Anger



Faridah Mohamad Saad
Institut Pendidikan Guru
Kampus Teknik
Bandar Tun Razak Cheras, Kuala Lumpur
noniemsaad@yahoo.com



None of us is a stranger to anger. And while we may regret our anger at times, it can certainly be a warning that something is not right with our world. It can also be a useful power to right those wrongs if properly directed and controlled. Used appropriately and then dismissed, anger is healthy. But if allowed to control us and have its way, it can also damage us and those around us.

Throughout history anger and angry people have caused so much pain that today many believe that all anger is a mental defect to be rejected and avoided. Simply saying to someone, “You're angry!” is often used as a trump to end the discussion and win the argument—as if being angry is the ultimate evil in and of itself, and therefore overrides any subject being discussed.

And yet anger at genuine wrongs has led to much change for good. Repressions have been overturned as the result of “righteous anger.” Peoples have been freed, illegitimate regimes overthrown, women and children protected, and the situations of countless members of the human race improved.

But as we know, much of the world's misery can be traced to the unjust and unhealthy anger of individuals or groups—despots, megalomaniacs, politicians, false messiahs, competing religions and warring peoples on the macro scale; and the power-hungry, the dissatisfied, the controlling, the offended, the slighted and the ignored on the micro level.

We get the English word "berserk" from Norse raiders who were called berserkers in the Old Norse tongue, after their habit of losing their minds to murderous anger and blood lust.

Even in modern, and supposedly enlightened, times we have and do see horrific examples of leaders, peoples, cultures and religions promulgating unbridled anger to sacrifice hundreds of millions of individuals to their lusts for power: a force wielded against anyone who would stand in their way.

But, you and I don't have any such power or inclination. So why talk about something that doesn't affect us?

Since uncontrolled and unhealthy anger does cause terrible grief, it is important to understand how to express it properly and to take charge of our own anger so that we can use it as a catalyst for positive change.

It is easy to recognize extreme blood-in-the-eye rage when it shows itself in others, and perhaps we've even seen it in ourselves. But psychotherapists Ronald T. and Patricia S. Potter-Efron in Letting go of Anger (2006) list 11 common anger styles—some of them masked, some explosive, and some chronic. Some styles of anger are able to hide, even from the person exhibiting them. Some people claim that they never get angry, and indeed try not to do so. Others hide a sneaky, passive-aggressive anger by procrastination, forgetting or playing dumb or helpless. Some turn their anger inward and follow patterns that the Potter-Efrons describe as: self-neglect, self-sabotage, self-blame, self-attack, or self-destruction.

Men and women may express anger differently. In Western society women have been stereotyped historically as the nurturing sex and may therefore be discouraged from showing their anger, but both sexes have issues with this emotion. Although most books on anger management are written to men, Laura Petracek writes to women and says, “Most women in our society are either not in touch with their anger or feel their anger but don't know how to express it.” Petracek describes two styles of anger she sees in women: Anger In, in which “women direct their anger at themselves by overeating, becoming depressed, and hurting themselves;” and Anger Out, “venting your rage at another person, or attacking or blaming another person, possibly to the point of pushing, shoving, or kicking that person.” 

All of us have the potential for anger as part of our humanity. Ignoring or denying anger prevents us from using it appropriately and allows it to cause us hurt.

Like Father, Like...Daughter?

Baseball hard-hitter Harmon Killebrew tells a story that hints at the importance of fathers to boys: “My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard,” he says on his Web site. “Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’”

Obviously, Killebrew’s father was tuned in to the needs of his sons, an admirable quality that seems only natural in a man. We accept that every boy needs a father as easily as we accept the notion that he needs a dog. But while society is beginning to acknowledge that a father is more crucial than a dog to a boy’s well-being, the question of how important fathers are to the well-being of their daughters has all but been ignored.

A search through online journals on family studies using the terms “fathers” and “daughters” does not prove entirely fruitless, of course. An abundance of material is available, nearly all of it exploring the psychological effects of incest and other dysfunctions. Unfortunately, however, there is very little that would lead anyone to believe that more positive relationships even exist between fathers and daughters, much less that such relationships may also have a profound and vital effect on a woman’s mental health.

This gap has been addressed by only a few researchers, one of whom is Linda Nielsen, professor of adolescent psychology and women’s studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Nielsen has been teaching a “Fathers and Daughters” course there since 1991 and authored its current textbook, Embracing Your Father: How to Create the Relationship You Always Wanted With Your Dad (McGraw Hill, 2004).

“Do you realize how rare incest is between a biological father and daughter?” she asked rhetorically in a recent interview with Vision. “It is extremely rare. When we talk about girls who are victims of incest, that term, to psychologists and sociologists, covers being sexually abused by cousins, uncles, stepfathers, stepbrothers, brothers, half-brothers, men who live with your mother who are not related—that all goes into the category of incest victims. But when you look into the percentage of girls who were sexually abused by their biological fathers, it is very small. What this tells me, just as it told you—is that researchers have the wrong focus when it comes to studying father-daughter relationships.”

