How to raise a child without causing him any trauma — psychological or emotional? How realistic is this? And what to look for in order to minimize the «inevitable» harm?
All healthcare professionals are familiar with the ethical principle of “do no harm”. In Latin, it sounds like «primum non nocere». This saying is popular among those involved in the field of medicine or bioethics, as this basic principle is taught to all medical students. The famous Hippocratic Oath (the ancient Greek physician) is also based on it.
The text in which this oath is stated was written around 500 BC. Doctors swore before the gods to adhere to certain ethical principles in their practice. Doctors these days often take a similar oath at the end of medical school, a kind of ritual of initiation into the profession. The principle of “do no harm” is also taught by psychologists. For psychoanalysts, this means the need to establish contact with one’s own unconscious.
It would be nice to require a similar oath from all parents. They need to be the most careful, because it is they who are responsible for raising children that are potentially capable of causing the greatest damage to them. The most severe psychological trauma is inflicted at a very early age, and sometimes even in the womb. It would seem that it is worth demanding both from parents and from everyone involved in the upbringing of children to strictly adhere to this principle? But is it really possible to never do harm?
Usually the most severe cases involve emotional abuse as it often goes unnoticed.
Parents can harm their children without realizing it. They would rather not know that they are harming children, because we all like to think that we are doing the right thing. In reality, those parents who are most convinced that they are right are the ones who harm their children the most. If they are not prepared to objectively evaluate how children are raised, it is very likely that they are harming them. Of course, most parents want the best for their children, but as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Since many do not realize the harm they do to children, there are even proposals to introduce licenses to have children, but such ideas are met with resistance. Therefore, we will manage for the time being by means of persuasion.
Parents can harm a child in a variety of ways, with the most severe cases involving emotional abuse as it often goes unnoticed. All of the following are examples of emotional abuse.
Many parents have narcissistic traits and rarely consider whether they are treating their children correctly. They have excuses for action, or they are completely immersed in their world and it is impossible to reach them.
This is exactly what Sigmund Freud had in mind when he started talking about the unconscious. The unconscious is not just a certain part of our mind (according to Freud, a very significant part), it is capable of harming both ourselves and others. The more unconscious we are, the less we control our actions.
The schizophrenic is almost entirely in the power of the unconscious. The father, sick with schizophrenia, almost completely loses touch with reality. His reality is his delusions and hallucinations, and his reality is unaware of real reality. Such a father (and often no one outside the family knows about his illness) will cause great harm to children.
A mother with schizophrenia will establish a relationship with her baby that will not be understood by anyone but the two of them. She harms him without even thinking about it. But the schizophrenic parent is an extreme case on the scale of child harm. It can also assess the harm caused by clinical depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, antisocial or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Each of these parents harms the children, while being confident in their innocence and justifying their actions.
Defense mechanisms — projection, reactive formation, denial — allow parents to ignore the damage they cause to the child.
Healthy parents are those in whom the influence of the unconscious is minimal and, therefore, they know themselves well. Such people are the least likely to harm their children and anyone else. Children do not understand that they are being harmed. For example, in the case of parental overprotection, the mother is constantly next to the child to protect him from any possible troubles. The mother feels loved and the child feels loved. But with overprotection, she harms him, because she does not allow her to gain self-confidence. Such children fail to learn to provide for themselves, they cannot show individuality and become independent.
Freud first discovered the unconscious around 1900 with the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams. Then he introduced the concept of a defense mechanism — with the help of these mechanisms, we hide from ourselves the truth that we do not want to know. Projection, reaction formation, denial allow parents to ignore the damage they cause to the child.
We do not want to know that we are harming others, and from a very early age we begin to hide this fact from ourselves with the help of psychological defenses. By the time we become adults, these defense mechanisms become part of our personality. Unfortunately, little is said about the unconscious these days. But until parents and humanity as a whole understand this phenomenon, they will continue to harm their children, and these children, in turn, will harm others already in their world.