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Exploring
Emotional Maturity Part
I with Richard Kieninger Q: What is emotional maturity? The first thing
that comes to my mind when discussing emotional maturity versus immaturity is
that the mature person is sociocentric and the immature person is egocentric.
For me that is a very simplistic way to sum it up. RK: Again we always get back to my favorite
subject of self-esteem. There are many childish behaviors which undermine a
sense of self-worth, and that tends to be a vicious cycle where you do the
things that undermine self-esteem and then because you don’t have much
self-esteem you continue to do those things which undermine self-esteem. Q: Does pride correlate in some way with
emotional immaturity? That is, being proud? RK: There is nothing so fiercely prideful as a
nine-year-old boy. Some people retain that level of pridefulness as they get older,
and it always seems to be out of place as an adult. I think pridefulness is
generated when a person doesn’t have anything going for him as yet; therefore
he has to uphold face by various kinds of pasturing. Nine-year-old boys are
very good at finding things to gain distinction or some little feat of
prowess—like being able to spit on a crack at ten feet away. It is very
important to them, to their manhood or boyhood, to be able to accomplish
feats of that sort because that’s all they have. In
countries where machismo is prevalent, the population lives more toward the
poverty end of the scale in their standard of living. Many of the countries
around the Mediterranean basin have been on a pretty low rung of the economic
ladder for many centuries, and a man literally didn’t have anything that he
could point to and say that this is mine, this is a home I own, this is what
I have accumulated. The nobility and a few rich individuals managed to
control everything, and they could get anything they wanted because they had
the power of wealth. The average man had nothing except his pride; therefore,
anything that could possibly offend his pride, in any way, he had to defend
even to the death because that is really all he had. If he lost his manly
pride, then he had nothing, and the whole society of men demanded that he
uphold his manhood, represented by strength, bravery and sexual prowess. That
is probably why Q: Do you think that one of the definitions
of emotional maturity is being more or less able to choose the emotion or
emotions that you feel in a given situation? In other words, would the
emotionally mature person be able to choose to be angry when he wishes to be
and choose not to be angry when he doesn’t want to be? RK: Well, generally speaking, emotions arise in
a way which are not a thing that you are in control of. How severely you act
in response to a given situation is something else. If you think, for
instance, of Christ when he scourged the money changers at the temple, He
likely felt a true righteous anger, but what a person decides to actually do
in a similar circumstance is totally in his control. Emotions are not
something that you turn on or off at will. They are automatic responses. As
one learns to have better control of his environment, he has fewer fear
responses. As one learns that some challenges truly are unimportant, he has
less anger responses. As one learns how to achieve more of his goals, he
experiences more joyful responses. You
can cultivate an emotion and decultivate one, but an emotion is. Each emotion
gives rise to a specific series of muscle responses called feelings. Emotions
are Egoic, and feelings are physiological. An emotion doesn’t become a
feeling until it gets translated through the physical body, so the Ego who is
decarnate knows when he is experiencing an emotion and senses it, but he
can’t know it as a feeling because he doesn’t have a body giving
characteristic muscle responses. Q: In line with that, I think you can be
conditioned to respond emotionally to things which are totally
immature—nationalism as an example—and this kind of thing has been used much
to our detriment. RK: I don’t know that I would classify
nationalism as an emotion. Q: No, it’s not. But we have been
conditioned like Pavlov’s dogs. We’ve been conditioned by all kinds of
rewards. Nazi Germany is the obvious glaring example of that. If you don’t
respond favorably to what the leader is saying, then you will be punished. It
is that simple. RK: There was national pride involved in that too. The Germans were a
people who had been subjugated, were paying huge reparations, and being
prevented by treaty from taking their place among the nations of the world.
This generated wounded pride because much of one’s personhood is an extension
of your community. Q: But emotions can arise because you have
been conditioned or trained to emote a certain way to some stimulus, and the
conditioning is often for immature goals. That is, to achieve ends which are
not for the greater good of those being conditioned but rather to enhance
the power of the conditioner. RK: If you belong to any kind of mass movement,
which is something greater than yourself, you identify with that greatness
and thus your own smallness is uplifted in some measure by your association
with it. The problem is that most mass movements are motivated by being
against something or to contribute toward a personality cult. Mass movements
almost never improve anybody or uplift them in any psychological way.