This wrong focus may contribute to the misconception that daughters don’t need their fathers after a certain age. “My students tell me that their fathers stopped doing things with them when they became teenagers—like going camping with them alone on the weekends—because it would look weird,” says Nielsen. “Once puberty hits, you aren’t supposed to spend as much time with your daughter. Once she’s a teenager, you’re supposed to back off and let Mom have the main relationship. If that’s the message you’re sent and you’re told that’s what a ‘good father’ does, then that’s what you’re going to do.”

This goes hand-in-hand with another stereotype that harms father-daughter relationships. “We portray fathers more negatively than we portray mothers in media,” says Nielsen. “Dad’s a blockhead when it comes to child raising—especially with his daughter. Mom is considered the expert. These messages discourage fathers from being actively involved.”

According to Nielsen, most men would like to be involved, and she adds, “Fathers do spend more time with their kids than in the past.” But she says some changes still need to occur. Although company work-life balance programs for men and women are becoming increasingly popular in Western nations, “men still spend an average of 15 more hours a week at work and commuting than their employed wives do, and American fathers spend about 70 more hours each year at work than do men in other industrialized countries. Dads still don’t have as much time as moms to be with kids.”

Clearly, as a society we remain unconvinced of how crucial fathers are to their children—particularly to their daughters. But would we be convinced if we read the research?

Vanderbilt University researchers have long known that girls who have supportive, involved fathers enter puberty later than girls whose fathers are distant or absent, and this is not as insignificant to a woman’s quality of life as it may seem. In 2003 researchers at the Cincinnati, Ohio, Children’s Hospital noted a link between early onset of menstruation and adult obesity. But there’s more. When early onset of menstruation was marked by early breast development, there was an associated rise in the risk for breast cancer. The accompanying factors may be complex, but there is certainly more to be explored in the association between good father-daughter relationships and a healthy future for adult females.

Beyond physical health, of course, the right attention from fathers can confer other benefits, as studies continue to demonstrate.

One such study was conducted in the United States and New Zealand in 2003, by Bruce J. Ellis, professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, and several of his colleagues. The researchers listed a variety of the negative outcomes adolescent girls set themselves up for when they have early sexual experiences. “Specifically,” they note, “adolescent childbearing is associated with lower educational and occupational attainment, more mental and physical health problems, inadequate social support networks for parenting, and increased risk of abuse and neglect for children born to teen mothers. Despite these consequences, the United States and New Zealand have the first and second highest rates of teenage pregnancy among Western industrialized countries. . . . Given these costs to adolescents and their children, it is critical to identify life experiences and pathways that place girls at increased risk for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy.”

After following a combined total of approximately 900 subjects from preschool to late adolescence, the researchers concluded that “father absence was an overriding risk factor for early sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy. Conversely, father presence was a major protective factor against early sexual outcomes, even if other factors were present” (emphasis added).

Ellis and his colleagues were not the first to make the association between strong father-daughter relationships and healthy sexual outcomes, of course, nor were they the most recent.

Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, reported similar findings in February 2006. In a study involving 10,000 students between 7th and 12th grade, Regnerus reiterated that girls who had positive relationships with involved fathers waited longer to have their first sexual experience. He added, “Girls who have poor relationships with their dads tend to seek attention from other males at earlier ages and often this will involve a sexual relationship.” This surprising characteristic of strong father-daughter relationships was not duplicated between mothers and daughters.

Nielsen’s own research has been conducted among her college students over a span of more than 15 years, and like other researchers before her, she acknowledges that positive fathering produces well-adjusted, confident and successful daughters who relate well to other men in their lives. Unfortunately, she says, fathers tend to spend less time with their daughters than with their sons, and many do not see anything negative about this. Nielsen also points out that “most of these fathers and daughters do not communicate, share personal things, or get to know one another as well as mothers and daughters.”

One might wonder how she hopes her course for young college women will change this. Shouldn’t she be talking to their dads? What can a young woman do to close the distance if her childhood is behind her, and with it, seemingly, any chance of a good relationship with her father? According to Nielsen, plenty! Unfortunately, many women are held back by the belief that their father should make the first move, or that patterns of communication in their relationship are so entrenched that they cannot be changed. Or perhaps they’ve tried some of the strategies before, without result. Nevertheless, Nielsen assures her students, the strategies she outlines in her class and its textbook will bring about changes. Indeed, the greatest changes may occur in the daughters themselves.

“Let’s say that your pessimistic assumptions turn out to be right,” she offers in her textbook. “No matter how many of my suggestions you try . . . your relationship with your father doesn’t get any better. Yes, you’ll be disappointed, frustrated, and sad—and maybe angry. But these are the same feelings you had before you started. So you really haven’t lost anything. And I seriously doubt that you’re going to regret having tried. Every daughter I know who has reached out and tried again, regardless of the outcome, feels better about herself. It’s as if she has lifted a weight off her shoulders. Like these daughters, you can give yourself the gift of pride and respect that comes from being active instead of passive, from acting like an adult instead of a child.”

