Emotional capability in that while the Emotions are open and ready to start operating from the moment of birth, at first Intelligence is merely a potential. Imagine our Intellectual ability as empty brain cells that are waiting and eager to be filled with our knowledge and experience. Over time and as we go through life, Intelligence and Emotions slowly and gradually become integrated with each other. Imagine this process as one that imitates the shape of the double helix that characterizes DNA, In the same way, Emotions and Intelligence will slowly and gradually intertwine themselves to render our personalities as we grow.
The Emotions we are given to begin our lives is an amorphous “cloud” of general Anxiety over which we have no initial control. Control of our Emotions, like our Intelligence, will also develop over time. But at first, we experience our Emotions as generalized, overwhelming fear. When we are born we shake, our body tingles and we are gripped by a need to scream and cry in shock. Our Emotions take charge and command us. We squeeze our bodies, open our eyes and gaze in wonderment at the world we just entered. As helpless creatures who must be nurtured and held at all times, we cry in desperation. We are possessed by feelings of insecurity: Who will feed me? Who will keep me warm and look after my bodily needs? Most critically, we worry about Who will LOVE me? And, since we know from the Mind of a Child that every child is concerned with monopolizing ALL the LOVE from their closest source of Emotional warmth, their Prime Love-Giving parent or PLG, DOLIF adds: Who will LOVE ME, ME alone and be devoted exclusively to ME, ME ,ME??
With time, growth and experience in the real world, our initial pool of Anxiety evolves and differentiates. By age one or two our difficult Emotional status slowly begins to sort itself out. The cloud of Emotions separates and they become identifiable, to ourselves and those around us, as the three essential negative feelings of Anxiety, Depression or Anger. Two of these feelings, Depression and Anger, are opposite poles, a fact that has been known since Freudian times. DOLIF theory adds that some anxious energy or feelings of Anxiety is always an undercurrent or base for both Depression and Anger. While a portion of Anxiety remains associated with each of Anger and Depression and serves as their base, a good portion of Anxiety remains in its purest form as raw Anxiety and can function as a separate entity on its own as well,
Beginning with this amorphous Emotional base, we increasingly begin to experience a well-defined feeling of Depression. This Depressive part of the original cloud of anxious energy is negative energy that is INTERNALIZED and directed INWARD against the SELF. It becomes expressed through behaviors that are aimed at SELF destruction. Feelings of Depression combined with Anxiety work together to blame, torment and harm the SELF. This set of Emotions leads to diagnoses such as eating disorders, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, panic disorders, ADHD, mild or severe depression, OCD and others that are essentially SELF-destructive. In serious cases of mental illness, complete annihilation of the SELF becomes the aim, as in suicide. Inside themselves these people grow up feeling that they are the ones at fault, unworthy, to blame and responsible for negative social situations or any undesirable circumstances that arise around them.
The other part of the original ball of Anxious energy is channeled and manifested as feelings of Anger. Anger, like Depression, is also always intermingled with an underlayer of Anxiety. However unlike Depression, Anger is Emotional energy that is EXTERNALIZED and aimed outward rather than becoming directed inward and harming the SELF, as with Depression. This negative energy in the shape of Anger plus Anxiety becomes channeled socially and is manifested through thoughts and actions that find blame and fault with OTHER people and situations outside the SELF. Inside themselves the Angry person feels that the OUTSIDE world is impinging on their SELF and causing their SELF to be uncomfortable, dissatisfied and unhappy. A person who harbors a great deal of Anger, such as a criminal, constantly feels and behaves as if their SELF is under threat or attack from outsiders and that they themselves are in need of SELF-defense and protection. Their feelings of Anger and aggression are aroused in response to factors in the environment that they feel are irritating, encroaching on or hurting the SELF. Their reaction of Angry feelings is expressed through urges and desires to alter or rearrange the OUTSIDE world to better suit and service the personal needs of their own inner SELF. Rather than allow themselves to sink into Depression and blame themselves as aggressors who have done harm to others, they deny or circumvent their Depressive feelings and see themselves as being targeted, impinged upon and victimized. Not surprisingly, they appear to us from the outside the way we categorize them and tend to label them – as selfish, self-centered and lacking in empathy with others.
As mentioned above, it has long been known that Anger and Depression are contrasting, opposite poles of feelings or Emotions, so that whereas the Depression–Anxiety formulation turns negative feelings inward, internalizing them and finding fault with one’s own SELF, the Anger–Anxiety combination externalizes negative feelings, seeking to redirect fault OUTWARD and shift blame away from the SELF and onto OTHERS. This Anger-based combination of feelings leads to diagnoses such as Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Sociopathy and Psychopathy. But we can include in this list of behaviors many more that we encounter every day under the umbrella of “attitudes” or common human personality traits such as stubbornness, political non-conformity, contrarianism, embellishing of truths or lying, cheating, rebellion against authority figures, outrageous departures from good reason such as choosing to become a member of a cult, and promotion or adherence to philosophies that challenge or stand against accepted popular social edicts, political views and general good judgment. Also included are milder and even less obvious expressions of aggression spurred by underlying Anger. These include behaviors and personality traits we commonly face that are by no means criminal but still entail the use of Anger for their implementation, such as bullying, ganging up, verbal aggression, bossiness, excessive use of authority, use of social pressure such as hard sales tactics, humiliation and other social strategies to accomplish one’s ends that are too numerous to mention.
