The Evolution of the Psyche and Society
Since the further back in history one goes the lower the level of childrearing, it follows that children in the past grew up in houses of horrors that were like those of dissociated personalities of today. Psychiatric studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between elevated levels of dissociative symptoms—separate alters, depersonalization, derealization — and the amount of early physical, sexual and emotional abuse. That the average person before the modern period walked streets full of spirits, demons, gods and other alters is evidence of the dissociation that resulted from their routine abuse and neglect as children. Historical evolution of the psyche, therefore, is the slow, uneven process of integrating fragmented selves into the unified self that is the goal of modern upbringing.
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The most thorough recent study of dissociation using a sophisticated interview technique finds that “14 percent of the general public experience ‘substantial’ dissociative symptoms” and most of the rest of us experience lesser dissociative symptoms when triggered by situations similar to the original abuse. This may seem excessive, until one remembers that perhaps half of the adults today were sexually abused as children, that most of us were physically and emotionally abused to some extent and that helping mode parenting which respects the growth and individuation of children is everywhere still rare.
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The main problem is that the evolution of childrearing has so far been a slow, uneven historical process, depending greatly upon increasing the support given innovative mothers and their hopeful daughters. Unfortunately, in a world where our destructive technology has far outrun our childrearing progress—where a single submarine can now carry a sufficient number nuclear warheads to destroy most of the world with the push of a button—we do not have the luxury of just waiting for childrearing to evolve. If we do, we will certainly blow ourselves up long before child abuse disappears enough to make us want to disarm. What we need now is some way for the more advanced psychoclasses to teach childrearing to the less evolved parents, a way to end child abuse and neglect quickly enough to avoid the global holocaust that is awaiting us.
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Only by starting now on a vast world-wide program to end child neglect and abuse and raise all of our precious children with respect can we avoid the likely coming global holocaust. Only by reducing dissociation to a minimum through empathic parenting can we avoid inflicting the self-destructive power we now have available to us. This is the single most important finding of the new science of psychohistory. Free universal training centers for parents may be a radical new notion, but so once was the idea of free universal schools for children. Our task is clear and our resources sufficient to make our world safe for the first time in our long, violent history. All it takes now is the will to begin.