Investing in neuroses: do children need to forgive toxic parents

Alina Vitukhnovskaya, writer

A dilemma immediately arises - is there an excuse for parents devoid of intelligence? Here we run the risk of being accused of almost "fascism", but we still have the right to ask questions. Who will be responsible for the genetic and psychological trauma caused by irresponsible parents to their children?

Many monstrous stories were heard in the program - some girls were beaten with their heads on the table, others were trained until they lost consciousness in art schools and various circles, out of habit, teaching exclusively what would never be useful in life. Despite the fact that many families paid great attention to allegedly cultural education, they managed not to give any basic ideas about the world, in principle.

In general, analyzing and comparing various stories of this kind, observing the life of certain families on a generational scale, you understand that a significant part of Soviet and post-Soviet people seem to be deliberately reproducing tragedies. Investing in children only their own neuroses, fears and complexes.

There were a wide variety of responses to my survey on social media. Some of which boil down to an absolute lack of understanding of the problem. For example, one of my readers believes that my claims are based on some kind of psychological inconsistency that I cannot get rid of. Namely, the inability to forgive their parents. Here's what he writes:

“I can say for sure that no therapy helps to forgive your parents if a person believes in free will. That is, he believes that the parents could have acted differently, but acted as they did of their own free will. And no therapeutic tricks can stop it. The person will still be offended.

The only solution is determinism. Understanding human actions as predetermined, and events as predetermined, solve the problem of resentment, because the offending agent himself disappears. A person says goodbye to the illusion of free will and lives on in peace".

I answered him literally the following: firstly, I have no need to forgive anyone. Why do I need it? Secondly, your interpretation of human nature makes a person an absolute subjectless person, a hostage of dictated fate, a kind of animal mechanism. Personally, I am not such a being. To be guided by your conclusion is only to indulge and aggravate the evil done by irresponsible people.

Here I stand in solidarity with the anti-natalists. For the logic of the all-forgiving is based on the far from obvious fact that life itself, whatever it may be, is an unconditional good. Whereas anti-natalists reasonably object:

1. Suffering is evil.

2. Pleasure is a blessing.

3. The absence of suffering is a blessing, even if this blessing is not experienced by anyone.

4. Lack of pleasure is not evil if there is no one for whom this lack of pleasure would be a deprivation".

The fixation on the topic of forgiveness is quite common, alas. Although the problem is not forgiveness and unforgiveness. But they do not want to understand this. A typical example of such reactions is this line:

“Disadvantaged parents (I'm not talking about the level of intelligence, or about the material condition, or about the position in society) cannot give their child a successful emotional upbringing. (it happens, but sooooo rare)

The problems inherent in the family have to be solved already at an age when all these flaws interfere with living, creating relationships, raising their own children...

Parents cannot be changed, time cannot be returned. It is necessary to forgive and understand that they simply could not do otherwise. This is not an excuse for them, but a condition for getting rid of problems.

And the statements I WILL NEVER FORGIVE THEM - is a pathos"

For a long time I lived in my children's ideas about the world, because, among other things, reality was not presented to me, shown, presented. And vice versa, what was presented as reality by the adults around me was a fake - from cultural imprints, fashionable in the intelligentsia, to social and cultural ones - absent in principle. After all, a Soviet person was apolitical and even being a nominal anti-Soviet, as a rule, he did not go deep into the jungle of the ontology of the political, remaining somewhere on the verge of guitar strumming by the fire and reading "forbidden" authors (forbidden only nominally, since everything was already allowed in my childhood)...

The so-called reality was woven exclusively from blundering pseudo-humanistic tales, hypocrisy, lack of will and irresponsibility. And all this reality, together with kindergarten sticky compote and semolina porridge, was forcibly poured into our children's mouths.

The system of social education worked in such a way that virtually all Soviet citizens were raised as children of a huge social machine, and in such a way that they then transferred all their infantilism into their families, literally bringing it down on their children, laying the foundations for them of a weak, neurotic character.

Of course, they may object to me that adults should not drag along with them the burden of childhood grievances and worries. This is certainly true. But to reject your personal past as a fact and to forgive those who harmed you in one way or another means allowing similar experiences to repeat themselves, if not in your own life, but in the lives of others.