Dependent personality type

This person is typified by a difficulty in making their own decisions. Difficulty initiating things. They will readily give up responsibility to others for major areas of their lives, they can lack self confidence and avoid having to rely on self.

If no one is there they will experience a strong urge to look around for and to attach to what they see as a strong authority figure and then seek for that person to make decisions for them. Hence we end up with the symbiosis diagram.



In this theory the dependent personality seeks to give up their Adult and Parent ego states and allow the other person to assume ’control’ of them. At the same time the other person is usually looking for some one of this dependency type so they can either control them. Or they are looking for some one they can rescue or ‘save’. The woman who seeks to save the man from prison, drugs, gambling and so forth.

At this point we need to define two different types of dependent personalities. The one diagrammed above essentially results form a lack of skills. The person lacks assertion skills, they lack practice and experience at using their Adult ego state independently or exercising their Parent ego state in the ways they can. Thus they lack confidence and a belief in self. This may happen because mother never gave the child the chance to practice such things or maybe father undermined the child’s confidence but putting him down or deriding him.



If this is the case then treatment is not too difficult. The individual is afforded the opportunity to learn assertion skills, use their own Adult ego state to change the tyre on a car, manage their money, practice setting their boundaries around others and expressing their opinions from their Parent ego state. When this happens their self confidence will usually slowly rise as well for which they get lots of positive strokes along the way.

The other dependent personality type does not result just from a lack of skills as described above. Instead it results from a disturbance in the structure of the personality. Thus one can say it is a ‘deeper’ kind of problem that is more difficult to remediate.

To explain this type we don’t use the symbiosis diagram but use the attachment diagram.



As the diagram shows this person has a poor sense of self as an individual. For some reason in childhood they did not successfully separate and in particular individuate from mother. As we know a child is born and it then develops an attachment to mother in the first two years of life. After that it uses the three separation/individuation stages of 2 yo, 4 yo and adolescence to separate and individuate from her.

The more the child separates the more it can individuate. That is discover who it is as an individual. The more it individuates the more it can then separate. The person who has successfully individuated can answer the question - Who am I? Not in the practicalities of gender, marital status and so forth, but in the feeling sense of who I am. The dependent personality will find it very difficult to answer this question.

The parents may have kept the child cocooned for some reason or children of rich parents can have this problem as well. Parents can use financial ties to make it harder for the child to leave. If a child has always been given lots of money that can at times significantly hamper the individuation process.

The person does not develop a strong sense of who they are.
Exercise: When I first moved away from my parents as a young adult what did I learn? What did I learn about me and about life?



As there is an under developed individual self this person seeks to form attachments to others. Once done they assume the the identity of the other as their own and thus feel better psychologically. An example of this is the woman who says: “I don’t feel complete without a man”. She recognises that she ‘lacks’ some sense of identity and discovers that if she forms an intimate relationship with a man then that lack of identity gets filled up with his and thus she feels more complete.

This woman is then in very difficult circumstances as she will find it very difficult to leave the relationship. All people find it difficult to leave a intimate relationship with a strong attachment. But she will find it 10 times harder because her basic sense of identity is also connected with staying attached to the man. For her to leave its like psychologically having her arm ripped off.

This woman is domestic violence waiting to happen. If the man is violent he discovers that he can hit her and she wont leave. She may threaten to leave or even leave for short periods but she always comes back for the reasons I mentioned above. When asked why she moved back she may say, “He said he loved me and wont do it again”. Of course the real reason is that she finds it intolerable to loose part of her very identity or sense of self.



The dependent personality of this type is harder to treat as it is not merely the acquisition of new skills that is required. She has to acquire a sense of herself as an individual human being which is not easy to do and will take time and money usually. However these people can end up in counselling because they will be attracted to the strong counsellor for the same reasons. In this case one can get the rapid development of strong transference feelings from the client to the therapist. The client does the same and takes on the therapists identity as her own and thus will get that sense of ‘completion’ again.

This can be a good thing in that then she can separate and individuate using the therapist as the parent figure but it takes time. On the down side this client is primed for financial exploitation by the unscrupulous therapist. Sensing her high level of dependence the therapist can propose multiple sessions per week and expensive workshops and training which she takes up because of her dependency needs as described above.

