Anxiety and the socialization of the child

Anxiety and the socialization of the child

As I see it, our fundamental problem in regards to knowledge is that our society, which focuses on maximizing production and consumption, has ignored the importance of synthesizing knowledge. The fixation on specialization leads to a society that fragments; a cleverly synthesized knowledge can facilitate social unity. Such a synthesis cannot be static but must be dynamic; it must constantly integrate new understanding into a new and thus living synthesis. We cannot arrive at absolute knowledge but we can maintain a dynamic synthesis.

Becker provides this synthesis in his book "The Birth and Death of Meaning". In this post I shall try to provide an abstraction of a small portion of this synthesis regarding the fundamental role of anxiety in a child's development.

Our educational system trains us to become proficient producers and consumers with little serious regard for the problems inherent in developing a moral understanding for constructing and dealing with our social environment.

Anyone who attempts a synthesis utilizing the theories of the world's great thinkers is always faced with the fact that the thoughts of many great thinkers are constantly being criticized and new ideas supplementing or replacing the theories of these thinkers. Because this is true, every synthesis becomes quickly dated. However, it is important to recognize that we all require a platform upon which to judge the knowledge that is being created and this platform can only come from a comprehensive study of someone's synthesis.

It is my judgment that we should find those thinkers who are capable of synthesizing and carefully examine their thoughts without regard to criticism of some of the pillars that support the synthesis.

Anxiety is a feeling that I assume is familiar to all of us. It is a sense of helplessness: when the throat constricts, the heart races, and chaos appears. The ability to stand upright against anxiety is considered to be heroic behavior.

What is the source and nature of anxiety? Kierkegaard saw it as a basic response to the human condition of impotence, finitude, and death. Thinkers since Darwin saw it as a stimulus to intellectual growth because only with this adaptation could humans survive. We can see in animal responses that it is the key to survival. Anxiety is the universal response of the organism to danger.

For the child, anxiety becomes second nature when there is the slightest hint of separation from or abandonment by the mother. William James said that solitude is the greatest terror of childhood. Children are midgets in a world filled with giants. The child is dependent upon these giants and feels itself as a helpless object without control. The child sees helpless objects being run over with the car or being flushed or flattened and, as another object, fears equal forms of treatment by the giants. The principal childhood adaptation is to master anxiety by controlling the situations which threaten to awaken it.

Freud's whole psychoanalytic theory of neurosis is basically a study of how children control anxiety. Human reaction to the environment is delayed and controlled by the ego. Unlike all other animals the human can take some time to analyze and choose a response. A major revision of Freudian theory finds that while the child's anxiety is based on helplessness; it is not based upon genetic instincts but is based upon the child's life situation and in his social world.