Unsent letters to editors (no.1945) : The Guardian doesn't get it

Dear Editor,
your luke warm, "two cheers" response to the TUC protest which is so evident in today's (28.3.11)Guardian editorial "After the March" as well as in the copy of your reporters and commentators, demonstrates that like the rest of the relatively wealthy, chattering classes, which you now seem to represent, the Guardian newspaper just does not get what is happening to people in the UK. The not so wealthy, the getting poorer, the poor, the soon to be unemployed, the unemployed, children, young people, disabled people, ill people and retired people are genuinely and justifiably fearful about their future,
At the same time your newspaper in its superficially balanced editorials tries to rationalise its decision to advise it readers to vote for the Liberal Democrats in the last general election. I am sad to say I was persuaded by your advice. Like the majority of people in this country I did not vote for a coalition government to carry out a vicious and vindictive assault on the services to fellow citizens in this country - real palpable suffering individuals - who do not have very much. If what has happened since last May is democracy, then democracy stinks.
I am not a member of a trade union but I would like to thank the TUC for organising Saturday's impressive and moving event and I still hope that the Guardian as well as the rest of the media will respond to Saturday's protest as sympathetically and as doggedly as it has done recently for protests in other countries.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sharpe

Anarchy is OK

Our media seems to think that an anarchist is anyone who, when in attendance at an event which has previously been announced as a peaceful protest march or rally, is : throwing stones or cans of paint,setting off flares, wielding sticks, wearing masks and damaging property.
Let's put the record straight. A true anarchist is far more likely to be a pacifist than a terrorist. Anarchists might not even care to join a protest event but if they did they would almost certainly be peaceful and quiet. An anarchist believes that we can all get along quite peacefully as a community without the undue influence of political figures who gain power through ownership of property. Now some might think that this is an unrealistic ideal and against human nature as they understand it but creating an anarchic community is intended to be a morally good aspiration.

Born in the DRI

Born in the DRI, Eh wus born in the DRI

On October 1st back in forty fev
Eh fell fae Ma-ie's womb n' cam oot alev

Eh wus born in the DRI, born in the DRI

Eh lived in Lochee, went tae Liff Road Schale
got the dux medal but Eh wus gonnae fail

Cos eh wus born in the DRI, a red hot baby fae the DRI

In '57 Pa took us tae Coventry
naebody unnerstood me n' Eh lost meh way

Cos Eh was born in the DRI
Eh wus a red hot baby fae the DRI

Eh, born in the DRI, born in the DRI

Dundee Royal Infirmary 1798 to 1998

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To Have and Have Not : more thoughts about poverty and wealth

It's difficult to know what to do about poverty. For me there is something morally wrong about believing it can be right for one person to earn, say, ten times more than another person.

In the capitalist system which imbues and it seems subsumes our lives, those who take and have the power - financial, cultural, social, political and military power - directly or indirectly award themselves inordinate material wealth and pay inordinately little to those whose labour provides  them with their wealth.

It might be said that if such a state of affairs is morally repugnant, our thoughts should lead to setting up and putting into practice a pure form of socialism where all have an equal share in the material wealth. Yet previous attempts to create socialist communities have invariably failed because those who have taken on political or leadership roles in these communities could not resist the descent towards the accumulation of more and more material wealth as well as more political power. There is, it seems, an inevitability towards a retreat to a "have and have not" community.

It may be asked, "Shouldn't democracy sort out all this fiscal inequality?"
Well the evidence is clear for all to see. It hasn't so far. There may still remain starry-eyed idealists - and I'm one - who still harbour thoughts that the right kind of democracy might deliver a human global community free of poverty. If so we need to find it because our current models of democracy don't address the issue of poverty with any sense
of there being a determined commitment to end the abject deprivation many of our fellow human beings suffer.

