Those that were without this chapter in their lives suffer greatly in its absence. That somewhat autistic factor – the sense of being without an organic attachment to their immediate physical environments – persists. Very often this contributes an erosive influence on the designs given to their lives as more mature adults.
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The Exploration-Deficit Syndrome is identified when the middle finger can be bent backward at the joint as seen here. |
In many instances the individual would be conscious of feeling his world somehow divided into two camps. In one camp would be everyone apart from himself. In the second camp he would find only himself. This has him experience a sense of separation and apartness even within the social groups with which he identifies. These two camps will generally have merged by the time this individual has reached his forties, but until then he feels himself struggling with the weight of an emotional burden the nature of which he would be at a loss to explain.
A therapist encountering this morphological development must always account for a seriously damaged sense of self-worth. A sense of worthlessness tempered with a large measure of shame is almost invariably a critical factor here which this therapist would do well to address. This does not always seem to apply to a client who appears to have been blessed with abundant charm, good looks, intelligence and even a degree of assertiveness and self-confidence, but, however deeply hidden – and perhaps even denied – the scarring is there.
History:
As infants with their motor and cognitive development now delivering them to the world external to themselves, they encounter a world rich with endless unknowns. There is no end to the fascination this ever expanding dimension has for them, and we can follow the determined ambition of these infants to access and examine everything that is within their reach. If it will not fit into their mouths they will try pushing it or throwing it. If it is standing they will have it fall, and whatever it is they will try taking it apart. Driven by an insatiable curiosity throughout the length of their waking hours, they cross distances on all fours to gain some measure of familiarity with, and mastery of, the contents and character of their environment.
This is just as it must be. The infants learn that on this they sit, with that they play, this they wear and that they eat. They learn that water spills and that glass breaks…that hands get dirty and water cleans. But this is much more than a learning process – it is a bonding process in every sense. These infants quickly grasp that they are neither extraneous to the fabric of this new dimension nor passive observers. They are very much fixed organic constituents of this physical and material world and partners to all shared experiences.
The Exploration Deficit factor sets in when the infant is largely prevented from effecting this close and very personal experience with its physical environment. Almost without exception in such instances, the mother, or surrogate mother, would tend to be overly anxious, overly critical, overly fastidious, or overly whatever. She insulates the infant from these experiences and disrupts the bonding process with her admonitions in the spirit of “…this will tear… this will break…this you will make dirty…this don’t touch…keep away…this isn’t for you…”
It does not end here, of course. Imagine this infant at the age of eleven months. It has not yet mastered a language, nor is it walking, but it is acutely sensitive to everything happening around it. On all fours on the kitchen floor it discovers an old pencil long lost and forgotten, say, under a corner of the refrigerator. It retrieves the pencil and fits it into its mouth. If the taste of the eraser is not to its liking it will try the other end. At this moment the mother sees, to her horror, what the infant is up to. Without ceremony and with shrill voice she takes away the pencil and deposits it in the trash.
The mother, of course, knows about germs, but the child still cannot understand her words. Nevertheless it is very much aware of the shrill sound of her voice, the hard furrows in her brow, her cold eyes and the turn of her lips. If this was a single experience for the child it would be of little consequence. But with Exploration Deficit manifest we would have as a point of departure the impressions of the child having to suffer the same shrill sounds and angry demeanor any number of times, day after day. It may well be that this child is more important to the mother than her own life, but if what the child had experienced was her reaction, say, to health issues, relationship tensions, financial stresses or other problems affecting her adversely, the child would see and understand only how the image of itself was being reflected in her eyes.
The child comes away knowing that his mother is grossly disappointed in him, that he is no source of joy for her, and that he alone is responsible for her anguish and distress. Considering that we are dealing with a child that still cannot fathom an existence separate and apart from his mother, the impressions he must contend with are too impossible to bear. Any number of defense mechanisms take root here, but what a therapist must account for when the client is very many years removed from these experiences, is that the child had powerfully identified with the image of itself as reflected in his mother’s eyes at that time. That identification persists. This is explained in Piaget’s concept of magical thinking so that however successful this person may be in academia or professional life, and however warmly this client may describe the nature of his mother when attempting to recall those early days, he nevertheless bears the psychical infirmity that is in the parcel of exploration-deficit.