Acting like an adult, in Nielsen’s view, includes understanding that daughters may also have contributed to the stereotypes that keep their fathers distant. Daughters may keep things from their fathers under the assumption that their fathers would respond more critically than their mothers. Daughters may assume fathers aren’t as nurturing or intuitive as mothers are, and may avoid going to them for personal advice and comfort.

Mothers may also contribute to the problem through what some researchers call “gatekeeping” behaviors. A 2005 study by the National Council on Family Relations explains that maternal gatekeeping may take a number of forms, any one of which "either encourages or discourages fathers from acting on their paternal identity. . . . One path to changing fathers’ behavior may involve changing the way that mothers look at them. If mothers believe that fathers can and should be capable parents, they are more likely to allow fathers into the lives of their children.”

Nielsen agrees this can be a factor. Her recommendation to her students is “Don’t build a road to Dad through Mom.” Unfortunately, Nielsen’s study of the data collected from her students between 1990 and 2004 revealed that most daughters do go through their mother to reach their father, which has the effect of pushing him away and diminishing their odds of improving their relationship.

So then, does all of the responsibility for good father-daughter relationships fall on daughters? Of course not. Especially while they have young children, fathers carry the bulk of the responsibility for spending as much quality time as realistically possible with their children, whether girls or boys. But as they mature, sons and daughters can contribute to the effort too. Eventually there comes a time when the best way to turn the heart of a father to his daughter is for his daughter to turn her heart to her father.

Silence Is Not Golden

While silence may be a safety net—the true friend who never betrays—it may also lend a false sense of security. Francis Bacon called it “the virtue of a fool.” Most would agree with the ancient wisdom that, while there is certainly a time for silence, there is also a time to speak. In fact, it might be fair to say that our family relationships are only as strong as our communication skills. 

This is particularly true, according to a recent study published by the American Psychological Association, on those occasions when the opportunity to express gratitude presents itself. In a series of studies published in April 2010, researchers from Florida State University, Yale and New College of Florida examined whether expressing gratitude to a relationship partner increases communal strength, defined as “the degree of felt responsibility for a partner’s welfare.” While it seems obvious that expressions of gratitude would increase positive feelings in the partner receiving gratitude, it is not quite as self-evident that there would also be benefits for the expresser. Nevertheless, whether in romantic partners or friends, the researchers found evidence that the sense of communal strength was heightened for those who voiced gratitude—at least in the sample of college students studied. The researchers speculated that when people express gratitude, it reinforces and increases their own pleasure in the action that prompted gratitude. It also heightens their conviction that they care enough about the partner to be responsive to that person’s actions. “Finally,” say the researchers, “conveying to the partner that his or her actions were appreciated and valued ought to encourage additional and possibly larger or more costly supportive acts,” which would typically have a reciprocal effect, strengthening the relationship still further. 

The study is only the latest in a growing body of research literature investigating the benefits of gratitude. Robert A. Emmons of the University of California–Davis and Michael E. McCullough of the University of Miami have analyzed the effects of this emotion extensively over the past decade, not only together but also in concert with other researchers. In a 2003 study they examined the effects of gratitude on both psychological and physical well-being by comparing three randomly assigned groups of subjects over nine weeks. One group was asked to report on five things they could be grateful about in their lives, another was to report only on hassles or irritants, while the third received neutral instructions to simply report on events that “had an impact” on them. 

Physical symptoms and well-being ratings were measured over the same period, with interesting results. Participants in the gratitude group experienced fewer symptoms of physical illness, spent significantly more time exercising, and reported higher levels of positive affect, more sleep, better sleep quality, greater optimism and a greater sense of connectedness to others than those in the other two groups. In addition, Emmons and McCullough noted that those in the group who were “led to focus on their blessings” rather than their hassles or complaints were “more likely to report having helped someone with a personal problem or offered emotional support to another.” In the view of the researchers, “this finding lends support to the hypothesis that gratitude serves as a moral motivator.”  

While the study focused on short-term rather than long-term effects of gratitude, the strategy used to produce the effects was so simple that it could presumably be added to any routine: taking time once a week to reflect on as few as five benefits could hardly be considered burdensome. And if practice makes perfect, who knows whether a year or two of regularly expressing gratitude might change one’s disposition permanently? Those who are not currently “dispositionally grateful” could have much to gain, as McCullough, Emmons and a colleague, Jo-Ann Tsang, found in an earlier study. Using a combination of self-reports, peer reports and well-validated assessment scales, the researchers found that people whose gratitude could be classified as “dispositional” were consistently more extroverted, more agreeable and less neurotic than their chronically less grateful counterparts. 

For those who prefer to remain chronically ungrateful, however, silence still may not be the best alternative. In fact, the existing research literature on the subject suggests there is ample reason to discount the traditional wisdom that “if you can’t say something nice,” you shouldn’t say anything at all. This was underscored by a 2009 study by Kira Birditt and Leslie Rott of the University of Michigan, who, together with Karen Fingerman of Purdue, examined relationships between parents and their grown children to assess strategies for coping with tensions in their relationships. 

