Locus of Control

Locus of Control is a central concept of clinical psychiatry.  Developmentally a child moves from a magical sense of omnipotence where needs are received from a magical mommy being to increasing separation and frustration with the universe not being as understanding.  Ultimately with old age an individual gains humility and acceptance and realizes how little ‘control’ they have in a multibillion competing universe.  Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmond, worked as a child psychiatrist and enveloped these ‘lines of development’ eg Narcissism to Altruism.  Jung described the “hero’s jouney’ which Joseph Campbell showed was a cross cultural normative process.

The recovery process shares these features.  An individual begins able to ‘control’ their addiction. Indeed for many the relationship doesn’t even involve a consideration of control and when the issue of ‘control’ arises they are too often deep in the rabbit hole already.    The relationship with the ‘false god’, or ‘substance’ is at first occasional. Eventually the person feels ‘controled’ by the substance and is increasingly unable to say ‘no’.   As Tom Waits so aptly said before he sought help for his addiction ,  he didn’t know who was writing the songs.

Locus of control describes the sense of autonomy and freedom a person feels and their sense of being an individual with choice.  Politically the historic Tory, conservative or even classical liberal position was that the individual rather than the government or external circumstances needed to change.  The original AA movement adopted the Christian Serenity Prayer, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  In the studies of change dynamics it was recognized that the individual must have a sense of control and decision making and ‘want’ to change.  Until then they ‘blamed’ the substance and external circumstances for their condition.  In marriage therapy as long as a person ‘blames’ the other then they themselves don’t need to change.  In the spiritual path the loving God is seen as always there but that the individual has turned away.  

Addiction is seen as alienation.  C.S. Lewis the great Christian theologian used to quip, ‘stop looking for the architect in the wall.  We say addiction and alcoholism are looking for love in all the wrong places.

As long as the problem is someone else’s as in the Hitchhiker’s Guide Acronym “SEP” (Somebody Else’s Problem) I didn’t have to do anything about it. Character is a conservative consideration.  We change our focus from food to well being to address our food addiction, that which was called gluttony in ancient days.  However if I consider the problem to be the government’s or Hollywood advertising , things I have the least control over, I don’t have to address my own individual problem. The so called  ‘Progressive movement’ today , a rather mundane historic retread, sees everything in terms of the collective whereas William James, father of American pragmatism, saw the world through the lense of the power of individual to change.  Collectivism, most known as ‘communism’ or it’s lesser variant ‘socialism’ sees the problems as ‘collective rather than individual’.  

In medicine we accept there are public health and individual health considerations. Both need to be addressed but initially the individual clinically must accept their need to change, whether it be an attitude or a behaviour before they can heal.

That’s the essence of ‘locus of control’.  At the mental health fulcrum the schizophrenic or paranoid feels the problem is you and you alone. Martin Buber say them as having an I and It understanding of the world rather than an I and You or I and Thou.  The locus of control is with the ‘it’ or the ‘feared object’.  

This is seen individually and politically.  Nitze promoted the individual as ‘superman’ . He marketed his ideas to the elite.  Marx claimed that ‘religion was the opiate of the masses’ yet religion said that the individual had the power of God within and has always been the most potent revolutionary force for change in history.  

Jung described the ‘collective unconscious’ and the individuals means of tapping into the ‘flow’ or what he called ‘synchronicity.  There is a sense of ‘Thy will’ as opposed to ‘my will’ a safer mainstream high way of tradition and custom which has been found through out the ages by trial and error in the same way as what is safe to eat has been learned.  The Conservative argues that we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water and that one should keep an open mind but no so open as to let all one’s marble’s fall out.  Spiritually one seeks to align one’s own feelings with this greater source of feelings. The word yoga was to yolk the self with the greater self.  ‘God’s will, not my will’ described the obedience which underlay the most creative. Discipline and freedom are faces of the same coin. People often want license but claim they want freedom.  In revolution everyone acts with ‘license’ , the last of accountability which results in pillage rape and crime.  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  Change dynamics suggest that war is a consequence of so many people rejecting the idea of discipline and wanting the Bachanalian night, the return to the primitive self.  It has been described as the ‘unleashing of the dogs of war’.  

The Beatles song , “We don’t want a revolution’ followed their observation that tyranny followed tyranny but that growth and development progressed most in peace.  

In spiritual practice , the wise man attempts to change his behaviour, leading by example, giving up alcohol for a year or five before demanding the world stop selling alcohol.  Today the adolescent movements manipulated by corporations are marketting their various consumer products to the most mental impaired and youngest while hypocritically doing the opposite themselves of the very campaign they are promoting for others for their own profit. The world has always been divided into those who lead from behind or lead from in front.  There are the ‘front line’ worker and the workers so far distant from the reality.  The Monday morning quarterbacks and the people who actually have a dog in the race.

Locus of control is central to all of these situations and fundamental cornerstone of what is called ‘cooperative behaviour’.  Unfortunately “Prisoner’s Dilemna’ studies find that ‘cooperative behaivour’ does not come ‘naturally’ and politically it is most often achieved by coercision.  

Where that line’