Who Put You In The Cage?

WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE?

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© 2005

It is the fact that man does not experience himself as the active
bearer of his own powers and richness, but as an impoverished
“thing,” dependent on powers outside himself, unto whom he
has projected his living substance.

Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

Depend on no man, on no friend but him who can depend on himself.
He only who acts consciously toward himself, will act so toward others.

John Caspar Lavater (1741 – 1801)
Swiss theologian

Destiny is the scapegoat which we make responsible for all our crimes
and follies; a necessity which we set down for invincible when we have
no wish to strive against it.

Francis Maitland Balfour (1851 – 1882)
English biologist

The other day I had a conversation with a man full of concern for his sister. He was trying to understand why his sister is a liar, a cheat, an alcoholic, a poor mother, and a possessively jealous lover. He told me a horror story of the single parent gone over the edge. It opens this book because it reveals a common cage of modern society.
His sister has not only done severe damage to herself by her profligacy but she uses her child as chattel to play on the guilt of siblings and her mother. The father, who has remarried, has washed his hands of his daughter and will be no party to the charade. At this writing, she wants her son back. The boy’s grandmother is taking good care of him in another state, “with loving attention,” he adds. No mention is made of what might be best for the boy, but the implicit concern, which seems most apparent, is how to placate the delinquent mother.
It is learned that ever since the boy was quite young, he has had to be parent to his inattentive mother, her protector, her only friend, as well as her constant companion while a cadre of boyfriends periodically took her attention and loyalty from him. To her credit, she has never had a boyfriend live with her, but she has always placed the boyfriend, whomever he might be, ahead of her son. This has included leaving the boy alone for as long as two weeks when he was eleven to fend for himself, only returning when the current boyfriend kicked her out.
The boy has done poorly in school, and now with his grandmother, for the first time, is doing better academically, playing sports, and has a positive outlook on life. At this late stage, he is finally being allowed to have a childhood, as he is about to become a teenager. His mother, now between boyfriends, wants him returned to her care, and the law is on her side. Given all this information, I asked, “How old is she?”

“She’s in her mid-forties, never taken hold or settled down.”

This man, also in his mid-forties, who looks younger, suddenly raised his voice in breezy justification. “Of course, it’s not her fault. It’s our father’s fault.”

“How is it your father’s fault?”

“Well, he wasn’t there for her when she needed him now was he?”

“When was that?”

“Well, when she was screwing up.”

“And how old was she when she was doing that?”

“It started, I guess, when she was about eleven or twelve. She started smoking and drinking and stuff like that.”

“Oh! And what did your father do about that?”

“You mean when he found out? Well, she lied about it of course. A teacher caught her smoking in the restroom at school and she was suspended for three days. She said she was holding someone else’s cigarette when the teacher came in. My father didn’t buy her story. My mother did because she wanted to. Then he grounded her. She snuck out, and he grounded her again. She snuck out again. This went on forever. He tried to talk to her but my mother always interrupted him saying he was browbeating her.”

“Was he?”

“Was he what?”

“Browbeating her?”

“No, I don’t think so, though I wasn’t paying much attention. Looking back, I think he was just trying to get her to see what she was doing to herself. Anyway, it didn’t work because then she started to skip school. Did these things constantly. Even came home drunk one night when she was fourteen. My father never knew that. The short of it, he never got her under control. My mother didn’t help. She was always making excuses for her actions, hiding a lot of her mischief from my father, including that first time she got drunk. Her teachers didn’t do any better, nor did the priest. Then one day she snuck out again. My father knew it, and didn’t do anything.”

“Did you ask him why?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

“What did he say?”

“All he said was, ‘Should I care if she doesn’t?’”

“How old was she by that time?”

“I don’t know for sure, maybe about fifteen, sixteen.”

“What did you think of that, your father saying why should he care if she doesn’t?”

“I thought it insensitive. What about you? How would you see it?”

“Me? Oh, I think your father was on to something.”

“On to what?”

“Do you have any children?”

“Yes.”

“Hold old are they?”

“Teenagers.”

“Well, I’m sure then that you understand, at some point, children have to assume control of their consequences. It differs with every child. How about your sister? “

“What do you mean, ‘how about her’?”

“How about her finally taking control of her own life in middle age?”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Well, she’s handicapped.”

“Handicapped?”

“Yes, she has poor eyesight.”

“A lot of people have poor eyesight. I don’t think they see themselves as handicapped.”

“Well, hers is different. Hers is from birth. She had to have eye surgery for being born cross-eyed. I think she developed an inferiority complex out of it.”

Thanks to the professions of psychology and psychiatry, there are always terms for laymen to throw around that are relatively meaningless, which form a cage of deception that covers a lot of sins. Rather than pursue this confusing issue of inferiority complex, I turned my attention to his sister.

“I’ve seen your sister and she’s actually quite pretty, some might say beautiful. She’s tall, blond, blue-eyed with a stunning figure. Yes, I can see where she would attract men.”

“Yeah, I guess so, but a lot of guys have taken advantage of her good looks. I’d say she’s been exploited because of them.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Well, theirs I guess, boyfriends, she’s an easy mark for them.”

“Why do you think she’s an easy mark?”

“Well, she’s a pleaser, isn’t she? She’s kind of needy and doesn’t like to hurt people’s feelings.”

“From what I hear she wasn’t much of a pleaser of your parents, her teachers, not even of her son.”

“That’s different.”

“How so?”

“It’s different in that she, well ah, she has a hatred of her father, you know, kind of a love-hate thing. He’s kind of a big deal and so she has kind of an antagonism towards all guys because of him.”

“Oh, so now you’re a psychologist?”

“No, I’m a tennis pro.”

“That surprises me, not that you’re a tennis professional, but because your comments have the ring of a psychologist making an assessment of a client. Have you discussed this with your psychologist?”

“I don’t have one or need one! Can’t I make my own assessment? I’m not stupid, you know!”

Ignoring this minor outburst, I went on. It was clear that his sister’s condition represented a lot of emotional baggage that he was carrying, and that he was obsessed with somehow getting rid of it, if it meant simply dumping it all on his father.

“So, what I hear you’re saying is that your father is responsible because your sister has never been able to get herself under control; that her good looks have been used against her; that handicapped with poor eyesight, she has never been able to get on top of her need for lying, cheating, smoking, drinking and partying; and that these problems harkened back to when she was an early teenager. Is that a somewhat accurate assessment of what you’re saying?

“Well, pretty much so, yeah.”

“And now you tell me her son has been taken away from her; that this has improved his health and well being; and that she wants him back now, not for his own good, but because she can, that is, legally speaking. Is that also the case?”

“Yes, that’s true, but I still insist it’s our father’s fault. You haven’t addressed that issue.”

“Oh, I see. You’re claiming that she is treating her son as if a piece of property that she can do with as she wills because your father did all these terrible things to her?”

“That’s right.”

I paused a moment not satisfied with my question because, first, it was a closed-end question that could be answered easily with either “yes” or “no,” and the answer given was the only answer you might expect from him. It also failed to move the discussion on to any understanding. I could see why lawyers never asked a question the answer to which they did not already know. So, instead of pursuing what the father did or didn’t do, I decided to ask another question.

“Now, let me ask you a question. What would you have done under the same circumstances? When she snuck out at night, when she started smoking you say at about eleven, when she was going on drinking binges when she was only fourteen, when she started to skip school, when she had several sexual encounters with boys when she was still only in her early teens, what would you have done?”

The sexual encounters were only a guess, but I could see they didn’t cause any raised eyebrows. Instead, he grew pensive.

“What would I have done?”

“Yes, you are a father now. What would you have done then different than your father?”

He pauses, reties his shoe, and then looks at me.

