Edwin Friedman: A Society in Regression

The following is from Edwin Friedman's Book The Failure of Nerve. It is an expanded look at Chapter Two - A Society in Regression. All of the below are excerpts with page numbers listed.



A Society in Regression




My thesis here is that the climate of contemporary America has become so chronically anxious that our society has gone into an emotional regression that is toxic to well-defined leadership.




Five characteristics of chronically anxious [families and societies]:
Reacitivity: the vicious cycle of intense reactions of each member to events and to one another.
Herding: a process through which the forces for togetherness triumph over the forces for individuality and move everyone to adapt to the least mature members.
Blame displacement: an emotional state in which family members focus on forces that have victimized them rather than taking responsibility for their own being and destiny.
A quick-fix mentality: a low threshold for pain that constantly seeks symptom relief rather than fundamental change.
Lack of well-differentiated leadership: a failure of nerve that both stems from and contributes to the first four.



Reactivity:

The most blatant characteristic of chronically anxious families is the vicious cycle of intense reactivity of each member to events and to one another. (62)




For example, members of chronically anxious families will be quick to interrupt one another, if not to jump in and complete one another’s sentences, and they are constantly taking and making things “personal.” Communication is marked more by diagnostic or labeling “you” positions rather than be self-defining “I” statements. Rather than saying, “This is what I believe,” “Here is how I perceive it,” “This is what I will do,” family members stay focused on the other: “You’re just like your mother.” “You’re a control freak.” “You’re insensitive, unfeeling, irrational, missing the point, or just don’t get it.” The family is thus easily “heated up” as feelings are confused with opinions. Those inclined to become hysterical and those inclined to be passive-aggressive will both find their tendencies promoted (emphasis mine - 62).




The fact that it is difficult for any one member of a chronically anxious family to remain calm enough to think out a well-defined position perpetuates the momentum. The very calmness of one member often creates more reactivity in the other members, as they perceive calmness to be lack of concern and confuse reactivity with passion. Members of highly reactive families, therefore, wind up constantly focused on the latest, most immediate crisis, and they remain almost totally incapable of gaining the distance that would enable them to see the emotional processes in which they are engulfed. (63)




What also contributes to this loss of perspective is the disappearance of playfulness . . .the relationship between anxiety and seriousness is so predictable that the absence of playfulness in any institution is almost always a clue to the degree of its emotional regression(63-64)




As with any chronically anxious family, there is in American society today an intense quickness to interfere in another’s self-expression, to overreact to any perceived hurt, to take all disagreement too seriously, and to brand the opposition with ad hominem personal epithets. . .As in personal families, this hardens hearts and leaves little room for forgiveness or balanced accommodation. (64-65)



The Herd Instinct

The chronically anxious, herding family almost seems to develop a “self” of its own to which everyone is expected to adapt. As its regression deepens, it will turn the togetherness principle into the supreme goal that rules every member and transcends all other values. In the herding family, dissent is discouraged, feelings are more important than ideas, peace will be valued over progress, comfort over novelty, and cloistered virtues over adventure. (67)




In order to be “inclusive,” the herding family will wind up adopting an appeasement strategy toward its most troublesome members while sabotaging those with the most strength to stand up to the troublemakers. The chronically anxious, herding family will be far more willing to risk losing its leadership than to lost those who disturb their togetherness with their immature responses. Always striving for consensus, it will react against any threat to its togetherness by those who stand on principle rather than good feelings. The herding instinct will move an emotionally regressed family to a position where it endeavors to accommodate the disruptions of the immature and of those who think in terms of their rights rather than their responsibilities. So rather than take stands with the most disturbed members and support those who stand tall, the herding family will adapt to the symptom-bearer . . . and at the same time undercut anyone who attempts to define himself or herself against the forces of togetherness. (69)




The herding instinct in chronically anxious America has the same effect of furthering adaptation to the least mature, to those who are most unwilling to take responsibility for their own emotional being and destiny. Its influence on leaders is several-fold. It discourages them from expressing “politically incorrect” opinions and encourages them to play it safe generally; it undermines excellence by encouraging society to organize around its most dysfunctional elements; it forces leaders to engage in countless arguments that are dilatory; and it makes it more difficult for leaders to be clear, much less decisive. (70)




