Oneil Carter
July 29, 2014
Human Development-The Journey To Achieve Self-Love
In order for human beings to learn how to truly love others, they must first learn to love themselves; a feat that can only be achieved when, in their minds, they have a construct of what love is. We grow and develop in stages. Psychologists such as Erik Erikson, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Ivan Pavlov have left, within their legacies, theories of how we navigate through these checkpoints, as well as hypotheses of learnt and unlearnt behaviors that manifest themselves during the learning process. We learn by observing and engaging the environment and those who operate within this beautifully crafted arena called the world. The penultimate question that the writer will attempt to answer is, how can anyone achieve self-love and what developmental milestones must subjects overcome in order to attain it? For anyone to arrive at self-love it is paramount that they succeed in dealing with the challenges of trust, shame and guilt. The characters “Syreeta” and “Randall” in Dywane D. Birch’s “Beneath the Bruises”, as well as Erik Erikson’s theory of psycho-social development, will be used as references in order to provide a clear and concise perspective on the subject of how to achieve self-love .
1. Define Love-What is Love?
Love is an abstract yet concrete substance, that manifests itself in our reality through human nature; should it be seen through the lens of theology, love would be perceived as a divine gift, a supernatural force or entity. The English word substance as used here finds it’s roots in the Greek word hupostasis transliterated as hypostasis which means “An underlying reality or substance, as opposed to attributes or that which lacks substance” (“hypostasis”). This conveys the idea that love is a foundation that supports and strengthens everything that is built upon it.
According to Moseley the English word “love” stems from “Germanic forms of the Sanskrit lubh (desire)” (“Love”). People of antiquity, most notably those belonging to ancient Greece, recognized that love manifested itself in various forms and as such purported that there were four types of love: eros (sexual or romantic desire), philia (friendship), storge (familial) and agape (self-emptying or divine love) (par. 4). Therefore, love cannot be limited to just feelings or a subject of abstract thought, instead it can be theorized to be a force that transcends our laws of logic, completely unchained by limitations. Although human beings are subjected to the power of love, we have the ability to tap into this force and share it with friends, strangers, loved ones, or even those popularized as culturally different. Love does not hurt, people do.
2. Personal Observations of Love-
I have experienced love in many forms, whether it be from family, friends, complete strangers, enemies and even my deity-YHWH. As a child I was often told that love was the saving grace that rescued me from sure death before birth. While I was still developing within my mother’s womb, oblivious to the events taking place in the outside world, my fate was being held in the balances by a choice threatened by the sharp suggesting blade of abortion. Health officials as well as other members of society proposed that my mother do away with me, because if she were to give birth the natural way she would most certainly die. However, despite these suggestions, she decided that she was going to sacrifice her life out of love, for the unborn child cocooned within her womb, because he had a right to life. Eventually, the idea of a Caesarean section was presented to her and with sheer joy she accepted it as her form of delivery and several months I was plucked from my mother’s womb and given the opportunity to live.
My observations about love have led me to the understanding that love exists as a third person would in a novel. As a teenager I hypothesized that human beings are but instruments that can tap into this force called love and disseminate it to those around them. The idea of sharing love brought to mind the human ability to love, which informed me that in order to love one must first learn how to love. From that moment on I perceived love as a learnt concept.
I noticed that love has the ability to bring people together, facilitating a greater understanding of the self as well as sympathy and empathy for other living things in our environment. It is this same force that guides me everyday, while I am fully cognizant that I can neither create this phenomenon nor terminate it, I move on a modus operandi that consciously liberates me from egotism and recharges me with an impetus to proliferate happiness, hope and inspiration wherever I go. Love is the end all and be all of all things.
3. Relating “Beneath the Bruises” to the Developmental Milestones in Erik Erikson’s Psycho-Social Theory of Development-
Upon entering this world we encounter a rising tide of information flooding our senses with details necessary for our survival outside of the womb. It is here at birth that we learn the quintessential sign of life, breathing. When we love, we breathe. As infants we are biologically coerced into trusting the air as a substance necessary for living. The key word here is trust. According to Erikson’s theory, trust is a concept that we learn during infancy, a period that lasts for eighteen months after birth. Trust is the “reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety…of a person or thing” (“Trust”). Erikson called infancy the period of “Trust vs. Mistrust.” During this period newborns use their senses to assess and evaluate the world that they live in by interacting with people and manipulatives. They also learn to trust their familiar caregivers: Mama and Papa. “If we fail to experience trust…we may end up with…a mistrust of the world in general.” (Harder, 2012).