Capitalists say that attempts to institute socialism have failed because people who are educated and who learn more sophisticated skills want to earn more than those who have not learnt skills and more than those who they judge as less skilled. This argument also demands that those who take on more "responsibility" will only do so if they are rewarded for it but surely for all fair-minded people these unwritten laws should only be exercised between reasonable limits.

A difficulty which persists in freeing others from poverty is that we seem impelled to acquire material wealth and power in order to ensure our own survival and the survival of our children. In a world where we can see the debilitating consequences that poverty has for others our primitive evolutionary fears may result in us taking more than our own share. At the same time however, human beings have persuaded themselves that they are rational organisms who have also strived to develop codes of morality which insist on fair treatment for everyone. Our religions and our social cultures underpin the moral demand that we should take a care for each other and yet it appears that as capitialism and its concomitant and predominant financial and military power increase their tight grip on our human community,the hoped for essential goodness of our human community is squeezed out. It may be argued that this tendency has been accelerated by new channels of communication which in their tendency to take us away from being in the physical presence of each other, have led us to lose our emotional and physical sensitivity,to become increasingly narcissistic,to strive to be ahead of others and to adopt the attitude,"the de'il tak the hindmost."

It has also been suggested that these new channels of communication can be seen as the most democratic development since human communities were first formed. Their capacity to allow the rapid expression of mass opinion has influenced governments to change policy much more swiftly than the threat of the ballot box and indeed they have in some countires directly led to the downfall of oppressive regimes. If this kind of mass expression can be persuaded to direct its interest towards ending poverty, what might be achieved?

But here is the rub. In recent times even the power of mass expression through the internet and over the mobile 'phone has failed to achieve the wishes of the majority in the face of military power and personal wealth. This is currently the case in Libya where the holding of the oil wealth by a very few, finances military power which may, the way things are, prevail over any burgeoning of democracy. In the case of Bahrain the people's cry for true democracy and regime change are ignored by the Bahraini governing royal family and its militarily powerful Saudi Arabian cousins because they do not wish to share their immense wealth and they have the military punch to make sure they don't need to. These autocrats are also bolstered by hypocritical western "democratic" governments like those of the United Kingdom and the United States of America who fear any disturbance in the area will threaten their short-term to medium term need for oil. What really lies behind this hypocrisy is the selfish determination of a world wide wealthy minority to keep its hold on wealth and power. If this power dynamic remains what hope is there for those people whose poverty disenfranchises them from the hope of a life worth living. What hope for their children ?

It's difficult to know how we can end poverty but I still think we should try.

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Dundee Football Club has yet another "famous eleven"

Last weekend I emerged frae my Devon midden in auld Angleterre and took a wee jaunt up Scotland way tae Dundee. I arrived in the rain,sleet and snow at Tay Bridge station, strode up to the Nethergate and then strolled along to, and through, the Wellgate and puffing and panting climbed the steps and managed to struggle up the Hilltoon until I arrived at Dens Park to watch Dundee Football Club defeat Queen of the South 2-1 and break a club record,which until Saturday had been the property of the greatest of all Dundee sides,the 1961-2 team. The new famous eleven took the record by remaining undefeated in the league for 20 games. This current side is neither metaphorically nor literally in the same league as the great 1961-2 side whom many well respected opinions still describe as the most stylishly accomplished club team the UK has ever produced. However this current side have had to play at the same time as going through all the insecurities involved in being employed by a football club which is in administration. They have seen a good number of their fellow players being made redundant. There are now only about 14 or 15 players in the first team squad because the financial and regulatory restrictions administration puts upon a club, do not allow it to sign new players. The quietly impressive manager, Barry Smith,doesn't often use substitutes during a match - he used only the starting eleven on Saturday - because of the limited resources available to him, but this means the players, who make up quite a skilled group, all know each other very well and work hard together. If the club had not been deducted 25 league points as a consequence of administration, the team would now be well ahead at the top of the league preparing for promotion to the Scottish Premier League. Instead they are now in a heroic struggle to avoid relegation to a lower league. No wonder then that at the end of last weekend's victory Dens Park was rocking and we were also singing "Naa naa naa nana naa nana naa naa Du- undee" to the tune of Hey Jude !

