Detachment or denial of affection to the mother figure.
These phases are universally seen in children who go through separation, either by loss of parent/s due to death, divorce or through boarding school. Bowlby identified that infants need one special relationship for internal development.
No variables have more far-reaching effects on personality development than a child's experiences within the family. Starting during his first months in his relation to both parents, he builds up working models of how attachment figures are likely to behave towards him in any of a variety of situations, and on all those models are based all his expectations, and therefore all his plans, for the rest of his life.
Maternal Care and Mental Health, New York: Scocken Books, 1966. Page 369.
Being an unwanted child, having had attempts made on his life while in the womb, having an absent and angry father, and being raised during the most important years of his life (the first two) by children—all these things gave Butch not only the sense but also the knowledge that he did not belong. He lived and felt like an orphan in his own family, even when the war was over and his parents finally returned home. As far as he was concerned, his sister Phyllis was the closest to him and a substitute mother.
When he was four, his birth mother would give him a quarter and send him off by himself to the movies. That quarter would buy him two full-length movies and the cartoon and news reels in between. He could even squeeze out a bag of popcorn with that money. Those twenty-five-cent pieces meant, to Butch, "Be gone a long time!" And so he quickly became a loner. The two friends he did have during those early years (from birth to seven) both died—one of hemophilia and the other of complications from polio.
One day, when he was about six years old, he came home from the movies to find a baby in a cradle in his parents' bedroom. This was a new brother, Bobby. His mother's attitude and behavior toward Bobby were totally foreign to him. "What is with all this hugging, kissing and rocking?" he wondered. As the months went by, he felt further distanced from Renata and detected his mother's preference for and adoration of his little brother. Butch chose to be absent from the house as much as possible. The feelings he had been experiencing all his life had been confirmed: "I am not wanted, I am not loved, I might as well cut myself off from these people and just take care of myself."
Meanwhile, his brother George, who was eight years older than him, had become the family scapegoat. George was beaten regularly down in the basement furnace room with Dad's leather strap. His mother would sit on the cellar steps and egg Daddy on to beat George harder and longer for the misdoings of all the kids and for things for which he'd already been beaten. Butch shared a room with George, and his brother would often come to bed beaten, bruised, blistered and bleeding, and would rock in his bunk trying to comfort himself from the injustice he had received. His older sisters would come and beat George on the head with their high-heeled shoes in an endeavor to shut him up. Ron got a strong message from those experiences: "Trust no one, especially women, 'cuz they will betray you!" And George, well, his life is quite another story!!
By the time Ron was sixteen, he had endured unjust punishments too, but not the beatings like George. When asked about it, Dad said he was just trying to beat good sense into George, and it wasn't working. So with Butch, he did the opposite—no touch, no connection, no inclusion and no love. Discouraged and struggling with learning at school, he quit high school after the ninth grade and went to work.
On Halloween night, Stanley went out with an old sheet over his head to play ghost for the neighborhood kids as they came across the bridge that crossed over a little brook. He came home rather late and was pretty tired, and Butch was already asleep. Soon Butch was shaken out of a sound sleep. "Come now—Dad is dying!" his sisters screamed. You see, Butch had joined the Boy Scouts and had worked his way up to an Eagle Scout. It was there that he learned mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and cardiac massage. With Dad in his arms, he struggled to do both, but to no avail. His Dad died in his arms. At that moment the message was imprinted: "No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try, it's never good enough. I will never get it right enough to be accepted."
The next morning, Ron bought a newspaper and went to the bridge that spanned the Arkansas River. In his hiding place under the bridge, he read his father's obituary. That day he made what he called "a deal with God." He said, "God, you take my Dad to heaven, and I'll take his place in hell." And, as he tells it, he came out from beneath that bridge with the determination to go straight to hell, whatever it took.
Of course, it was not that he hadn't already done some illegal and mischievous things. By that time he had already determined that if the world, including his family, wouldn't give him what he needed, then he would just take what he wanted, regardless of who owned it. He had been sexually abused numerous times by older boys and men, and the rage that came from those experiences added to his need to take what he wanted became the formula for a downward spiral to prison.
At seventeen he finally landed in juvenile court and was given the option: join the armed forces or face juvenile detention. Ron joined the Navy. He soon discovered that no one was cuddling and loving him there, so he continued his crime spree, taking what he wanted. Mostly he wanted liquor, because it helped to dull the pain in his heart from years of not belonging or being loved. After two years in the Navy and a devastating fall from a high point on a ship, he was honorably discharged from the service, narrowly escaping a general court-martial.
As is often the case, one thing led to another; habits are formed easily and hard to break, especially when they are fueled by perceived injustice and boiling anger. So his crime continued landing him in one prison after another, one from which he escaped. He later paid the time for that in Tennessee's Big House in Nashville. The movies The Green Mile and The Last Castle were both filmed at that prison. Angry and still alone, he felt that life was really not worth living, especially considering that his future at that hellish prison was bleak.
Rejection, which is what he felt from his family, is extremely difficult for those who have experienced it. It gives the victim the idea that their worth and value are minimal at best, and anger seethes within. Especially hard for a boy is rejection experienced from his mother, as it sets in place a mindset that all women are suspect. While he grows up longing to be in intimate relationships with women, those relationships are often unsuccessful. Actually believing that he is loved by a woman, any woman, is difficult because of the original non-acceptance by his mother. Everything the woman does is scrutinized, every action she takes is questioned, and every phone call she makes is a reason to accuse her of betraying him. Often this is the beginning of domestic violence.
The God-given software, already programmed in the human brain, is that we are to honor our mothers and fathers. When a fellow, for whatever reason, has built up resentment toward his mother, he often takes out that anger and frustration on his wife. The rage that comes from not being able to alter his relationship with his mother is dumped onto his unsuspecting wife. He may restrain, pinch, beat, or otherwise physically or sexually abuse his wife, not because of real anger at her but rather out of frustration with his mother. Ron lived with that negative mindset for years during his nearly-50-year marriage with Nancy, and of course it was a cause of great marital difficulty! By the grace of God, physical abuse never occurred, but it is still possible to do significant damage with spoken words. It took a determined plan for him to recover from his original childhood wounds and to begin erasing the pain that he carried. He feared that at some point Nancy would leave him—either for another man, or in sickness or death. "After all, if my mother who bore me didn't love me, why should a strange woman who comes into my life?" He asked that question of himself repeatedly.
From his childhood onward, Ron took with him everywhere he went the feeling that he was unloved and unwanted, and didn't belong. The story of his prison years is written in a book entitled Chosen, which is unfortunately now out of print. (It is occasionally available on Amazon.com) That feeling showed up in every relationship and in every endeavor of his life. Sheer determination, along with the gift of direction from God, helped him to overcome. We will look at what became of him and his life later