While a part of the total pool of Anxiety is always attached to each of Depression and Anger, Anxiety can also operate separately in a sphere of its own. In its pure form, Anxiety creates a proprietary set of symptoms such as malaise, discomfort, agitation, nervous arousal, fear, worry or dread. In terms of psychopathology, Anxiety in its purest form can lead to diagnoses such as OCD, phobias, ADHD, panic disorder or PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder). Similarly to Depression, when on its own, Anxiety gives rise to thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are aimed INWARD, targeting the SELF. As such, rather than seeking to cause damage to others or wanting revenge on outside resources as with Anger, just as with Depression, feelings of Anxiety assault and are harmful to the SELF.
But following DOLIF theory, and bearing in mind that the balance of negative Emotions is established quite early in life, say between 0 and 14 years of age, we might ask: How do our negative feelings become amplified and move to such excess as to incite extreme Angry behavior? For example, How does excessive Anger develop and eventually become acted out in criminal behavior? We might also ask: How is it that some people build up such an immense pool of Anger that they turn criminal, while others, perhaps raised in the same or similar environments, do not? Furthermore, once their base of excessive Anger is formed by their later teens or adulthood, rather than try to reform their behavior by disciplining, isolating or incarcerating them, how should we manage Angry feelings and behavior so we can better fit such Angry people into our normal society, or possibly even avoid such outcomes before they appear?
DOLIF attributes Angry behavior to a lack of sufficient feeling of parental LOVE in the Family of Origin. Specifically, we refer to feelings of Disfavor encountered by the misbehaving child beginning from their first encounters with their PLG or Prime Love Giving parent. DOLIF attributes such behavior to a poor relationship with this PLG compared with their next born sibling and asserts that SIBLING RIVALRY and Disfavor is the main irritating factor that is responsible for the build-up of Anger in early childhood, and that this dynamic is what ultimately leads to a personality infused with the 3 negative feelings. In most cases of criminal behavior, as well as all the more normalized behavior patterns mentioned above, ANGER and LOSS OF LOVE is undoubtedly the driving force or motivation. Through the observation of numerous families over almost half a century this author found that a sense of Disfavor compared with a next born sibling, or SIBLING RIVALRY, is the most salient situation and compelling factor behind the behaviors we observe throughout the lives not only of those who break the law, but of all those who express an ANGER-based force of character in our common social environment.
In DOLIF we use the knowledge first exposed by Freud and his colleagues, about the seesaw action between Anger and Depression. These scholars found out that when Anger rises, Depression goes down, and when Depression rises, Anger diminishes. It means that if Anger is too low and Depression takes hold, in treatment, Anger needs to be bolstered. This is true whether treatment for the Depressive individual becomes necessary or not, meaning that even people in the common population who tend to be Depressive and blame themselves in social situations, could use bolstering or increasing of their Anger. Conversely, the answer to reducing Anger, as with a criminal or rebellious, socially over-aggressive person, is for the therapist to assist the client in tapping into their Depression. This means that the focus of treatment for an Angry person or one in Anger Management training should be on eliciting and resolving the sad thoughts, events, LOSSES, failures and Anger-provoking situations that the person experienced and felt in response to their overall sense of Disfavor in their Family of Origin and in comparison with their rival sibling. It is hypothesized that the feeling of Disfavor is the Emotional dynamic that undermined the person as a child, irritated them and built up their Anger. This dynamic is what led up to the negative behaviors, opinions, attitudes, social behaviors and rebellious expressions that we see in the Disfavored person later on. With the help of DOLIF theory now affords us the advantage of knowing beforehand, or ‘a priori’ and even allowing us to predict their style of behavior, without the need to ask for the family history or re-confirm the facts. We know that these Angry thoughts and feelings most often had to do with insufficiency, shortage or even complete lack of parental LOVE, specifically from the original PLG, and that they became experienced as feelings of Disfavor in comparison with their next born rival sibling. Ample examples are provided in the blogs that review the case histories of criminals. Also provided is a list of those criminals whose offenses are believed to be the result of feelings of Disfavor compared with a sibling according to their documented personal histories. (For extensive analysis of criminal motivation see blogs about Bart Whitaker, Alan Hruby, Ted Kaczynski. Also see: List of Criminals Whose Crimes Can Be Attributed to Sibling Rivalry).