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Votes for prisoners : the meaning of prison and its influence on the wellbeing of politicians

    There was a time when there was a debate as to what made individual human beings turn out the way they had. Was the cause genetic or environmental? Was the influencing factor nature or nurture? Well nowadays, psychologists and neuroscientists seem to agree that both elements go along in tandem. The same kind of "either/or" debate has also long been carried out about the meaning and purpose of prison. Should prison be a punishment or a process of rehabilitation ? Some might take the view that the analogy with the synergy of nature and nurture does not hold. They would argue that we can punish without rehabilitation. Yet, just as nature unmollified by environmental factors leads to unhealthy personal development, is it at all healthy for a society if punishment is not accompanied by a process of rehabilitation? What kind of society would lock someone up and do nothing until a prisoner's sentence came to an end?
    In trying to answer this question we should perhaps accept that in the first instance prison is a method used by our society to punish a wrongdoer. Whether this punishment or indeed any kind of punishment is an effective way of dealing with wrongdoing is another debate.
     We should also acknowledge that a punishment may give some comfort to victims of crime and to their relatives, though this may not be universally so.
     We can be sure prison is a punishment. Just think of how it would feel to be kept in a place where you cannot live with the people you love, cannot do the simple things like take a walk in the town or in the country, go to meet the people you want to meet. On the other hand imagine what would have happened to your inner self if you had spent so much time in a prison that living there carried less threat to you than the thought of being free? Do we need to punish a prisoner more? Should we only give them an experience of punishment and if we do what kind of person will come out when his or her sentence is over?
     It should not be considered extreme to suggest that prisoners need the right kind of nurture : being encouraged not only to respect others but also to respect themselves. This can be done by giving them dignity.
     Prison should give its occupants a feeling that life is worthwhile and that in accepting their sentence - that is their loss of liberty - they are being punished enough. Opportunities should be provided to help them grow as human beings. They should have a chance to study, to work productively, and be given opportunities to feel that they have not been abandoned and that they do have a part to play in the community that all humans share, no matter what their predicament. This includes the right to vote. It is extremely worrying that our political leaders, for, one imagines, populist reasons fed by what is most base in our nature, are aghast at the notion of allowing prisoners the right to vote, to the extent that they feel physically sick just thinking about it, or even more timidly they equivocate and say, "Well yes, maybe we can allow these ones to vote, but not those."
     The right to vote should be given to all prisoners. It would be the action of a civilised society. One which does not condone criminal action or leave it unpunished, but one which demonstrates the lengths it will go to ensure that the generous action is predominant over the selfish one. In the generous action may be seen the seed of rehabilitation for prisoners and hope for us all.

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Being truly British and liberally muscular

.

"Multi-culturalism hasn't worked. Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism."
David Cameron, Munich, September 1938, oops sorry, February, 2011.



I need some help. I am apparently unaware of what it is I don't understand about the prime minister insisting I cannot be counted as truly British unless I am a liberally muscular member of the Conservative Party and a former public sector worker who recognises the vital national need for me to be out of a job so that deprived banking executives can have some more cream.

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Just like Charlie Sharpe's blues (2010)

Down south it looked okay to me
Til “New Labour” cuckoo'd the Tory hutch,
Lured from our housing schemes
Into the profiteer’s clutch.
And now the Liberal Democrats
Have been seduced by the moneyed man’s touch :
I’m going back to Dundee city
I do believe I’ve seen too much.

