Crazymaking, Social Proof and Restoration to Rationality

Double-binding and paradoxical injunction are cultural norms, but they can be de-programmed with cognitive therapies.

Hypothesis

Children (and inner children) are driven “crazy” in no more complex a manner than this: They can see how things actually work in a rational and functional world… but the world is dominated and controlled by dysfunctional and irrational people who do their best to force children (and inner children) to believe that things work in ways other than how they actually do.

Discussion

Instead of developing along a path to greater – and more functional and effective – awareness of how things actually work in the world, the child’s task is to accept the statements, behavior and social conditioning of others as “truth” when they are not. To avoid becoming cognitively and behaviorally dysfunctional as the direct result of accepting cultural dysfunction, the child (and inner child) will have to (somehow) determine for himself that the majority of the people in the world, including his parents, are dysfunctional and irrational. Moreover, he must accomplish this all by himself without the help of parents and others who cannot see that they are the cause of his dysfunction, confusion, frustration and resentment.

When this occurs, as Robert Pynoos at UCLA’s Charles Drew Center for the Study of Violence and Social Change asserts, the vast majority of children will blame themselves – not society – for their dysfunction, confusion, frustration and resentment… and will continue to do so because this is the conditioned belief of society as a whole (see Pynoos in van der Kolk et al).

As Bateson, Jackson, Haley, Watzlawick and others made it clear in the 1950s and ‘60s, the child is expected to be rational and functional by irrational and dysfunctional parents who themselves live in a world of irrational and dysfunctional, say-one-thing-and-do-another madness. The child is raised in a world of “right” or “wrong” by dictat of the dominant, as opposed to “functional” or “dysfunctional” (or “rational” or “irrational,” or “effective” or “ineffective,” or “competent” or “incompetent”) instruction and experience.

Most children are punished not for being “good” or “bad” relative to what is “functional” or “dysfunctional,” but for being “good” or “bad” according to the dictates of parents, authority figures and peers who were themselves conditioned to be dysfunctional and irrational by the dictates of parents, authority figures and peers who were… you get the picture. Horney had fairly much figured all this out by the late 1930s; Adler had figured it out by the late 1920s, and Freud had figured it out by the late 1900s.

We are raised by crazy people to be… crazy.

The paradigm of “say one thing and do another” is so socialized to the bedrock of humanity that humans are observably far less functional (meaning “interpersonally appropriate”) than the other higher primates on any measure of social adjustment. Goodall remarked on this numerous times in lectures about her observations of gorilla culture in equatorial Africa. Mead asserted in the late 1930s (and took a lot of heat for so doing) that it appeared to her that the simpler the culture (meaning closer to hunter-gatherer as opposed to industrial) the greater the interpersonal harmony. Inversely, Mead was hugely castigated for demonstrating that the further culture had moved from hunter-gatherer, the more competitive and contentious it became.

Is an ever-more-widespread “social infection” of media-conditioned narcissistic expectation and competitive greed at the bottom of all this? I will assert that it is. As man has “evolved” from hunter-gatherer to slash-and-burn to stable agrarian to toolmaker to guild craftsman to industrialist to information processor to multi-tasker, one can easily build a case for

1) ever-increasing pathological narcissistic imperative and competition,
2) ever-increasing complexification of the environment in which man lives,
3) ever-increasing stress,
4) ever-diminishing memory of one’s own experience as a child, and
5) ever-diminishing direct and functional interaction with children.

Diamond, Jaynes, Smith and others who have studied the development of “culture” from various perspectives tend to support the notion that increasing interpersonal interaction, demand for rapid decision-making, stress, competition and complexification have made human beings increasingly materialistic and less experiential in their values, as well as interpersonally jealous of material wealth, and competitively hostile towards each other at every level from intimate dyadic to familial to cultural to racial to national.