Graffiti

The process of individuation**

Integral to a child’s breakdown of its attachment to mother is its own individuation. As it reduces its attachment it then develops an understanding of itself as an individual. It slowly moves out to the individual self. If it does not individuate successfully then it can never successfully separate from the initial attachment figure.

The top diagram is the situation for the new born. It has no sense or very little sense of its individuation or its self as an individual. Over time this begins to happen and slowly the child develops a sense of individuation as it separates from its attachment to mother. This is shown in the second diagram. As the child separates it has to individuate and the more it individuates the more it can separate.

To define who am I - individuate - I have to also define who I am not.

When I worked in a prison there was one guard in particular whom I became quite good friends with. When there was a ‘lock down’ as thus there was not much to do we would sometimes have heated argument.

One of the arguments that I would present to him, to which he would vigourously debate against, was that society needed its prisons and prisoners. They had a positive effect on society and that if ever there were no prisoners or law breakers then society would eventually collapse in on itself. This could happen because the society would loose its sense of identity.

Prisoners allow us to define what we are not. “Those people in prison are prisoners and we are not like them”. It allows us to get a sense of “Them and Us”. By doing that we then begin to get a sense of who and what “Us” is and thus we get a sense of our group identity in that way. Prisoners allows us to maintain our group identity.

Individuals?

Indeed then we have wars. One sometimes hears the phrase, “The war on crime”. When ever a society in engaged in some kind of war it allows it to define what we are not - we are not the enemy. Thus we get a sense of who we are, we get more of a sense of what “Us” is. If we didn’t have this then perhaps the group’s identity would fade and that is one thing humans do not like at all! This could be argued as one of the psychological bases of war.

At an individual level we find the same psychological mechanism at work. We hear a lot about the child’s separation from the parent. After it forms an attachment to mother it then sets about breaking that down by separating from the parent. It actually does two things. It separates and it individuates. As the young child separates it stops using mothers identity and must begin establishing it’s own and thus becomes its own individual. So how does it do that?

At birth an infant is all Free Child and has no identity of its own. It has no individuation. The separation and individuation is seen to occur at three crucial stages of development. 2 years of age, 4 years of age and adolescence. It is at these three ages when it develops its own identity.

These three stages are know as the negativistic stages. That is, at these ages many of the children are found to be negativistic, antagonistic and rebellious against the parents. Why would they be like that? One reason is that they are defining what they are not, they are establishing who the enemy is, which is most often the parents. This of course is when the RC or Rebellious Child ego state is extensively used by the child and teenager.

The teenager finds out what he is not which partially allows him to define who he is. If he is also allowed to experiment with different things then he also finds out the things that he actually likes himself. If he is allowed to do things then this allows him to develop his views and beliefs on this and that then he will complete the identity establishing process. He becomes individuated. Slowly he starts to shift from individuating by rebelling to individuating by the Free Child. If he is afforded the opportunity to define what he is not then he can start to define what he is.

Firstly the child sets about defining what it is not and then it can start to define what it is. If the parent makes the wrong responses then the child can get stuck in RC individuation and the FC individuation is hampered. Those wrong responses can be two fold

1. The parents do not allow the RC expression either by providing nothing for the teenager to rebel against. That is the parents are highly permissive with very few rules and boundaries for the child. Or they are simply overwhelmingly strict and authoritarian such that the teenager gives up trying to rebel at all.

2. The teenager is not allowed to try and experiment with a variety of activities and life styles. For instance I can remember being 18 years of age, unemployed and living in a house (if you could call it that) with three of my male friends. I lived for a year with virtually no money and it was a great experience even though at times I went hungry, was cold and tired. I learnt how to make a can of baked beans taste really good. Mind you that is not very hard when you are really hungry in the first place. I recall on the occasions that I would go home to my parents house and noticed how soft the carpet felt on my feet. I had never noticed that before. The house I lived in for a year had carpet in a few rooms but it was very thin and worn.

My parents could have intervened and provided the money for me to live in a much more luxurious accommodation but then my Free Child individuation would have been disrupted by them doing so.

Why do teenagers do this? Because they can. FC individuation.

The point being that I was afforded the opportunity for my Free Child to experience the world and life in ways that I had never done before. By doing such a thing I could then discover who I was as an individual. Of course this is just one example of the many hundreds of things that the teenager needs to be allowed to do so his Free Child can find out about life, who he is and what he thinks and feels as an individual.

