The Transcendent Child.... book by Lillian Rubin

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I don't know if LR is considered a quack or a great mind in her field.

I do know I read her book and it seems timely that I just pulled it from a box while moving stuff yesterday.

I also found my scariest of scary masks, which I've been looking for also.... so I'm laughin.  Whoo hoo!  That big scary black robe clad man wil be handing out candy this year from the candy bowel that shrieks and traps your hand, heh.... I even have perfectly placed cobwebs around the house this year! 

Ahem......  Lillianwrites here.... on her cover.....'tales of triumph over the past' and that's what she's written about.

"This book challenges the culture of  victimhood and celenrates instead the human capacity to triumph against the odds."  This is a partial quote by Kim Chernin, author of In My Mother's House.

Darnit.... I didn't highlight my way through this book: /

Page 2... an excerpt from her book:

"Certainly, the tangled strands of DNA that determine our genetic predispositions make a difference in how we respond to the world around us.  In my own family, my brother's pessimism and my optimism stood in oppoisition to one another from our earliest childhod.  He characteristically saw a half empty glass;  to my eyes, it was always half full.  Such differences are not trivial.  They govern how we experience the world, how we internalize and interact with those experiences, what choices seem possible."

"But the secrets and possibilities embedded in the double helix notwithstanding, it alone cannot explain why some people fall down seven times and get up eight -  and why others cannot recover from the first fall.  For although the process by which we respond to events around us may be influenced by our genes, it is mediated by the social and psychological circumstances within which our lives are embedded." 

"In twenty-five years as a practicing psychotherapist, I have often found myself awed by the ability of some people to transcend their hurtful past and, against all odds, find pathways to a satisfying adulthood.  Yet virtually every twentieth-century theory on which clinical psychology rests, from psychoanalysis to behaviorism, insists that the earliest experience of a child's life in the family foretells the rest."

"Even casual observations suggests, however that it's not possible to write a biography before a life has been lived.  Certainly, the past counts.  A good start--- a parent who provides what D. W. Winnicott calls a "holding environment" in the first years of life, for example- can make a difference in a person's capacity to form attachments later on.  Similarly, a bad start- abuse, abandonment, neglect in early life- take their toll."

I think that's a nice start.  This author has written a book about men and women who have violated the psychological predictions and overcome harsh and painful early life experiences.  I'm interested re reading this book and noting her ideas about how this works and why.

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Page 8  The author talks about her childhood..... brother, glass half empty, herself... glass half full? 
\
She had the veggies crammed down her throat by an immigrant cruel mother and her brother just ate them, horrified that she puked them back up on the dinner table... and asked why she didn't just eat them too.

Years later, when asked to make a living sculpture of her family in a family therapy course...... she placed the representation of herself away from the brother mother representation, who were together.  She was distanced and watching them warily.

She goes on to write from there.....

"It was a wrenching reminder of the aching, gripping loneliness of my childhood, my conviction that I must be an adopted child to feel so alien, my despairing fantasy that in some heroic, romantic quest I would find my "true" family, the one in which I would finally belong.  None of that happened, of course, b c this was my true family, the family of my birth. A reality that left me with the choice- although not consciously understood and articulated at the time- between accepting my marginality and searching for comfort elsewhere, or trying to belong and getting stuck in the past.  I chose marginality, my brother belonging- a choice that freed me and left him victimized by the web of pain, poverty, depression, and anger that characterized the ethos of that family."[/b]

I found the above very interesting and consider it new information, though I've read the book before.

How have we chosen?

Who's still trying to fit in..... and who's searching for comfort elsewhere?








 

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I've thought a bit about the last post...... and this info follows the question about what we choose.

I'll re post the book is The Transcendent Child by Lillian Rubin, the author of such best-selling books as Worlds of Pain, Intimate Strangers, and Juste Friends, is a sociaologist and spychotherapist who lives and practices in San Francisco.  Sher is Senior Research Fellow at teh Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley.



Still on page 8, she writes:

"Sometimes it's the child who marginalizes himself by withdrawing in alienation.  Then family members, feeling hurt, angry, and uncomprehending, respond in kind, helping to entrench the pattern of marginalization.  SOmetimes it's family memhers who initiate the process by their collective inability to understand adn cope with teh child whio doesn't fit.  Such a child often seems like an accusation to the others, an unfriendly and judgmental observer in their midst.  Then the child reacts."