“How should I know? I’m her brother.”

“Well, you have children.”

“Yes.”

“Do they behave like this?”

“No. That’s what I say. I don’t have kids that behave like this. That’s why it’s my father’s fault.”

“Have you ever talked to your father about this?”

“Are you kidding? Hell, no!”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I don’t have a relationship with my father.”

“Oh, you don’t have a relationship with him either?”

“No. He wanted me to study in school, wanted me to find myself and get stuff on my own, like he did, and I just wanted to play sports. Well, he said to me, ‘son, the choices you make you have to live with.’ As it turns out, I’ve made a good living at tennis. I make a six-figure income and have for years.”

“That’s nice. How about your other siblings. You say you have another sister and brother. How have they turned out?”

“Well, my other sister has done very well. She is a wife, mother and professional model with a husband who is a real go-getter. He does better than I do. And my other brother, who never spent a day in college, has done about as well as I’ve done working his way up from day laborer in high school to the executive ranks of an international sign company. Hell, his wife even makes a six-figure income in the beautician business. Then there’s my sister. She’s not done well at all. She’s a waitress and can never seem to hold a job for too long because of her habits if you catch my meaning.”

“You mentioned that your brother didn’t attend college. Did you or any of your other siblings?”

“Yeah, my sister the model and I both went more than four years. Neither of us graduated. She kept changing her major and I always took the minimum hours to devote more time to sports. I’m three hours short of graduating. My sister the waitress and my brother never went to college.”

“Money seems important to you. Is it important to your father?”

“Hell no, but that’s because he’s got it. Academics are important to him. He could paper the walls with all his academic degrees and honors.”

“But I thought you said he came from nothing.”

“He did. But let me tell you something, he’s an oddball. You’d agree with me if you ever met him. He’s never smoked or drank, spends money like it’s the last nickel in his pocket, and prefers his own company to anyone else’s.”

“Why is that?”

“Why is what? I don’t follow you.”

“Why do you think he is the way he is and why the rest of you are the way you are?”

“Well, he was born in the depression. I guess that’s part of it. He told me one time his only way out was using his mind. As long as I’ve known him, he has had a book in his face. It soured me on education because with him school is never out. None of us liked school and my sister the waitress least of all.”

“And is that also your father’s fault? That none of you were interested in school especially her?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“How is that?”

“Well, he tried to show her things as he did the rest of us. When she wasn’t interested, he simply said, ‘Well, that’s the choice you make.’ Just like he said it to me. He didn’t badger her anymore than he did us. He said education was a privilege, not a right, and if we couldn’t appreciate that, he couldn’t make us.”

“You think that was wrong?”

“Well, yes!”

“Why?”

“Well, it didn’t work with her now did it?”

“Maybe she has the life she wants. Did you ever consider that possibility? Maybe she wants to be irresponsible, maybe she wants to live on the fly, maybe she has the attention span of a gnat, maybe all these things add up to what she sees herself as being. How do you feel about that?”

“Well, then you’re saying it’s her fault for the way she’s turned out.”

There were several ways to proceed. I moved papers about my desk as if they were important trying to decide what tact to take. Finally, I said,

“Let me ask you a question. Do you think she has free will?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Has she been allowed the freedom to make free choices in her life, using your father’s expression, whether to stay in school, or not; whether to stay in her bedroom at night, or not; whether to avoid drinking and smoking when she was a teenager, or not; whether to abstain from sex as a young girl, or not; whether to esteem herself as a person, or not; whether…”

“That’s it! You hit upon it. She lacks self-esteem.”

There again he was playing the role of the self-help popular psychologist as analysand. He came to me for confirmation and corroboration of his analysis, not to gather an insight into his sister’s condition or dilemma. He knew what was wrong. All he needed was an authority figure to confirm it.

“And that’s her father’s fault?”

“Absolutely, don’t you agree?”

Instead of answering, I asked,

“What exactly does self-esteem mean to you?”

