The below is an excerpt from my (2007) school thesis draft The Underlying Psyche in the Oppressor / Oppressed System. It may be useful to note that the schema descriptions below are slanted toward how they play out within systems of oppression. These are useful to consider when contemplating life changes, and what personal obstacles or resistance you might be creating.
Schemas[1]
Our responses and actions toward others and events within our environment create systems called schemas. Initially self-generated to avoid anxiety, schemas are a strategy for meeting our basic needs; safety, connection to others, autonomy, and competence among them. We preserve specific emotional learning, adding to this throughout our life. How we see our environment is dependent upon our filter, or lens. When our ever-shifting hierarchy of mental states is triggered our stronger schema comes to the forefront.
Frequently, our responses provide answers to problems that no longer exist. They are wrong choices based on situations that trigger feelings of familiarity with a situation originating in our childhood. Most schema responses are overreactions and are not appropriate responses to difficult situations; instead, they embody ways we have given up on as to what is possible for us. Maslow, quoted by Bennett-Goleman (2001) says, “If the only way to maintain the self is to lose others, then the ordinary child will give up the self”.[2]
Two characteristics are at the heart of our schemas: one is fear and the other is a general hardening against life. I think of this hardening as some combination of immaturity, habit, lack of awareness, and not knowing or wanting to be held accountable to either ourselves or to others. One way to resolve the reliance upon any particular schema is to find better adapted mechanisms for engaging with the world and by facing and moving through the very fears our schemas act to protect us from.
There appears to be some similarity of expression among the schemas; they tend to cluster, or travel in packs, further complicating our interactions. Knowing the schemas others operate under seem to me to be as necessary as the knowledge of one’s own patterns. Following are several of Goleman’s identified schemas with brief descriptions of how they may inform our behaviors specifically, behavior which perpetuates the oppressor / oppressed polarity. Be mindful that the list is not fully inclusive. In the larger atrocities perpetuated by humankind all schemas may come into play by groups as well as by individuals.
Schema of abandonment: The schema of abandonment stems from a fear of being abandoned. Nothing is more terrifying than being alone; than being unable to see our inter-connections with others. We fear that as an individual we will not be able to provide for our basic needs, that we are too small, too insignificant to matter even to ourselves. We do not want to confront our vulnerability and mortality; we seek external validation, being unable to provide internal validation. We will submit to almost any form of humiliation, self-degradation, and abuse rather than to feel our a-part-ness. To lose the other would be the death of our existing psyche. The intolerableness of being abandoned could lead us to develop our own agency and sense of personal power, or one could be mired in depression. In this schema an individual submits to an oppressor, if it appears that the oppressor will at least remain in relationship. If we are desperate enough, we may become the oppressor manipulating the adhesion of a more vulnerable victim.
Schema of Deprivation: In this schema, we are well aware that the other is not going to meet our needs. By entrusting them we are consigning ourselves to an emotional and possibly material world of poverty. They will fail us miserably. We have no one to trust but ourselves, and not infrequently, we are the least trustworthy of all. We are alone, but we are alone out of our own design and desire. If we wish to have our needs met, then we are our own last hope. Our interactions are based upon getting what we want as often as they are based on keeping what we have from the consumption of others. We want so much and have nothing or little to give in return. We may take what others offer, feeling entitled and despising the humiliation of gratitude, having no understanding of how altruistic and mutual reciprocity looks. If someone offers something we feel we need, we invest only what is necessary to keep them around, otherwise maintaining distance should we need to abruptly bolt, usually after finding some other with better looking resources.
Schema of Mistrust: A small minority may be for us; the majority is against us. They are trying to use us for their gain. We approach others with suspicion; they must prove their allegiance to us over and over again. To achieve our desires, we interact on a battleground, fighting to make our wishes known and achieved. Even the most neutral of cues is perceived as a personal threat.[3] When we have found an ally, our distrust often frightens them away. We cannot trust, and in turn cannot be trusted. We learn that while we need interaction with others, some of them flee in the face of our distrust. Strategizing to keep our self-safe, we must erect barriers, lie even, omit the truth of our experience, and say only what we imagine they long to hear. Intimacy is improbable if not impossible. When we have found someone to trust, betrayal is imminent and the chances of forgiveness and healing after betrayal insurmountable.
Schema of Being Unlovable: We are flawed; perhaps by our parent’s imperfect parenting, perhaps because we do not offer enough of whatever is wanted. We lack. We are unworthy. We are ugly to the bone. We have experienced and internalized so many incongruities that we do no longer recognize our self. We are plagued with shame and humiliation not only at the negative though likely perceptually correct projections of others, but at our own negative affirmations. There isn’t enough confidence within to validate our own existence. Others deserve respect, we do not. In desperation we may seek the praise of others, performing tricks for love; or we may in reverse hide our unattractive self from the world to protect our self from the terror of further rejection. If oppressors, we will be tyrants; if submissive, we will acquiesce at any directive.