Next paragraph: same page:

"However it starts, it soon becomes a reciprocal system that circles around and feeds upon itself, leaving the child increasingly isolated.  All too often children who find themselves in this situation spend theri lives knocking on a door that's closed to them.  But those who transcend tgheir pasts soon become adept at finding and engaging alternative sources of support.  Almost always a surrogate, a mentor, a model, a friend plays an important role in the life of the child- assuaging the loneliness, presenting the possibility of another life, of a different way of being"

OH OH.... this is such welcome information right now!  I was asking questions, this information speaks to them.



Page 9

"In real life, the more the transcendent child feels detached from the center of family life, the more she becomes involved in some arena of living that's far removed from family pursuits.  One child buries herself in books in a household where no one reads.  'I spent a lot of time taking the bus to the library', recalls Sara Mikoulis.  'That was my pattern; it still is.  I find soemthing to throw myself into that keeps me engaged in something besides my own worries.'


OK..... ok. 


I wish I'd made notes and highlighted.  Sometimes I do make notes in books and go back with different colored highlighter pens, each time I re read it.  I always get new information and compare how well I've internalized lessons I found important at the last reading. 

This is like having a book club again... cept I'm the only one reading the book: /


The author goes on..... still page 9


"Although such activities usually isolate the children still further, the ability to escape into them also contributes to a heightened sense of efficacy and a more autonomous sense of self.  Whatever the outcome of the choices they make, it's the sense of marginality in the family, the feeling that they don't fit, that lays the psychological groundwork enabling them to see and grasp alternatives."

OK.... makes sense.

Still page 9, she writes:

"Psychological explanations, however, are not enough to explain the capacity to reach for opportunities.  True, some people don't see options even when they're available.  But it's the one of the great failings of the psychological theory that it doesn't adequately take account of the impact of the larger social milieu- whether economic, cultural, or political- on human development."

Page 10

"Certainly, as Robert Louis Stevenson once said, life isn't just a matter of holding good cards but of playing the bad ones well.  But it's equally certain that the psychological resources we bring to the table can't be disentangled from the larger social context within which the hand must be played out.  A poor child has fewer options and greater obstacles to overcome than a middle-class one.  In a society where race oten determines life chances, a child born into a n African American, Latino or Native American family has even more to surmount.  The immigrant child who confronts an alien culture and a laungauge she can't speak has a more difficult time than an American born one.  WOmen still are more handicapped than men in thier attempts to develop lives that include both love and work. "

"Just as the social context of life can impede development, it can also cacilitate it.  Look, for example, at how feminism has made possible choices for women that were largely unavailable before, at how it has helped not just to change the rules and roles by which they live but the very identify they call their own.  Or at the influence of the civil rights movement on both the identity of African Americans and the economy of that community."

Still page 10, she continues....

"It's true, as every therapist knows, that people who's lives are beset by pain and trauma oftent are so focused on themselves that they barely notice the world around them.  Sara Mikoulis, for example, a black soman who suffered an exruciatingly brutal childhood, explains, 'I know it's hard to understand, but I never thought about myself or antging that ever happened to me as connected to my race.  I was so abused by family, I thought it was my destiny.  It was like everything fell into teh same pot, so if someone said or did something to me because of my race, I woudln't even have noticed.  It just seemed natural that I'd be abused by them, too."  Nevertheless, whether consciously understood or not, the shifts and changes in the social world form the background of our lives and times, often opening options that were unavailable to earlier generations, allowing us to see what had been invisible before."

On Page 11 now..... the book goes on about the ties of each transcendent child, poor or priviledged.

"They have, of course, also been molded by the past.  But the form of the mold defies the expert predictions.  The battered child is now a genlte and loving mother who sees it as her mission to spend part of her professional life working with abused children and thier parents.  The child who was the family isolate, whose early years show little evidence of any particular talent for social relatedness, grows up to be what I call here adoptable.

By adoptable, I mean the ability to attract others who, at various times in life, become the mentors and surrogates who light the way and fill the gaps left by the past.  It's a gift that's common among those who transcend their past- a gift that makes it easier to bear their travail, easier, too, to get up and move on each time they fall down. 