However, such movements may improve their members’ political power or
economics. Q:
I think maturity depends on the
ability to be empathetic. That is just one part of it, but that is a very important
part of it. In being empathetic, I think you are motivated to try to
communicate better and be willing to be responsible for communicating. RK: What I’m hearing you say is that the sociocentric person feels
the other person; so he is able to empathize in putting himself in that other
person’s place and is considerate of that other person’s rights and feelings.
Whereas an egocentric individual only sees himself and the things which are
important to him; so people are things to be manipulated to his own ends. Adults
are all responsible to help uplift those who are less able so that they are
more able to fully take part in the greater human condition. The mature
person is kind to those who are weak and uplifts those who are ill and
educates those who are ignorant rather than lording it over them and feeling
he’s above those people. Otherwise you start playing one-upmanship, and that
is upholding pride or is purely manipulative and not empathetic. A
further thought on machismo and everyday problems that most men experience
with their conditioning to it. Women just can’t understand it, and most men
are unconscious of how they have been undermined by it. From the time they
were infants and up through their whole lives men are constantly being told
in subtle ways that they are warrior killers—the destroyers of life—rapers of
the planet—the users and abusers of women. From the time they are tiny tots,
men are reminded they are ones who go to war and their industry pollutes the
land. This painful psychological dichotomy between the image of male
activities as opposed to women’s bringing life into the world and nurturance
of all life is depressing to all concerned. Even
my grandmother detracted from my self-image when I was a little kid. She
taught me that boys are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails, and
that disturbed me for a very long period of time. I cared even less for the
corollary that girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. That
must have had a negative impact on just about every boy that has ever heard
that. There is a whole line of subtle things which contribute to the
perception that men are destroyers whereas women are creators and the
nurturers of life. The
heroic, macho man is aggressive, ruthless, unfeeling, and brave to a fault.
This amounts to a massive guilting of the male half of the whole human race.
That image permeates just about everything that men think about because they
have been so thoroughly imbued with it. Men hear this constantly; and it is
subtle because it is so all-pervading that they don’t consciously hear it
anymore. This constant mental bombardment of males is really mythological,
but we all try to live the image. There is nothing basically or inherently in
the male half of the race that says that they are destructive or
non-nurturing. But they have been made to believe that they are, and that is
where the difficulties come in. It poisons all male/female relationships. Q: It’s amazing that men and women have
gotten along as well as we have. RK: I agree, but we need to learn how to improve
marital relations so they’re much better, and I think this has to begin with
youngsters. The image of toughness is very important among boys, and anything
that can prove that toughness is pursued by them. I remember that I obtained
most of my scars as a youngster proving that I was just as tough as the rest
of the kids. And I didn’t even want to! I didn’t want to climb power poles
and mix it up with high voltage electric lines and things like that, but one
had to. If you didn’t take a dare, you lost face. I don’t know how many
people are killed playing chicken because it’s easier to die than to be
labeled a chicken by all your peers. Many a Mexican man has received a few
slices with a knife because it was easier to go through a knife fight with a
challenger than to be literally ostracized from normal social acceptance. In
Puerto Rico I know that is the big thing, and Q: Nevertheless, those cultures have had a
strong influence in our country. RK: Well, their emigrants helped build the Q: You’ve been saying there are forms of
that in Western society. Does that mean that Eastern societies have grown
past that? RK: Talking about Eastern societies is too
remote for most of us, but they have their own problems. It is important for
us to realize that most of those countries are strongly patriarchal. Q: On an individual level of feelings like
jealousy or inadequacy—those types of things—is there ever any justification
for feeling that way? RK: Not in the overall view of things, no. But
so far as your training by everybody around you is concerned, you could
hardly respond any other way. It has been so thoroughly bred into you. Q: Are there specific conditioning events that
can be gotten in touch with by an individual in order to decondition himself?
In other words, do those feelings have a root in some specific events? RK: The answer to that is yes. You were
conditioned by everybody that you have come in contact with. Practically
everyone will tell a kid that little boys can’t cry because good little
soldiers never cry, even though the doctor is sewing up the gap in his leg
that takes ten stitches. He can’t cry in front of the nurse, and the doctor
doesn’t want to put up with howling. What eventually happens is that you cut
yourself off from your own natural emotional responses in order to inure
yourself against fear and pain. The end result of feeling guilty about
natural emotions is that you end up being rigid and stoic and unfeeling. It’s
then hard to be empathetic with someone’s fear and pain where you’re trying
to suppress and deny those very feelings in yourself. The logical conclusion
of these self-denials is to become as insensitive as possible to all of the
things that little girls are permitted to experience. If a little girl
scrapes her knee, then she is expected to cry and she is comforted as she
cries. Little boys, on the other hand, are likely to be scolded for such
natural responses, and they are shamed into silence. Fathers are likely to be
embarrassed by a son who cries, and he might well tell his son, “Stop it!
You’re acting just like a girl.” Q: So girls are allowed to reach out for
emotional support? RK: Well, everyone needs emotional support
during rough times. People who grow up without emotional support grow up to
be non-human, literally. Do you have any argument with that? Q:
No, I agree. But I have been reading
a book that kind of explains that when you reach out for emotional support
that means you don’t feel well enough in yourself to give yourself emotional
support. RK: I can’t go along with that. That is just a
continuation of the very thing that I am talking about. That book implies
that you are less of a person if you turn to anybody for assistance. That is
why men don’t go to doctors; they may suffer from lung disease and cancer and
heart trouble but won’t seek professional assistance because that would be an
admission of not being in control of yourself. To depend on some other person
implies being a weakling. That really isn’t so. But a man tends to believe
that inside his own head because it is a logical extension from all of the
things he was told he mustn’t do as a little boy if he hoped to grow up and
be a real man. The kind of things that you have to do to save face as a
teen-ager are incredible. One of the reasons that I grew separate from my
peers in High School is that I already had some basic information from Dr.
White and Q: Your credibility broke down? RK:
Right, and so I didn’t answer the dares any longer, but that put me outside
of that level of society. But I found 5 or six other guys in my school who
believed the same way that I did, and we got along great and didn’t have any
problem with one another. Q: Refugees from the pits? RK: That was very well put. Because that is what
we really were. We were on top of the heap, but we weren’t even sure of that
at the time because we realized that we were not posturing in all the super
masculine kinds of things that we were otherwise expected to do. That is
where all the lying arises between teen-agers about how many girls they are
making out with. “Who have you had lately?” And if you can’t come up with a
girl’s name, your own name is mud for a week. It’s silly, isn’t it? Now, as
you look back at it, some of the things you were obliged to put up with in
High School were simply ridiculous. But you didn’t know that at the time you
were so earnestly trying to comply with what was expected of you. Q: I would have sold out a long time ago if
somebody would have bought me. What happened in my case was that each
different clique or group wasn’t sure that I was quite all right. RK: Not belonging is very hurtful. No matter how
you try to tell yourself that such rejection is really okay, it nevertheless
bothers you. Q: Maybe what you were saying about men a
while back, about their having this burden of being the destroyers, is what
Mexican men mean when they say that they need a woman as consolation for
their pain in the world. What pain do they have when the women do all of the
work in the fields and then come home and work, cook and take care of the
children. On the surface, what could be such a man’s problem? I haven’t heard
anyone say what the pain is that these men have to bear. Maybe it’s the pain
of having the feeling of being destroyers and the struggle to maintain an
image of machismo. RK: It’s exhausting being guilted by their
society. They have become convinced they are one of the destroyers, and that puts
them out of touch with the church. The church is telling them about the
Savior (who is regarded as somewhat matriarchal) and all of the things that
one has to do to be a good person, and all the while their society is telling
them they are evil. That’s a kind of no-win stand-off. Q: A man in my Puerto Rican culture can beat
his wife with license any time, but that has to give guilt. Boys are brought
up with total permission to be as bad as they want and do just about
anything. RK: Well, I suppose the assumption is that the
boys are naturally bad. Then the unspoken message all the time is, “You are
just naturally bad. You are going to hell no matter what happens. Your
Sainted mother is going to heaven, but you are going to the other place.”
