What makes us who we are? This was the subject of a bitter row between Oliver James, psychologist and media pundit, and Steven Pinker, neuroscientist and popular science writer, in September 2002.
| James, author of They F*** You Up: how to survive family life, accused Pinker, author of The Blank Slate, of promoting a 'wicked' argument. According to James, Pinker downplayed the impact of our upbringing on our lives, giving the 'perfect excuse to be violent to children' (1).
| Judith Rich Harris, author of The Nurture Assumption, jumped to Pinker's defence - pronouncing that James' parents must have done a bad job in bringing him up, and that 'certainly, he sounds fucked-up, like his book' (2). This must have been particularly wounding for James, who prides himself on the fact that his parents went through years of psychoanalytic treatment to ensure they were good enough to raise their kids. But don't sympathise with him too much.
| This rather public slanging match seems to rest on the old nature-nurture debate. Pinker sets out to slate the nurture argument, claiming it is our evolutionary history, not our family history, that gives insights into why we behave the way we do. James attacks biological explanations of human behaviour, arguing that it is not nature but nurture that makes us who we are.
| But while the positions taken by James and Pinker seem polarised, they have in common a determinist view of human development. James succeeds in drawing out many of the limitations of biological explanations for human behaviour, but rather than seeing us as the victims of the genes that we inherit, he sees people as the victims of our childhood experiences. Everything from addiction, personality disorder, violence and criminality, neurosis and hyperactivity can apparently be traced back to the type of care received by a child between the ages of six months and three years.
| Much of James' book is rehashed pop psychology: conjecture presented as authoritative fact. Take his claim that 'offspring of families with five or more children are significantly more likely to be delinquent and to suffer mental illness' (3). Why? Because there is not enough love to go around. That's me screwed, for a start.
| Or take his claim that 'at least as big a determinant as gender on the role in which your parents cast you in the family drama is your place in the family, known as birth order.… [F]irstborn children are more likely to be self-assured, assertive, competitive and dominant compared with lastborns'. 'Lastborns', says James, 'are more altruistic, emotionally empathetic and, when small, get more involved with other children' (4). Of course James can present numerous examples to support this thesis - and each and every one of us could find numerous examples to challenge it.
| The crux of James' argument is that our emotional attachments in our first years of life shape all our future relationships, as well as our very sense of self. This notion may well be supported by a substantial body of research. However, despite the number of studies that James refers to, the reality is less clear-cut.
| James argues that 'how we react to our friends as well as who we pick as a lover, our abilities and interests at work, in fact almost everything about our psychology as an adult is continually reflecting our childhood in our day-to-day, moment-by-moment experience.… Whether we were seen as the sweet, lovable one or the black sheep of the family, we go out and find people who see us that way' (5).
| He draws on John Bowlby's attachment theory to support his claim that the 'pattern of attachment' we form in adult life - whether secure or insecure - is based on the kind of care we received as young children. Our earliest experiences have greater impact because the brain is rapidly expanding, he argues, and because we have been programmed by evolution to be more responsive to certain cues at particular stages of development.
| What the reader is not given, however, is an indication of the substantial body of research that challenges Bowlby's claims. It is far from straightforward how early attachments do shape our future development - not least because of the difficulty in isolating variables in longitudinal studies of human behaviour.
| James draws on examples of children who received no empathetic care during early infancy - either as a result of being raised by wild animals or being given no human contact other than the supply of food - to demonstrate how important early emotional engagements are. He points out that where such extreme early deprivation is followed by nurturant care there is some improvement in speech, intelligence and social skills. However, the care does not reverse the damage to the self and 'invariably, such cases are severely Personality Disordered' (6).
| What James seems to forget is that very few of us are raised by wolves - nor subjected to the appalling plight of the young children in orphanages in Ceausescu's Romania. There is a world of difference between being completely starved of human contact and having parents who do not match up to James' expectations - continually loving, caring, expressive and encouraging. Emotional engagement in infancy matters, yes - but extreme conditions of emotional deprivation may be so exceptional that they tell us little about the situation where there is engagement between the adult and the child.
| Psychotherapist Peter Hobson makes a more persuasive case for the idea that human thought, language, and self-awareness develops 'in the cradle of emotional engagement between the infant and caregiver' (7). Emotional engagement and communication, he argues, are the foundation on which creative symbolic thought develops.
