Ричард Бах

Министерство общего и профессионального образования

Свердловской области.

Правовой Лицей имени Е. Р. Кастеля города Екатеринбурга.

Образовательная область: Филология.

Предмет: Английский язык.

Тема: “I preserve his future,

he preserves

my past.” (R. Bach). We all are from the childhood.

Исполнитель: Ученица 10 «Б» класса

Фамилия И. О.: Калашникова С. И.

Научный руководитель: Воронова М.В.

17 февраля 2001 года

Contents.

“I preserve his future, he preserves my past” (R. Bach).

We all are from the childhood.

1. Introduction (part 1)………………………………………………3

2. Part 2…………………………………………………………5

3. Conclusion (part 3)…………………………………………14

4. The list of literature………………………………………..17

Introduction (Part 1)

Everybody wants to know what is happening around him or her? We hear

about criminals, children’s creams and strange behaviour? If analyse the

last ten news-programmes, we’ll understand than the kid’s problems stays on

the same level with news about gas or oil. The children’s problems are the

most interesting and important one for the majority of psychologists. They

tries to understand everything what is connected with children, because

everybody believes that we can change a kid, but we can not do the same

with a man. Frankly speaking I disagree with this statement. Is it means

that a person can not understand and solve all his problems? I think, that

everybody does not believe in this.

Really, nowadays everyone is surround by a great number of problems.

Some of them are really easy, and we don’t need any help in their solving.

However, life is not so primitive, the majority of situations are really

strange. If we want to cope with such difficulties, we must understand the

roots of them. We will never be good at chemistry, physics and math

without knowing the basic rules and laws. The same is with the roots of

human behaviour. We can not learn about men’s conduct in different

situations, else we’ll be able to claimant people’s stresses and predict

human reaction (it can be very useful from the criminal side). Or, may be,

we can ..!

There are a lot of points of view on a problem, where the origin of

this or that conduct is. Freud came to believe that all the roots of

possible complicates are laying in the sexual life of a person, Bacon found

them in the inward life, in men’s ghosts and idols. A great group of people

believes in mystic power, which controls people’s existents. It means that

everything has its own beginning. If we know the origins, we will be able

to give a right estimation to the situation and, of course, to react in a

proper way. But, if we can learn about math rules from the special books,

we can’t do the same, if we want to find a local answer to the question:”

where are the roots of human behaviour and reaction? Of course, there are a

lot of theories and conclusions, which are connected with our topic.

Nevertheless, the majority of them touch upon a question about the

childhood in any case. They are confident that all information about our

future life (precondition) we get in an early age, that our problems are

connected with childhood and the roots of good and evil are not in the

genes as commonly believe, but in the earliest days of life. This idea is

rather new and conflicting, but very popular and under discussion. In this

case it will not be only interesting but greatly important to learn such

material inside out, and define at last, is it a solid theory, because, if

it is, we’ll be able to understand and claimant the impediments after

memorising our past. This problem is really dillicate. For it solution, we

should work with an enormous quantity theories of different thinkers (like

Freud or Birn) and writers (like Bach and Coalio). The main idea is that

the majority of conclusions belong to the pen of European scientists.

Considering the importance of this question, it is easy to understand that

it’s necessary to work with English writing material, because different

reports can give us inexact information, and make incorrect opinion of

situation. For this reason, my paper is in English. I think, it is not

very difficult to understand the aim of this work, of course. It

consists of consolidation the theories about the questions that all our

problems are from childhood, analysis of this material and response to the

issue of correctness of these ideas.

Part 2

Human infants seem so weak and helpless at birth that it is hard to

believe they are capable of much interaction with their environment. In

fact, not too long ago many people still wondered whether new-born could

even see or hear at all. In the last several decades, however, research on

the new-born has expanded greatly, and a very different view has emerged.

We now know that human infants are born with sensory systems that are

impressively able. They process information and learn about their

surroundings from the very moment of birth. They learn the world and try to

understand how to survive in it. Children acquire an enormous amount of

information in the twelve years of live. For Piaget’s mind “to this age

the personality is “shaped””. [1]

Everything what children have learned during this years stays in the

subconscious. Of course, people cannot remember the experience of such

early age, but they use it, calling - intuition (instinct) or presentiment.

So, our reactions and deeds “depend on what we had put in our mind” [2]Lots

of psychologists, the main of them is Freud, “came to believe that current

problems can often be traced back to childhood experiences.” [3]

“Unfortunately, these early experiences are not usually available to

consciousness. Only through great effort can they be coaxed into active

memory,” [4]– said Freud to this problem.