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Damocles descended : the sentencing of Edward Woollard

On January 11th, 2011 Judge Geoffrey Rivlin QC handed down a "deterrent sentence" to Edward Woollard and sent him to prison for 2 years and 8 months. 18 years old Edward had acted dangerously by putting the lives of others at risk during  a protest in London about a government decision to increase  student tuition fees. On November 10th, 2010 Edward threw a metal fire extinguisher from the roof of the Conservative Party’s headquarters building at Millbank in London. The extinguisher narrowly missed falling on policemen and other protesters who were on the pavement and street below. The sentence the judge meted out to Edward was intended as a warning to others who might do something like this in the future.
Edward’s impulsive and dangerous deed was outrageous but in essence it was impelled by the same overwhelming excitement which has induced innumerable young people to carry out potentially dangerous acts when for the first time they have become a part of the drama of what they believe is righteous protest. Peaceful protest is a right. Protest is also a part of the adolescent process so necessary for human development. Many of us, however old we are now, may at some time in our lives have experienced the feelings Edward was having that day, but we were lucky enough not to have our impulsive, foolish and at times dangerous acts discovered. Equally some of us may have been discovered but were fortunate enough to be responded to by thoughtful adults who forgave our trespasses with a stern warning and gave us the opportunity to reflect on just how stupid our actions were. For most of us this response worked.
That’s why it is difficult to understand Judge Rivlin’s harsh, not to say vindictive sentencing of Edward Woollard. Edward, it is generally agreed, has previously been of good character. He is not a hardened criminal. He is not even an experienced activist. This was the first protest he had attended. After the offence was committed Edward accepted the advice of his mother to give himself up to the police immediately. Since the event he has consistently expressed contrition for his act. Judge Rivlin says he took this into consideration but it does not seem to have engendered judicial moderation. For the next 16 months at least Edward will spend time firstly in a Young Offenders’ secure unit and subsequently in an adult prison. Will this help him ? Will making an example of Edward stop other young people doing thoughtless and at times dangerous things ?
It is difficult not to conclude that Judge Rivlin’s decision has shown that the political and financial powers will be defended at all costs. If you threaten them or act to question their legitimacy you will not deal with the scales of justice you will feel the sword of Damocles descended.

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The de-valuation of people : the process of privatisation

     In these dark, dank times of recession the United Kingdom government has decided we must cut our costs. To serve these cuts people who have worked as public servants in local and national institutions lose their jobs. Of course the work that they do is necessary and very soon after putting these people out of their reasonably but not highly paid jobs with their good but not extravagant pension rights, their work is tendered to the private sector. In this way the work is done less expensively by reducing the pay and removing the right of a permanent job and a pension to those who are now carrying out this work.

     Maybe this is the price of profligacy : the de-valuation of people.

     The question left hanging in the cold damp twilight is "Whose profligacy is being paid for?"

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Camden to Islington, 2008

The weekend went well for the celebrations:
long boat, snacks, prosecco and the nice;
the young middle-aged do duty
to the early-aged as they dice.
Good to be with people,
a couple of kids but no pets.
There were genuines and superficials
but they weren't making any bets.
So polite to,
could be wrong to,
could be right to
worry about who it upsets.

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Thinking about Machiavelli

One thing you can say about Machiavelli was that he made it clear that seeking wealth, and power does not canter along harmoniously with humility, self-sacrifice, honesty, generosity and other virtues.
This was and is an awkward truth. First expressed in The Prince which was written in 1513 but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death, this idea was condemned by the church and now, as then, no one likes to be thought of as ruthless, unscrupulous and self-centred - even if they are.

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And I also shot the deputy

Would I create a paradigm shift if I were to sing "I shot the sheriff and I also shot the deputy?"

The poor are such an embarrassment

     Our economic system like our sport is based upon competition. Competition explicitly demands that there should be losers as well as winners in business, in sport, in education, in work, in fact in life in general. That's why it has always puzzled me when victorious sports individuals and teams are so triumphant. It's as if they can't acknowledge that in order to win someone else must be prepared to lose. The way we have allowed our society to develop there seem to be some people who are always the losers. 