The study’s most notable finding? 

“In contrast with constructive strategies,” the researchers write, “avoidant strategies [such as remaining silent or saying only what the other person wants to hear] predicted lower solidarity [emotional closeness, trust and respect] and greater ambivalence [conflicted feelings about the relationship]. This finding was surprising because we had expected that avoidance would be associated with greater solidarity and lower ambivalence.” Also surprising is the suggestion that avoidance could potentially be as detrimental to relationship quality as destructive strategies, which include the use of inflammatory or emotional language, accusations, yelling or criticism. Constructive strategies, on the other hand, were consistent with expectations. Understandably associated with greater solidarity and relationship quality, constructive strategies include working collaboratively to find positive solutions to disagreements, accepting one another’s limitations, and understanding one another’s point of view.

This last strategy would seem to be pivotal. When we take the time to understand another’s point of view, our eyes open to understanding the other’s limitations, and we may even gain insight into potential avenues for positive solutions. We may also find more reasons to express gratitude. 

Clearly this requires a level of communication that goes beyond the “small talk” that may take the place of silence for some. Fortunately there is nothing to fear from deep conversation. In fact, according to researcher Matthias Mehl and his colleagues, it appears there is much to be gained when deep conversations are the norm: a sense of happiness and well-being, for starters. In a study comparing the effects of small talk versus more substantive social encounters, the researchers found that the study’s happiest participants were those who not only had more conversations but also deeper conversations than their less social counterparts. The happiest participants spent about 25 percent less time alone than those who were unhappiest, and they spent about 70 percent more time talking. Further, twice as many of their conversations were substantive. 

“Just as self-disclosure can instill a sense of intimacy in a relationship,” say Mehl and his colleagues, “deep conversations may instill a sense of meaning in the interaction partners. Therefore, our results raise the interesting possibility that happiness can be increased by facilitating substantive conversations.” 

How much of this happiness stems from the inevitable improvements in understanding, empathy and communal strength promoted by frequent, meaningful communication? A great deal, it would seem, when these studies are considered together. 

Rather than being found in silence, then, perhaps the gold—at least as far as healthy relationships are concerned—lies in appropriate communication set against a healthy backdrop of gratitude for the relationships we hold dear. The idea isn’t revolutionary. “A word fitly spoken,” wrote an ancient sage, “is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” It seems there may indeed be nothing new under the sun. 

Helping Children Develop a Positive Sense of Self

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” American abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s words of wisdom seem blatantly intuitive. Nevertheless, agreement on how best to build strong children is not easy to come by, despite the fact that nearly every month a new parenting book is published, promising new and shocking insights to simplify parenting forever. Rather than simplifying the process, however, it seems that each book merely adds to the mounting literature, threatening to make a parent’s task more difficult rather than less so.

Prominent developmental researchers Nancy G. Guerra and Catherine P. Bradshaw gathered a group of their colleagues to comb through the published research with the goal of reaching a consensus on a set of attributes that could be considered common to well-adjusted youth. The project, the results of which were published in 2008, was supported in part by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

After extensive review, the researchers identified five “competencies” that emerged as core components of positive youth development: a positive sense of self, the ability to practice self-control, effective decision-making skills, a moral system of belief, and prosocial connectedness. Although Guerra and her colleagues acknowledged that additional attributes could potentially be included, the consistent message of existing research is that adolescents who demonstrate high levels of these five key assets are less likely to engage in risk behaviors and better able to become productive adults.

Although there are certainly areas of overlap among these five markers of healthy child and adolescent development, each skill presents an opportunity for a rich discussion about the role parents can play. In this article, however, we’ll address only the first of these markers, which has been at the center of child-rearing debates for decades: a positive sense of self. This is an often misunderstood asset and involves much more than the popular concept of self-esteem, which is really only one component of a positive sense of self.

THE EMERGING SELF

According to Emory University’s Philippe Rochat, a child is not oblivious of the self even at birth. At the earliest stage, says Rochat, “infants differentiate between self- vs. non-self touch, between stimulation originating from either [their] own body or an external source.” But by the age of two, self-awareness has developed to the point that self-consciousness emerges. A two-year-old is already capable of exhibiting embarrassment or even pride.

Guerra and Bradshaw suggest that as self-awareness becomes more complex, it works interdependently with two other components of self to influence adjustment: agency and the more familiar self-esteem.

Like self-awareness, agency—an individual’s sense of personal and independent control over an outcome or event—begins to develop in infancy. Children learn very early that their own actions affect objects and people in their environment. Over time, this realization matures as they successfully complete tasks by setting goals, maintaining effort, and overcoming failure to achieve a desired result. Through repeated opportunities to test the effects of their actions, they form beliefs about their self-efficacy, their ability to perform at the level they have intended or to produce a desired result. This, it turns out, underpins an individual’s motivation to change his or her behavior and is therefore also crucial to the development of the other component of a positive sense of self: self-esteem.

POPULAR PSYCHOLOGY WEIGHS IN

Unfortunately the importance of personal agency and self-efficacy has been too often overlooked in popular attempts to bolster self-esteem in children, often with unfortunate results.

