Is Change Really Possible?, Part II

In the last post, we considered two types of deterministic views held by people, astrological and genetic. In this post, I will discuss two more, psychological and sociological.

III. Psychological Determinism

Sigmund Freud and his followers popularized the notion that our experiences in childhood affect our psychological state as adults. Mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, were blamed on the mother's treatment of the child. The key to resolving neuroses and other psychological disturbances was to dig deeply into one's past and resolve issues that still lingered from our childhood.

Certainly, there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that our childhood experiences affect our psychological well-being as adults, but do those experiences determine how we feel and think as adults? This view can be taken to extremes. For example, in highly publicized criminal trials, defendants have justified their criminal behavior because of things that happened to them in the past. They claimed to have no control over their actions because their psychological health had been impaired by neglect and abuse when they were younger. One of the most prominent and sensational of these trials involved the Menendez brothers, Lyle and Eric, who slaughtered their parents with shotguns on August 20, 1989. In the televised trial in 1993, they defended themselves by arguing that the parental abuse they had suffered made them incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.

On a more common level, we often excuse many of our bad habits or failures in life by blaming our parents for how they treated us. We feel that we are who we are because of how we were raised, and we think there is little that we can do to change that.

But this viewpoint involves a major misunderstanding of the field of psychology. The science of psychology was not developed in order to give people the right to refuse to change or to control their actions. As I mentioned in the last post, the industry of psychotherapy is based on the supposition that it is possible, and necessary, for people to change. Knowing how the past affects us in the present was never intended to relieve us of the responsibility for the choices we make in the present. That knowledge is intended to help us understand the influences on us so that we can modify our thought processes and change our behavior. Psychologists have continually sought ways to help people change their harmful thoughts and behaviors, resulting in a variety of approaches such as behaviorism, hypnotherapy, and cognitive therapy. The field of psychopharmacology has developed drugs to adjust the chemistry of the brain so that dark moods can be lifted and impulsive thoughts can be controlled.

A major study of how psychotherapy promotes change was conducted by Michael J. Mahoney (1991). He showed that scientific research indicated that it was possible for people to change but that the process is "rarely rapid or easy" (p. 18). He also found that core areas were more difficult to change than peripheral areas. Core areas included things like "a person's experience of reality (order), self (identity), value (valence), and power (control)" (p. 18). Change is not easy, but it is possible, a view which seems consistent with biblical teaching.

The psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis also recognized the difficulty of changing the personality: "Personality is a complex balance of many conflicting claims, forces, tensions, compunctions, distractions, which yet manages somehow to be a functioning entity. However it may have come to be what it is, it resists becoming anything else. It tends to maintain itself, to convey itself onward into the future unaltered. It may be changed only with difficulty" (1973, p. 100).

And yet Wheelis believes that change really is possible. He expresses the tension between viewing ourselves as the product of our upbringing and believing in the possibility of change:

Being the product of conditioning and being free to change do not war with each other. Both are true. They coexist, grow together in an upward spiral, and the growth of one furthers the growth of the other. The more cogently we prove ourselves to have been shaped by causes, the more opportunities we create for changing. The more we change, the more possible it becomes to see how determined we were in that which we have just ceased to be (1973, pp. 87-88).

He goes on to warn against viewing either determinism or freedom to change as absolutes exclusive of the other:

Sometimes it will be necessary to see behavior, individual or social, as the product of preexisting conditions, for we are indeed pushed and pulled, and if we are to increase our authority in reference to these forces we must examine them as causes. Sometimes, likewise, it will be necessary to see behavior, individual or social, as the product of unconstrained will, for we are truly free, even in situations of extreme coercion (1973, p. 96).

So, while many have distorted the findings of psychological research to excuse their bad behavior and deny the possibility of change, psychology actually assumes the possibility of change, as difficult as it may be.

IV.Sociological Determinism

This excuse for avoiding change is similar to psychological determinism. Many people feel they cannot improve themselves or their situation because of the country they were born in or the area in which they were raised or the race they belong to. This view was prevalent in the 50s and 60s: If we could change social structures, people would become better people. This excuse, along with psychological determinism, was mocked in the musical West Side Story when the gang members, in the song "Gee, Officer Krupke," try to explain why they are the way they are. The song begins with these lyrics:

Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke,
You gotta understand,
It's just our bringin' up-ke
That gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies,
Our fathers all are drunks.
Golly Moses, natcherly we're punks!

Gee, Officer Krupke, we're very upset;
We never had the love that ev'ry child oughta get.
We ain't no delinquents,
We're misunderstood.
Deep down inside us there is good!

Later in the song, A-Rab complains:

Officer Krupke, you're really a slob.
This boy don't need a doctor, just a good honest job.
Society's played him a terrible trick,
And sociologic'ly he's sick!

Undoubtedly, our social background does affect who we are to a great extent. A person who grows up surrounded by racial prejudice will naturally be influenced to hold those views, but many people have broken out of their sociological straitjackets and altered their ways of thinking and relating to people.

Reflection Questions:

1. How have my childhood experiences affected me? Have I used those experiences as excuses for refusing to change?

2. In what ways have I moved beyond my past experiences to become a healthier person?

3. What unhealthy influences have I experienced from my social upbringing? How can I continue to rid myself of those?

4. How has Christ helped me to move beyond my past into a healthier future?

Next Topic: Is Change Really Possible?, Part III

Sources:

Mahoney, M. J. (1991). Human change processes: The scientific foundations of psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.