That kind of attitude of permissiveness toward males must eventually lead to
the rebellion that women rightfully have begun. That machismo stuff belongs
back in the Dark Ages. But there is danger that the current women’s rebellion
can go overboard. When people finally get to the point where they should
rebel, and they build up a head of steam to overcome the opposition they
expect, they usually build up so much momentum that their rebellion goes past
the point of best effectiveness. Then there is backlash; and so it goes, back
and forth. As Martin Luther commented, “Mankind is like a drunk trying to get
on his horse. He climbs up on one side and falls off the other side, then he
climbs up from that other side and falls off again over the opposite side. He
can’t find the middle balance so he can go someplace on the horse.” Q: I have a conflict on how to handle some
feelings. Say that you are in a situation where you feel anger at something
or someone. On one side I get the sentiment that you should feel that anger
and find a constructive outlet for the anger. I mean go home and beat on the
bed with a tennis racket or go out in the cornfields and shout at the sky. So
if you are angry at a co-worker or something, don’t blister his ear but find
a harmless outlet for it. On the other hand there is the sentiment that says
transmute that anger. Say, “Yes, I am angry. That means that something is
frustrating or threatening me. What is it that I want and what am I going to
do to get what I want?” And thus rationalize yourself through the anger.
Which way is right? RK: Both can work, depending upon where you
happen to be at the moment in your thinking or feelings. They are just two
techniques for helping to get over it. Anger rarely resolves anything, and
the person who suffers the most from your anger is you. So you have to
rationally decide if the anger is justifiable and what should be done about
the cause. Do you straighten yourself out because it is not rational for you
to be angry or do you point out his wrongful action to the other guy because
he is causing that justifiable anger in you. You need to look clearly to
penetrate what it is. But just sitting on anger and denying it is
destructive. Continually stuffing down anger ends up as hypertension and
ulcers and things of that sort, which means that you really didn’t properly
deal with it. You didn’t discharge your anger, you just internalized it; and
it is now attacking your body rather than somebody else’s. Q: In view of that, should we perhaps put
thought or energy into constructive discharges of anger in addition to
rational analysis and transmutation of it? In other words, give them both
validity and both free expression for a given person in a given space? RK: I can’t disagree with that. Whatever works
for you. Q: I have found that I tended to use both,
and I haven’t found yet where the line is. RK: Well, I justified both for you. The question
that most people should ask is why am I feeling this anger? Why is this
situation pushing my buttons to such an extent that I am feeling anger? Let’s
say you are a corporation boss. You tell somebody that you want something
done a certain way and he says, “No, I don’t think that is the best way to do
it.” Some bosses are going to think, “Gee, maybe this guy has a better idea.
Let’s hear what he has to say.” And other bosses may say, “This guy is
challenging my authority.” Well, if you feel weak on authority, then you are
going to get mad because he has now threatened your possible loss of face. Q: What about sadness or grief? Can this be
dissipated through rational processing? Let’s say, “I am feeling sad. Why am
I feeling sad? I am feeling sad because I lost something. What does that
really mean to me?” And so on. Or should I cry it out to completion? Are both
valid forms of moving through this? RK: The emotions which are not likely to result
in destructive behavior are probably best just expressed. Just experience
them through, and then be done with them. But when somebody gets to murderous
feelings as a result of anger, obviously that is not socially acceptable.
It’s important to find some way to transmute anger, even though it isn’t
easy. Of course, the ideal is to be so secure within yourself that nobody
threatens you so much as to make you angry. Anger arises when you feel you
have been threatened with something that makes you fearful or with something
which causes you the possibility of losing face. Q: Speaking of fear, that emotion seems to
be a little tougher to deal with than the other ones. A lot of times I
experience angry feelings to cover my fear. RK: You can draw on your own inner strength by
confronting what frightens you, and that involves the virtue of Courage in
what is primarily an intellectual process. In other cases sometimes a thing
to do is turn to another person for support and say, “Help me through this,”
so that you don’t have to go it alone. Both of those options are valid. A man
in this country, however, is less likely to take the last alternative. He
will try to deal with it through his own resources; and if those resources
aren’t really up to the situation, he may break under the stress rather than
turning to somebody for assistance. Even if that support be his faith in God
or Christ. You can see that sometimes we are programmed to not do things
which are in our best interest. In even a simple, non-threatening situation,
men are reluctant to ask for help. My father, for instance, would sooner
drive fifty miles in a wandering search rather than stop and ask directions
to a place he hasn’t been before. |
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