It has been my impression that at any gathering, whether it be public or private, those who are quickest to inject words like sensitivity, empathy, consensus, trust, confidentiality, and togetherness into their arguments have perverted these humanitarian words into power tools to get others to adapt to them. (71)



Blame Displacement

Chronically anxious families encourage blaming rather than “owning it.” (76)




Every crisis has a different context, of course, but what can be said of all families of any culture is that to the extent that families deal with crisis by focusing on the impacting agent or condition, they usually remain stuck as a result. More mature families that focus primarily on their own response to a trauma generally heal faster. (79)




All the characteristics of blame displacement we find in families are also prevalent throughout the greater American family today: focus on the other, disregard of personal resources, personal attacks on the opposition, a desperate quest for certainty, and a variety of pet (that is, favorite) displacement issues. (79)




Where one partner can be taught to regulate his or her own reactivity, the other will often begin to imitate that behavior and adaptation can ultimately be reversed. But for this shift to occur a critical point of departure must be reached: the more motivated partner must also be able to stop shifting blame to the other and to look more at his or her own input. This does not mean that they should look more at their own faults, but rather at how they have been compounding the situation (81).




The focus on pathology rather than strength throughout our society is itself a form of displacement, since it protects us from tlhe far more difficult task of personal accountability. (81)



Quick Fix Mentality

The chronically anxious family is impatient. The same escapist thinking that leads it to the displacement of blame also leads it to assume that problems can be fixed in a linear way. The quick-fix mentality is the other side of the coin of displacement. Both are a flight from challenge, simplistic in their conception of life, and outwardly focused. Both avoid dealing with emotional process and devalue the self. And ultimately, both depreciate the integrity of the leader. (84)




The degree of pain we are experiencing at any time almost always includes two variables: the stimulus “causing” the discomfort, and the threshold for tolerance-that is, the capacity to overcome or perhaps reduce the sensation itself. . .To the extent we are motivated to get on with life, we seem to be able to tolerate more pain; in other words, our threshold seems to increase. Conversely, to the extent that we are unmotivated to get out of our chair, our threshold seems to go down. This connection between pain and motivation also has a relational slant and plays a role in the aforementioned herding adaptation to immaturity. Raising our own threshold for the pain another is experiencing can often motivate the other to take more responsibility for his or her life. There is even the possibility that the challenge of having to deal with their pain will, in the most natural way, make their own threshold rise as well. By the same token, to the extent that our threshold for another’s pain is too low, perhaps because we are unable to distinguish theirs from our own, their threshold for their own pain is likely to go down as well, and with it, their own motivation for maturing. (85-86)




What chronically anxious families require, of course, is a leader who does not give in to their demands. . . .As with personal families, the desire for a quick fix throughout the greater American family evidences a search for certainty, a penchant for easy answers, an avoidance of the struggles that go into growth, and an unwillingness to accept the short-term acute pain that one must experience in order to reduce chronic anxiety. (87)



Poorly Defined Leadership

The major regressive effects on leadership of chronic anxiety in both personal families and in the greater American family are these:
Leaders lack the distance to think out their vision clearly.
Leaders are led hither and yon by crisis after crisis.
Leaders are reluctant to take well-defined stands, if they have any convictions at all.
Leaders are selected who lack the maturity and sense of self to deal with sabotage.

These are in stark contrast to the major principles of leadership mentioned earlier that were characteristic of the great Renaissance explorers.
The capacity to separate oneself from surrounding emotional processes;
The capacity to obtain clarity about one’s principles and vision;
The willing to be exposed and to be vulnerable;
Persistence in the face of inertial resistance; and
Self-regulation in the face of reactive sabotage.

What is always absent from chronically anxious, regressed families is a member who can get himself or herself outside of its reactive, herding, blaming, quick-fix processes sufficiently to take stands (89).