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’ 

Sexual Significant Other - the Mate

"A man without a woman is not a man," Jewish proverb.

In todays jargon this would perhaps no longer be gender specific.  It speaks to the essentially relational aspect of the individual.  We lack eyes in our back for defence.  Together with another we can stand back to back and even hugging we have a 360 degree view of our environment.  When one is sleeping the other can be awake.  The dyad rather than the monad is the essential 'unit' of mankind.

In the the days of Winston Churchill and before, almost up to present days it was ever said, "Behind every good man there is a good woman."  Hitler's problem according to the high self esteem women, in part if not all, was that little tart, Eva Brawn, Hitler's girlfriend.  The male joke today is that she was the one who was refusing sex unless poor Adolf killed her more Jews.  She definitely wanted the English Crown Jewels and the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth were not going to give them to the whore of Germany.

With the rise of Margaret Thatcher to English Prime Minister and given her impressive partner the saying was extended to be 'behind every good woman is a good man.'  "Birds of a feather flock together' is well acknowledged despite the fact that all criminals insist they didn't know their mates were up to no good when the groups are caught red handed.

Much as the  Feminism of Social Communism would claim "all men are victimizers" and "all women are victims",  despite the the facts of history, the limits of generalization, and the ethnocentricism of the culturally ignorant  rhetoric of these western university WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic).  Personally coming from a Celtic Egalitarian background, with equally powerful  complementary parents,  so different from the patriarchal Mediterranean  Israel, Rome and later Germany, we've always celebrated the outstanding women.  Pelagius the Aberdeen monk pilloried by Augustine was considered more offensive for his tonsure and love and celebration of the mother than his famed "Pelagian heresy".

As France had her Joan of Arc, all Latin and South America celebrated the woman as mother. Catholics and Christians in general have always portrayed Mother Mary as next to God. An early pre Nicene or pre Roman empire Christian schism had God as dualistic, mother and father God.  In, Evolution of God, Robert Wright traced the father-mother God to the early Jewish community before the Yahweh 'emperor' God of Jewish patriarchy.  Orthodox Jews still at times pray "thank god I am not a woman' .  Jesus's offence among many was his egalitarian approach to women, his friendship with Martha and Mary, his deferring to Mary, and his calling the ultra masculine Jewish 'Father' of the day ,"Abba"  the diminutive  'daddy'.    

Most of the great men of history were family men, men as fathers, not as boys.  The rite of passage for most cultures was the marriage of a man and woman and the becoming of these adolescent individuals fathers and mothers and adults in family.  Gender until very recently referred to the sex of man as boy and father and woman as girl and mother.  The dissolution of family in the war of group versus individual invariably seeks to destroy all natural allegiance in exchange for artificial allegiances  crown, flag or religious dogma.

Radical feminism was a theology of individualism, a death cult promoting abortion, ritual infanticide no different in it's scientific guise than the infanticide  renounced historically as epitomized by the Abraham and Isaac sung so well by Canadian poet, Leonard Cohen.   Radical feminism was by nature a rejection of the mother by the daughter.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and these daughters imitated their fathers and emulated the hard drinking, sexist, polygamous men of their hurt and angry girl imaginations. To them a man to a woman was as useful as a bicycle to a fish.  There's nothing womanly about girlish 'radical feminism'.

Much of modern day confusion especially in the Courts and Government edicts reflects the ignorance of the laws regarding development and science.   Intellectuals are forever formulating ideas alien to nature and playing out their 'experiments' on millions of people.  The billions murdered by atheist communism in Russia and China speak to the failure of fundamental understanding of the 'interconnectedness' of individuals.  No man and no woman is an island.' It was not surprising that the old 'women's studies' departments evolved to 'gender departments' as so many white girls maturing went on to become mothers themselves and realized their former dogma favoured killing off their sons.

The  Chinese meanwhile were with patriarchal communist efficiency killing off all future feminists by selectively aborting female babies. The hijacked humanism of the original suffragette and women's liberation movement having weathered the obscenity of radical feminism expanded culturally to include women of all races where motherhood and children were not abhorrent and despised. On the international scene the simple education of women without abortion has reduced family size to three; not dissimiliar to the numbers common in aristocracy, which have usually celebrated their own children, no matter how much they had disregarded the children of the masses. The spiritual women studies today increasingly replace the paradigm of individualism and 'corporations' artificial legal constructs of the 'individual'.  Today it's recognised that it takes a village to raise a child. Good children are a product of good mothers and good villages.

The importance of our most significant others cannot be understated whether or not one goes on to produce a family following marriage, adopting or simply maintaining a long term partnership, this relationship beyond the original family membership is the greatest developmental process in life.

It has long been understood that where there is no money or sex involved people can quite easily 'agree' in general. This is why coffeehouse intellectuals can have such fun playing with ideas. It's why governments and government committees are so exciting because they're invariably playing with someone else's money. Church ladies are forever making rules for 'other women' but rarely are willing to have their own behaviour held up for similar scrutiny.  Censors love to read salacious material and censor you or me from the same experience.

The poor routinely criticize the way the rich spend money but invariably when the poor become rich they too spend similarly.  Revolutions mostly exchange tyrants and little often changes.  The 'reformer is the enemy of anyone who benefits from the status quo', so with reform comes a new 'status quo'.  Progress when it occurs doesn't do so smoothly but rather in stops and starts with 2 or 3 steps forward and 1 or 2 steps back.

I loved that celtic Queen Boudica beat the Roman armies of Emperor Nero time and time again, being of such success that later Queen Victoria would celebrate and claim heritage.  Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, Catherine de Medici, mother of three French Kings, Isabella I , unifier of Spain, Hariet Tubman, conductor of the underground railway, all are examples of extraordinary women who defy the feminist paradigm of woman as 'victim'.  As scientists, when the data overwhelmingly defies an ideology, the ideology is chucked, whereas in politics the exact opposite occurs, with any evidence to the contrary and those who espouse it, removed to save and promote the ideology.  Ideology and politics aren't about 'truth' but about money, power and people.

The individual is a construct of 'history' and 'media'.  Even St Theresa is a product of the group of nuns who worked in Calcutta and she would be the first to say it.  Even as General Patton would speak of his dependence on his men.  We are not a collection of 'individuals' despite the fact we are born between piss and shit.  Our birth is a dyadic phenomena of 'mother and child'.  Paul Simon eulogized this in his song "mother and child reunion'.  When we think of ourselves as a 'alone' we negate our very mother, deny the X and Y chromosomes of our father and mother, and that our DNA all apparently relates back to one African cave family some 80,000 years ago.  No wonder people say to Barach and Michelle Obama, they've "come along way".   In addition our birth more often than not involved community.  Further, if we were collectively evil no child would survive infancy when their vulnerability is so great that they are wholly dependent on their parents and community.  Even the greatest of us stand on the shoulders of those who went before.

That first child adult bond of family with siblings perhaps or not is next developmentally seen as the adult adult bond of the first and most important 'significant other'.  Once the proto unit of family, though not always, to day with gay marriages and "DINKS - dual income no kids'" relationships and 'friends with benefits', despite all its permutations,  this 'sexual significant other " still remains of paramount importance in and of itself. It is the cauldron of personal development and the foundation of connectedness with community.