Sometimes these are long-lasting relationships; often they are not.  It makes no difference.  Their importance lies in their meaning to the persons involved and in the fact that there is someone to hold out a hand in time of need, someone also who can help fill the empty spaces inside. "

I'll go on here though I was just trying to hit highlites.  I see great importance in the author's thoughts here.

Page 12

"Just drawing such people in is not enough, however.  As a therpist, I have seen many adults who might quality for adoptability but who are too fightened to risk a trusting engagement with another.  For an adoption to work, therefore, a person needs to know how to accept and use what others offer, which means, among other things, being opent ot a relationshyip and willing to risk enough to give oneself over to it.
A sense of mission-commitment to something larger than self and personal interest-is prominent in most of the sotries that follow as well.  At the most obvious level, such a mission provides purpose and meaning in people's lives.  For the men and women whose stories I tell her, the mission is related also to teh grati8tude they feel for having escaped their childhood suffereings-gratitude that expresses itself in a sense of indebtedbess that impels them to try to pay back what they call thier "good fortune."

Ok.... OK..... this all makes sense.... I feel like I'm reading this for the first time but it resonates with me on the very deepest level of my gut, heart and head.

She goes on..... still page 12

"In adulthood, therefore, they're not content just to revel in lives that are so different from what they knew in childhood.  Instread, they want to use the experiences of the past to change the present, not just for themselves but for others a well.  In doing so, they not only give meaning to their suffereing but help to heal themselves."

Yes yes yes..... must get coffee.

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Page 12, yes..... still.

"The past, of course, leaves scars that, when picked, can bleed.  But the transcendent child long ago leanred to live with the pain.  In fact, it often seems like a faimiliar if difficult friend who, for all the anguish, has played a positive role in the development of a life.  The tolerance for pain-the ability to recognize it, to live with it, to accept it, to understand its source, and to master it-breeds the strength necessary for transcendence.

"Each chapter in this book presents the life history of a person.  Each story shows the person's place in the family, the chioces and adaptations each made along the way to adulthood, and the social and psychological forces that made those choices possible.  All together these narratives form a collage-a series of portraits of epople whose characteristics and adaptations have enabled them to fall down seven times and get up eight."

As with all personal narratives, each story is a construction that reflects the indivudual's experience of his or her life.  This doesn't mean (on page 13 now) it's a fiction.  Rather, as Erik Erikson wrote in Insight and Responsibility in every life stroy there aer both the "actuality" and the "reality"-the former concerned with objective facts, the latter with how the individual feels about those facts.  Certainly, facts count.  But it's how those fdacts are experienced and remembered, how they're interpreted, what meaning is assigned to them, that's central not just in contstrucing the narrative of a life but in how that life actually is lived."

"The process of remembering is itsself a delicate one, guided in great part by the need to maintain an integrated and coherent sense of self.  But what we remember and how we remember it may be more important than the event itself.  Some people nurse and cradle memories of adversity as if they were gold, offering them up at every opportunity as explanations for their damaged lives.  THese are the men and women for whom the past lives as powerfully today as it did yesterday, who relate to the old hurts with the same sense of injury and helplessness they experienced as children."


::sigh::

[lighter]

This is all leading up to the individual stories of children who have transcended and overcome.  I won't be sharing those but I'll share up to that point. 


Still page 13


"Other repress and deny their painful pst in the vain belief that if they close their eyes, it will cease to exist.  But the cost of forgetting is high.  To forget, we must dissociate ourselves from our history, silence thought, strip words from consciouseness, armor the heart, smother the soul.  Fogetting, then, is a symbolic death, obliterating not just what once was but who we are now an dhow we came to be that way."

Ouch and Oy.  Is this where most of us are now?  Is this where we're trying to find our way back from?  Is this where those who are farther on the path here, have come from?

Are the children who handled it differently on other boards, or living their lives sans chaos and the haunting?

I digress........ still on page 13

"The men and women on the pages of this book remember.  They remember the pain and feel the sorrow, just as they did when they were children.  But now as then, they're not rendered helpless by their experience.  Instead, their lives are organized around transcending it, and their memories serve as a goad in the struggle to overcome.  Their suffering is evident in the stories they tell.  And so is their pride-pridein their stubborn refusal tob succumb to even the bleakest environment; pride in having gotten up each time they fell, or more likely were pushed, down; pride in having foiled the predictors and beaten the odds."