Of course the antiscript stage of development occurs at this time as well for the teenager. Indeed this could be seen as an explanation of why the teenager deviates off the path of the life script into antiscript. He will try and do all sorts of things that his life script would not normally allow him to do. What is also highlighted here is that teenagers are sometimes see as being rebellious, that is doing RC individuation, when in fact they are not. Yes they rebel to get a sense of - I am not that - but this still does not allow them find who they are. To do that they have to try out and experiment with lots of alternative activities and life styles.

Many might see her as being rebellious by the way she presents herself. This may not be so. She may simply be trying different ways of looking and dressing so she can find out what she likes and what fits for her own sense of sense. Free Child individuation.

Graffiti

Establishing independence

There are eight main psychological struggles that children and teenagers need to resolve before they become psychologically complete as an adult. Below are the first four.

1. Leaving home. Establishing independence from home supervision.

*Emergence from parental supervision

*Reliance from the security one can give self rather than security provided by the parents.

*Development of an attitude towards parents as friends rather than protectors and supervisors.

*Planning of one’s own time and making one’s own decisions without parental control.

Free from parental supervision

In psychotherapy there is a general rule of thumb for the adolescent or adult client. Do they refer to their parents as mummy & daddy, mum & dad or Fred & Alice. This is about getting a psychological divorce from ones parents and if one refers to their parents by their christian names then they are more likely to have resolved this dilemma. If they refer to them as mummy and daddy then there can be considerable emotional immaturity.

To become an adult or a person in ones own right one must learn how to deal with the good and bad events in life. How to deal with things like gossip, rejection, feeling scared, ashamed, angry. It is the overprotective parents cause the most problems with this psychological struggle.

This also refers to the geographical separation from the parents such as moving out into an abode of their own. Physically leaving home can greatly assist the child in resolving this psychological struggle. This need can also be reflected in the desire of younger people to travel and see some of the world without the parents being present.

Family

2. Emotional maturity. A person does not become an adult until he has abandoned childish or adolescent ways of reacting emotionally.

*Substitution of harmless instead of harmful ways of expressing emotion. For instance young children hit and bite when angry. Temper tantrums is another example.

*Learning to react to emotional situations objectively. If someone is angry at what you have done, to be able to assess objectively if their anger is justified or not. Being able to move beyond simple revenge responses or an eye for an eye thinking.

*Learning to accept criticism without hurt feelings.

*Learning to face things that are unpleasant instead of running away from them.

*Elimination of childish fears and anxieties.

3. Social maturity. This is not independence from home but maturity in one’s own social circle.

*Development of a sense of security in one’s social circle.

*Ability to get along with others in peer relationships

*Ability to take part in the activities of the group, without trying to either dominate it or be excessively submissive in it.

*Freedom from excessive dependence on one’s social group. This allows one to go some what against the norms of the group but still remain part of it.

*Development of a tolerance to different social groups.

Choosing who to be friends with is up to them

Teenagers have an acute interest in social matters. They can be dependent and meticulously imitate their friends and social group. This serves a real and positive purpose in the break away from the parents. However it can become a problem in itself if the person merely becomes a slave to the norms of the group instead of the parents.

4. Beginnings of economic independence. One cannot truly become psychologically adult until they earn their own living.

*Reasonably accurate estimate of one’s abilities

*Selection of a field of work in which success is possible

*Completion of enough training to get started in one’s career

*Realising the need to work

One can not become who they are without economic independence.

This is a distinctive difficulty for children from wealthy families. Many parents will promote economic ties as a way to keep children around. This also highlights the difficulty when a child goes into the family business and is why often the second generation in the family business in much less successful. If given an easy path into the family business they tend to be more interested in the spoils of it than making it profitable.

In western society these psychological struggles have gained extra importance in recent years as they evolve more and more into nanny states. As the state takes more and more responsibility to protect and look after its young it is becoming harder and harder for them to evolve into what is seen as psychologically adult.

We are making it harder and harder for the young to become psychologically independent. To do that they have to take risks of their own and that means some of them will get hurt and some will even die. We have to accept that there will be casualties or risk the predicament of promoting a generation of dependents.

Graffiti