by Nathan McKaskle

“Accommodation to parental needs often (but not always) leads to the “as if personality”. This person develops in such a way that he reveals only what is expected of him and fuses so completely with what he reveals that one could scarcely guess how much more there is to him behind this false self. He cannot develop and differentiate his true self, because he is unable to live it.”

-Alice Miller (Drama of the Gifted Child)

The true self is the expression of the spontaneous, what is in tune with reality and not based on the expectations and opinions of others. It is the part of you that is repressed, unable to express the true emotions you feel. For instance:

The other day I was working with a co-worker on a server build for Citrix. He shared with me that his 9 year old child will manipulate he and the child’s mother, his ex-wife, playing them against each other for attention. I sat stunned at the horror of what I’d been told. My true self could not express the horror, my false self laughed with him. Laughter was expected, agreement was expected. For the child he spoke of could only manipulate as his sole means of getting the attention he so desperately needs. My true self asks the question, “Why do you think he wants attention?”, but he cannot speak. Any expression of horror would have resulted in the provoking of his defenses and ultimately – attack.

The first response to that question, of course, would have been a defense of minimization or dismissal, “Oh… that’s just the way kids are.” A tautological non-answer akin to saying “The sky is blue because the sky is blue.”

If I work hard, save my money and drive 5 miles to the store in order to buy an iPod, it can only be for one of the following two reasons:

1. I don’t have an iPod.
2. I don’t have enough iPods.

This may seem blatantly obvious to anyone with any kind of empathy, but the reason why the child is going to the tremendous amount of trouble to manipulate his parents is because he is not getting attention by any other means. To take a sad but common example of neglect… If I imprison a starving dog in my back yard and I do not feed the dog, can I blame the dog for fiercely attacking myself or… another – smaller, delicious animal?

Something is obviously troubling the child, can he not simply take as much time as necessary to be curious about the child’s thoughts and feelings, rather than punishing the child for being “manipulative”?

Thus you can see why my true self felt horrified. If my true thoughts and feelings were exposed, my work environment would have become a lot more hostile… an expense I simply cannot afford. When a child expresses his horror and true self feelings of anger towards an abusive parent, that parent is faced with a choice. They can either face the feelings of terror as they stare at the ugliness of their own evil reflected back from the true self mirror of the child… or they can deny the evil in themselves, blame the child for provoking those feelings and respond with additional attacks on the child.

I felt terrible about my laughter. Is this an act of cruel cowardice for financial gain? My true self suffocates under the pillows sat upon by the false self. Smothered, as to muffle the cries of a small, Jewish child, hiding in the attic of a Nazi Germany home.

Nathan McKaskle lives in Houston, TX. When he is not delivering new content to the readers of Lost Liberty Café and studying philosophy as well as psychology, he is working as a Citrix Server Administrator at Hewlett-Packard.