For example, in the summer of 2005 a retired British school teacher, who was a 37-year veteran primary-level instructor, proposed a motion to her union, the Professional Association of Teachers (since then renamed Voice). She moved that the word failure be banned from classrooms and replaced with the more palatable phrase deferred success so as not to discourage students from continuing efforts to achieve. Although the motion ultimately experienced its own deferred success, it was not without supporters among the 35,000-member teachers’ association. One of them expressed his enthusiastic agreement, saying: “It’s time we made the word ‘fail’ redundant and replaced it with ‘please do a bit more.’” Though mainstream psychologists and researchers have long recognized failure as an important step toward building self-efficacy, many educators apparently found it incompatible with building self-esteem in school children. 

The same year, several American newspapers reported another threat to children’s self-esteem: the use of red ink in public schools. Parents in Trumbull, Connecticut, objected to the use of red ink on the grounds that it was too stressful. The school responded by banning the offending color and substituting blue ink instead. Had the Connecticut school only been aware, several other schools around the nation had already found a compromise to red ink. The Boston Globe reported: “A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red’s sense of authority but also blue’s association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.” 

“Color psychologists” may be convinced that they’re onto something. Mainstream psychologists, however, while acknowledging that color may temporarily affect attitude and emotion, would be skeptical of its relevance to educational policy. There is certainly no research to suggest that color can have a lasting positive or negative effect on self-esteem. Like most other popular notions of how to bolster self-esteem, these “pop-psych” approaches bear little resemblance to those known in developmental psychology for more than a century. In fact, Harvard psychologist William James developed a formula for self-esteem as early as 1890. It took into consideration the role of personal agency and is still acknowledged by psychologists today. James suggested that “our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do. It is determined by the ratio of our actualities to our supposed potentialities.” In other words, individuals cannot feel good about themselves without also doing well.

STEPS TO SELF-ESTEEM

It would be nearly three-quarters of a century before another respected psychologist, Stanley Coopersmith, revisited the concept of self-esteem. In an intensive study conducted over a period of six years, he examined the subject using a variety of research methods and measures. His findings were published in 1967 as The Antecedents of Self-Esteem. But even Coopersmith, who proposes that building a healthy respect for the self is a child-rearing necessity, underscores that the parents of children with the highest self-esteem are the kind who set clear limits and define high standards of behavior, and who model these by their own examples.

Like James, he acknowledges the role of personal agency in self-esteem, proposing a four-part definition of what it takes for children to develop a positive self-image. First is the need for “respectful, accepting, and concerned treatment” from parents or significant others. This lays the groundwork not only for the child’s ability to accept him- or herself, but also to accept the values and guidance of those others. Second, Coopersmith points to the importance of a “history of successes.” These provide a child with a sense of reality on which to base his self-esteem. However, he says, a third element is also important: the child needs “values and aspirations” that are personally significant, against which successes can be measured. Finally, the child’s “manner of responding to devaluation” must be healthy. In other words, a child must learn how to deal appropriately with negative appraisals by others, and to feel it is possible to overcome failures.

Does this mean parents should force failures and negative appraisals on their children in order to teach them how to handle these experiences? It should go without saying that such an approach to parenting would be extremely damaging to the trust and support that should exist in parent-child relationships. Life itself provides enough such experiences for children. Obviously the parents’ role would be to guide and encourage children as they encounter obstacles to reaching their goals. And despite the fact that the popular pendulum swings alternately toward and away from endorsing praise for children, research continues to support the understanding that praise, when merited, can be a wonderful tool for reinforcing positive action. The important point is that children see through empty praise, however well-meaning it is, and a steady diet of this kind of deception can lead them to mistrust even deserved praise. When they take steps toward doing well, however, and this is acknowledged, their positive aspirations are reinforced and more attempts to do well will follow. But praise or no praise, if children are never given opportunities to try and ultimately to succeed, their attempts to make a difference will eventually cease. Psychologists know this state as “learned helplessness.”

In the late 1960s, psychologist Martin Seligman and his colleagues employed Pavlovian conditioning to study this phenomenon in animals. When dogs learned that they could avoid a shock by performing certain actions, they continued those actions even if doing so no longer achieved the hoped-for result. On the other hand, animals whose actions had never resulted in shock avoidance quickly learned that “nothing I do matters,” and they became passive, abandoning any attempt to affect the outcome.

This is an important understanding for parents, or for anyone whose goal is to help foster change in others. “Self-efficacy is the other side of personal responsibility for change,” say motivational researchers William R. Miller and Stephen Rollnick. “To assert that a person is responsible for deciding and directing his or her own change is to assume that the person is capable of doing so. The person not only can but must make the change, in the sense that no one else can do it for him or her.”

What Miller and Rollnick call the “faith/hope effect”—belief in the ability to change—is fundamental to feeling motivated to overcome repeated failure and do well. Clinical psychological literature is replete with this theme, particularly as it relates to bolstering self-esteem.