     We rail against them : the losers, the poor. They don't try hard enough. They are shirkers and undeserving. They are not a pretty sight. They are an embarrassment to us. We should not associate ourselves with losers. They are a poor reflection upon us. Indeed, they are.

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The wrath of Roth

Can anyone write an outraged, outrageous and yet lucid tirade better than Philip Roth ?

This excerpt from the novel The Human Stain is a mild, for Roth that is, declamation of the summer of 1998. There are two places in it where you can stop for breath.

'It was the summer in America when the nausea returned, when the joking didn't stop, when the speculation and the theorizing and the hyperbole didn't stop, when the moral obligation to explain to one's children about adult life was abrogated in favor of maintaining in them every illusion of adult life, when the smallness of people was simply crushing, when some kind of demon had been unleashed in the nation, and on both sides, people wondered "Why are we so crazy?," when men and women alike, upon wakening up in the morning, discovered that during the night, in a state of sleep that transported them beyond envy or loathing, they had dreamed of Bill Clinton. I myself dreamed of a mammoth banner, draped dadaistically like a Christo wrapping from one end of the White House to the other and bearing the legend A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE. It was the summer when - for the billionth time - the jumble, the mayhem, the mess proved itself more subtle than this one's theology and that one's morality. It was the summer when a president's penis was on everyone's mind, and life, in all its shameless impurity, once again confounded America.'

(From page three of The Human Stain by Philip Roth, published in London by Vintage in 2000).

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Inconsequential

     Earlier this year, (2010) at the age of 59 years, a man called Chris Haney died from kidney and circulatory diseases. “Who was he ?” you may well ask. Well he was a tired looking, rather average Canadian newspaper reporter who, on December 15th, 1979, with his friend Scott Abbott was playing Scrabble in his house. The two men found that some of the letters were missing. At a loss as to what to do they set about creating a new game based on remembering inconsequential facts. Trivial Pursuit was being born. So when members of my family play our annual game of Trivial Pursuit this Christmas we will offer up a toast to his memory for his gift to us of two hours of mainly enjoyable evening entertainment on Christmas Day.

     Chris Haney may have died at a relatively early age but he had begun to live the life of Reilly soon after Trivial Pursuit was put on sale in the shops. The game had made him and his friend very wealthy.
   If you’ve found this post of no import, accept my trivial and anorakial apologies.

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Wistfulness, milk and Liff Road School

     When I was a wee boy in the early 1950s, every morning at school playtime we were all given a free one third of a pint bottle of milk which we took from square metal crates that held 36 bottles.  The  Labour government had arranged that this milk would be provided to make sure all of us, whether we from poor or less poor backgrounds   - though all of us kids at Liff Road School,  rich in many ways, could never be described as well-moneyed  -  were provided with the essential nutrients which milk gave. 

     The teacher on playground duty would distribute straws through which we sooked the milk. Some of the older boys - who I thought were rougher, tougher boys - would drink it direct from the bottle without the use of the straw. This naughtiness was very worrying for me because although I knew our teachers frowned upon such behaviour I was secretly impressed by it.  

     Every morning one of the boys brought to school an old empty babies' dried milk can to which he attached, through two small holes he had punched near the rim, a long loop of string. He would ask those kids  - and they were, as I remember, usually girls -  who had not drunk all their milk to pour the remains into his can. When it was about a half full of milk, he began to swing it around rather in the way a hammer thrower swings the hammer before he releases it. Not a drop of milk was ever spilled from the can as it rotated around him and got up to such a speed that it could only be seen as a blur like an aeroplane propellor. Later I discovered the science going on was centrifugal force. Yet, it is the magic of unspilt milk which makes me wistful, and is at the core of me, not the science.

