And it came to pass after these things,
that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold,
here I am.
And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son
Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Mor'ah, and offer
him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell
thee of. (Genesis, 22:1-2)
ABRAHAM
Assuming this divergence of God and humans, what
kind of truth might the story of Abraham, as given above, be reflecting?
First, we should note that this story is one
that has survived and come down to us, maintaining itself in our collective
consciousness, for thousands of years. Told, and retold to children,
of generation upon generation, in Judeo-Christian culture, it is a mythological
landmark in the socialization of many, including myself.
I recall the dilemma of Abraham — a rather
heady one for a child to consider, it occurs to me now — being put to us
grade-schoolers on more than one occasion. It seemed this story was
a favorite touchstone for instilling something or other into us that was
especially important to those who taught us, at every level of elementary
school.
I remember being taken into the story, "What
would you do if you were Abraham? What would you do
if God told you to destroy something that you wanted very much? How
do you think Abraham felt? Can you imagine his dilemma?" Transporting
us into the story, into the very sandals of Abraham, was a powerful ploy
— it definitely had us thinking. From there we were skillfully led
to the "proper" conclusion and understanding of the story — that is, that
it represents the degree of obedience God requires, that it presents the
exemplar of such obedience — Abraham — and the unthinking and dutiful response
he came to in his fear of God, and the rewards that come from such obedience
— in Abraham's case, the fatherhood of nations.
I earnestly considered all this and applied
myself to understanding its messages as it was presented, and to accepting
it. But though I convinced myself that I had it, still a part of
me inside, a feeling, would remain — an uneasy feeling about the kind of
God that would make such a demand . . . and then there was a funny feeling
about Isaac.
Now, we may not agree with this traditional
interpretation of Abraham and Isaac; but we must concede that taken as
myth, as an element of our collective psyche retold across the generations,
we have every right to interpret it.
In other words, it has potency and meaning
for us, to be sure. That it resonates with something in our psyche
or collective or personal unconscious is certain. What it is that
it resonates with is something that is an open question. As myth,
in its configuration it may be reflecting realities within us, other than
those we have previously addressed.
In fact, it is my contention that it is possible
to see in the Abraham myth, not only an example of mistakes that one can
make in understanding the Divine after the Fall from Grace in Eden — which
is one interpretation I'd like to offer — but also, more importantly, a
reflection of a psychological reality, a psychological event. I submit
that this event occurs to us all as a consequence of that Fall —
which in history is the adoption of agriculture and in idiostory (an individual's
life) is one's birth.
I propose that this event reinforces
the psychospiritual shutdown at birth and reinforces the limited
consciousness of the agricultural society. It narrows consciousness
even further and makes possible the suppression of self, feelings, and
needs that is characteristic of the agricultural society's commitment to
economic control (control of nature, of resources) and survival values.
Therefore we might call it the other fall from grace.
Abraham, as "the person of faith" — we may
remember — exemplifies those qualities of separation from the Divine will
within.
He denies his inner conscience as the voice of God; we know his conscience
is at odds with him else there is no dilemma here as to what to do about
God's supposed command. He demonstrates that humans, in this mode
of relating, doubt their highest understanding and look outside of it
for evidence of God's will.
Humans thus are no longer identified with God
or even "walking with God," as was the case prior to the Fall from Eden.
Human's highest expression is different from God's expression (for Abraham's
highest expression would obviously be that his son should live).
Human's deepest will is separate from God's will (for the same reason).
Thus, God can demand of a human actions that go against her or his innate
sense of rightness and morality (which is the inner representative of God).
God can even play the role of the devil and tempt humans — as it is written
that God decided to "tempt" Abraham in giving him this command. I
submit that all of these, taken together, are the psychospiritual characteristics
of the other fall from grace.
PRIMAL SCENE
But when does this other fall, this psychological
event, happen in one's individual history? Just as the first major
shutdown, the Fall from Grace, happens at birth with the forgetting of
our Divine heritage in the travails of the birth trauma, so also this Other
Fall from Grace — the mechanics of which are exemplified in the Abraham
story — occurs at the time of the primal scene, with the denial
of our inner God under the terrorizing influence of what might be called
social,
societal, or relationship trauma.
Of course, Freud calls this 'development' the
Oedipus and Electra complexes. Also, this primal scene is
not to be confused with Freud's meaning of that term, which is completely
unrelated to this one. Still, Freud (1961) was aware of the results
of this trauma, though he related it to an inevitable conflict between
"drives" and society. He wrote:
This state of mind is called a "bad
conscience"; but actually it does not deserve this name, for at this stage
the sense of guilt is clearly only a fear of loss of love, "social"
anxiety. In small children it can never be anything else, but
in many adults, too, it has only changed to the extent that the place of
the father or the two parents is taken by the larger human community.