THE IMPORTANCE OF FAILURE

Considering the wealth of available research, it is unfortunate and inexplicable that in some circles the doing-well aspect of building self-esteem has been overlooked in favor of the feeling-good part of the message. Seligman emphasizes the critical distinction as he connects self-esteem to childhood depression in his 1995 book, The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and Build Lifelong Resilience. 

“Armies of American teachers, along with American parents, are straining to bolster children’s self-esteem,” he says. “That sounds innocuous enough, but the way they do it often erodes children’s sense of worth. By emphasizing how a child feels, at the expense of what the child does—mastery, persistence, overcoming frustration and boredom, and meeting challenge—parents and teachers are making this generation of children more vulnerable to depression.” 

How could it be that well-meaning attempts to shield children from feeling bad could actually result in more depression rather than less? “Every subfailure, as well as every big failure, produces bad feeling—some admixture of anxiety, sadness, and anger,” notes Seligman. “These emotions, when moderate, are galvanizing, but they are also daunting. Your child has one of only two tactics available when he feels bad. He can stay in the situation and act, trying to terminate the emotion by changing the situation. Or he can give up and leave the situation. This tactic also terminates the emotion by removing the situation altogether. The first tactic I call mastery, the second I call learned helplessness.”

This conceptualization of mastery is easily recognizable as another way of expressing the role of agency and self-efficacy described by Guerra and Bradshaw, as well as the “history of successes” and healthy “manner of responding to devaluation” described by Coopersmith. In this context, Seligman’s findings aren’t necessarily shocking, but he perhaps expresses them more clearly: “In order for your child to experience mastery,” he insists, “it is necessary for him to fail, to feel bad, and to try again repeatedly until success occurs. None of these steps can be circumvented. Failure and feeling bad are necessary building blocks for ultimate success and feeling good.”

Taking issue with political claims that poor self-esteem is the cause of such ills as academic failure, drug use, teenage pregnancy and dependence on welfare, Seligman argues that the reverse is actually the truth: poor self-esteem is the result of these ills rather than the cause. “There is no effective technology for teaching feeling good which does not first teach doing well,” he says. “Feelings of self-esteem in particular, and happiness in general, develop as side effects—of mastering challenges, working successfully, overcoming frustration and boredom, and winning. The feeling of self-esteem is a byproduct of doing well.” For Guerra and her colleagues, doing well is expressed in terms of agency and self-efficacy, but they also see these skills as necessary to self-esteem and a positive sense of self.

A PARENT’S ROLE

If doing well is so fundamental to self-esteem, how do parents teach the steps that lead there? Seligman offers a great deal of practical advice that spans the developmental continuum, beginning with avoiding swaddling (which, he says, reduces one of children’s earliest opportunities to learn about their ability to affect their environment) and responding promptly to the needs of infants. “Do not let your infant cry and cry when he’s hungry or wet,” he cautions. “One of the most fundamental building blocks is his learning that crying works to bring relief.” This assurance, along with frequent positive and responsive interaction, is the basis for secure attachment between a child and his caregivers.

In addition, Seligman emphasizes, even in early weeks exploration and play are essential to the development of mastery. A child’s safe exploration space should be increasingly expanded to fit his growing potential for mastery and fitted with toys that operate only in response to the child’s actions. Since this is a key characteristic of computers, Seligman notes that this technology is far more beneficial than TV, radio and movies when it comes to building mastery in children.

Of course, opportunities for mastery can be found in almost every activity of the child’s day—including mealtimes, dressing and interactions with others—and these opportunities should be provided within the framework of clear boundaries that define appropriate values, and against the backdrop of relationships that produce a positive emotional atmosphere. Positivity in the form of love, affection and warmth feeds mastery and self-efficacy, because when children feel safe, happy and secure, they reach farther in their exploration; and of course, the more exploration, the more mastery.

But as the research has acknowledged, mastering tasks, reaching one’s aspirations, or living up to one’s goals and values is not always a seamless process, and children’s development of a healthy self-image then depends on how they learn to cope with or overcome failure. Even when parents help them break challenging tasks into small, achievable steps, children will inevitably still encounter obstacles. How do parents help their children overcome them? Neither by cushioning them from failure nor by criticizing their character when they fail, says Seligman. Rather, children learn the necessary coping skills when parents hold them accountable for specific behaviors while also expressing confidence in their ability to change, and offering opportunities to try again—along with the necessary encouragement to do so.

“[Children] listen to how adults criticize them and absorb the style of the criticism as well as the substance,” says Seligman. “If you criticize your child as being lazy, rather than as not trying hard enough today, your child will believe not only that he is lazy, but that his failures come from permanent and unchangeable factors.” Seligman calls for accurate and specific but impermanent assessments of failures, rather than global, exaggerated, permanent blame. Focusing on specific and temporary personal causes is also important when parents talk about their own failures, since children readily acquire the explanatory styles of those around them.

For instance, the wrong approach to criticism would be “You are a bad boy” or “Why don’t you ever do what I ask?” A constructive approach would be “You’ve been teasing your sister too much” or “I asked you to clean your room. Why didn’t you do as I asked?”

