The Causal Force of NOTHING

• A Favor-----Please by Doug W., 12/5/98
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    • What I Do and Don't Believe by Jim Duffy, 3/22/99
      
      

In my posting just above, I wrote that:

"...the presence of such [e.g., survivor and related] guilt is elusively hard to recognize and easily misconstrued as something else. I furthermore believe that the major reason this guilt is so hard to correctly identify is that we participate in a cultural ideology dominated by the economist's principle that self-interest in the most basic undergirding human motivation and the corresponding widespread minimization of the power of the human need both for secure interpersonal relationship and for expressions of altruistic other-interest as well as self-interest."

In the following essay, I would like to give an another explanation--one that applies in cases of emotional neglect--of why this guilt is elusively hard to recognize. This other reason has to do with "the psychology of nothing."

THE CAUSAL FORCE OF NOTHING

NOTHING never exists. How can it? It's nothing! Yet NOTHING can cause undesirable things to happen. How could it? Nothing never exists!

Look at it this way. Without vitamin C, you get scurvy. When there is no vitamin C in your body, you have NO(vitamin C)THING that will make you sick. Vitamin deficiencies are instances of NOTHING, and they cause trouble.

Neglect is like this. Neglect is NOTHING. Emotional neglect, as an instance of nothing, doesn't exist. Yet such neglect can cause bad things to happen. So NOTHING can be a cause of one's problems.

Now although NOTHING cannot be seen, touched, or heard, NOTHING certainly can, in one sense, be FELT when its effects cause scurvy or the effects of emotional neglect.

Consider the following quotation explaining clearly how emotional neglect--NOTHING--can work its causal force:

"Does the person we're eagerly speaking with make an apt comment at the right moment or smile as we make a point? If so, we sense engagement, and our talk flows easily. Should someone stare at us blankly, gaze off into space, or remain mute, however, we begin to feel confused, rejected, perhaps even unloved. Very sensitive individuals may even find their thinking becoming disorganized, their sense of purpose gradually dissolving.

"This pattern can be seen vividly in infancy. In a well-known study of infants at four months of age, mothers of healthy babies were asked to forgo their customary smiles, nods, and affectionate coos and show only blank, expressionless stares. The babies followed a predictable pattern in response, first smiling, cooing, and reaching with more and more intensity, as if to say, 'Hey, pay attention! I'm talking to you!' When that failed, they paused momentarily, then tried again, more frantically. In a few minutes they had become irritable and frenetic; their gestures disorganized and increasingly purposeless. At last apathy and disinterest set in and they gave up." {From Stanley I. Greenspan, MD, and Beryl Lieff Benderly, THE GROWTH OF THE MIND: AND THE ENDANGERED ORIGINS OF INTELLIGENCE, New York: Addison-Wesley, 1997, p. 56. The well-known study of infants referred to is by E. Tronick and is titled "The Primacy of Social Skills in Infancy," published in EXCEPTIONAL INFANT, volume 4, 1980, pp. 144-158.]

Some persons who were emotionally neglected in their early life understandably have a lot of difficulty recognizing this is the case.

We also now know from well-researched experimental evidence that it is hard--or sometimes impossible--for animals and human beings to actually be able to perceive the absense of something that once existed or that could hypothetically exist.

To appreciate this idea better, consider that we can see the hole in the donut and talk about it, but where does the hole go when we eat the donut? It goes nowhere because it wasn't "out there" is the first place.

In a literal sense nothing never exists "out there" because nothing can exist only in human minds. We cannot see, touch, or hear that which doesn't exist and therefore isn't "out there." Deficiencies or absences or NOTHINGS are intrinsically hard to remember to think about--or to recognize as having causal roles is our lives!

We know from lots of experimental research that animals and humans quickly forget what isn't there and often have a very hard time being able to perceptually recognize JUST WHAT isn't there that usually has been there. Again, NOTHING is in our minds, not "out there."

NOTHING has a unique ontological status--that is, it has a unique logical kind of being that is different from the being of things that do exist "out there."

The marker telling us there is causal agency from some deficiency is a marker consisting of one of the effects of the deficiency. But, to be able to recognize an effect as due to a particular deficiency, one must already know and keep in mind the cause-effect relations known to exist in order to recognize an effect as a marker of a deficiency.

For example, vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, but deficiencies literally do not exist OUT THERE because a deficiency is the existance of nothing--and nothing, of course, does not exist. But one would better get some vitamin C if one has symptoms of scurvy! Knowing what is deficient is then accomplished from thinking about known causal relationships and not from a perceptual act of seeing, touching, or hearing the deficiency itself. We see, hear, or touch the EFFECTS of the deficiency. Only understanding or knowledge or expectation in one's mind thus makes possible a recognition of NOTHING.

Although nothing does not exist "out there," the effects of NOTHING sure do exsit out there!! Neglect literally does not exist--but it's effects are everywhere and that are enormous.

These effects are all the harder to bear because these effects would seem to come from nowhere. But they come from somewhere--they come from deficient nurturing, i.e., neglect, i.e., nothing.

We know that human infants and children need sustained attention and relatedness that accommodates their need for wholesome growth in order not to be later afflicted with numerous symptoms of humiliation about needing others.

Each time a neglected child feels the loniliness of isolation from being slighted by neglect, s/he nearly always will experience it as something "I HAVE DONE" or something "I FAILED TO DO."

And what else is a child to think? The child can only reason thusly: "I feel bad. But nobody did anything. There must be something wrong with me. I am ashamed and guilty. I need help. But nobody can help. So I must really be bad or irresponsible. If only I would better use my freedom! If only I had more courage! I must do something! It's all my fault. I deserve no better. I should be punished."

How else can a child reason who knows only nothing?

The child does NOT REASON as follows: "I feel bad. But nobody did anything. Say, that could be my problem--everyone is doing nothing! I start to think there's something wrong with me, but there may in fact be something wrong in my relationships, in my social world. I believe it's possible that I'm being neglected while nobody realizes this because nobody can see it since the persons in my world have all been neglected themselves and know only nothing and cannot see it because it doesn't exist. How can anyone possibly see what they don't understand or recognize and what doesn't exist anyhow?!"

If a child could reason in this second way, s/he would still probably feel ashamed, but it would be a shame in being the only own who understands in a sea of darkness. Instead the child typically feels ashamed/guilty for even wanting to understand at all, for feeling dissatisfied with the way things are, and for not being able to make everything right ON ONE'S OWN. Thus the child has a lot of guilt-filled self-sacrificing and self-blaming shame for needing something that nobody recognizes as a real human need.

But nothing literally causes all this! Then we can say, if we, too, overlook nothing, that the child, and later the adult, is making him/herself so troubled.

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