(p. 85, emphases mine)
At any rate, according to Janov (1970), the primal
scene occurs sometime, on the average, at around the ages of four or five.
I have described it in detail in Chapter Eight. Its essential element
is the negation of the realer, feeling self, and the setting up
of an unreal self in a futile attempt at gaining love.
That it is a futile attempt is clear in that
real love does not require of a child such an abdication of its self.
As Janov explains,
A loved child is one who's natural
needs are fulfilled. Love takes his Pain away. An unloved child
is the one who hurts because he is unfulfilled. A loved child has
no need for praise because he has not been denigrated. He is valued
for what he is, not for what he can do to satisfy his parents' needs.
(Janov, 1970, p. 24)
Similarly, Bradshaw (1990) writes, "When a parent
cannot affirm his child's feelings, needs, and desires, he rejects that
child's authentic self. Then, a false self must be set up" (p. 40).
The primal scene is that haunting event which
epitomizes that utter abdication. It is the Waterloo in the child's
numerous attempts, over the course of the infant and toddler years, to
maintain and regain the fading sense of self-worth. As mentioned,
the time of the occurrence of the primal scene is usually around the age
of four or five. In its configuration we may begin to see the parallel
to the Abraham and Isaac story.
CHILDREN AS ASSETS
At the primal scene, the God within, the real
self of the child, is sacrificed. The altar she or he is sacrificed
on is that of the parents' own growth needs. Just as Isaac, the son,
the child, is to be offered in sacrifice to Abraham's relationship to the
divine, his "spiritual needs," if you will; so also we, each and every
one of us, are required to redirect, to conform, and to shape our inner-directed
natural purposiveness, our Divine heritage, into the other-directed wants
and needs of the collective, the economy, which in its initial presentation
is that of the parents.
This factor in psychological development became
immensely more important in history with the changeover from hunter-gatherer
to agricultural means of subsistence wherein children became important
economic assets. No longer just valued in and of themselves, they
are seen more and more as tools to be used in the continual attempt to
control the natural. Thus, they are "seen" less and less and are
required to submit, correspondingly, more to control. The parents'
wants and fears become ever more important than the child's needs — which
are less and less even noticed, let alone attended to, becoming ever paler,
as they do, in comparison to the neurotic needs of the parents.
And, sure enough, the differences in modes
of child-rearing are evident from current anthropological study, as we
see a tendency for greater indulgence, care, and tolerance towards children
in hunter-gatherer societies compared with greater harshness and attempts
to train and re-form children for social and economic ends in post-agricultural
societies, especially Western industrialized ones. (Whiting &
Child, 1953; Liedloff, 1977)
For examples of such different attitudes toward
children, look to Colin Turnbull's (1961) study of the Pygmies, a hunter-gatherer
society, in The Forest People and to Jean Liedloff's (1977) The
Continuum Concept. For the classic analysis of this process of
repression of self in the face of society, see Freud's (1961) Civilization
and Its Discontents. Refer to Arthur Janov's (1970) The Primal
Scream and Abraham Maslow's (1968) Toward a Psychology of Being
for the alternative perspective on this same process, as I am presenting
it here.
FREEDOM TO ABUSE
In sum, it appears that a change in a relationship
to the natural — controlling versus trust — correlates with a change in
attitude to children and consequently to modes of child-caring. The
evidence suggests a greater harshness and lack of respect, to put it mildly,
toward children and to their inner capacities and potentials for optimal
beingness and a greater effort at re-forming and requiring compliance in
"post"-hunter-gatherer societies compared with non-literate societies in
general. However, we need only look around us for direct evidence
of this phenomenon of excessive child control and "neglect" in the service
of parental needs. This trend of agricultural societies seems to
have become even more pronounced in industrial-technological societies.
Indeed, Whiting and Child (1953), in their classic cross-cultural study,
found the Western societies of forty years ago to be among the very lowest
in terms of the degree of indulgence that we afforded our children.
But currently we perceive an additional trend.
Formerly, the child's needs were neglected in favor of economic and social
values as presented by the father. In this age of equality, however,
women have joined the ranks of men and so equally put their social, economic,
personal, "spiritual," and psychological growth "needs" ahead of the child's
physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual ones. "Liberation"
has brought with it the freedom for women to be as equally neglectful of
their children's needs as have men. And so we have child care, preschools
at earlier and earlier ages, and latchkey kids.
In fairness, though, some women as well as
men are fighting this strong socioeconomic, cultural, and psychological
trend and are striving to be caring, loving, giving of time, and attentive
to their offspring in ways that we perhaps do not see as a societal characteristic
except in hunter-gatherer societies. So we see that freedom, as always,
includes the freedom to abuse as well as to go beyond.
