Parent, Adult, Child

At the mall last week I overheard a customer loudly talking to the saleslady. “I have to buy something, but I’m trying to figure out what it is!” Amused by those words, I looked around and saw a flamboyantly dressed middle-aged woman being ushered by the saleslady towards the expensive jewelry section. 

The woman’s behavior was somewhat peculiar, but not at all very unusual. Maybe what she really wanted was something else, not anything material. Perhaps she just needed attention, that of the saleslady and of the other people around. Or, maybe she actually wanted something to accessorize herself with, to reignite her husband’s waning interest in her; maybe she wanted to show him what he was turning away from.

A story is told of a powerful politician’s wife who would wander from section to section in upper-class department stores abroad. She would spend great amounts of money, allegedly public funds, often buying five of every item she liked. Her husband saw the wanton extravagance of his beloved wife, but never complained. He understood that she was only trying to purchase the self-importance she did not have in her childhood.

There’s also an interesting character in the movie Everything I Own. This young man sights a bright red sportscar and could not resist the urge of taking the car “for a spin”. He doesn’t see his action as stealing. He’d explain later he just needed to sit at the wheel, set his foot on the accelerator, feel the wind in his face, and the sound of the horn almost blowing his eardrums. The man is always in trouble with authorities.

There is an aspect of our personality that is eternally immature and self-centered, a stubborn brat that always wants to have his way. Some people are aware of their childish drives, wrestle hard with it and are able to attain a certain degree of composure. Of course, childish tendencies need to be contained or directed properly, so we may become reasonable, responsible grown-ups.

But this is not very easy to do. The child within us all operates on an emotional plane and seeks only gratification. It does not consider possible consequences other than pleasure. The thing is, to a large extent we are unaware of the workings of the reckless power at play inside.

A childish nature is not much of a problem… among real little kids. It doesn’t take much to make a little kid happy. An inexpensive toy or a cone of ice cream is often enough. Sometimes a simple hug or word of praise can easily divert the child’s attention. And, for any excesses, there’s always a concerned adult to enforce limits.

The big problem occurs when grown-ups behave like pigheaded little kids. They can be most terrible, especially when they have the means to carry out their childish whims. They can be a menace, both to themselves and to others around them.

Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychotherapy himself, once smashed the jaw of a colleague who pointed out that his addiction to cigars might be symbolic of a hidden sexual obsession. Freud smoked up to twenty cigars a day, and the insinuation was that this hinted of a reprehensible side of his personality. One thing, at least, is sure—smoking is unhealthy. It gave Freud cancer of the mouth, which finally killed him.

His reaction to someone’s opinion of his own behavior was quite unbecoming of a renowned human-behavior expert like Freud. At his stature, he was supposed to have already mastered his personality so thoroughly. An expert should not be so easily thrown off by anybody’s attack, especially along the line of his expertise.

Freud yielded to the whim of his inner brat. Now, if a legendary behavior guru could fall prey to the quirks of his childish side, what are the chances of ordinary mortals like you and I of containing our own wild instincts? Or is it even possible to modify instinct?    

I think so.

When food is scarce, a mother can forgo of her own hunger just so that her little child may eat enough. In a social function, we force ourselves to smile at people we abhor. We have learned certain manners for certain situations.

When properly handled, the inner child can be a powerful ally. For instance, it is visible in the charm of an enthusiastic salesman giving his most engaging sales pitch to a prospect. His compelling talk is often the outcome of the praise and encouragement of his supervisor, as it is also the result of his own discipline in constantly harnessing his selling skills.

In like manner, the performance of every brilliant artist is sustained by the applause and adoration of his audience, and polished by the discipline of practicing regularly. And so it is that by consciously acknowledging our “desirable” qualities and feeling good about them, we encourage these all the more in us. As our good traits become more and more reinforced, they will marginalize the bad ones.

On the other hand, people with poor control of their inner child are unnecessarily getting themselves into debt and in trouble with the law. Many of them are laden with guilt, losing their jobs and their precious relationships, with some even losing their self-worth completely.

We must understand that this little kid inside is not the whole of our grown-up being. We are, alongside being a child, also parent and adult at the same time. These more mature aspects of ourselves should be allowed, as well, to manifest in our daily lives.

It is said that the key to an excellent life is balance. The reason, perhaps, why a person is made many things in one is to have an anchor on every side. When he is pulled with equal force in every direction, he attains a sense of stability. The child in us shall be free to seek self-indulgence, but the parent shall temper it with higher ideals, and the adult shall set the proper limits.

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