Daily question on a select quagmire (aka Psychoanalysis to the rescue!)
I don't know about you, but I was not the overly confident, jovial, relaxed and in-control individual that I presently hold as my authentic self (!). In fact, perhaps due to my bi-cultural and bi-lingual domestic status, I felt out of place in most environments. Moreover, as blond men/boys are rarely considered men in this grand nation of ours, I also felt that bizarrely condescending look hover over from top to toe, very frequently mixed with a fascination with the exotic, which uncomfortably nudged the discomforting look I mention, over to extremely nebulous ambivalences felt by little ol' me. Thus, as I tried to mirror my counter-party, I unknowingly would drift from misery to acceptance and back at the slightest gesture that would halt their own personal progression of silent domination under the guise of daily interaction.
I mean, don't we all carry these types of indeterminacies from our childhood, where oblivious to the true motive behind the gaze, we had to make up reactions to the unknown, so a double unknown to be tackled...?
Childhood is indeed one hell-hole for some...
Then again, perhaps this is not your experience. Perhaps you were still the total, whole, in-control perfection that you always are? Perhaps I imagine these inconsistencies in character, these shifts of domination in the semi-formed psyche; perhaps I am alone in imagining thus, and most of you were, in general, quite well adjusted human beings? I do hope so, yet I, for one, was not. And though I cannot speak for the larger population, I think I can safely assert that I am not the sole representative of my kind, that there were yet other children, who did not feel wholly themselves, perhaps due to their incompleteness, or perhaps a budding personality disorder in the making...
Whatever the population of 'my kind' may be, mostly puberty does/did away with this weakness (!) of character, leading to my blossoming into the flower of perfection (!) I presently hold as authentic and true 'me' :) Yet when I do encounter an image, person, gesture, scent from the past, there are times when I am flung back in time to re-embody those same inconsistencies that, at the time, made me tremble and shake in my shorts... I take the shape of a hunchback more, my voice trembles a tad, wherewithal I assume the markings of the fetal position, and embark on a personal purgatory that haunted my past. I am certain this issue has been treated in psychoanalytic literature somewhere, but I cannot place it at the moment, thus am bringing to the fore the question to whomever is unlucky enough to be perusing these lines: Does anyone know of any concept relating to this regressive stance one takes imitating a position of inferiority one has experienced in their childhood, where they were the lower half of a balance of power between two equal parties?