ISAAC'S EYES
At any rate, the psychological structure of the
Abraham myth and that of the typical primal scene in the life of the individual
are the same. In eliciting this from the myth, we have to make the
unusual effort to see through the eyes, not of Abraham or of God, but of
Isaac. The son's perspective screams out its significance in the
poignancy of its utter absence. To mangle Shakespeare's words:
it doth disappear too much. The absolute only indication of the son's
perspective is given in his question: "My father . . . behold the
fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" (Genesis,
22:7).
This lone statement is telling in its innocence
and utter dependence on the parental figure. Both innocence and dependence
are important elements in the psychological construct I am describing.
But to elicit the other elements — betrayal
and hopelessness not the least of these — let us jump into Isaac's footprints.
What might the boy be thinking and feeling with all these heavy dealings
unfolding around him? At a certain point, the realization that sets
in is identical to that of the four- or five-year-old at the time of the
primal scene. Equally ignored and unseen, equally destitute of hope
for ever getting his or her needs seen and fulfilled, the words ring out
— screaming from the primaler upon reliving and integrating the traumatizing
primal event and silently raging in the mind of Isaac. Those words
are, "BUT WHAT ABOUT ME?!"
SOCIETAL GOD
It is in the sense of this interpretation, then,
that it can be said that the God of Abraham, this God that is outside oneself,
is the God of Society — that is, of economic reality, of survival in this
world (cf. Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents). It fits
with this interpretation that Abraham's grandiose dreams — his, so-called,
"promises" from God — would be for a nation to be founded from him, i.e.,
that they would be societal aspirations for this-worldly aggrandizement.
And we, in our turn, generation upon generation,
to the societal dragon we sacrifice our "first-born." Having been
psychically maimed ourselves, we are unable to see or fulfill our children's
needs for love. We are unable to adequately see and fulfill the needs
they are helpless to satisfy themselves or to accept them in their uniqueness
— which is their manner of being in direct contact with their God within
(or their "inner child," as they like to say these days).
So having been forced to sever our own ties
with the infinite, we cannot help but do the same to our own children in
their turn. Interestingly, it is the first-born child who takes the
brunt of this neurosis . . . and is, in so many ways more than the later-born,
forced to be the embodiment of the parents' lost hopes and broken dreams;
to carry out, as it were, not his or her own unique spiritual destiny,
but to rescue the failed spiritual-human destinies of its parents.
For what we traditionally do to our children
psychologically is we take away for ourselves from what we should be giving
to them. That is, traditionally parents require from their children
exactly that which they did not get from their parents when they
were kids.
We demand our children pay attention to us,
not giving them the attention they need, because we were deprived of it
as children. We wheedle and cajole them into giving us the unconditional
love we want, having likewise been deprived of it as children, never noticing
our unwillingness and inability to give it likewise to them.
And, of course, their parents didn't give it
to them because they were similarly deprived when they were children.
So it is passed on from generation to generation; it becomes a kind of
psychological national debt. And this debt seems to be increasing.
One indicator is the tendency that some theorists are noting of an increasing
incidence of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Nelson, 1990, p. 103).
Regardless, it would appear that at least in some sectors of modern society
— with the verified increase in crack babies, Satanic ritual abuse, a reputed
"epidemic" of sexual abuse, and the like — this psychological national
deficit is added to with every generation; just like the fiscal deficit
in America grows with the passage of each year's governmental budget.
The overall direction then, in psychological
terms, on the children is to become neurotic, to be cut off from one's
"child within," to be separated from one's real self with its real
and unique and magical needs, capacities, desires, duties, and destiny.
In spiritual terms, it means to become separated (further) from God . .
. another fall from grace.
CHAPTER ELEVEN REFERENCES
Bradshaw, John. (1990). The impact of the wounded
child. New Realities, 10(6), 11, 36-42.
Freud, Sigmund. (1961). Civilization and
Its Discontents: Standard Edition. New York: W. W. Norton.
Janov, Arthur. (1970). The Primal Scream:
Primal Therapy, The Cure for Neurosis. New York: Dell.
Liedloff, Jean. (1977). The Continuum Concept:
Allowing Human Nature to Work Successfully. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Maslow, Abraham H. (1968). Toward a Psychology
of Being. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
Nelson, John E. (1990). Healing the Split:
Madness or Transcendence? A New Understanding of the Crisis and Treatment
of the Mentally Ill. Los Angles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Turnbull, Colin M. (1961). The Forest People:
A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Whiting, J., & Child, I. (1953). Child
Training and Personality: A Cross-Cultural Study. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.