A Political Metaphor

In my own utilization of values clarification (see Simon et al) at the political level, it seems clear to me that governments representing mercantile interests present a case for armed conflict on the basis of religious disagreement, economic system disagreement or “they-did-it-first” violent hostility (“terrorism”) when the evidence points almost invariably to territorial, cheap labor or natural resource acquisition, and an obvious history of reciprocal reactivity. The child is told that the “good guys” are out to save the world from the infidel, totalitarianism, the barbarians or the yellow peril when any rational observer can see for himself that the war mongers want

1) cheap labor (Japan and the other “treaty powers” in China in the early 1900s-1930s; Germany in the 1910s, 1930s-40s; the Soviet Union in the late 1940s);
2) farmland (the US since it declared independence; the Soviet Union; Germany;
3) petroleum (the Pacific War in the 1940s; the Middle East since the discovery of oil there in the 1920s);
4) diamonds and gold (South Africa in the 1890s); and
5) gold, silver and copper (the American west in the 1840s-1880s).

But, as Peck demonstrated in People of the Lie, most people have been conditioned to the Big Lie for so long (really pretty much since they were born) that most will lay down and roll over for it.

1) The Russians began to take issue with the Big Lie in the early 1900s, but having thrown off the original liars (“killed the tzar and his ministers,” as Mick Jagger put it), found themselves right back in the soup again by 1925.
2) The Chinese began to take issue with the Big Lie in the 1920s, but having thrown off the original liars (the colonialists and warlords), found themselves right back in the soup again by mid-century.
3) The Punjabi Indians and Pakistanis began to take issue with the Big Lie in the late 1920s, but having tossed out the original liars (the colonialists and the rajahs), found themselves back in the soup by the late 1950s.
4) The Americans began to take issue with the Big Lie in the 1960s, but having erroneously believed that they had overcome the control of Big Money, found themselves right back in the rat race by the mid-1970s.

On an Interpersonal Level

Please don’t get tangled up in the politics. I am far less concerned here with that than I am with how social proof and “Big Lie” drive people to drink, drug, divorce, gambling, workaholism, eating disorders, hyper-stimulation and child abuse.

The Big Lie – and the crazymaking it causes – will never be fully overcome. The reason I assert this is that

1) on a bell curve, 80 percent of the population (by repetitious research) are concrete, rather than abstract, thinkers (see Piaget in Berger and Thompson, Dacey and Travers, Sroufe et al, and van der Kolk);
2) while about 25 percent of this 80 percent (thus 20 percent of the original 100) could be taught to become abstract thinkers, most of them will not be (see Piaget et al); and
3) 75 percent of the 80 percent (thus 60 percent of the original 100) cannot or will not be taught to become pattern-conscious, hypothesis-and-experiment, theory-and-test, abstract thinkers (ibid).

On a Cultural Level

What I have presented immediately above is precisely why American business has lobbied the US government to allow free-for-all immigration: It supports their needs for both

1) more technologically educated, narrowly-abstract-thinking, but authoritarian-culture-conditioned Asians for use as technologists; and
2) more uneducated, broadly concrete-thinking, and authoritarian-culture-conditioned Hispanics for use as cheap labor.

Four out of five people either never or very rarely think conceptually or look to see patterns. Four out of five people will stay in the Skinner box and take their electric shocks like good little lab rats. Four out of five people will work and work and work to get the cheese even though it comes pretty regularly along with a nice jolt to their feet. In fact, behavioral research has shown that nineteen out of twenty people will, having temporarily escaped their slavish, self-destructive paradigms for a time… quite reliably return to them (see Seligman, Skinner, and van der Kolk et al).

They will do this because they cannot see the paradigms. And they cannot see them because

1) they have been conditioned by all the crazymaking to abandon the small child’s inherent imperative to explore and make sense of the environment, and
2) few, outside the better universities largely attended by the sons and daughters of relatively wealthy – but concretist – families are teaching them to see the paradigms.

Karl Rove is a fine example of how the sons of the concretist (generally religious) wealthy come to school to learn not how to think conceptually for the sake of their own or anyone else’s growth or improvement… but to utilize the knowledge they acquire about logical fallacies to manipulate the traditionalist, anti-intellectual, authority-accepting, religious and/or materialistic, concretist masses. (I spent 30 years in the media manipulation game hawking all manner of stimulations people didn’t truly need at all. You can blame me, too.)

All that said, I am not going where Marx or Hegel went with this a century and a half ago. Violent revolution has very clearly proven to be no more functional than accepting the cultural norm.