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Adam Phillips and personal excesses

     Some time ago, Adam Phillips, the psychotherapist and essayist wrote a newspaper article about human excesses, including those concerned with food, alcohol, other drugs, sex, love and religion. Approaching it from a psychoanalytic direction he arrived at a conclusion that ultimately our excessiveness is a mask for deep-seated insecurities, fears and frustration. 

     It occurred to me, when he proposed the idea that some of us are excessive in our relationships with others, and, that we may use these relationships to moderate our other excesses. Even if this proved to be so, I have not come to any conclusions as to whether this would be healthy. I suspect the answer may be, "It all depends....."

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Dire days at Dens

     The football club which I have supported since I was a wee boy is in financial trouble. It is not the first time this has happened but there are great doubts if it will survive this crisis. Along with many others I will try to ensure that it continues to exist. 
     I saw the team when it won the Scottish Football League Championship in the early 1960s. I was held on my Daddy's shoulders when the team played Rangers in the Scottish Cup in 1953. There was a record crowd at the match that day - 43,000 - and it stands as the record still. I saw the team when Claudio Cannigia played for it in 2001 and though he was a tremendous player, it is ironic that he and the other expensive players who were in the team at that time really signalled the current downfall. 
     My favourite time ever of going to see my team was when Gerry Laing and I, both aged about 7 years old, walked from Clement Park in Lochee to Dens Park and were allowed in free at half time to see a reserve match against Celtic. The club I support is Dundee FC.

To have and have not - thoughts still in progress

     I often question why the resources of our world are not shared equally and why there is not an equal right of access and receipt of the good things our planet has to offer us.

     I am often called an idealist, a naif and a simpleton who clearly does not examine human reality too closely. Oddly enough, I am content to accept being categorised as such ; if only I could be so good ! There is a significant part of me which accepts that I ask for the unrealisable and the unachievable. I question too whether I would really be prepared to act as altruistically as I have suggested others more wealthy than I should. I understand that when I was helping to bring up a family, there seldom seemed to be much left over that could be shared with others who did not have as much as I did. Looking back now it seems my ambition to achieve what I notionally thought of as better and greater things did not rest easily with the equality and altruism I espoused.

     It is only now when I can see that in my bid to be the first to discover the wheel I had not seen that everyone needs to discover his or her own particular wheel and my ambition was an attempt to deny others this satisfaction. We gain more from the discovery of things than from being told about them so fortunately some of the time at least we ignore being told about things because we have a need to discover them ourselves.

     I used to moan about what a waste of time it was that others needed to discover what I already knew about and what I could tell them. Yet I have seen the process repeated so often now, that I am prepared to accept that there is a human law which says there are some things which we must discover for ourselves.

     So what does this have to do with equality of access to the world's and human society's resources? Well, among these discoveries I have been talking about may have been gaining the insight that though we cannot each have all things in equal measure, there are things that we must have. We should be fed, clothed and sheltered. We should each be cherished and loved.

Compassion before vengeance : a Scottish achievement

Last year's decision by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish government's justice secretary, to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who had been convicted under Scottish law of the Lockerbie bombing, has raised its head in the news again. The decision has been condemned by both Barak Obama and David Cameron during the British prime minister's visit to the United States of America earlier this week.To be clear the Lockerbie aeroplane crash on Wednesday, December 21st, 1988 was the consequence of an outrageous and murderous act which demonstrated the worst of humankind. I continue to mourn the loss of each one of those innocent unique human beings who perished on that day. They are lost to us forever. They can never be brought back. My own grief is brought even more sharply to mind every time I pass by Lockerbie on the way up to Scotland from my home in Devon. They will never be forgotten. 

     However the Scottish government's decision to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi showed the terrorists the best of humankind - compassion for a sickly human being - even though he may have shown himself to be a most deadly enemy of humankind (thought no proof of this was ever provided). I am not a Christian but I understand compassion is part of the Christian creed which, I am told, underpins the ethos of the governance of both the UK and USA. Even if the Scottish government's act of compassion does not influence the cruelly destructive behaviour of terrorists it certainly should make us all feel better human beings. 

