Fairly recently, my father passed away, and my brothers and I had to deal with a lot of issues around his practice (he was a dentist.) – e.g.: closure of his office… etc.

Due to the fact that one of my brothers has now been living for a very long time in a different country, it was extremely hard for us to make him understand that here, in our country, things (and people) just don’t function the same way they do where he lives now. On top of this, my father’s wife, who is truly an unscrupulous person, acted in a shameless way (she stole as much as she could, starting only a few hours after my father’s passing.) We had to press criminal charges against her, one of my brother’s is a lawyer.

Still, my youngest borther, who lives far away, was not able to fully understand this woman’s character disorder, and kept expecting her to “apologize because what she did was wrong”.. and people who act wrong -usually- apologize. While that might hold true in his new homeland, it does not apply here (as much as we wish it did) because this country is like a land of barbarians… So, here, unfortunately, some psychology principles or rules just don’t apply.

In some other countries and cultures, people who have been severely abused for ages, typically behave as if they have been brainwashed, and are genuinely unable to understand “what’s wrong with them” o they are truly unable to change because they know no other (healthier) way to interact or behave socially.

So, I agree it’s very important to see the big picture and not limit our thinking to one type of society, only. Cultural differences play a major role in people’s behaviors.

I have read Dr. Simon’s book carefully in its entirety.

At various points in the last 200 years or so, women have realized that this serves patriarchy wonderfully, but it prevents women themselves from using their own creativity and energy for their own goals, and indeed for goals that serve humanity better than patriarchy does, with its aggression and militarism. So women rejected the idea, for example, that they must stay married forever unhappily “for the sake of the children,” and other nonsense like that.

A lot of conservatives still think that women who work outside the home, or have abortions, or refuse to marry, are poorly socialized and that for the sake of the greater good, they should stay home and cook and clean, etc. So one question we have to ask about socialization is: socialization into what? A hierarchical system that demands that women and people of color remain at the bottom and serve white men?

Our society has largely rejected the view that women and colored people should serve white men. But it seems that this rejection of illegitimate authority has resulted in a rejection of ALL authority and all notions of cooperation, for some young people especially. A healthy social change was co-opted by capitalism to make capitalism work better: now young people believe in a kind of ruthless, competitive, dog eat dog, violent culture.

We need to think about what KIND of socialization we want children to have. We want to preserve the respect for the individual that the Enlightenment gave Western society, while also preserving some of the communalism of earlier more traditional societies. (see Tocqueville.)

It seems that industrial capitalism makes a fetish almost of individual success, because the untrammeled pursuit of individual success actually helps the hierarchy stay in place, ironically: even poor people believe that they, too, can get rich someday, and so they reject any sort of socialist reforms such as health care reform, for fear that some of their taxes might pay for somebody else’s health care. The cult of individualism is sort of a mask for oligarchy.

What we need is a real individualism that respects the right of every individual to have certain basic entitlements, such as decent housing, food, and health care and safe, dignified work. This is a kind of communalism and cooperation that industrial capitalism loathes and tags with the epithet “socialism.”

It seems that any consideration of why our young people have disordered character turns into a political discussion, inevitably. They don’t grow up in a vacuum, or even just in a nuclear family. Psychology needs to take the political culture into account.

Their mother was depressed and maybe more dysfunctional than their father realized when they were growing up, and so it’s possible that she didn’t socialize them very much; for his part, he was very busy making a living, and also he didn’t know how to exercise any authority with them. His own father was quite domineering, and he wanted to avoid that, but he never worked out an effective alternative discipline system. In fact he didn’t really even see the need for it. He thought that example was the best teacher, but in this case, it didn’t work.

One of the children grew up to be very disciplined and functional, almost to a fault. I have heard that this often happens in dysfunctional families: one child will be “perfect.” The others have had problems with drugs, school, and other people. Now it’s mostly problems with other people. They’re all in their twenties.

I wonder if people can learn to be sociable and cooperative in their twenties if they missed out on normal socialization in their childhoods.

Also, what role do peers and school play in socialization? We live in a hyper-competitive, materialistic city, where it’s dog eat dog, winner take all. Success is measured by how much money you make and how big your house is, rather than by how much other people trust you and respect your ethical behavior. It seems that this culture teaches young people that only the ruthless will be able to compete successfully. But in fact, ruthlessness causes extreme chaos in their lives, and a trail of broken relationships.

So sad.