Paradoxically, using catastrophic language to explain failures does not teach children to accept responsibility for specific behaviors. “You’re a slob” implies to a child that he or she has a character trait that is unchangeable. “Your room is a mess; please clean it,” on the other hand, places the blame on the child’s own changeable behavior and expresses a clear and specific expectation for change. When change occurs, praise your child; but just as punishment should fit the crime, praise should fit the success. “When a parent rewards a child, say with praise, regardless of what the child does, two dangers loom,” says Seligman. “First, the child may become passive, having learned that praise will come regardless of what he does. . . . Second, the child may have trouble appreciating that he has actually succeeded later on when he really does succeed and Mom praises him sincerely.”

But praise is only one of several positive techniques for influencing a child’s behavior, and while both positive and negative techniques can be effective, Coopersmith’s 1967 research found that children with the highest self-esteem tended to have parents who favored positive behavior-modification techniques. Those with low self-esteem tended to have parents who valued negative techniques. Paradoxically, Coopersmith noted that the parents who primarily preferred to use negative techniques were also those who were more permissive, displaying simultaneously a “lack of parental guidance and relatively harsh and disrespectful treatment. These parents either do not know or do not care to establish and enforce guidelines for their children. They are apt to employ punishment rather than reward, and the procedures they do employ lay stress on force and loss of love. . . . They propose that punishment is a preferred method of control, yet state that they find it generally ineffective.”

It is hardly likely that parenting mistakes such as these have become extinct since Coopersmith’s research was published. With almost 80,000 American children between the ages of 12 and 18 incarcerated in juvenile facilities in 2006, according to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and with England and Wales reporting a 795 percent increase in the population of children in custody between 1989 and 2009, it is clear that parenting in at least some Western nations may not yet be an exact science.

THE ESSENCE OF SELF-ESTEEM

If, as Guerra and Bradshaw assert, a positive sense of self is a crucial marker of healthy adolescent development, what can parents take away from the preceding century’s study of self-esteem?

The answer seems deceptively simple. Children need distinct values and aspirations to measure success against; they need opportunities to explore and master new tasks; they need the ability to overcome failure and disappointment. And they need all of this in the context of healthy attachment to supportive caregivers who are concerned enough to set clear limits and boundaries that define acceptable behavior.

Unlike the claims often made by popular parenting books, the research behind these concepts is neither new nor shocking. But the fact that it has stood the test of time weighs heavily in its favor.

Two Emperors Who Would Cheat Death

Historical and archaeological records tell us that humans have always been curious about an afterlife and have tried many different approaches to getting there. Egypt’s fascinating “boy king” Tutankhamen and China’s “First Emperor” Qin Shi Huang Di were no exception. Although these two emperors lived a millennium and thousands of miles apart, their concept of the cosmos, its gods, and their possibilities for an afterlife were similar. Everything about these two powerful monarchs’ lives—gods in human form to their subjects—focused on making an indelible mark on their world, living forever and joining the sky gods in the afterlife. 

Both forced their subjects to serve in corvées (forced labor collectives) devoting their energy—and often their lives—to constructing monumental projects for the empire: roads, defenses and waterways; temples for the gods; and personal tombs to ensure the emperor's transition to the hereafter. Both were so accustomed to their lifestyles that they included in their tombs a retinue of servants to provide for their eternal comfort. And both resorted to magical spells and mythological substitutes to shield them in case they might be required to perform the same physical duties for the sky-gods that they had required underlings to perform for them while they were alive.

TUTANKHAMEN

At the tender age of 8, Tutankhaman inherited his father’s throne and with it, his father’s gods. Religion in Egypt meant priesthoods and temples and power to religious leaders, so major cult changes caused political power plays—and vice-versa. From earliest Egyptian history, the people had worshipped a pantheon of animist and astrological gods, including the sun god, under various names. By the New Kingdom (2686-2181 B.C.), Amun, as creator, sun god, and ‘king of gods,’ was honored in a trinity along with Re and Ptah. But when Tutankhamen’s father, Pharaoh Akhenaten (1352-1336 B.C.) promoted Aten over the more popular Amun, it was too much for the people and for the priesthood who vied with the pharaohs for power.

Thus, when young Tutankhamen came to the throne, he may well have been manipulated by the power-seekers of his day to put the old gods back in authority. Or, he may have hoped to win favor with his people and make a name for himself. Whatever the reason, he started the empire on a course back to the old comfortable gods. 

Though “King Tut” died mysteriously at about 17 without completing the process, it continued after him and ancient Egypt quickly returned to the ways of the old favorite gods and powerful priesthoods.

Tut lived such a short life that he didn't have the opportunity to build an impressive mausoleum. But he was nevertheless entombed with many “magic” statuettes (intended to come to life as celestial servants when he joined the gods in the night sky), some servants to feed and entertain him and others to replace him in any physical work that might be required.

