Dark Side: Realistic Approximation

 Most people who are considered “good” live their lives at various points along a broad spectrum between the extremes of good and bad. All of us, if we remained unsocialized, would act as bad men do—in antisocial ways. Feral children, those who have grown up in the wild, bereft of human warmth and care, behave more like animals than like human beings. That our nature is unregenerate is a tenet of many religions, reflected, for instance, in the concept of original sin. As Job sat on his dung heap, he observed, “Yet man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.”

 

Beyond the easy generalizations—money, sex, power, and the need to love and be loved—people are immensely complex in ways that have been unforeseeable to me as well as to themselves.

 

 

Sound mental health is inextricably bound to character. The character, it is a highly individual personality structure that expresses deeply held values and beliefs about oneself, others, and the world. It involves the typical enduring patterns of a person’s functions. We know a person’s character by his or her habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and speaking.

 

Serious character flaws invariably create psychological problems. Impaired mental health can adversely influence character development. Perfect character, like perfect mental health, is a fiction. “Goodenough” character is a more realistic approximation. One’s character is always on display, especially in the little things that we do, or do not do.

 

The healthy person has internalized loving, nurturing parental figures that provide sustenance during times of crisis and inner support at times of failure. This person intrinsically rejects suicide as a solution to life’s vicissitudes. In the examples cited in this book, many physically and sexually abused children internalize hostile, sadistic parents and repeat the cycle of abuse with their own children. In both the adults and the children who suffer abuse, memories of the past are painful and often discontinuous.

 

 

The conscience of the healthy person is firm but fair and adaptive, not harsh and punitive. Absent is any cruel, unbending righteousness; present is a clear but reasonably flexible sense of right and wrong. In the face of human suffering, the healthy person does not insist on compliance with trivial formalities. He or she accepts guilt when it is appropriate without experiencing panic or immobilizing depression. The healthy person’s conscience works in harmony with other aspects of the personality. It is not a conscience full of holes that permits the acting out of destructive behaviors that are inconsistent with the person’s consciously held value system.

 

 

The healthy individual’s value system emphasizes becoming proficient at one’s work while aiming at realistic goals. The healthy person is willing to work hard to achieve success, to learn from failure, and to forge ahead. Debilitating perfectionist standards that guarantee failure are absent. The perfect is the enemy of the good. I have worked with patients who have felt psychologically deprived and hungry because they have pursued pie-in-the-sky goals, unaware of the sumptuous meal present before them. Many of the disturbed individuals described in this book had a deviant, utopian vision, one that required the relentless pursuit of money, possessions, power, sex, and love.

 

Healthy and nonhealthy people can be determined by their relationships. Psychologically healthy people enjoy their relationships with others. They place appropriate trust in others as well as themselves acting in a trustworthy manner. They are empathetic toward others, accepting those who manifest conflicts and problems similar to their own. Support and empowerment of friends and acquaintances is their hallmark.

 

The psychologically healthy person maintains good personal boundaries, knowing where he or she stops and another individual begins. The erotomanic stalker has lost personal boundaries, fusing with the object of his or her erotic delusion. A total self-absorption and disregard for others is the sign of the psychopath, and, in my opinion, the origin of what much of the world calls evil. Pathological self-centeredness is roughly equivalent to Christianity’s pride, one of humankind’s chief sins and greatest evils. In the chapter on sexual misconduct of professionals, persons in positions of power and trust can abuse their standing to exploit others for their own gratification. The healthy person does not do this. He or she feels regret or guilt if others are unnecessarily harmed by his or her own actions, and if they are, the healthy person makes efforts at reparation. The ability to feel remorse, sadness, regret, and guilt in appropriate measure is based on toleration and acknowledgment of our own failings. The healthy person does not shift blame to others, as we find with some of the workplace killers. The person with good character makes liberal use of two phrases in nurturing her or his relationships: “I am sorry” and “Thank you.” It is amazing how difficult it is for some people to apologize and to express appreciation.