If my observations (and those of numerous theorists, behavioral observers and researchers; see Ellis and Harper, and Seligman) are correct, fully 95 to 97 percent of the population in the West is coerced, contaminated, corrupted and convinced by and of an immense, culturally embedded and transmitted, oral traditional fabrication of cultural values called “social proof.” Rather than utilize the innate biogenetically inherited skills of the child to determine for oneself what is so vs. what is not, all but three to five percent of the population will rely for their sense of “reality” upon what others tell them it is (see Cialdini, and Woodward and Denton).

In a democracy, of course, this gets us into a lot of trouble. To be effective as a means of serving the true (“actual”) needs of a society, a government needs to work from what is actually so in the environment rather than what it believes to be so because others in positions of either financial, military or simple mass power believe – however accurately or inaccurately – to be so. If the electorate is deluded, the government’s actions will reflect that delusion. This is very obviously the case at this very moment in the electoral “democracies” of Iran, Russia, Venezuela and the United States of America, all of which currently demonstrate irrational foreign policies.

There is a widespread popular belief that groupthink will arrive at a rational and responsible concensus. Research has, however, debunked that idea for decades (see Cialdini, Griffin and Moorehead, Woodward and Denton).

Wilson and his newly abstinence-free peers in Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1940s asserted that the “voice of God” would speak through the “group conscience.” Anyone who attends AA meetings with a relatively clear mind will have difficulty with swallowing this en toto. The “democracy” of AA is no more or less subject to irrationality and illogic than any other institution.

And one need only watch a day’s worth of political campaign advertising on CNN, MSNBC or FoxNews to see how rational and logical the advertisers believe the viewers of those commercials are.

One learns very quickly in the media manipulation game that appeals to rationality and logic may be useful here and there, but appeals to beliefs about needs, status, prestige, and position are far more compelling and result-productive.

Freud and Adler were aware of all this a century ago, but in the hugely authoritarian, Germanistic culture of Austria at large, as opposed to the educated, egalitarian culture of Vienna “at small,” they kept their observations to the written page. Pierre Janet was less circumspect in the far more broadly egalitarian, post-revolution France of the late 19th century. Janet spoke (and wrote) loud and long about the contamination, corruption and destruction of the child’s functional ego by the systematic insistence upon adherence to social proof enforced by threat of – and resort to – physical punishment. “Animals,” Janet pointed out, “allow their offspring to experiment with and discover the world for themselves. Humans compel their children to accept the world as their parents have been taught by their own parents and others to see it.” (See Janet throughout van der Kolk et al.)

Treatment and Rehabilitation

How does the adult free himself from the dominance of his inner child’s continued beliefs in falsehood? First, of course, one must identify the inaccurate beliefs. Most people have many, but Albert Ellis, arguably the godfather of cognitive psychotherapy (he called it “rational-emotive behavioral therapy”), determined a list of 10 (later 12) fundamental erroneous beliefs. See them at http://sighkoblahgrr.blogspot.com/2008/07/challenging-twelve-fundamental-beliefs.html .

We have found in more than 40 years of rigorous scientific research on the therapeutic use of these beliefs that 75 percent (or so) of the people who examine them as Ellis set them forth in his seminal Guide to Rational Thinking (1961) will reliably show improved scores on the Beck Depression and Anxiety Scales, as well as numerous other test instruments for emotional status, orientation to environmental reality, interpersonal function, character measure, Eriksonian and other developmental capacities, social skills demonstrations, and Banduran competence. (See Beck at al, Ellis and Harper, Seligman, Young, and Wessler et al.)

Basco et al, Benjamin, Beck et al, Beck and Freeman, Garrett, Seligman, Young, Wessler et al and others have developed extensive enhancements of Ellis’s original work. Their “cognitive-behavioral,” “cognitive restructuring,” “thought questioning,” “schematherapy,” and “cognitive-appraisal therapy” methods are capable of – with sufficient effort – taking a heretofore highly illogical person to a 95th to 97th percentile level of rational function within a year, though most appear to improve from a range in the 40th to 60th percentiles to the 60th to 70th percentiles.