| In The Cradle of Thought: exploring the origins of thinking, Hobson reviews an array of clinical and experimental studies, and captures aspects of human exchanges that happen before thought. He shows that even in early infancy children have a capacity to react to the emotions of others. This, he argues, points to an innate desire to engage with fellow human beings. However, as children develop, this innate desire is transformed into something quite different.
| So, for instance, at around nine months of age, infants begin to share their experiences of objects or actions with others. They begin to monitor the emotional responses of adults - such as responding to facial expression or tone of voice. When faced with novel situations or objects, infants look at their carers' faces and, by picking up emotional signals, they decide on their actions. When they receive positive or encouraging signals, they approach and engage; when the signals are anxious or negative they will retreat. There is no evidence of these responses involving 'thought'.
| But out of the cradle of these early emotional engagements emerges the ability to symbolise - and therefore have thought. When a toddler gains the insight that people-with-minds have their own subjective experiences and can give things meanings, he or she then gains the insight that these meanings can be anchored in symbols.
| This, according to Hobson, is the dawn of thought and the dawn of language. 'At this point, [the child] leaves infancy behind', he writes. 'Empowered by language and other forms of symbolic functioning, she takes off into the realms of culture. The infant has been lifted out of the cradle of thought. Engagement with others has taught this soul to fly.' (8)
| Hobson uses the example of autism to show what happens to thought when the foundations for its development is lacking. He points out that 'there is something profoundly lacking in [autistic people's] orientation towards [other] people, in their interest and responsiveness to others, and, perhaps most striking of all, in their emotional engagement' (9). This has profound and cumulative effects on their cultural learning and social relationships.
| There is no evidence that autistic children have developed autism as a result of emotional deprivation or a lack of care. But there seems to be evidence that, in extreme circumstances - as with Romanian orphans - a small, but higher than average, proportion of children develop symptoms similar to autism.
| Hobson is keen to point out that, other than in extreme circumstances, the vast majority of adults will be emotionally sensitive and responsive to infants. And, even if that is lacking, he says, 'one is constantly amazed by the resilience of babies and how effectively they can find ways round potential disadvantage and get much of what they need from people around them' (10).
| Oliver James, then, is right to recognise that our emotional engagements in infancy are important. But in seeing such engagements as what determines our future development, he is way off the mark. Rather, engagement between the adult and the child should be seen as a stepping stone to the future transformation of the child.
| The mistake James makes is to compare rather clumsy, at times unresponsive, parental behaviour with systematic abuse and neglect. Of course, some parents will be awkward in the way they show their love for their children. Some will fail to provide their children with much praise and encouragement. Some will shout excessively at their children, or at times physically hurt them.
| And of course our family relationships are likely to play a big role in shaping ourselves. Our relationships with our parents and siblings are, after all, the longest, most enduring relationships many of us will have - they do tend to be for life. But they do not determine who we are.
| Just as we may form relationships outside the home that affirm our sense of self and nature of attachment, so we may form relationships that challenge our self-image and our way of relating to other people.
| One cannot help but feel that James gives the family, and in particular parents, a very hard time. It's kind of ironic that he pleads with the reader to 'please believe me when I say that the last thing I want to do through this book is stir up trouble between you and your family, to burst the bubble of illusions you have about your own childhood or to add to the burden of anxiety that parents already carry' (11). How else are parents supposed to react to a book that preaches the ease with which they could destroy their children's lives - just by falling short of a smile or two?
| There are some children in the world who are unwanted, or unloved by their parents. If those children fail to develop any enduring, caring and loving relationships outside the home, they will most likely end up incapable of negotiating life's challenges. Maybe therapy can help some of them - but even in such extreme cases, there is no firm scientific evidence of the efficacy of psychoanalysis.
| But one thing is for sure. Making all parents believe that they need years of training and therapeutic treatment in order to raise their children as stable individuals is likely to cause more problems than solutions.
| Love is based on, and expressed through, spontaneous emotional interactions. If we are all led to believe that we need to follow a set script in order to engage with our children in a non-destructive way, then ultimately we will become debilitated in expressing spontaneous, loving, compassionate and empathic feelings.