“What do you mean what does it mean? It means exactly what it is.”

“And what exactly is that?”

“You esteem yourself.”

“You don’t think she esteems herself?”

“Well, no! She wouldn’t be in the mess that she’s in if she did.”

“I get the impression from what you’ve shared with me that she actually esteems herself very much. It seems her self is what dominates her. Her self love. Her flaunting self over commitment to others, at home, in school, in her relationship to her son, in her relationship to her job, in…”

“How do you know she’s that way on the job?”

“You told me she had difficulty holding a job. I assumed she is also very convincing in that it is always someone else’s fault when she loses one.”

“It’s true, but how did you know that?”

“The pattern is there. She can’t stand any pressure, any stress, or anything that nullifies the dominance of her self first, second and always.”

“I don’t think I quite understand that.”

“Let me ask you this, do you help her out financially when she gets into trouble?”

“Of course, I’m her brother.” Then to further justify this approach, he added, “Every time she gets into financial straits I help her, so does my sister, so does my brother. We’ve bailed her out of jail when she broke into her boyfriend’s apartment and trashed it. We got her son back when she ran into trouble with the social services. But lately, well, social services’ patience is wearing thin and we don’t know if we can save her relationship with her son. We’ve sent him off to our mother, but she wants him back now, and it’s not good for the boy. It is the reason I’m here. We’ve run out of options. She is forty-five and her son turns thirteen soon.” The man bent forward his head in his hands as if he had just lost the tennis match of his life.

“So, you’re saying each time she falls on her face there is a safety net to break her fall. She keeps falling, and falling, but the net is always there.”

“That’s right.”

“You say that proudly. Why?”

“What do you mean, why? She’s my sister. She’s my flesh and blood. That’s why.”

“How about you? What’s your safety net?”

It was as if I hit his funny bone. He sprung alive, waved his arms in the air as if in surrender, and then bent over in ruckus laughter.

“I don’t have one. It’s up to me. I’m a self-employed kind of guy. If I screw up, I’m out of business. One club can so damage my reputation that I couldn’t find another job not only in this country, but also in this cotton picking tennis world. That tells you something about my industry.”

“So, you go by rules?”

“Yes.”

“You make choices?”

“Yes.”

“You respect authority, accept responsibility, and abide by the rules that govern your life.”

“Yes to all that. Your point?”

I ignored his question.

“You are sensitive to the needs and demands of your clientele?”

“Yes, yes, yes! Would you make your point?”

“You do all these things, accept all these pressures, and realize as a result that you are successful. That’s my point.”

“Yes, so?”

“Now, let us look at your sister. Does she do any of these things?

“No, but that’s my point. She doesn’t do any of these things. But she can’t because, as you can see from what I’ve told you, she’s not in control.”

“Now I come back to my question again, are you, your brother and sister helping her get under control?”

“No, but as I told you that’s why I’m here. We’re doing the best we can, and whose going to help her if we don’t?”

“How about herself?”

“She’s not capable.”

“How do you know? Did you ever think by helping her that you were in fact hurting her? That you were weakening her resolve to help herself? That in helping her you are actually destroying her resolve to carry her own baggage?”

“That’s kind of funny.”

“Why so?”

“Well it comes back to my father.”

“Yes?”

“A long time ago when my sister was first married. She’s divorced now. She and her husband purchased a very expensive car with no income whatsoever. They couldn’t make the payments. She came to my father and told him, ‘I need $800 for two car payments today or they’re going to take my car from me.’ Guess what my father said?”

“I have no idea.”

“My father smiled at her, and said, ‘I’m going to do you a favor.’”

“And?”

“He said, ‘I’m not going to loan you the money.’”

“And?”

“Well, he could have loaned her $8,000 and it wouldn’t have hurt him, but he wouldn’t loan her a measly $800 to keep her car.”

“Do you think it was a matter of the amount of money or something else?”

