"The human being is a very strange animal. He matures when he is about twenty years old. He has been growing for twenty years. For most animals, that is the length of a lifetime. So here is a creature who has grown for twenty years in an attitude and in a position largely of dependency: uncertain of himself, turning—particularly in the earlier years, the first twelve or so—to his parents for help, instruction, protection, approval and punishment.
This creates a psychological structure of dependency. The individual is in an attitude of dependence on parental figures. Then we ask him to become responsible, to assume responsibility, grow up. This is the crisis of the transit from infancy to adulthood, from dependency to responsibility. Something has to be done to make it happen; it won't happen automatically, as we now know from the problem of psychoanalysis.
A person who looks like an adult, but every time responsibility is thrown upon him turns around to see where Mother or Daddy is just hasn't passed that threshold. A neurotic is a person who is having responses of dependency when there ought to be responses of responsibility. That's all it is. So then he goes to a psychiatrist, who tells him, "Grow up."
That's about all the problem is. But that is not so easy, because after you have, you know, the business of a reflex stimulus response, the response takes place—the response of dependence, dependence, dependence—and now suddenly it's got to be responsibility. And so, here it's going: you say, "Oh gee, look, I'm 30 now, I've got to be over here," and the thing gets mixed up".
- Joseph Campbell
No comments:
Post a Comment