The ability to memorise depends on the development of brains. And,

in each term, the abilities a person’s brain can develop depend on

experiences in the first three years of life, the childhood. Studies on

abandoned and severely maltreated Romanian children, as an example,

revealed striking lesions in certain areas of the brain. The repeated

traumatization has led to an increased release of stress hormones which

have attacked the sensitive tissue of the brain and destroyed the new,

already build-up neurones. The areas of their brains responsible for the

“management” of their emotions are 20-30% smaller than in other children of

the same age. Obviously, all children (not only Romanian) who suffer such

abandonment and maltreatment will be damaged in this way.

The attitude to the children always has its results. An American

writer Alice Millir tried to understand, why some people (Hitler, Stalin,

Mao and common one’s) are so aggressive. She wrote:” I found it logical

that a child beaten often and deprived of loving physical contact would

quickly pick up the language of violence. For him this language became the

only effective means of communication available. However, when I began to

illustrate my thesis by drawing on the examples of Hitler, Stalin, Mao,

Ceacescu, when I tried to expose the social consequences of child

maltreatment, I first encountered strong resistance. Repeatedly I was

told,” I, too, was a battered child, but that did not make me a criminal.

When I asked these people for details about their childhood, I was always

told of a person who made the difference, a sibling, a teacher, a

neighbour, just somebody who liked or even loved them but, at least in most

cases, was unable to protect them. Yet through his presence this person

gave the child a notion of trust and love. I call these persons “helping

witnesses”.”[5] So, we see that these people became aggressive because

they lack love and protection in the childhood. It means that we depend

not only from our common surrounding, but from “the people from the

past” [6]If a person lacked protection in the childhood, he will feel

himself uncomfortable and “even in a great horror” [7]in the company

of people, he’ll want to protect himself and that’s why his reaction too

ordinary things will be rude. Many have also been lucky enough to find

“enlightened” and courageous “witnesses”, people who helped them to

recognise the injustices they suffered, the significance the hurtful

treatment had for them, and its influences on their whole life. They may

even suffer much in their life, may become drug addicted, and have

relationship problems, but thanks to the few good experience in their

childhood usually do not become criminals. “The criminal outcome seems to

be connected with a childhood that didn’t provide any helping witness,

that was a place of constant threat and fear,”- [8]Miller thought.

The parents attitude to the kid finds its mirroring in his future

personality and behaviour. It has been observed again and again that

parents who tend to maltreat and neglect their children do it in ways which

resemble the treatment they endured in their own childhood, without any

conscious memory of their early experiences. Fathers who sexually abuse

their children are usually unaware of the fact that they had themselves

suffered the same abuse. It is rather in therapy, even if ordered by the

courts, that they can discover, sometimes stupefied, their own history. And

realise thereby that for years they have attempted to act out their own

scenario, just to get rid of it. The majority of psychologists believe that

the explanation of this fact is that “information about the cruelty

suffered during childhood remains stored in the brain in the form of

unconscious memories. For a child, conscious experience of such treatment

is impossible. If children are not to break down completely under the pain

and the fear, they must repress that knowledge.[9]” But the unconscious

memories of the child who has been neglected and maltreated, even before he

has learned to speak, drive the adult to reproduce those repressed scenes

over and over again in the attempt to liberate himself from the fears that

cruelty has left with him. For example, The German reformer Martin Luther

was an intelligent and educated man, but he hated all Jews and he

encouraged parents to beat their children. He was no perverted sadist like

Hitler's executioners. But 400 years before Hitler he was disseminating

this kind of destructive counsel. According to Eric Ericson's biography,

Luther's mother beat him severely even before he was treated this way by

his father and his teacher. He believed this punishment had "done him good"

and was therefore justified. The conviction stored in his body that if

parents do it then it must be right. This example shows, nothing that a

child learns later about morality at home, in school or in church will ever

have the same strong and long lasting effect as the treatment inflicted on

his or her body in the first few days, weeks and months. “The lesson

learned in the first three years cannot be expunged,” –[10] said Freud.

So we can see that if a child learns from birth that tormenting and

punishing an innocent creature is the right thing to do, and that the

child's suffering must not be acknowledged, that message will always be

stronger than intellectual knowledge acquired at a later stage. Alice

Miller made really great research work and her conclusions give us, at

last, the hole picture of this situation:“ Usually away from home either

praying in church or running the priest's household. Stalin idealized his

parents right up to the end of his life and was constantly haunted by the

fear of dangers, dangers that had long since ceased to exist In the lives

of all the tyrants I analyzed, I also found without exception paranoid

trains of thought bound up with their biographies in early childhood and

the repression of the experiences they had been through. Mao had been

regularly whipped by his father and later sent 30 million people to their

deaths but he hardly ever admitted the full extent of the rage he must have

felt for his own father, a very severe teacher who had tried through

beatings to "make a man" out of his son. Stalin caused millions to suffer

and die because even at the height of his power his actions were determined

by unconscious, infantile fear of powerlessness. Apparently his father, a

poor cobbler from Georgia, attempted to drown his frustration with liquor

and whipped his son almost every day. His mother displayed psychotic

traits, was completely incapable of defending her son and was but were

still present in his deranged mind. His fear didn't even stop after he had

been loved and admired by millions.” [11]

But, what happen with people who were loved in their childhood?

