The view that maternal deprivation has dire effects on personality gained support from case histories documenting maternal rejection in the backgrounds of aggressive youngsters and from studies of children reared in orphanages, many of whom became delinquents. Indeed, John Bowlby suggested that the discovery of a need for maternal affection during early childhood paralleled the discovery of the role of vitamins in physical health.
John Bowlby, Maternal Care and Mental Health. Page 59.
Just as the physical body lacking the proper nutrients for health will develop disease, so the child's brain lacking physical affection, especially from the mother, will develop tendencies toward criminality.
Using multiple sources for information about parent-child relations, Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck found that parental rejection was a strong predictor of criminality. After coding case records based on home observations for a period of approximately five years, Joan McCord retraced 235 members of the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study. She found that those who had mothers who were self-confident, provided leadership, were consistently non-punitive, and affectionate were unlikely to commit crimes. Thus, studies on emotional climate in the home present consistent results. Like parental conflict, negative parent-child relations enhance the probability of delinquency. Parental affection appears to reduce the probability of crime. Not surprisingly, parental affection and close family ties tend to be linked with other features of family interaction.
Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor T. Glueck, Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency. New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1950.
Most of the responses to rejection are self-destructive. The torture of keeping a mental list of abuses only piles on the resentment and bitterness as the list increases in length. Emotional paralysis seems to take over, but eventually an explosion of catastrophic dimensions will occur, with the fallout landing either on oneself or on those with whom the victim is closest. Retaining slights or purposeful rejections, which one cannot help but do because they are emotionally charged, constructs a set of grey, cloudy glasses worn every day by the victim and used to predict and prevent reactions from all they meet. Why should this be? It is because the brain has a method of working, a design to help us protect ourselves and have the ammunition to combat further rejections. The only issue here is that those attacks keep piling up and eventually can cause volcanic-type eruptions when we least expect them. Furthermore, those reactions and eruptions bring to us the very rejection that we fear.
Alice Miller, a widely-published and well-known author, has achieved worldwide recognition for her work on the causes and effects of child abuse and its cost to society. In her book entitled The Drama of Being a Child, first published in 1987 and revised in 1995, she states:
Experience has taught us that we have only one enduring weapon in our struggle against mental illness: the emotional discovery of the truth about the unique history of our childhood.
She continues:
The truth is so essential that its loss exacts a heavy toll, in the form of grave illness. In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual "wisdom," we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception.
Pages 1-2.
Powerful words, aren't they? But oh so true! There is always a precipitating event producing inhibitions and fear, but it is possible to break through the shadow of the past and into the light of accomplishment, success and emotional growth. Interest in the subject of rejection is, therefore, a path of wisdom. Physical, emotional and spiritual health will greatly benefit from the decision to honestly face one's feelings head on. The ways that we connect or plug in to each other are greatly influenced by the shadows created from our early experiences of attaching to primary caregivers in childhood. That attachment is determined by how those parents or primary caregivers were equipped to bond with us. Because our need to survive is so strong, it has determined how or if we will attach to others in our lives in a secure manner. Our ability to attach or to plug in has also been impacted by the wounds we received while we were in the process of determining our worth and value. (The first two years of life are the most impactful, but up to age seven is when our thoughts and feelings are formed.) Let's face it, the bottom line is this: Wounded people wound people. Rejected people look for rejection under every rock, and nearly always find it. If they do not find it, they create it by behaving in such a manner that others will reject them. Their shadow enlarges in the process.
After half a century of studying parental rejection and acceptance, Dr. Ronald Rohner of the University of Connecticut's Family Studies Department has concluded that if a person perceives he is rejected, he has received it. One's perception is one's reality.
So, if during your character-forming years (conception through age seven) you felt like you did not belong among your family or friends, or if you currently find yourself being sensitive to the slights of others and predicting that your friends or family will reject you, you will find your answers here! Be careful in scrutinizing yourself, because it is easy to fool ourselves with cover-ups that we have devised in an attempt to look strong. There is so much more to learn and apply to yourself about the influence of rejection on a life.
Chapter Two
Rejection And Anger
Until his death, Dr. John Joseph Evoy was an expert in the ins and outs of rejection. In fact, he would see in his practice only those who reported that rejection was in their experience. His famous book entitled The Rejected has been a blessing to many for detailing the remnants of early rejection during childhood and adolescence.
The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think that everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime—guilt—and there is the story of mankind.
The Rejected by Dr. John Joseph Evoy. Page 10.
Furthermore, his book is packed with information about the anger, fears, anxieties, guilt and depression, and the behaviors they produce, in rejected individuals. To copy all of his information would basically call for a complete re-write of his research and that of the other experts he cites. Since that is impossible in this book, we will instead highlight some of his written information and provide charts in an attempt to synthesize this valuable material in an easily understood and more concise fashion. We will quote some of his main points first and then present them in graphic form for ease of understanding.
Anger that is displayed in those who have been rejected stems from a sense of being unjustly treated. Parents who have neglected, demeaned, ignored, or physically or sexually abused their children, who simply need love as much as they need food, air and water, appear to be the cause.
Certainly, that was the case with Ron, whose story is in Chapter One. The ignoring and neglect was most painful for him when his baby brother was brought home from the hospital. It was then that he saw preferential treatment toward the younger brother. The hugging and the kissing, the rocking and the tender care of his adoring mother had been totally absent from Ron's experience. Why wouldn't a little boy think that he'd been treated unfairly and unjustly? Why wouldn't he be angry? Why wouldn't he direct some of that anger toward himself and keep it hidden inside until he couldn't bear it any longer? So the boy (Ron) became a loner and spent many hours away from home because he believed that he was unwanted and unloved. The idea that "something must be wrong with me" is what he as a child would come to believe, considering the circumstances. Here is the beginning of his diminishing self-concept; here is the continuing sense that he doesn't really belong in his family. Here is the beginning of a determination to make it on his own—to do it himself, regardless of what it would take.
In a tiny book entitled By God's Grace, Sam, the story of Sam's life is told.
Samuel Woodrow Tannyhill was born to parents who seemed to adore him, but they couldn't get along with each other. Their divorce took place when he was only five years old, but divorces don't happen