When I hear young and middle-aged people talking about how their parents are to blame for all their problems (“I wasn’t loved enough”, “I wasn’t taught to be independent”, “I didn’t get a decent education because they didn’t take care of it “), I’m very angry.
To be honest, I’m already fed up with the talk of those of my colleagues who blame their parents for all the troubles of their patients. And worse, they help their patients keep blaming those parents. There is such a free interpretation of the theory of psychoanalysis.
I have respect for Freud, but I am ready to seriously blame some of his followers for contributing to the “hype” of this idea. The very idea – “all troubles come from childhood, parents are to blame for everything” – entered mass culture, became a commonplace. And for some reason, much less often people say: “How grateful I am to my parents for the fact that they …” And that is why I want to speak in a completely opposite direction. I declare responsibly: from childhood I learned not to pee in my pants, because my mom and dad taught me this. And I am grateful to them for that.
They are responsible for our upbringing, but they are not responsible for what we are today, now.
Many readers of psychological literature are poisoned by the idea that our entire life is conditioned by our childhood traumas. Of course, this is no accident: not a single idea takes possession of the minds of people so much if there is not at least a grain of truth in it. Our parents really play a defining role in our development. I do not want to remove responsibility from parents, and yet I cannot but say: parents are responsible for our upbringing, but they are not responsible for what we are now. There is a significant difference in this. Today I am already an adult, and what happens to me is already on my responsibility. Only by accepting this responsibility, a person is able to grow up.
It is surprising that such an infantile topic as resentment towards parents has gained such popularity in our culture. Or maybe there is nothing to be surprised here, because blaming anyone but yourself for your troubles is the easiest thing. Maybe it’s part of human nature. According to the Bible, this is where people started: even Adam and Eve already shifted the responsibility for their misconduct to others. Adam claims that a woman treated him to the forbidden fruit, but Eve immediately shifts the blame to the serpent. And one may wonder: were Adam and Eve expelled from paradise because they ate the forbidden fruit, or because they did not dare to take responsibility for their act?