     Just to be sure, I am, as a citizen, impressed with, and proud of, a government which exercises compassion. I feel both despair and guilt if I am served by a government that seeks vengeance anywhere it can exercise it and which in my name tortures, or condones the torture of human beings it has wrongly or even rightly apprehended. I am sad to say our United Kingdom government does this.

    

Cable disconnected on the question of graduate pay

     Vince Cable, the government minister for Business has proposed that rather than pay for their tuition at university all graduates should pay a graduate tax once they are in work.* There may be some sympathy for Cable's view that the interests of fairness would be best served if such a tax were to be levied at a rate which reflected the graduate's capacity to pay it. It would not he says, “ be right that a teacher or care worker or research scientist should be expected to pay the same graduate contribution as a top commercial lawyer or surgeon or City analyst.”

      I fear I will be accused of exposing my naivety if I suggest that Cable fails to connect with the more important question, “Why is there such a huge salary differential between a top care worker and a top commercial lawyer?” 

*See for instance, (Cable begins universities revolution, The Guardian, 16.07.10).

The nature of giving and receiving love

     From the first as infants we look to be lovingly cherished. The paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, suggested that a human being could not give love to another if she or he had not received love. From birth most of us receive good enough love from parenting figures.
     
     For many reasons some infants are not given sufficient devotion. A parent's unresolved difficulties from her or his own infancy and childhood may obstruct, to one extent or another, his or her capacity to offer genuine love.  One of the most despairing of experiences for a child is to receive attention that is given grudgingly from someone whom he or she might reasonably expect wholehearted love, (for instance a principal parenting figure). Such a parent shows no satisfaction in the infant's pleasure, and by refusing to acknowledge the infant's attempts to give back loving responses the parent manifestly demonstrates a refusal to love.  The probable and natural outcome for an infant experiencing this is the development within the infant of a mistrust of the promise of mutuality in loving relationships. In turn a tendency may develop in the infant which is represented by unreasonable demands for love. "Love me and me alone or you will be dismissed from my life." Those who have looked after troubled children and young people in group care settings will recognise this cry. 

    In my view if this tendency is not interrupted, as an infant grows through childhood, youth and then into adulthood, she or he may look for self-sacrifice in others as the only evidence of love.

     To have a care for someone naturally, willingly, lovingly without having to think about it is as pleasant for the giver as it is for the receiver and so it brings its own internal rewards. This is not to suggest an impossible idyll. What is important is as psychoanalyst and paediatrician, Donald Winnicott suggested, is that the love given  is 'good enough.'
    
      When someone - who has previously only experienced attention that is reluctantly given - receives good enough love and care, may find it difficult to receive because they are suspicious of it. Is it authentic or is it just like previous false promise?  It comes as a surprise for it is a new experience and has not been an element in the child's earlier life. The child, in not knowing how to receive it, not knowing how to internalise it or reciprocate it, resists it.  The gift of willingly given love has no value for him as a source of warmth and security. He does not trust it. Its secondary material value may stay with him but he cannot accept its spontaneity and its invitation to reciprocality because he can only demand that others should enjoy loving him to the exclusion of all else. For survival reasons a newborn infant naturally demands this but a fault has developed over the period of a person's life if he or she is still demanding absolute attention.

     This is not to say restorative efforts should not be made but they will take time what has developed over years cannot be 'fixed' by  time limited scripted guides. We are we dealing with deep primitive feelings from our pre-verbal experience. It is my own belief that psychodynamic therapy as a group practice or as a one-to-one exercise can, over time, help those who have been deprived of love and help them to develop a feeling of their own real intrinsic value as they experience the determined care and concern another or others have for them in the face of their resistance. In this way they can begin to love themselves. Reparation becomes possible as does the capacity to have a care for others.


Updated 25.3.13 and 27.5.20