People use psychological maps to navigate situations. Some maps are like diagrams of how things stand, some are like small movies about what is likely to happen (these are called memories), and some are verbal guides telling you what to do or how the world works. In many situations, maps just get in the way, like following a recipe for the amount of salt to put in a stew instead of tasting and adjusting. In many situations, the problem is that you’re using the wrong the map, a map of how things used to be, of how to relate to different people in outmoded situations.
If you are using a map of Denver to get around Washington, it doesn’t take you long to realize that the map is no good. That is because the information on the map is fairly clear and the feedback you get from the Washington landscape is fairly clear. The street signs aren’t right, the landmarks aren’t right, and the sun isn’t even setting in the right direction when you’re driving on 14th Street. Psychological maps are harder to invalidate. Everyone agrees with a statement like, Hey, the Lincoln Memorial isn’t supposed to be there, but not everyone agrees with a statement like, Your righteousness is supposed to make other people obedient but it just irritates them.
The other big problem with psychological maps is that you’re attached to them. It’s as if you were personally a member of the Rand family, the McNally family, or the AAA family. To discard the map as erroneous is to question your loyalty to the people who gave you the map. In this respect, psychological growth is to family loyalty as science is to religion. Every new bit of knowledge derived from science contradicts some folk wisdom about how things work; when that folk wisdom is associated with loyalty to God or your family, it’s hard to relinquish.
The upshot is that people defend their parents from accusations of imperfection and incompetence by trashing the feedback from reality and sticking to the map. Ironically, the more incompetent the parent, the more the child idealizes him, since only the most incompetent parent insists he is always right. Also, competent parents produce children who don’t think their well-being is hanging by a thread, a thread held by the parent. When you are totally dependent on something, you have to believe it’s perfect.
Perhaps the most insidious way we defend our parents is by becoming the person who justifies their conduct. If they were brutal, we are annoying, proving as it were that anyone would treat us poorly (or we are equally brutal when annoyed, to prove that brutality is normal). If they were hyper-emotional, we obsessive-compulsively drive people to emotionality (or we’re equally emotional, to prove that’s the only way one can be). If they were domineering, we are childish (or equally domineering). If they were neglectful, we act as if we don’t need much, and neglect our own needs and insist that dependency is a form of whining. If they responded warmly only when we were brilliant, then we act as if brilliance is the only thing that matters. If they told us we were especially wonderful, then we bark at anyone who says we’re merely ordinary. You get the idea.
The greatest value in science is falsifiability, the acceptance of only those propositions that might not be right, that can be tested against reality. All other propositions are either tautologies or religious convictions. It’s true that some laws of nature become convictions, such as the conservation of energy in a closed system and the fact that punishment only seems to work to the punisher. But in science, even these convictions could ultimately be falsified. I sum up this scientific attitude in one word: oops. “Oops” captures the recognition of a mistake with an attitude of fixing it rather than devastation. This conveys the best approach to take when you realize your map, regardless of its origins, has led you astray. But it’s an attitude that develops best under robust parents who don’t get angry or defensive if questioned.
In therapy, the cure for tendencies developed to defend parents is not to join with the therapist in attacking parents. Instead, the cure is to have a therapist you don’t have to defend, a therapist who owns up to mistakes, explores rather than dictates your reactions, and takes your changing psychological states in stride. With such a therapist, you can discover who you are independent of having to protect someone else’s investment in who you are.
Michael Karson, Ph.D. 