Treatment Issues

The problem, however, is that many whose thinking has been clarified by such therapeutic endeavor will run smack into the very uncomfortable realization that the rest of the world is 95 to 97 percent unlikely to see things as they do. One of the components of the CDDCR Therapeutic System is development over time of acceptance and tolerance of the cultural “craziness” of others.

I have determined from more than 20 years’ experience in the therapeutic trenches that the ambiguous and conflicting issue of “swimming upstream” in a crazy culture (e.g.: at home, at work, in the self-help group, on the team, in the church) must be identified, examined, considered, accepted and tolerated if the patient is to retain the benefits of his therapeutic experience. If this is not done, many patients will begin to either

1) decompensate into co-dependent enmeshment once again,
2) become resentful of and avoidant toward the “crazy” majority, or
3) become narcissistically (even antisocially) abusive toward the “crazy” majority.

In fact, I think the culture is so pervasive, and its impact through so many different mediums is so powerful, that an ongoing program of disengagement is required. I have proposed the idea of a self-help group like “Realists Anonymous,” but, admittedly, haven’t followed up on it. Failing the development of such a “reality support group,” however, I will recommend what I have seen work well for many people: Continued exposure over the course of a lifetime to such published material as I have listed below:

Alpert, R. (“Ram Dass”): Be Here Now, San Francisco: Lama Foundation, 1971.

Anonymous: Adult Children of Alcoholics: Alcoholic / Dysfunctional Families, Torrance, CA: ACA World Service Office, 2006.

Anonymous: Co-Dependents Anonymous, Phoenix, AZ: Co-Dependents Anonymous, 1995.

Bandura, A.: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1997.

Basco, M. R.; Rush, A. J.: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Bipolar Disorder, New York: Guilford Press, 1996.

Bateson, G.: Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, London: Hampton Press, 1979.

Beattie, M.: Codependent No More, San Francisco: Harper/Hazelden, 1987.

Beattie, M.: Beyond Codependency, San Francisco: Harper/Hazelden, 1989.

Beattie, M.: Codependents’ Guide to the Twelve Steps, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990.

Beck, A.: Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, New York: Penguin-Meridian, 1976.

Beck, A.; Freeman, A.: Cognitive Theory of the Personality Disorders, New York: Guilford Press, 1990.

Beck, A.; Wright, F.; Newman, C.; Liese, B.: Cognitive Therapy of Substance Abuse, New York: The Guilford Press, 1993.

Bern, E.: Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships, San Francisco: Grove Press, 1964.

Bernstein, A.: Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People who Drain You Dry, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Black, C.: It Will Never Happen to Me: Children of Alcoholics as Youngsters-Adolescents-Adults, New York: Ballentine, 1981, 1987.

Bowlby, J.: A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development. London: Routledge; New York: Basic Books, 1988.

Bradshaw, J.: Healing the Shame that Binds You, Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1988.

Bradshaw, J.: Bradshaw On: The Family, Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1990.

Branden, N.: The Disowned Self, New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Branden, N.: The Psychology of Self-Esteem, New York: Bantam Books, 1973.

Carnes, P.: Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction, Minneapolis: Hazelden, 1989.

Carver, J.: Love and Stockholm Syndrome, New York: Mental Health Matters (online), 2003.

Cermak, T.: Diagnosing and Treating Co-Dependence, Minneapolis: Johnson Institute, 1986.

Cialdini, R.: Influence Science and Practice, 4th Ed., New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

DeSpelder, L. A.; Strickland, A.: The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying, Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1983.
Donatelle, R.; Davis, L.: Access to Health, 6th Ed., Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.

Dyer, W.: Your Erroneous Zones, New York: Avon Books, 1977, 1991 (even if it is a fairly blatant re-write of Beck's cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders).

Ellis, A.; Harper, R.: A Guide to Rational Living, North Hollywood, CA: Melvin Powers, 1961.

Ellis, A.; Becker, I.: A Guide to Personal Happiness, North Hollywood, CA: Melvin Powers, 1982.

Ellis, A.: Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, New York: Promethius Books, 2001.

Erikson, E.: Identity and the Life Cycle, New York: W. W. Norton, 1959, 1980.