Schema of Subjugation: We cannot speak up for our self. Our desires are too large, too overwhelming to possibly be achieved; they run counter to the more pressing and necessary needs of others. Our needs upset the precarious balance of relational harmony. We are powerless and quake in fear at our powerlessness. We do not want others to tell us what to do, to rule over us; yet others do so, repeatedly. We have no defenses to stop them; yet have become adept at duplicity, at subterfuge and sabotage, holding more power than we perceive. We are indirect in the extreme, frequently lying even to ourselves about our motives and actions. If offered the opportunity to exert our own desires, we would likely not know how to do so, having previously found the process so painful. To escape these feelings of impotence, we may seek out others upon whom we may impose our wills and wishes. Finding relief and a strange sense of pleasure at that relief, we easily become increasingly abusive.
Schema of Failure: Underneath it all, regardless how successful we are, we are still a failure. We are driven to produce tangible evidence to the contrary, surrounding our self with others and relying on their projections to temporarily feel adequate. We are imposters, knowing our success is a fluke or a cruel trick of the universe which will surely reveal our fraud. We come to impose more and more on our acquaintances with increasingly difficult projections to uphold. Eventually we come to perceive others as equally fraudulent, or as possessing substandard intelligence evident by their believing us worthy. If and when failure does occur, we know it is the way the situation was meant to proceed, making any lasting alterations of our schema problematic to engineer. Not wanting to be un-masked we may avoid contact with others.
Schema of Perfectionism: We are unrelenting in the expectations we impose upon our self. Others may turn in mediocre performances, may exhibit dysmorphic flaws, but we do not allow our self to do so. Nothing is good enough; we set ever increasingly higher standards. If we do achieve mastery, we may then begin resenting that others do not reach this standard. If we are inadequate, we wonder why the performance of others is so much lower than ours. This cuts us off from engaging with others, because not only are we not good enough; they are worse, or we are not good enough and have so objectified them we can’t see the other clearly. We want power, because we know what is right for others. We are critical, bitter, resentful and anxious.
Fear lives at the heart of our schemas. Fear is often an internal device; yet we will do anything to keep the terror out there. Attempting to escape it increases our fears. We may even further complicate it by endowing upon our self a special state of mind and linking with others to form group schemas.
Schema of Exclusiveness: We may exaggerate our outcast role, glorying in it. We join social justice causes without the level of compassion necessary for change. Justice for others is not our true goal; we fight for our own glory, to satisfy our own feelings of righteous indignation or to extract admiration from others. Our agenda may indeed, be for justice; however, we do not take the time to educate ourselves to the full problem, being satisfied that we are right, and others are wrong. We may seek to annihilate the other, mis-placing our anger and objectifying the other. We may also join a cult, an extremist or fundamentalist religion or political group, or a group motivated by racial hatred or homophobia, finding relief from alienation by harming others.
Schema of Vulnerability: We live in fear of catastrophe and join with others to ward off possible natural disasters, political upheaval, or the threat of other groups siphoning our resources. In many ways this appears as the schema of exclusion, but it can also be present in a small group in the workplace struggling through a merger or a re-organization; wherever there is a perceived threat of one’s identity which is often tied as much to what we do as to whom we are. The schema of vulnerability creates unhealthy patterns of dependency as we feel we can’t live without the other, or we perceive that the other cannot live without our efforts. We have no control; situations quickly escalate outside of what any human could reasonably deal with. This generates worry, and often leads us to overly conscientious, to over-plan to ward off danger, to dis-engage as much as possible from life. Paradoxically, we may instead over-compensate and engage in high-risk behavior to show our self that our fear is misplaced.
Schema of Entitlement: Life holds no limits for us. We are better than others. Our parents may have deprived us of affection or material goods, and now it is time we are compensated, usually with more than our share. We lack confidence but abound in conceit. We do not perform well; yet perceive our selves as masters in our prowess and abilities. We despise those who set limits such as personal boundaries, or who hold less than perfect perceptions of our work performance. We see others as having no legitimate rights not only to question us, but also by not behaving or thinking as we wish them to; their uniqueness defies our sense of being special.
Fear, then, as it relates to our connection and separation with others is one of three major elements I believe constitute the underlying psyche of the oppressor/oppression dynamic.[4] Our need for connection is a fierce human drive, and in attachment our experience has a tendency to feel it is greater than we are. This is where the illusion our schemas create become dangerous; we may believe that something larger than life can be incarnated in a single person, or even in an organization or movement. While this is a natural occurrence, true connection is much more complex and profound than what any of these entities can offer us. Until we see the illusion we have, in effect, bound ourselves to the system we created.[5]
[1] Greymond, Alley (2007) The Underlying Psyche in the Oppressor / Oppressed System.
[2] Bennett-Goleman, Tara (2001) Emotional Alchemy. New York: Three Rivers Press. p 87
[3] Bennett-Goleman (2001). p 86
[4] This section on schema’s followed sections on Bowlby’s attachment theories and on object-subject relations.
[5] Hort, Barbara (1996). Unholy Hungers. Boston: Shambhala Press. p 205
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