Tony White

The need to define what we are not.

When I did my time in prison I got quite friendly with one of the officers. We had many a good discussion over the years and I found him to be a very bright man with some quite insightful thinking. Often when there was ‘lock down’ of some kind (and thus he had little to do), he would come down to the ‘psychs’ room and we would have our fervent discussions. As I said he was very bright but somewhat of a lost soul. One of those people who are just passing through life with little direction. I must also add that he and his wife and various others did engage in some quite unusual sexual practices. However enough said of that!

Over time I sort of became his defacto counsellor as he began confiding in me more and more, which I was prepared to go along with. Why? Firstly because I liked him, I also liked our stimulating debates and thirdly because he was of a significant standing in the politics of the prison officers. When working in a prison there are some who are real ‘hard arses’ on the staff so it is a great idea to have a foot in the door with the officers. If you get on the outer with the officers they can make life very difficult for you. So he was sort of an insurance policy for me in that way.



One of the arguments that I would present to him to which he would vigourously debate against was that society needed its prisons and prisoners. They had a positive effect on society and that if ever there were no prisoners or law breakers then society may eventually collapse in on itself. This could happen because the society would loose its sense of identity.

Prisoners allow us to define what we are not. “Those people in prison are prisoners and we are not like them”. It allows us to get a sense of “Them and Us”. By doing that we then begin to get a sense of who and what “Us” is and thus we get a sense of our group identity in that way. Prisoners allows us to maintain our group identity in this way.

Indeed then we have wars. One sometimes hears the phrase, “The war on crime”. When ever a society in engaged in some kind of war it allows it to define what we are not - we are not the enemy. Thus we get a sense of who we are, we get more of a sense of what “Us” is. If we didn’t have this then perhaps the groups identity would fade and that is one thing humans do not like at all! So this could be argued as one of the psychological bases of war.



At an individual level we find the same psychological mechanism at work. We hear a lot about the child’s separation from the parent. After it forms an attachment to mother it then sets about breaking that down by separating from the parent. It actually does two things. It separates and it individuates. As the young child separates it stops using mothers identity and must begin establishing it’s own and thus becomes its own individual. So how does it do that?

At birth an infant is all Free Child and has no identity of its own. It has no individuation. Its separation and individuation is seen to occur at three crucial stages of development. 2 years of age, 4 years of age and adolescence. It is at these three ages when it develops its own identity.

These three stages are know as the negativistic stages. That is, at these ages many of the children are found to be highly negativistic, antagonistic and rebellious against the parents. Why would they be like that? One reason is that they are defining what they are not, they are establishing who the enemy is, which is most often the parents. This of course is when the RC or Rebellious Child ego state is extensively used by the child and teenager.


He has defined what he is not.



So the teenager finds out what he is not which partially allows him to define who he is. If he is also allowed to do lots of different things then he also finds out the things that he actually likes himself. If he is allowed to do things then this allows him to develop his views and beliefs on this and that then he will complete the identity establishing process. He becomes fully individuated. Slowly he starts to shift from individuating by rebelling to individuating by the Free Child. If he is afforded the opportunity to define what he is not then he can start to define what he is.



This is a delicate shift for the parent or psychotherapist to handle. The child’s shift from RC individuation to FC individuation. Generally there will not be a clear point at which the change occurs but the process usually starts off with a dominance of RC individuation as the diagram shows. If the normal process is allowed to evolve then slowly there is a shift to FC individuation. This means for some time there will be RC and FC individuation occurring together until the RC ceases and one is just left with the FC individuation.


Why do teenagers do this? Because they can. FC individuation.




So firstly the child sets about defining what it is not and then it can start to define what it is. If the parent makes the wrong ‘moves’ then the child can get stuck in RC individuation and the FC individuation is hampered. If this happens to a significant degree then the person will lack a sense of its identity. Unless he can change it though some intensive psychotherapy he will then spend the rest of his days being rebellious or conforming and he will never really be able to answer the question, Who am I? That can only be done when the FC individuation is allowed to occur.

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