Early Deprivation and Love Defects
We understand that the deprivation of physical touch early in life can lead to emotional poverty and violent behavior later. Observation and study of orphans who have been so deprived has led to the discovery of Reactive Attachment Disorder, a crippling incapacity to form and maintain the emotional bonds that constitute normal loving. There is no doubt that we are all the result of our past, both genetic and environmental. To understand why we sometimes act so strangely against our own best interests, we must try to understand what happens to us in childhood.
Simply put, a child deprived of physical closeness early in life will develop an extraordinary need for affection, along with a paradoxical fear of it. Since this need is unlikely to be fulfilled in adult life leading to intense (usually unconscious) frustration and since fear (a common precursor to anger) is bound up with it, some emotionally and physically deprived persons are prone to act out periodically with violence.
And that’s not the only way bad love screws us up in childhood. Far from it. the less care we received, the less we are capable of giving. a well-known study found that parents who abused their children were abused as children themselves, deprived of physical affection and had poor sex lives. Female child abusers are usually nonorgasmic.
Most people don’t understand perversions. Take sadomasochism, for example. how does someone experience erotic pleasure from giving or receiving pain and humiliation? These people usually don’t understand it themselves and are astounded and ashamed by their own behavior. Look to their childhoods. a child will bond emotionally with bad love as readily as with good love. To a child, anything is better than abandonment. the child comes to associate pain with the only kind of security he’s ever known. Humiliation and pain are familiar, psychologically and physically linked with the bad love received from a neglectful or abusive parent.
It becomes a legacy in some families, often in those that are well meaning and want to produce healthy, happy offspring. many adults are terrified of their own sensuality and unconsciously deprive their children of the loving touch they need. This results in a spiral of obsessive sexuality (a poor substitute for love), emotional perversity and an increasing propensity for violence.
Early Deprivation and Love Defects