They have a better live without violent and horror. There are people who

grow up with loving and protecting parents who “can later find a kind,

sympathetic partner, can organize their life and become good parents”,

even “if they have to go through the horror of a concentration camp during

their adolescence” [12] after learning about Pablo Picasso we can mention

the severe trauma that the child Pablo Picasso underwent at the age of

three: the earthquake in Malaga in 1884, the flight from the family's

apartment into a cave that seemed to be more safe, and eventually

witnessing the birth of his sister in the same cave under these very scary

circumstances. However, Picasso survived these traumas without later

becoming psychotic or criminal because he was protected by his very loving

parents. They were able to give him what he most needed in this chaotic

situation: empathy, compassion, protection and the feeling of being safe in

their arms.

Thanks to the presence of his parents, the two enlightened witnesses

of his fear and pain, not only during the earthquake but also throughout

his whole childhood, he was later able to express his early, frightening

experiences in a creative way. In Picasso's famous painting "Guernica" we

can see what might have happened in the mind of the three-year-old child

while he was watching the dying people and horses and listening to the

children screaming for help on the long walk to the shelter. Small children

can go unscared even through bomb-raids if they feel safe in the arms of

their parents.

It is much more difficult for a child to overcome early

traumatizations if they are caused by their own parents. Here we have an

another example. I analysed the childhood of the writer Franz Kafka. I’ll

try to show that the nightmares he describes in his stories recount exactly

what might have happened to the small, severely neglected infant Kafka. He

was born into a family in which he must have felt like the hero of The

Castle (ordered about but not needed and constantly misled) or like K. in

The Trial (charged with incomprehensible guilt) or like The Hunger Artist

who never found the food he was so strongly longing for. Thanks to the love

and the deep comprehension of his sister Otla in his puberty, his late

"helping witness," Kafka could eventually give expression to his suffering

in writing. Does it mean that he therefore overcame his traumatic

childhood? He could indeed write his work, full of knowledge and wisdom,

but why did he die so early—in his thirties—of tuberculosis? It happened in

a time when he knew many people who loved and admired him. However, these

good experiences could not erase the unconscious emotions and memories

stored in his body.

Kafka was hardly aware of the fact that the main sources of his

imagination were deeply hidden in his early childhood. Most writers aren't.

But the amnesia of an artist or writer, though sometimes a burden for their

body, doesn't have any negative consequences for society. The readers

simply admire the work and are rarely interested in the writers' infancy .

However, the amnesia of politicians or leaders of sects does afflict

countless people, and will continue to do so, as long as society remains

blind to the important connections between the denial of traumatic

experiences in early childhood and the destructive, criminal actions of

individuals.

An American writer, Richard Bach, is well knowing by his Fantasy and

Philosophy. He solves difficult problems, which are connected with “Human

psychology”. He does not have special education, Richard is only a pilot

(in any case, he was…before he began to write). His first book was “Sea-

gull”, than “breach through the eternity”, “One”, “Plane” etc. In this

stories and novels Bach taught upon lots of different topics, and one of

them is about childhood. This man deadly believe that a person cannot live

without his past. And what do we have there, in the past? Of course,

childhood! This topic glassed in one of the latest work: “Running from the

safety”. The main idea of the plot is that “Richard-men” [13]( he prefers

to write about himself rather then to work with heroes) meat “Richard-

kid”. It means that he, the old one, meat in his own world a little boy of

eight years old. This boy is “HE”, but from the past. In this novel Richard

Bach tried to answer the the question: ”What will you do if you meat

yourself-from-the-past?” The own correct response he has able to find is

“to learn everything what you can from this kid”. What can you learn from

the little child from your past? What he can give us? This questions can

appeared in the mind of everybody… in “Running…” Bach neatly respond to

them: “he remembers all what I have forgot” Really, we have spoken about

this already, all information which people get in an early age cannot be

remembered further. But kids retain all this, cause it still in their

active memory. Some people had critical moments in their childhood, which

influence their lifes, but they cannot remember this episode – the most

impotent one – and that’s why cannot change the situation. For example, a

man is a looser all his live. He cannot do anything with this. Why? After

memorising his childhood, he remembered that he was whipped by schoolboys

and after this all the school was laughing at him…He understood everything

and tried to change the attitude to this situation at last we won for first

time. Richard Bach had such critical moments too. At first, the death of

his brother and his climbing to the water-tower. After this he understood

that he was not a little boy, and “left the family and common world”

after this moment he decided to become a pilot and “made the biggest fault”

in the live: went to the army. Why he did it? For what he left the family?