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Dr. G.... I'm going to read your book next and highlight the whole way through.... in bright pink!




Now..... page 14.

"The details of their childhood miseries may differ, but the common ground-then as now-on which tehy all stand is their dogged refusal to define themseleves as victims, no matter how crushing their burdens.  In a society where people clutch their victimhood to their breast like a badge of hnor, where there are support groups for every kind of complaint, (HEY! I resemble that remark, lol!)listening to the people whose lives are chorniocled on these pages was, for me, like  breath of fresh air."


The author goes on.....

"I don't mean to suggest that there are no legitimate grievances in our society or that support groups offer nothing but the opportunity for whining.    But when our therapeutic fulture meets the culture of complaint that surrounds us today, the same group that offers support often also facilitates, if it does not acutally encourage, a continued sense of victimhood."

"on a trip to the Midwest a few months ago, for example, I saw a sign advertising a support group for "wounded daughters of distant fathers,"  and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  What does it mean for a woman to think of herself as wounded?  Why would anyone want to define herself as wounded?  Why would anyone want to think of herself that way?  However a person answers these questions, such groups too often thrive on soliciting pain, encouragingpeople to fan it, to lhodl it tight, rather than helping them to heal."

There's another page then I'm done for now. 

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Continuted from page 14


"Undoubtably, it's helpfult and useful for adult children of alocholic parents to meet others who have suffered the same experience.  But the group itlsef can also promote a kind of fatalistic resignation that becomes an excuse for not dealing with the problems of living that aren't much different from those we all encounter."

"Similarly, the support groups that help men adn women cope with the issues divorce raises may nurse a sense of victimhood that impairs their ability to get on with their lives.  Recently, for example, I listened to a woman, divorced nearly five years, about how udnerstanding other women are, how helpful.  But no one had pushed and prodded her to get her professional life on track, nor did anyone suggest it was time for an end to mourning.  When I expressed surprise that she still felt her suffering so keenly so many years after her divorce, she replied, offended, "It takes a long time.  There are women in the group who were divorced ten years ago, and they're still in pain."

"On the other side is Karen Richards, whose nineteen-year-old daughter was killed in an automobile accident a few years ago.  Searching for surcease from her agony, she sought support in a group for parents who had lost their children.  "They were very kind," she recalls, "and I don't want to criticize them.  People have to deal with that kind of tragedy in their own way.  But after a few meetings, I couldn't go back.  There was so much pain and sadness in the room, I didn't think it was helping me.  There were people there whose children died years ago, and they were grieving as if it happened yesterday.  I wanted to die when jennifer was killed; it would have been fine with me if I had.  But I didn't want to live that way."

"The stories that follow are tales of triumph over the past, life hisotries of women and men who refuse to be bowed by their trials, no matter how harsh and painful they may be.  How does it happen that way?  What makes it possible for some people to recover each time they fall, while others lie prostrate on the ground?"



Sigh......  glancing over the stories... I don't remember one of them.  Fascinating stuff, though. 

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note:

The ability to separate oneself from the pathology of the family..... as parent's craziness.... enables the child to cope with the difficulties within the FOO.  In defindingtheir crazy behaviors ..... the child can disctance himself, become an observer instead of a participant.

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Very important that the child comes to understand that the punishment they receive is unjust, not their fault.

Easier to see in family where cruelty and brutality is outright and less covert so he can understand the problem doesn't lie with him. 

The mixed message families make it harder for a child to discern what's his fault and correctly discern if his perceptions are correct, mired in guilt over the craziness/unhappiness he thinks is his fault.

"That understanding, however, comes with both a price and a prize.  For the particular child in the story, it was isolation, loneliness and the terrible knowledge that he was left to cope on his own long before he was ready.  But his alienation, and his anger at teh humiliations and injustices that were visited upon him, also left him free to think and act independently of the family pathology-free psychologically to resist their blows and their blame; free, too, to seek alternative sources of support and identification, which helped to liberate ghim from his family's damning estimate of him."

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OK... for those who do find mentors and move beyond their FOO's into successful lives....

"it's soon muted by complicated and ambivalent responses to being somewhere better, where we might do well and fit in. For like so many others who have lived on the periphery of their FOO's, the sense of marginality remains long after it is no longer fully a reality.  And always it is a double-edged sword."