Egyptian life was determined by the land and the cycles of nature. Egypt is desert except along the Nile and its delta. The Nile began to rise at the summer solstice, continuing to do so for 100 days, flooding the lowland and depositing silt and precious moisture—annually renewing fertility to the only arable land. By the end of October the river was back to normal levels, remaining so until the next summer solstice. Mummy expert Rosalie David notes in her book Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt that the inundation was worshipped as the god Hapy with ceremonies and sacrifices of food, animals, jewelry and female "dolls" thrown into the river. Hapy and Osiris (god of vegetation and rebirth) were included in a triumvirate along with the sun-god Re (the creator) and petitioned for favorable harvests.

The Pyramid Texts, carved on the walls of the Saqqara pyramids and dating to the Old Kingdom, proclaimed that the rightful reward for the pharaoh was to join the gods in the night sky and travel with them through the constellations as a “star among the imperishable stars.” Magical instructions and spells were to ensure the Pharaoh's safe passage into the next world.

These pyramids were oriented to represent the constellation Orion, identified with the god Osiris, who had died and been resurrected. David says that Osiris “in the old kingdom (2686 B.C. – 2181 B.C.), already played an important role in ensuring the king's eternity," but came to offer "an individual resurrection and eternity to rich and poor alike.”

QIN SHI HUANG DI 

Almost a millennium after Tutankhamen’s death and half a world away, China was near the end of its Warring States period (403-221 B.C.). As many as 170 city-states vied with one another in a political and military free-for-all. Into this mix, in 247 B.C., stepped a new Qin (Chin) king named Zheng. With a more effective use of cavalry, infantry, iron weapons, and—according to John Fairbank and Merle Goldman—“especially the crossbow,” he defeated the other six states and declared himself Qin First Emperor (Qin Shi Huang Di) in 221 B.C. Di had been worshipped as supreme god more than a thousand years earlier. When Zheng compounded di with the word for ‘august’ or ‘majestic’ he made up the title Emperor-god.

To cement his control, he relocated the local aristocratic families to the capitol and administered his 36 new districts using civil servants who were dependant on him for their office and income. Using forced labor, as Egypt’s Pharaohs had done, he built over 4,000 miles of highways, 1,200 miles of waterways and great defensive walls.

Qin pitted family member against family member, using rewards and punishments, in an effort to elevate loyalty to himself and to the state above the long-held tradition of loyalty to the family. Five to ten families were grouped into collectives, responsible for each individual's actions. Severe punishments were inflicted on the whole group in response to one person's misdeeds, which made informing on others the only way to protect one's self.

But the First Emperor of China is best known today for the extravagant grave-goods in his tomb near Xi'an. In 1974 farmers digging a well unearthed the first of approximately 7,500 larger-than-life terracotta soldiers with their accompanying horses, chariots and armaments—placed there to protect and support the emperor in his afterlife. These statues were expected to magically come to life and do the emperor's bidding as he joined his place among the stars. After achieving total conquest and the abject obedience of his subjects, he had become obsessed with learning the key to immortality and a god-like afterlife.

Qin built his temples in orientation with supposedly auspicious celestial objects as the Egyptians had done. He made five royal journeys to sacred mountains—high-places as close to the sky-gods as possible—seeking answers to immortality.

As John Fairbank and Merle Goldman put it, “Under the Qin, the First Emperor's ruthless exactions of men and taxes year after year exhausted the people and the state's other resources. After 37 years as ruler of the Qin state, he suddenly died at age 49 in 210 B.C. His empire quickly disintegrated. Aside from unity of the known world, the First Emperor had sought mainly an elixir of immortality for himself.”

GOT SOUL? 

Tutankhamen and Qin Shi Huang Di have captured the imagination of the modern world, chiefly because their tombs are two of the most spectacular archeological finds to date from ancient times. And while it’s interesting to compare those perspectives they had in common, it is also interesting to note that in the end, neither achieved the most important goal the two shared—that of becoming immortal and a god.

But these two men were not alone in this yearning. Some of the earliest human religious artifacts demonstrate a reverence for astrological symbols and a desire to find a way to continue life after death. Cults such as that devoted to the Egyptian Isis and Osiris and the Babylonian Nimrod and Semiramis offered variations on eternal life.

Around the second century after Jesus, an evolving Christianity began to echo the same ancient cosmologies, teaching that humans can go to heaven and that their souls are immortal. Much of humanity to this day embraces the notion eagerly. Interestingly, however, this is not what Jesus and His early followers taught. They were rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures which tell of the impermanence of man’s physical life: “His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; In that very day his plans perish” (Psalm 146:3 New King James Version). The apostle John records Jesus’ words, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man” (John 3:13, English Standard Version).

Like the prophets who lived before them, Jesus and His followers taught that the hope of life after death did not lie in an immortal soul or spirit, but in God’s power to ultimately resurrect according to the unfolding of His plan for humanity (see "Resurrection"). Very different from the cosmologies of Tutankamen and China’s First Emperor, this plan does not call for the building of elaborate tombs to be stocked with physical possessions for use in an afterlife. Rather, it calls for a focus on inner change, a task that in some ways may seem far more daunting than the building of pyramids.