Why his behaviour was such as it was? Richard cannot understand. But after

the talk with Dickey (Little Bach) he was able to explain all this to

himself and “ the desert” – Dickey’s world – “converted in a field of green

grass”. At first Richard was not able to “survive in the dark of the mind”.

But Dickey was able to return to Bach “the part of himself”, and he did

it. Now he could be “ out of space and time”. Telling things about the live

and answering to Dickey’s questions, Bach found lots of responses for his

own issues. “Dickey knows everything about the childhood, and I knows

everything about one of his Futures”, - told Richard to his wife. So, the

boy could find all the answers in several months, and spare 50 years of

had learning the live. The man remembered the half of his life and

understood the roots of all the problems. And both took that they could

not live without each other. “I preserve his future, he preserves my past”,

- said Richard Bach and he was absolutely right.

Conclusion (Part 3).

So, we can see that the question about the Childhood is really important.

It found the glass in many spheres of human life and men’s deeds. It is not

a science theory, but a reality. We know that every cow is an animal

doesn't include the statement that every animal is a cow. It has been

proved that many adults have had the good fortune to break the cycle of

abuse. Yet I can certainly aver that I have never come across persecutors

who weren't themselves victims in their childhood, though most of them

don't know it because their feelings are repressed. The less these

criminals know about themselves, the more dangerous they are to society. So

I think it is crucial to grasp the difference between the statement, "every

victim becomes a persecutor," which is wrong, and the statement, "every

persecutor was a victim in his childhood," which I consider true. The

problem is that, feeling nothing, he remembers nothing, realises nothing,

and this is why surveys don't always reveal the truth. Yet the presence of

a warm, enlightened witness ... therapist, social worker, lawyer, judge ...

can help the criminal unlock his repressed feelings and restore the

unrestricted flow of consciousness. This can initiate the process of escape

from the vicious circle of amnesia and violence. Working toward a better

future cannot be done without legislation that clearly forbids corporal

punishment toward children and makes society aware of the fact that

children are people too. The whole society and its legal system can then

play the role of a reliable, enlightened and protecting witness for

children at risk, children of adolescent, drug addicted criminals who may

themselves become predators without such assistance. The only reason why a

parent might smack his children is the parent's own history. All other so-

called reasons, such as poverty and unemployment, are pure mystification.

There are unemployed parents who don't spank their children and there are

many wealthy parents who maltreat their children in the most cruel way and

teach them to minimise the terror by calling it the right education. With a

law prohibiting corporal punishment towards children, people of the next

generation will not have recorded the highly misleading information in

their brain, an almost irreversible damage. They will be able to have

empathy with a child and understand what has been done to children over

millennia. It is a realistic hope to think that then (and only then) the

human mind and behaviour will change. With a law that forbids spanking

every citizen becomes an enlightened witness.

So, we see that everything lays in ourselves. It is easy to understand that

people can change everything around themselves. The theory about personal

children problems is really correct. Now everybody can just analyse his

past and remember the main idea of his last deeds. They will help him to

solve the difficulties. It is the easiest way to survive in your own inside

world, which can be a bright one. But the main problem is that not

everybody knows about this theory, and especially such people can not be

happy and live an easy life else the whole world can be changed. People

will understand all their problems and (it is important) now how to behave

and solve all the difficulties. It means – no depress, mad people and their

deaths, good social situation, at last. To my mind we should try to use

this material, because it can help us and it will be so easy to understand

each other and, at the first term, ourselves, is not it?

The list of literature

1. “People, who play in games” A. Birn

2. “Psychology” Camille B. Wortman

Elizabeth F.

Loftus

3. “ The Childhood Trauma” Alise Miller

4. “Running from Safty” R. Bach

5. “Interpretation of dreams” S. Freud

-----------------------

[1] The list of literature. The 2nd book.

[2] The list of literature. The 1st book.

[3] The list of literature. The 2nd book

[4] The list of literature. The 5th book.

[5] The list of literature. The 3rd book.

[6] The list of literature. The 1st book.

[7] The list of literature. The 3rd book.

[8] The list of literature. The 3rd book.

[9] The list of literature. The 2nd book.

[10] The list of literature. The 5th book.

[11] The list of literature. The 3rd book.

[12] The list of literature. The 3rd book.

[13] The list of literature. The 4th book. Other quotes are from this

book.