::gulp::

"The awareness of never fully belonging anywhere and the feelings of isolation that follow are not only hurtful reminders of the past but part of the loneliness of the present.  But the very marginality that is tghe source of such distress also is a familiar companion, so much a part of the definition of self that it seems like the wellspring of creativity and accomplishment.  Therefore, people may nurture their outsider status-albeit often unconsciously-even while wishing they could be rid of it.

These are feelings I know well.  Some years ago, when I was invited to apply for a position at one of the nation's Ivy League universities, I was caught in just this mix of emotions.  I was pleased and gratified to know that my work had been noticed and appreciated.  But I was also anxiouse bc being "in" was not only an alien experience but an unsettling one


Just contemplating the possibility took me back to my childhood, to the moments when it seemed to me that to be a real part of my family I had to give up my soul.  I knew once again the visceral fear of fitting in, the vague but powerful sense that to belong would be to lose myself.  As I reflected upon the choice before me in adulthood, I felt the same conflict ai had known as a child, the same conviction that I must choose between autonomy and belonging.  I refused the invitation.  To accept it was too profounddly at odds with my sense of self-in-the-world-- a self whose intellectual and creative pacapsities seemed to me to be deeply linked to being an outsider



Oh..... this is so sad to read.  I really really hate the feeling of struggle when on the outside fringes of social gatherings... so many I'd usualy avoid but can't bc of children's school activities.  Sometimes things just click.... and sometimes they don't.  Is it bc of me or people there?  I always click at the one school and not the other so I have to think it's the particular OTHER personalities involved at this time, anyway. 

Giving up our sense of marginality and allowing ourselves to belong.  ::sigh::

A quote from the person whose story is being told.....

"I hated it passionately.  It was elitist and snobbish.  I didn't fit  and felt like I was second class the whole time I was there.  My roommates were all from upper middle-class families with omey and privilege, and I was this scholorship kid.  Those American WASP types always make me unformfortable.  They think they're entitled to everything; they're arrogant, liket he world owes them something."

"The idea that someone could believe that "the world owes them something" is insupportable, not just to the person in this story but to all the others whose lives are chornicled in this book.  For these are women and men whose sense of entitlement has been distinctly undernourished.  They tend, therefore, to look with scort at those who feel entitled to the goods of the world, seeing them as spoiled and self-centered.  But while the disdain tehy express about the more priviledged is deeply felt, it also allows them to hide from themselves their own feelings of anger and envy-anger that others wear their priviledge so easily, envy of the sense of entitlement that they themselves can never feel.


Wow, wow... wowow.... and wow. 

I think we were just discussing this on the board.... on the guilt thread?

"Their mix of emotion notwhithstanding, their lack of feelings of entitlement is also an element in their victory over the past.  Most people who don't feel entitled to a fair share of the world's goods live with a sense of hopelessness that cripples theri ability to go after what tehy want.  But for transcenders, it's just another handicap to be overcome, another challenge to be met and mastered.  Since they don't expect antyhing to be handed to them, they find their own way to get what they need.

It's this kind of self reliance, this ability to organize themselves and their lives in their own bahalf, that accounts for their success in the world.  Moreover, since they expect so little, they tend to be grateful for whatever may be given--a quality that endears them to the people they meet and facilitates their adoptability



Oh my goodness, oh my goodness.... this is all so familiar to me and ringing bell after bell!

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I'm reading from one of the stories now... bc it connects some dots for me, as well.

"there he met his first wife, Anne Marie, a young woman who sought refuge in marriage from her unstable abusive, home.  But the idea of marriage was more compleeing than the reality, and teh two troubled young people quickly came to grief.  "I hadn't worked out any of the stuff we're talking about now, and she had her own problems," says Petar.  "But I was infatuated.  She was pretty, and I wanted very much to have a family and be loved.  I think I knew walking down the aisle that I was making a mistake"

But it was teh kind of "knowing" that slipped away before it fully reached his consciousness, censored out bc knowing threatened to deprive him of the loving acceptance he wanted so badly.  To listen to his doubts, to allow himself to know them, to weight them, was to inhibit action, forcing him to question his decision to marry and confronting him with the loss of a fantasy he wasn't prepared to abandon

The experience of not knowing what we know is a common one, so common, in fact, that much of the work of psychotherapy is helping people to attend to that fleeting knowledge that lies right at the edge of consciouseness.  Somewhere inside an inner voice gives warning.  We hear but we don't listen;  we know but we don't allow ourselves to attend.  So it was that Petar "knew."


