Human beings on the way to maturity to go through moments that can accelerate it or strand them in the middle of development. Stages which are especially influential include your stay in the womb, the first two years, and pre-adolescence from 9 years to 12 in which there is an increase in the pathways that communicate the brain modules with each other, preparing it for increasingly more complex tasks. Adolescence is disrupted by the entry of reproductive hormones onto the scene and young people’s need to be included among peers, and the first stage that begins to outline what adult life will be. And lastly, what we each bring as a genetic predisposition can be an obstacle or an advantage.
We know that the human is born premature, because if it was born “developed”, their brain would not fit through the birth canal, so the very complicated cerebral anatomical structure will end up outside the uterus: in the social and family environment. We know that at birth we have no functional brain, only the brain stem, where the reflections that maintain the vegetative life reside. We know that neurons with few stimuli, few branches (dendrites) to collect information, little intelligence and human skills are present. Therein lies the human vulnerability and the enormous dependence on the family environment for the rest of the brain to function. A mixture of genetic dispositions and the need for multimodal stimuli requires 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 phones and television series, which ruin, spoil and create possible citizens, preparing their minds for simplicity. In short, they present no so precisely structured models of a half-developed youth that seems to matter to no one. All this will 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 understand what comes from their children’s environment and gangs. And, they have already lost the game.
The human being who is lucky and survives that barrage can maintain and interject attitudes, emotions, habits, feelings, values and everything we call the family group structure, as they follow their personal evolutionary path.
If this takes place naturally and gradually, the infant builds an identity based on tangible, human, finite and positive models. All this will take place in a reassuring, stable and safe environment. The product of a couple that respects and enhances the role of one another in front of the children, where the children are loved for who they are, themselves. They will not be used for narcissistic, family image and class objectives, nor should they have to be perfect to be valued and loved.
As the result of a loving, attentive upbringing, dedicated to the enjoyment of raising and educating them, we have stable humans, with the ability to create their own criteria, mental independence, the ability to make a life plan in accordance with nature, which is to care, respect, and cooperate; they have empathy away from any mental intoxication. Humans can thus identify with their parents and relatives and finish this process and complement it with good educational models. It is the calm serene identification that builds healthy, peaceful, kind goals and developments alongside teachers, parents and family.
In case of failures and deficiencies of everything previously stated, the subject has a void, an unease, a contained rage, a desire to fill that gap … and fills it through some conscious and non-conscious processes. Some within this group achieve success and get ahead, but perhaps blocking their emotional system, along the way so as not to suffer the consequences of the stressful family environment. Others are installed in models of good and bad, of the ideals and the scorned, and many other compensatory systems that may indicate lack of emotional development. Or they show how much they have to hide how little they are. In other cases, their minds have not experienced nuances, complexities and middle terms. They perceive little and focuses on only one direction of life, they have a very limited life repertoire, they are fanatics. They can use addictions, material or immaterial drugs, another «therapy» self-applied as a crutch, as a sign of the poor ability to enjoy common life, their lack of impulse control, to get carried away by the environment. Copying, imitating, living on borrowed criteria. It may be normal, but when you touch a point of fragility, it snatches away, loses shape, and is flooded with emotions, violence and lack of control.
José Antonio Rodríguez Piedrabuena
Specialist in Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis