TIFT #112: Freedom Envy

This post is about intense emotions around our natural abhorrence of constraint. We have all seen how far down the chain of evolution the desire for freedom is manifested. Animals, even insects, almost universally struggle to remain free when constrained. Constraint can be forced or self-imposed, but it often generates a reaction either way. The truth is that none of us is entirely free. We all have constraints. Rather, constraint is a state of mind, a reaction to the feeling that some internal or external will is limiting our choices. In fact, when limits are imposed by some natural or inanimate circumstance, such as weather, unless it is personified we don’t see the same strong emotional reactions. Freedom is the opposite state of mind, a subjective sense that no alien will is in control of our choices.

Around the world, people continue to die in the hope of gaining freedom. The founding of the United States is based on resentment of the British crown’s denial of liberty. On an everyday psychological level, published studies show that recommending adoption of a behavior such as putting on suntan lotion is more effective when framed as a way of gaining health rather than needing to give up a familiar habit.

Parents and adolescents

Understanding the emotional power of freedom is important in explaining a number of important phenomena. My own interest in the subject started with wondering why parents, especially fathers, are so often intolerant of their adolescent children and why their resentment and anger often create problems within the family. As I thought and observed, what became clear is that much of the resentment comes from situations where a parent works hard and deprives themselves of freedom in order to support the family. Meanwhile, they see their adolescent basking in the privileges and freedom of self-discovery. The phenomenon is all the more exaggerated when the parent is "self-made." They pride themselves on their iron discipline and self-denial, along with the success it has brought. At the same time, the adolescent, seeing the enormous sacrifices of the parent, has no desire to follow in those painful footsteps. To the contrary, they find value in the increased freedom that comes with modest goals and low ambition. As they embrace these contrary values, the parent, not surprisingly, experiences all the more rage.

Just to complete the picture, other parent sees the damage caused by the breadwinner's anger and tries to support and protect the adolescent's personal development. They ramp up support for the young person's experimentation and exploration, further angering and polarizing the other parent. The two parents' increasingly opposite views cancel out each other's effectiveness and the child is left to raise themself, which they are far from equipped to do. Oh, and marijuana solves everything. Of course there are many variations but the underlying principle remains constant, that those who are constrained or constrain themselves tend to feel immense anger, born of envy, towards those who don’t.

Trauma

Perhaps on a deeper, more instinctive level, Peter Levine often writes about people frozen in the middle of a traumatic experience, having had to constrain themselves to survive. They are freed to return to a normal state only after they have released the constraint and followed through with a more natural and active response, a movement, a scream, etc.

Why is this so powerful?

While the abhorrence of constraint seems to hold throughout biology, being human puts a special spin on it. In our slow development, we gain self-consciousness long before we gain power over our own lives and choices. The one-year-old’s love affair with life takes place during a period when their inexperience and cognitive limitations shelter them from awareness of conflicts of will. They “take it for granted” that their will and mother’s are perfectly aligned. If there are conflicts, they are kept in a different cognitive basket and do not affect the sense of being one with beloved caregivers and the world in general.

Then, somewhere around age two, children become aware that those same grown-ups sometimes say, “No!” That shocking realization is the beginning of constraints on freedom. For the next dozen or more years, the child experiences a lack of physical and relational power. As they “mature,” they seem to accept this and learn the skill of bending to the will of others. They internalize constraints in the form of superego* values (See TIFT #4), and seem at peace with them, even feeling pride in functioning within those constraints.

Fairness and the rules

The concept of fairness provides a scaffolding for how we and others should behave. It balances the wish for personal liberty with the need for respect of others. Developmentally, from around eight until secondary school, children tend to place great emphasis on “the rules.” They depend on those to bring order to the world and govern behavior. Children in this phase who experience oppressive conditions may learn to place their hope on getting others to follow the rules by scrupulously doing so themselves. When this pattern lasts into adulthood it doesn't work, and that leads to chronic anger and frustration. A variation is to demonstrate the wrongness of the rule breaker by giving in to their power and, in doing so, proving their immorality to a non-existent jury. 

Regardless of age, the intensity of anger at those who treat others unfairly has a lot to do with freedom envy. We rage at those who take advantage, abuse others, or cheat. It’s important for maintaining the fabric of the group, but derives its intensity from freedom envy.

Adolescence

Among the most important new lessons of adolescence is that humans obey the rules only when they are motivated to do so, not simply because the rules are there. Navigating the adolescent and adult worlds requires an entirely new understanding and set of skills. Ideally, young people learn that getting others to treat them fairly requires social adeptness. One must learn to influence and motivate others. This takes place at the same time that values are questioned, chosen, and finally taken as “owned,” instead of “borrowed” from parents. This is when late teens and young adults become ready to give up their lives for their personal values, often including freedom.

An alternative solution

A fundamental problem is that individual freedom necessarily comes into conflict with the good of the group. Human survival from the beginning has depended on maintaining the integrity and health of the group. One solution is to temper everyone’s freedom in the interests of the collectivity. But that is not the only solution. Another pattern is for an individual to grab power and dominate, forcing others to accept constraints. Interestingly, those who are able to take power gain the feeling of having won the battle for their own freedom, where deep down, they are often motivated by their own painful experiences of weakness and constraint.

One might imagine that dominators and despots would cause great freedom envy among their subjects and be deposed. As Confucius noted, dynasties of this type do have the shortest lifespan. However, on a shorter time scale, they can persist due to the phenomenon of attracting followers who stand to win their own struggle for freedom from constraint by joining the leader and identifying with the leader’s dominance.

The price of identifying with another’s power is loss of one’s own choices and even thinking. This principle operates from the level of high school cliques to cults and all the way to dynasties, autocracies, and empires. Leaders learn to deny their weakness by gaining power over others. The emotional relief is intoxicating. They are driven to keep building their power by assembling larger numbers of followers willing to give up freedom in exchange for the illusion, and sometimes reality, of gaining a share of the power and freedom of the leader.

Fascination with the powerful and criminals

Yet another human solution to the conflict between freedom and constraint is fascination with those who have or appear to have escaped constraint. From Shakespeare to the West Wing, audiences have been enthralled by stories of great power. People Magazine has found perennial success with accounts of those who seem not to be bound by constraint. Rich people seem to have unlimited choices. Criminals garner our fascination because they do whatever they please. We secretly revel in their liberty but, just as much, in their fate when they fall and are constrained to follow the same rules as the rest of us.

What we are up against

The health we therapists are selling is the joy of counterbalancing the pain of constraints with the empathy-based pleasure of supporting others. For those who have most suffered from smallness and disempowerment, the unhealthy solutions of dominating others or allying with a dominator are hard to let go of. Healing in such cases means taking on the difficult task of accepting constraints when their history has involved precisely the dreaded experience of being overpowered. In narcissistic cases, Kohut’s “mirror transference” represents an interim compromise where the therapist takes on the role of “the greatest therapist ever,” in fact, the dominator, with whom the client can identify until true acceptance becomes possible.

What can we do?

A lot has been written about how to control and process anger. My answer is first to look at lack of empowerment. When anger takes over, it is most often because of an underlying feeling of loss of free choice, that is, constraint. The first answer is to try to gain real control. When control is possible, it can solve the anger problem. More often, it will lead to clarity about what one can and can’t control. That clarity is of paramount importance. Why? Because when it is clear that control can't be achieved, then the mind seems most open to letting go, that is, accepting.

The classic situation is the couple where each one is fighting for what they want. Each naturally focuses on changing the other, who then puts all their energy into resisting any attempt to take away their freedom of choice. This goes on simultaneously in both directions and the result is no change. It can continue for years. The solution is for each to become clear that they can only control themselves, not the other. Letting go of that impossible goal is actually freeing. That’s the peace that comes with acceptance. What remains is to manage the self, which turns out to be very possible. Furthermore, the tussle has been supporting a sense of secure connection. "As long as we fight, we are joined together.” When the other lets go, the resulting void conveys to the inner self a sense of anxiety about connection, and that is actually a strong driver of willingness to seek reconciliation. Thus, letting go is actually more likely to lead to solving the conflict, where each one gets a larger portion of what they wanted. It also leads to a sense of greater liberty and being in control of what is most important, namely oneself.

What all this adds up to is that self-honesty and accepting reality on its terms are the keys to an inner sense of empowerment and readiness to let go of serious freedom envy. What may remain is an occasional, wistful glance at those whom we fantasize to be capable of doing whatever they want!

Jeffery Smith MD 

* The term superego is a more value-neutral, scientific term for the internal system of checks on behavior colloquially known as the "conscience."

Photo Credit: Luca Upper, Unsplash