| James' previous book was called Britain on the Couch. They F*** You Up promotes the same message - that the only way any of us can survive family life is by seeking therapeutic treatment. James calls for an emotional audit of every child in their sixteenth year of life. 'The grotesque overemphasis on exam performance should be replaced by a version of Cognitive Analytical Therapy (CAT), in which every child is helped to evaluate the impact of her upbringing on her psychology', he claims (12). One can only wonder whether a parent getting lower-than-estimated grades would have recourse to a re-mark.
| James also argues that the obsession with economic performance indicators should be replaced with greater measurement of the effect of government policy on mental health. 'Every two years there should be a nationally representative audit…by which the government should be judged. This audit would include an evaluation of how parenting is faring in the light of government policy.' (13)
| For New Labour to set such targets would be completely in character - and there is certainly no shortage of government initiatives to try to improve the nation's parenting skills. But how you would measure the government's 'success' in improving such an intimate aspect of life as family relationships is anybody's guess.
| James' pop psychology is likely to have an impact in policy circles - not because of the strength of his arguments, but because it fits in with the contemporary cultural outlook that views adults as 'emotionally illiterate' and constantly in need of a helping hand. In early October 2002, the National Family and Parenting Institute launched a pamphlet - with the help of government funding - entitled From Breakfast to Bedtime: helping you and your children through the day! (14).
| Much of the pamphlet is basic common sense. 'Children's needs and levels of understanding change as they grow and what might be expected of a four-year-old can't be expected of a two-year-old'; 'let children sort out their own squabbles as long as no-one is getting hurt but do separate them if they hurt each other', and so on (15). Surely parents do not need the advice of an army of child-rearing experts in order to appreciate these self-evident truths?
| But the pamphlet goes beyond preaching mere common sense. Its overriding message is that if we do not seriously consider the way we discipline our children, we may end up subjecting them to unintentional long-term damage. So parents are told not to shout at their children, but instead to 'try and give five times more praise than criticism' (16).
| The more parents are led to believe that they need this kind of prescriptive - and, for that matter, banal - advice about how to relate to their children, the more stilted and insecure they are going to become in everyday interactions with their kids. How does this help anybody?
| The fact is that most parents will have bad days. They will lose their temper, and even threaten their children with inappropriate punishment. That's normal. It will not help parents if they are loaded with guilt for behaviours that are as inevitable as they are harmless. And it will do children no good to think they can blame all their bad behaviour on their parents.
| Oliver James, and his fans in government, should allow children to carry on loving their parents despite their many flaws, and parents to continue loving their children in their own way. It might be awkward, it might be clumsy, but it's a million times better than the uptight approach advocated by self-appointed childrearing experts.
| They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, by Oliver James, is published by Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002. Buy this book from Amazon (UK)
The Cradle of Thought: exploring the origins of thinking, by Peter Hobson, is published by Macmillan, 22 February 2002. Buy this book from Amazon (UK)
Read on:
spiked-issue: Parents and kids
(1) Raging boffins, Observer, 22 September 2002
(2) Raging boffins, Observer, 22 September 2002
(3) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, Oliver James, Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002, p4
(4) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, Oliver James, Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002, p41
(5) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, Oliver James, Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002, p5
(6) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, Oliver James, Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002, p209
(7) The Cradle of Thought: exploring the origins of thinking, Peter Hobson, Macmillan, 22 February 2002, jacket
(8) The Cradle of Thought: exploring the origins of thinking, Peter Hobson, Macmillan, 22 February 2002, p274
(9) The Cradle of Thought: exploring the origins of thinking, Peter Hobson, Macmillan, 22 February 2002, p59
(10) The Cradle of Thought: exploring the origins of thinking, Peter Hobson, Macmillan, 22 February 2002, p148
(11) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, Oliver James, Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002, p10
(12) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, Oliver James, Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002, p300
(13) They F*** You Up: How to survive family life, Oliver James, Bloomsbury, 16 September 2002, p300
(14) From Breakfast to Bedtime: helping you and your children through the day, National Family and Parenting Institute, October 2002, p4
(15) From Breakfast to Bedtime: helping you and your children through the day, National Family and Parenting Institute, October 2002, p11
(16) From Breakfast to Bedtime: helping you and your children through the day, National Family and Parenting Institute, October 2002, p13
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