Well.... that explains a lot: /

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On being an outsider:

"Even if he wanted to, it would be nearly impossible for Petar to "do like they (his political scientist peers) do."  His lifetime of having to make his way as an outsider hasn't prepared him for the kind of conformity that's necessary to be on the inside.  Instead, he's so accustomed to marching to his own drummer that he often has difficulty attending to the beat of the world around him.  It seems natural to him to think what he calls "the big thoughts," to be more concerned with philosophical inquiry about what drives nations and people than with the narrower questions about political behavior that engage more traditional ploitical scientists

Still, while he defends his work passionately and is disdainful of the main current in his discipline, he's not without conflict about it.  On the one hand, he's proud of his independence, of his refusla to bow to disciplinary canons for the sake of narrow carreer goals.  But having in effect thumbed his nose at his collegagues, he's pained when they don't give him the approval and accetance he craves.  "they're busy ploshing their buttons while the world's going to hell, and I'm writing books about the world going to hell and nobody's buying them," he complains caustically.  Then, with a dmisimssive wave of his hand, he concludes, "That's the story of my life, not fitting in, so what's the big deal?"

The attempt to shrug off his feelings, however, is belied by his melancholy tone and his body language, which tell a tale of dejection and rejection.  So when I comment that it does, in fact, sound as if it's a "big deal" to him, his reply is etched in a kind of weary resignation.  "Yes, it would really be nice, very nice, to fit in like in my (new) wife's family.  But I'm always a misfit, so I don't think I'll ever get that lucky, I mean, to fit into a departmetn or a discipline."

[lighter]

Did you guys know that there are principles embedded in Jewish life that call upon Jews to make peace; it's a responsibility they bear.  If you're a Jew, you can't turn down the opportunity for peace.  Is there any imperative in Christianity, such as this?


Here's a quote from Jewish scripture about peace.....

'He who establishes peace between man and his fellow, between husband and wife, between two cities, two nations, two families or two governments, no harm should come to him.'

This person, who has overcome and grown beyond a tormented childhood, has a will to be that peacemaker.  Not only political peace but an internal one.... a release from the anger that's dominated his life so much, up to this point. 

Though the anger has been a huge part of his transcendence, goading  him every time he stumbled or failed, it also plays a part in his marginality, even when it's no longer necessary. 

So, now he's trying to relax into his life and experience his joy...... and ready himself for inner peace he's just beginning to know. 

Cool.

[changing]

Lighter You Are Truly A Wonderful Person-

Yes, there are many Christian exhortations to peace, i.e., "Blessed Are The Peacemakers", etc. Christian is "like Christ" and Christ was an extremely devout Jewish religious person, educated in the Temple. So the Jewish responsibilities of peace, charity, humanity and obediance, etc. must be taken up by Christians, though there may be those who use the name in vile ignorance to hurt the Chosen people.

Your transcendent child sound so much like my brother, an Ivy League professor, with many doctorates, businesses, riches, famous friends, and a complete cut-off from his FOO since the age of 16 when he went away on full scholarship to an Ivy Leagyue school- no parent ever went to the school, checked his living conditions, sent money or clothes-EVER. I am many years younger, and I would wake up every night covered in sweat after fearful dreams about him coming to harm. I adored him, but I guess he didn't feel the same about me. He never wrote me or visited me in foster care.

I am obscure and stuck by my NF through his final illness- what does that say? I love and admire my B, though he would say things like "There is no point in going to law school unless one is in the top 10 percentile of an Ivy League school", etc., and his wife,an attorney educated in a top 3 Ivy League law school, would cry that he would not talk about our NM ever, and she couldn't get through to our NF- she wanted a whole family universe.

Lighter Sweetie-I hate even thinking about this subject- I have a hole in my solar plexus where a family should be- but what you posted is both instructive and evocative.

Love and Thanks,

Changing

[Ami]

I really love this thread,Lighter. With Peter,I think that he was saying that we must listen to ourselves as one of the keys .
Could you put on some more stories,if you don't mind?                     Ami