“What else could it be?”

“Could it be he didn’t want to create a codependency with her?”

“Oh come on now. Don’t start talking to me in that psychological double talk. I’ve read those books. They’re pure BS!”

“No, I’m quite serious when I say that. Codependency is real.” Then a thought occurred to me. “Why is it do you think that you remember what your father said about that car purchase? Why do you think that stuck in your mind?”

“Because I’ve hated him ever since for doing this to her.”

Rather than challenge his thinking on this, his face told me he held ripe bitterness toward his father still, I decided on another approach.

“Let me ask you another question, when your sister gets in deep yogurt, does she ever call on your father?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. No chance.”

“Why do you think that is so?”

“Well, he’s a heartless bastard and she knows the answer doesn’t she?”

“Now, imagine if she got the same answer from the rest of you, imagine what would happen then? You said she’s been in jail and you’ve bailed her out.”

“True.”

“That she was going to be kicked out of her apartment and you came up with two months rent that she didn’t use on the apartment but spent otherwise, still getting kicked out of her apartment.”

“That’s also true. My brother-in-law even gave her three-months advance for the rent on another apartment, and she never paid a month’s rent with that money either.”

“Well, well, well. We see a pattern here don’t we?”

“Yeah, I guess kind of.”

“I’m going to say something now, and I don’t mean any disrespect to your sister or the rest of your family. Your sister is in a cage. And there is not one steel bar of that cage that she did not purchase and install herself. However, she did purchase some of the bars with money given to her by you and others. No one but herself marked off the space, and constructed those barriers. Each bar is an excuse she has provided to avoid the consequences of her actions. The cage is enclosed in the wire mesh safety net that you and your family have provided her over the years. She did this to herself and has not learned what she has done. She’s living in a cage, and she put herself in it, while you and your family are ensuring that she never escapes.”

“I think that is a little harsh.”

“Oh, no, it’s not harsh enough.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she doesn’t understand it nor do you.”

* * * * *
By the nature of our species, the newborn child cannot survive without tender loving care for a number of years. But then a point is reached between nurturing and nature, between parents as caretakers and the child discovering its own essence.
The parental fallacy is a cultural phenomenon when nurturing becomes an obsession at the expense of the individual’s nature. Parents epitomize authority figures. They are expressed in the double-binding mother, the seductive mother, and now the absent, possessive or punitive mother. The latter has previously been identified with the father.
Notice that all of these parental fallacies draw attention away from the child and back to the parents. Parents always worry about such questions as: have I the right attitude, am I too strict, too lenient, or am I good enough parent? These self-referenced narcissisms give meaning to the parental fallacy, which spins off into parental fantasy. The child is protected from ever discovering what makes it tick, or the meaning and consequences of right and wrong because the parent is always there to put a positive spin on otherwise untoward behavior.
We have a parental society, which sponsors a parental culture, which in turn gives moment to parental fallacies on every level of society. Our schools, churches, workplaces, and our government perform as caretakers, providing a cage of security, a place of regression where we as members of that community need never grow up.
We even see parents as mentors, which they cannot be or cannot perform because the role between caretaker and mentor are different. A caretaker’s focus is on the person; the mentor’s focus is on the person’s talent. Mentors, however, often behave as parents. Consequently, mentoring has become not unlike that of parental authority with the ready answers and developmental ideas for the mentored without so much as a hint of the invisible load that is at the heart of the mentored.
A point is reached, therefore, in the present climate of this parental fallacy that the individual must become parent to the man, separate from his parents and those who would mentor him, and take charge of his own mentoring and development.
Self-mentoring is an idea whose time has come to combat a society, which forgives all transgressions. This society discourages the idea of genius because that would mean we differ widely in talent and ability, which we do. As a result, society places everyone in some kind of a cage. In many ways, our present society has become an unconditional positive parental fantasyland. It has not made us happy campers. We will now explore why this is so in some depth.

* * * * *