The antagonist in Birch’s “Beneath the Bruises,” Randall, saw his mother being abused by his father ever since he was an infant (p.222). For twelve long years he witnessed one person whom he loved and trusted being hurt by another person whom he also thought he could love and trust. Randall must have been traumatized by the violence he experienced in that home, especially the unfamiliar exchange of love and pain between his parents. How could he trust anyone after seeing human beings return love with cruelty? Was he safe? Would other people do this to him too? Was this behavior right? Was this love? More importantly, was this how men showed women love? “Being a victim doesn’t have to become who they are or how they define themselves. But if they don’t get help and their families don’t participate, they can have long lasting difficulties” (Article 11.3: More Support Needed for Trauma Intervention). Difficulties could range from having problems with interaction, intimacy, depression, anxiety, and morbidity. Randall was a prime example of such an untended victim.
Kohlberg classified childhood as the pre conventional morality stage, and during this stage children would develop obedience and punishment orientations (McLeod, 2013). It is likely that Randall could have fabricated ideas in his head, as a child, that his mother deserved this punishment, because of some fault on her part. This paradigm would justify his distorted belief that what he was doing to Syreeta was right. These childhood experiences facilitated the rise of irrational fears, that over time, trained Randall to look at love as inconsistent and at those who loved him with skepticism. This was the beginning of Randall’s association of love and pain.
From a behaviorist perspective, one could say that Randall’s mind was classically conditioned to associate love with pain since infancy, over a span of twelve years, and to accept domestic violence as a man’s way of asserting dominance over his female counter-part (Classical Conditioning). Randall’s irrational fear of infidelity revealed itself when he asked Syreeta, “Oh you like it when some other man is grinning all up in your face, don’t you? Makes you feel real special being a…tease, doesn’t it ?(p. 5)….Is there someone else?” (p. 202). Erikson described the stage of Trust vs. Mistrust as being the most fundamental stage in life and that failure to successfully pilot it resulted in “a deep-seated feeling of worthlessness and a mistrust of the world in general” (Harder, 2012).The first thing that went missing from Randall’s life was trust and if you can’t trust yourself, or anyone for that matter, then how will you ever begin the quest to self-love?
The second obstacle on our journey to the Shangri La of self-love is “Shame”. Shame is “the painful feeling of having done or experienced something dishonorable, improper, foolish” (“Shame”). According to Erikson’s second checkpoint in his theory of psycho-social development, labeled as “Autonomy vs. Shame”, which ranges from eighteen months to three years old, “achieving a balance between autonomy, shame and doubt would lead to will” (Cherry, 2014). In this stage toddlers learn fine motor skills such as talking and feeding themselves, as well as gross motor skills such as walking. During these moments children need constant motivation and encouragement in order for them to maintain a healthy idea of self as well as the belief that they can perform tasks well and that they are performing these tasks very well. They need praise.
In order to reach self love we must develop a high overall evaluation of our value. If we believe that we are precious then we will be quick to refute any threat of violation. This mechanism will emerge as the psyche’s attempt to preserve the self, because any abuse of the self leads to shame and people who see themselves as special have no need to feel ashamed; it is this logic that re-affirms those who are on the journey to find self-love, that in order to love themselves they must eliminate any inclination of being ashamed of who they are. We must will this behavior away by choosing the path of truth and love. A good start is to look in the mirror and tell ourselves that we will not be ashamed of who we are anymore. We must learn to muster the courage to assertively use our wondrous liberty to say no to habits that oppress the self.
Syreeta, the novel’s protagonist, was perceived in the initial chapters of the narrative as a timid young woman plagued by insecurities. These traits were engendered simply because as a child she was constantly placed into the shadow of her more out-going sister, who just seemed to excel at just about everything, “…my mother basically ignored me growing up, constantly doting over Janie”(p.85). Syreeta in all her attempts could never meet her mother’s approval “…no matter what I did, I still managed to come up short,” and her father never expressed to her how much he love her. She never felt loved, more evidently she did not feel valued. This “double whammy” contributed to her experiencing chronically low self-esteem and constant shame, even more so, it explains her reason for trying to use Randall to fill that void, to make her feel loved. With such low self worth, where would she ever sum up the courage to truly say “no” to anyone and mean it? “Failure to successfully steer through this stage results in very low self-esteem, inadequacy and self doubt” (Cherry, 2010).