Erikson, E.: Childhood and Society, New York: W. W. Norton, 1950, 1967, 1993.

Evans, P.: The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Expanded Second Edition, Avon, MA: Adams Media Corp., 1996

Evans, P.: Controlling People, Avon, MA: Adams Media Corp., 2002.

Forward, S.: Toxic Parents: Overcoming their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life, New York: Bantam Books, 1989.

Fossum, M.; Mason, M.: Facing Shame: Families in Recovery, New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.

Frankl, V.: Man’s Search for Meaning, New York: Pocket Books, 1984.

Fromm, E.: Escape from Freedom, New York: Avon, 1965.

Goleman, D.: Emotional Intelligence, New York: Bantam, 1980.

Gordon, T.: Parent Effectiveness Training: The Proven Program for Raising Responsible Children, New York: Three Rivers Press, 1970, 1975, 2000.

Griffin, R.; Moorhead, G.: Organizational Behavior, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986.

Harris, T.: I’m Okay—You’re Okay, New York: Harper and Row, 1968.

Hoffer, E.: The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, New York: Harper and Row, 1966.

Horney, K.: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time, New York: W. W. Norton, 1937, 1955

Jaynes, J.: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown off the Bicameral Mind, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin & Co., 1976.

Kannon, J.: Narcotics Anonymous, Van Nuys, CA: World Service Office, 1983.

Kopp, S.: Guru: Metaphors from a Psychotherapist, New York: Bantam, 1976.

Korzybski, A.: Manhood and Humanity, 2nd Ed., New York: Institute of General Semantics, 1950.

Kubler-Ross, E.: On Death and Dying, New York: Macmillan, 1970.

Laing, R. D.: Knots, New York: Penguin, 1973.

Lakein, A.: How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, New York: Signet, 1989.

McNinch, B.: Training Your Rottweiler, Hauppage, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 1999.

Mellody, P.; Miller, A. W.: Facing Co-dependence…, San Francisco: Harper, 1989.

Miller, A.: For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child Rearing and the Roots of Violence, London: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983.

Moyers, B.; Flowers, B. S.; Grubin, D.: Healing and the Mind, New York: Doubleday, 1993.

Nuland, S.: How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.

Nuland, S.: The Wisdom of the Body, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Peck, M. S.: The Road Less Traveled, New York: Touchstone, 1978.

Peck, M. S.: Further Along the Road Less Traveled, New York: Touchstone, 1994.

Peck. M. S.: People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil, New York: Touchstone, 1998.

Peckenpaugh, N.; Poleman, C.: Nutrition Essentials and Diet Therapy, 8th Ed., Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders (Harcourt Health Sciences), 1999.

Perls, F.: Gestalt Therapy Verbatim, San Francisco: Gestalt Journal Press, 1992.

Perry, B.; Szalavitz, M.: The Boy Who was Raised as a Dog…, New York: Basic Books, 2007.

Perrifoy, R.: Anxiety, Phobias and Panic: Taking Charge and Conquering Fear: A Step-By-Step Program for Regaining Control of Your Life, New York: Warner Books, 1992.

Rogers, C.: On Becoming a Person, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961, 1995.

Ruggiero, V. R.: Beyond Feelings: A Guide to Critical Thinking, 4th Ed., Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 1995.

Sarason, I.; Sarason B.: Abnormal Psychology, 8th Ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996.

Schaef, A. W.: Escape from Intimacy, New York: Harper-Collins, 1987.

Seligman, M.: Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, New York: Knopf, 1990.

Skinner, B. F.: Beyond Freedom and Dignity, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971.

Skinner, B. F.: About Behaviorism, New York: Random House, 1974.

Simon, S.; Howe, L.; Kisrchenbaum, H.: Values Clarification: The Classic Guide to Discovering your Truest Feelings, Beliefs and Goals, New York: Warner Books, 1972, 1978, 1995.

Sroufe, L. A.; Cooper, R.; DeHart, G., Marshall, M.: Child Development, 3rd Ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996.

Stern, D.: The First Relationship: Infant and Mother, Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, 2002.

