First Word
by Charles L. Whitfield, M.D.

Originally published in OMNI Magazine

What is the human condition? Research from several professions is beginning to help us clarify this often-confusing term. Clinical professionals are focusing their attention on the “true self” or the “child within.” It is believed this personal identity is critical to understanding behavior. To unravel the concept of the true self, researchers are studying how the family affects each individual.

According to Virginia Satir, a founder of family therapy, about 95 percent of U.S. families are dysfunctional—troubled, unhealthy, or unable to deal directly with daily problems. Most households are troubled because the parents came from unhealthy families. Until someone breaks the cycle, parents pass on this painful legacy.

I believe that the primary cause of a dysfunctional family stems from the loss of each individual’s “true self.” This loss is an underlying factor responsible for several types of addictive or compulsive disorders, such as alcoholism and other drug dependencies. More recently recognized problems associated with the loss of the true self include eating disorders, compulsive gambling, religious addiction, workaholism, mental illness, and family violence.

From the second we are born, we have needs. These needs are healthy and normal. In a healthy family, the parents are able to get their own needs met in a healthy way. The parents are then capable and free to provide for many of the child'’ needs. They also act as models for the child, helping the child learn how to meet his own needs. The more wounded the parents and more troubled the family, the less the child will be able to get his needs fulfilled.

Inside each of us are a variety of subpersonalities (the hero, the victim, the nurturer) that contribute to how we respond to life experiences. The two that are most central to either a healthy or unhealthy development are the “true self” or “child within” and the “false self.” The false self is who we pretend to be.  It allows us to survive mistreatment or neglect from within or outside the family.

Growing up in a troubled family wounds the true self such that to survive, it goes into hiding and the false self (important only as an aid to some life experiences) dominates our behavior. This is the only way many people learn to survive. A dysfunctional family does not support a child that exhibits his true self. The child is humiliated or punished and thus forced to react to life only through the false self.

I believe once wounded, the true self goes into hiding and the false self emerges to help the child survive. The child within still has needs, and from time to time the true self will peep out or show itself fully through an unhealthy explosion—a binge or compulsive behavior—often hurting the child or someone else.

So how can adult children of unhealthy families reverse their fate and get their needs met? Millions of people are beginning too discover their true identities. They are healing their child within by working on their recoveries in self-help groups such as Adult Children Anonymous. Recovery is also obtained by grieving previously ungrieved losses, hurts, or traumas, which up until now may have kept these people locked into a life of unhappiness and compulsion.

The healing process has two powerful results. First, individuals will know themselves better and feel more alive, fulfilled, and creative. Second, they can then pass this aliveness, fulfillment and creativity on to their children.

The majority of individuals currently seeking this healing process are between thirty and fifty years old, and one in ten people receiving help is over fifty years of age. As the movement continues, more elderly will have found their true identities, thus providing a larger healthy support group for our children and grandchildren.

As society progresses and the nuclear family changes (through divorce, homosexual parents, and single-parent families), additional stress will affect each individual. The rising divorce rate, however, is often a mixed blessing. While kids ideally need both parents, if one or both parents aren’t healthy, it is better for the child to grow up with the parent who is less wounded.

The loss of the true self is the human condition. It has been with us since the beginning of human development. I feel it is our basic dilemma: Should we be real, or should we be false? The movement to heal the child within has accelerated in recent years as a result of the growing awareness among helping professionals guiding more and more patients through the healing process in individual and group therapy.

Through this movement of self-caring and self-healing, the future of the family—in the midst of its apparent chaos—is indeed hopeful. Parents of the present and future who heal themselves will be breaking the vicious cycle of passing their dysfunctions on to their children. Rather than teenage pregnancy and suicide, addictions, corruption, and crime at all levels of society, we may begin to see more wholeness, creativity, harmony, and peace on this earth.