The final milestone will be from Erik Erikson’s third stage of development which is called the “Play Age”. The “Play Age,” which spans from three to five years of age, is distinctively known for its rivalry between initiative and guilt. “During this stage children experiment with the blueprint for what we believe it means to be an adult” (Harder, 2012). Failure to successfully transition this stage results in a life imprisoned by guilt. As a child, Randall was introduced to a very flawed design concerning what it meant to be an adult. The family is the most important center of socialization and it is by observing our families that we construct our own meaning of how we should operate in this world as adults. Albert Bandura purported that, “Most human behavior is learnt observationally through modeling” (“Social Learning”). Who was Randall modeling? The very man he promised himself that he would never be like. This is similar in the case of Syreeta, who felt guilty for her husband’s act of abuse “…So what I’m hearing is that you’re responsible for your husband’s behavior?” (p.13) Such a notion of guilt came straight from Syreeta’s mother, who explicitly perpetuated this idea to Syreeta as a woman and implicitly did so while she was a child (p. 153). Syreeta modeled her mother’s behaviors without being conscious of it and this played a huge part in how she perceived herself as Randall’s wife.
People who suffer from guilt tend to believe that they are responsible for the way they are treated by others, they feel that they are not good enough, that they are not worthy and constantly compare themselves with others. Stuck on replays of the past they often try to justify their guilt, which only makes matters worst. “If we’re in toxic relationships with people who are constantly putting us down, this has actual physical consequences” (Article 9.3: We’re Wired to Connect). Such relationships are like viruses eating away its victim socially, mentally and physically. It is urgent that we must liberate themselves from unhealthy relationships that nourish guilt by offering to the destructive party, routes that they can take to correct their behavior, should they desire to rebuild their relationship, au contraire, if not then turn away from such relationships and “slam the door” at one less headache in your life.
In order to truly love one’s self, people must be open to trust, overcome guilt and penalize shame in order to discover their identity. We must dissect our destructive thought sequences and question the reason we think and act the way we do. When we discover the reasons behind our thought patterns then we must be responsible enough to accept who we are, where we are and the choices that have brought us to this point. It is an absolute must that we get to a place where we stop comparing ourselves with others and with the things that they have accomplished and start paying more attention to what the our self wants and needs. This does not mean that we are to become self-absorbed or narcissistic, because self-love is an appreciation, an acceptance, an affirmation of who we are. It is this knowledge that the self exists and deserves to be cared for. If you don’t love you then whoever you expect to love you will never satiate your need for love, your need for happiness. No self-love means no that there is no you.
Works Cited
Azar, Bath. “More Support Needed for Trauma Intervention.” Annual Editions Psychology. 44th ed. Landrum, Eric. Idaho. McGraw-Hill. 2013. 200. Print.
Birch, Dwayne. Beneath the Bruises. New York. Strebor Books, 2008. Print.
Cherry, Kendra. “Stages of Psychosocial Development.” About. Psychology, n.d. Web. 25 July 2014.
Harder, Arlene. “The Developmental Stages of Erik Erikson.” Support4change. 2012. Web. 28 July 2014
McLeod Saul. “Kohlberg.” Simply Psychology. Cognitive. 2013. Web. 27 July 2014.
Moseley, Alexander. “love.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2014. Web
Matousek, Mark. “We’re wired to Connect.” Annual Editions Psychology. 44th ed. Landrum, Eric. Idaho. McGraw-Hill. 2013. 200. Print.
“Hypostasis.” In Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1997. Print
“Shame” In Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1997. Print
“Trust.” In Random House Webster’s College Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1997. Print
“Social Learning Theory (Bandura).” Learning-Theories. Behaviorist Theories, Cognitive Theories, n.d. Web. 21 July 2014.
“Classical Conditioning (Pavlov).” Learning-Theories. Behaviorist Theories, n.d. Web. 21 July 2014.