Sternberg, R.: Thinking Styles, Boston: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Tangney, J. P.; Dearing, R.: Shame and Guilt, New York: Guilford Press, 2002.

Vaknin, S.; Rangelovska, L.: Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited, Prague: Narcissus, 2003.

Weiten, W.: Psychology Themes and Variations, 4th Ed., Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 2000.

Wessler, R.; Hankin, S., Stern, J.: Succeeding with Difficult Clients: Applications of Cognitive Appraisal Therapy, San Diego: Academic Press, 2001.

Wilson, B.: Alcoholics Anonymous, New York, A. A. World Services, 1939, 1955, 1976, 2001.

Wilson, B.: The Best of Bill: Reflections on Faith, Fear, Honesty, Humility and Love, New York: A. A. Graprevine, 1986.

Wilson, B.: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, New York: A. A. World Services, 1951.

Winnicott, D.: Human Nature, London: Routledge, 1990.

Winnicott, D.: The Child, The Family and The Outside World, 2nd Ed., San Francisco: Da Capo, 1992.

Woodward, G.; Denton, R.: Persuasion & Influence in American Life, 4th Ed., Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000.

Woititz, J. G.: Adult Children of Alcoholics, Pompano Beach. FL: Health Communications, 1983.

Worthington-Roberts, B.; Williams, S.: Nutrition Throughout the Lifecycle, 3rd Ed., St. Louis: Mosby, 1996.

Young, J.: Cognitive Therapy for the Personality Disorders: A Schema-Focused Approach, 3rd Ed., Sarasota, FL: Professional Resource Press, 1999.

Further discussion of the topic from an email exchange:

Original email:

As a child, I was taught to deny my feelings. My anger was bad, it might hurt someone. I shouldn't be too happy, I might be disappointed. Don't be sad, think of something nice. Constantly bombarded by messages to deny, I found it easier and safer to shut off my feelings than to explore them. Now there is a big part of me that I don't know or understand. Paying attention to my feelings can help me open that door. My emotions are fluid and they lead me inward to the source of my wisdom and power.

First Response:

My mom always said, "C'mon, your not angry, sad, hurt, tired, hurt.." etc. As a child - I depended on my caregivers to help me label what emotion was what and that they were okay to experience. Today, I allow the feeling to manifest itself in my mind - the difference is that nowadays, I don't base decision-making out of emotion like I used to. I depend more on what I KNOW to be true - and not how I FEEL. My feelings have gotten me into more trouble than I wish to elaborate on. I can see the relief on my kid's faces when I say, "Do you feel angry? Let down? frustrated?" and when they say, "Yes!" we can then move forward.

Second Response:

Parental (and education system, religious, social, and cultural) denial of the child's inner affective (and outer observational) reality has been a topic of discussion and research for more than a century that I know of.

Charcot and Janet were onto this in Paris in the 1870s and '80s. Freud and Bleuler were onto it in Vienna in the 1880s and '90s. Adler was -hugely- into this in Vienna in the early 1900s. Winnicott practically built his (immense) reputation as a "child psychologist" on the topic in the 1930s. Bateson (and the entire Western school of "family therapists" who came out of his "school" at Stanford in the 1950s) were all over this stuff, calling the way parents (and others) did it "double binding."

Watzlawick and Jackson (two of Bateson's followers) developed the concept of "paradoxical injunction" (say one thing, then say another, and insist the child believe both) in the early '60s to explain how parents who had been conditioned by their own parents to deny affective reality literally brainwashed it out of their children.

When the advertising industry began to exploit professional psychology at about that same time, one of the major tools they picked up from what I just described was -HOW- to perpetuate the denial of affective realty in the service of selling all manner of products (like cars, drugs, clothing, cigarettes, booze, etc.) to cure the ills denial of affective reality produces.

It wasn't until the late 1980s / early 1990s that college texts revealing all this began to show up. The big names in the revelation are Robert Cialdini, Charles Stewart, Robert Denton, Gary Woodward, John Bowers, Don Ochs and Richard Jensen.

The citations of references in the text above are all covered in previous material.

© 2008 by Rodger Garrett; all rights reserved. Links are fine. Please contact rajah524@fastmail.fm with comments or questions.