On the way to maturity, the human being has to pass through moments that can lead to maturity or remain halfway through development. Stages in which they are especially influential, such as their stay in the womb, the first two years, pre-adolescence from 9 to 12 years of age, when there is an increase in the pathways that communicate the brain modules with each other, preparing them for increasingly complex tasks; adolescence, shaken and stirred by the arrival on the scene of reproductive hormones and the need for young people to be included among peers, and early youth, when they begin to outline what adult life will be like. Apart from what each of us brings as a genetic predisposition that can be an obstacle or an advantage.
We know that humans are born prematurely, because if they were born "full term", their brains would not fit through the birth canal, so the very complicated anatomical brain structure will end up outside the womb: in the social and family environment. We know that at birth there is no functional brain, only the brainstem, where the reflexes that maintain vegetative life reside. We know that neurons with few stimuli, few branches (dentrites) through which to collect information, little intelligence and human skills. Therein lies the human vulnerability and the enormous dependence on the familiar environment for the rest of the brain to function. A mixture of genetic dispositions and the need for multimodal stimuli demand careful and constant attention.
Given the current situation, especially in early and late adolescence, where they have to suffer the consequences of an inadequate diet, excessive hours hooked to telephones, television series, which ruin, indoctrinate and create potential citizens, preparing their minds for simplism. In short, they present models that are not exactly structuring to a half-baked youth, which nobody seems to care about. All of this is going to put to the test what parents have received and their contribution of love, bonding, education and values. Parents are going to have to give up their criteria and follow what comes from their children's environment and their gangs. And, they have already lost the game.
The human being who is lucky and survives this flood can maintain and introject attitudes, emotions, habits, feelings, values and all that we call structural introjection of the family group. And follow his personal evolutionary path.
If this takes place naturally and gradually, the identity the infant builds is on tangible, human, limited and positive models. All of this will take place in a reassuring, stable and secure environment. The fruit of a couple where each respects and enhances the role of the other in the eyes of the children, where the children are loved for what they are in themselves. They are not to be used for narcissistic, family image and class purposes. Nor do they have to be perfect to be valued and loved.
As a result of loving, attentive upbringing, dedicated to the joy of raising and educating them, we will have stable humans, with the capacity to have their own criteria, enough mental independence, capable of making a life plan in accordance with nature, which is to care, respect, cooperate; to have empathy far from any mental intoxication. Humans can thus identify with their parents and relatives and complete this process and complement it with good models in education. It is the calm and serene identification that builds healthy, peaceful, kind goals and developments together with teachers, parents and family.
In case of failures and deficiencies in all of the above, the subject has an emptiness, a malaise, a pent-up anger, a desire to fill this gap... and fills it through non-conscious and some conscious processes. Some within this group manage to succeed and get ahead, but perhaps by blocking their emotional system, partly so as not to suffer the consequences of the stressful family environment. Others settle into models of good and bad, ideal and reviled, and many other compensatory systems that may indicate a lack of emotional development. Or they exhibit how much they have in order to hide how little they are. In other cases their mind has not reached nuances, complexities and middle ground. They perceive little and focus on one direction in life, they have a very limited life repertoire, they are a fanatic. They may use addictions, material or immaterial drugs, other self-applied "therapy" as a crutch, as a sign of their lack of ability to enjoy ordinary life, of their lack of impulse control, of letting themselves be carried away by their environment. Copying, imitating, living by borrowed criteria. It may be normal, but when it touches a point of fragility, it is snatched away, it loses its character, it is flooded with emotions, violence and lack of control.
José Antonio Rodríguez Piedrabuena
Specialist in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis