Psychological Problems and Their Big Deceptions. David W. Shave

way as an infant, to a much more unrecognized “part”-oriented way, as an adult. As a newborn, we were obviously dependent on one person, in one experience, and in one situation. That’s the ultimate state of emotional immaturity. As we moved toward emotional maturity, we unconsciously perceived more parts of people, things, experiences, and situations as helping to adequately meet our basic emotional need. The mass of these parts became larger as we continued to spread out the meeting of our basic emotional need, while most of the individual parts of that enlarging mass became smaller. We first began to pleasurably meet our basic emotional need in reality, on a very noticeable “whole”-oriented basis, in an overly dependent relationship with our mothers. As we approach emotional maturity, we meet more of our basic emotional need in our unconscious, on an unnoticeable “part”-oriented basis, though we might still have very special people, things, experiences, and situations that are recognizably enjoyable to us. But these entities may not be meeting the majority of our basic emotional need, as that need might be more predominantly met in our unconscious, on an unrecognized “part”-oriented basis. Similarly, the majority of the frustrating of our basic emotional need may, at times, be more predominately occurring in our unconscious, on an unrecognized “part”-oriented basis, which might greatly increase our unmet basic emotional need.

      Some people don’t get far from emotional immaturity in life, or they do, but then regress back toward it, because of developing a much larger unmet basic emotional need from a more adverse reality. The more our unmet basic emotional need increases, from more recognizable and unrecognizable frustrations of our basic emotional need, the more we’ll tend to regress toward being overly dependent where it becomes more noticeable how we are attempting to meet our basic emotional need. For instance, a woman recently told me that her daughter, now a third-year college student, refers to her as “Mom” and gets her attention by calling, “Hey Mom!” But when the daughter becomes sick for one reason or another, which increases what is unmet of her basic emotional need, she plaintively addresses her mother like she did much earlier in life, as “Mommy,” while complaining of her discomforts and seeking emotional comfort from her relationship with her mother, as she did when she was much younger. “Mommy, I don’t feel well,” causes her mother to respond with how she emotionally comforted her daughter when the daughter was much younger.

      How we are attempting to meet our basic emotional need becomes more easily discernible as our basic emotional need becomes more unmet. With a sustained increasingly unmet basic emotional need, we can become more vulnerable to becoming overly dependent. The more we become overly dependent, the more emotionally immature we become. In contrast, as our basic emotional need is increasingly met in a disseminated manner, we become more emotionally mature. It then becomes more difficult to recognize how our basic emotional need is being predominately met even if we do have a very special person, or a religious belief, that can meet well our basic emotional need. We can define “emotional maturity” as an emotional independence, and “emotional immaturity” as being overly dependent. Emotional maturity is the state we reach when we have greatly extended the meeting of our basic emotional need, not only amongst a multiplicity of things, people, experiences and situations, in a “whole”-oriented recognizable way, but also from a multiplicity of unconsciously perceived parts of things, people, experiences, and situations, in an unrecognizable way. If we, for any reason, were to develop more of an unmet basic emotional need, as we might from any major recognizable frustration of our basic emotional need, or from an uncomfortable accumulation of unrecognized “part”-oriented frustrations, we would tend to move closer to emotional immaturity, trying to pleasurably meet that need from bigger more noticeable parts. We might eventually seek to meet our increased unmet basic emotional need predominately in a single relationship, on a recognizable “whole”-oriented basis, rather than on a predominately “part”-oriented way, as we would when we’re emotionally mature. The more our basic emotional need is unmet, the more noticeable it might then become that we are attempting to pleasurably meet that need in too much of a “whole”-oriented, “Mommy”-like way, like we did as infants. If we’re not an infant, our trying to meet entirely our basic emotional need from a single human being is invariably fraught with major difficulties, as we shall soon see in a later chapter.

      Chapter Two

      The Illogical Way Our Unconscious Thinks

      Our basic emotional need is essentially a need to engender within us pleasurable or “good” feelings, and no unpleasant or “bad” feelings. Our talking to a perceived listener can engender “good” feelings. It’s our talking that most often initiates, and then maintains, our becoming emotionally attached to others in our interpersonal relationship sphere on an unrecognized “part”-oriented basis. Our talking is the adhesive of our relationships. When friends “stick together,” it’s their pleasurable talking that does the “sticking.” Without that pleasurable “sticking,” we’d be going from one overly dependent relationship to another overly dependent relationship. Our pleasurably talking with others allows us to spread out the meeting of our basic emotional need on a “part”-oriented basis so that we’re not exclusively attached to one person to meet a predominance of our basic emotional need the way we once were when we first started out in life. When our basic emotional need is being more diffusely met from the pleasure of our talking with our friends, and from whatever else we take pleasure in doing, we can avoid becoming overly dependent on another person like we were as infants. Being overly dependent on another person is only advantageous if we are spending most of our time asleep, confined to one place, and having a very limited knowledge of reality. Outside the nursery and the nursing home, our being overly dependent isn’t emotionally advantageous to us.

      Because our basic emotional need can be pleasurably met on an unconscious basis, we won’t always recognize a part of a relationship, experience, or situation that might be “just a little bit” pleasurable to us. Yet that unconsciously perceived “just a little bit” of pleasure can meet “just a little bit” of what might be unmet of our basic emotional need, making us “just a little bit” more emotionally comfortable. These small unconscious gratifications of our basic emotional need that aren’t recognized by us, can be continually occurring, and meeting our basic emotional need sufficiently enough for us to be emotionally comfortable. With a better met basic emotional need, we are better able to maintain a very special “whole”-oriented relationship source that we might have for meeting our basic emotional need in a recognizable way. When we’re not overly dependent, we become less demanding, less possessive, less prone to jealousy, and have less of a potential for initiating anger. Like a statue needing to be firmly supported by a sturdy pedestal to prevent its toppling, that special relationship of ours that we might have, is supported best by a pedestal of many other relationships, experiences, and situations of ours that can meet our basic emotional need on a more unrecognizable “part”-oriented basis. Without that sturdy pedestal of “parts,” our special relationship with someone, that we might greatly admire, could soon become a pile of emotional rubble that we’d do better without.

      What allows us to unconsciously meet a lot of our basic emotional need on an unrecognizable “part”-oriented basis, so that we become more emotionally mature, is the very illogical way our unconscious “thinks.” To unconsciously perceive a part within a relationship, experience, or situation, implies that our unconscious is able to perceive pleasurable parts of our relationships, experiences, and situations that can meet our basic emotional need, as well as unconsciously perceive unpleasant parts of our relationships, experiences, or situations that frustrate our basic emotional need. As such, we may not consciously know what is being unconsciously perceived as meeting our basic emotional need, nor know what is being unconsciously perceived as frustrating that need and creating anger to be stored in our unconscious. This is in contrast to our conscious thinking which perceives our relationships, experiences, and situations as “whole” entities, and where what meets, and what frustrates our basic emotional need, and makes us angry, can be readily recognized. That which recognizably, or unrecognizably, frustrates our basic emotional need will always create a degree of anger that will be either immediately expressed, or will be stored in our unconscious. Our conscious thinking differentiates those recognizable relationships, experiences, and situations that are in the memories of our past that either met or frustrated our basic emotional need, from those