 

A strong indicator of emotional health is the ability to withstand anxiety that arises from internal or external conflict without falling apart or launching into drastic action. During a crisis, our internalized loving family relationships sustain us. Those persons who have experienced hate and rejection from their caretakers find that in a crisis, these abusive relationships emerge to once again tear at their hearts and minds. They feel abandoned in the present as they were in the past. Some of the mass murderers described in the chapter on workplace violence were unable to contain and control their feelings of anger and vengeance without descending into a lethal paranoid depression. The ability to delay gratification and to tolerate frustration, when appropriate, is a critical developmental step that is accomplished by the psychologically healthy person. Primitive, unsocialized personalities cannot perform this fundamental psychological delaying action. A sure sign of psychological dysfunction is the inability to defer gratification without becoming angry, anxious, or depressed. When frustrations arise, the less than healthy person uses others as “whipping boys.” Critical to health is the ability to think before acting and to modulate impulses in the way that one adjusts the volume control on a television set.

 

 

The psychologically healthy person is able to love—that is, to value and care for another person beyond oneself. Love nurtures the independence and growth of others. The ability to love another person has nothing to do with Hollywood’s version of love. The lovers whose moonlight gazes sparkle on the silver screen mirror only the illusion of each other’s perfection. We are all imperfect. To love someone requires that we first accept ourselves, despite our weaknesses and foibles. To truly commit to another person, we must first authentically value ourselves. Perfectionists cannot do that and often end up hating themselves. When we acknowledge our dark side, we take our first transcendent steps toward discovering the miracle of love.

 

Healthy people have many satisfying facets to their lives. They work to make a living, but work is not the only source of satisfaction for them. Work is a source of creative emotional growth and mental refreshment rather than a primary way of obtaining or maintaining self-esteem. I have treated patients undergoing serious personal crises whose positive work experience helped sustain them through a very difficult time. Professional goals are folded into a broader fabric of life that is rich in sustaining relationships, recreation, hobbies, and spiritual quests. The healthy person is capable of experiencing awe,

joy, and wonder about the world, finding a sense of fulfillment in a life not beset by regret or bitterness.

 

 

 

People often throw away their hard-won careers, their families, and their lives over some small thing, a trivial matter. Persons in positions of great trust and power betray the most sacred trust placed in them, often for a peccadillo, or 30 pieces of silver—and in full knowledge that if they are caught, dishonor and disgrace will follow. This is an affliction of all humankind, not just of prominent persons. Why do we cross the line?

 

For most people, gross antisocial behaviors are inhibited by the policeman at the elbow. But although they believe that major breaches will be discovered, they also feel that minor transgressions will go unnoticed. The psychiatrist knows that character can be best discerned in such “little things,” which reflect serious character flaws just as major transgressions do. Character is what we display when we think no one is watching.

 

Taming our demons and acknowledging our humanity with its attendant dark side can be empowering. Those who become psychologically resourceful may be able to put the demons to useful work, in the same way as humankind has learned how to tame and use fire, though the sparks inevitably fly upward. It is the essence of the human condition that we struggle against our dark demons, that our spirit strives to harness these demons in the pursuit and the fulfillment of our human destiny.

 

 

Reality is perceived reasonably clearly by the psychologically healthy person. Personal needs and conflicts do not usually interfere with a reasonably accurate perception of the world. The reality principle is harmoniously melded with the pleasure principle. For the most part, the healthy person confronts the threat of internal and external dangers and only denies them when it becomes necessary for survival, say, in an acute crisis or emergency. Anger has a realistic place in the person’s palette of feelings and is expressed in an appropriate, adaptive manner. But no person totally leaves behind his or her childish feelings of complete self-absorption, of the rageful intolerance to frustration, of the insistent need for the immediate gratification of all wishes. Some of life’s comedy and much of its tragedy arises when infantile strivings clash with reality.

 

 

Acknowledgements:

The Police Department; 

www.politie.nl and a Chief Inspector – Mr. Henk van Essen©

www.aivd.nl      AIVD – Mr. Erik Akerboom ©

 

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