Int J Adolesc Med Health 2003;15(3):00-00.
The breakdown of meaning and adolescent problem behavior
Moshe Hazani, PhD
Department of Criminology, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
Abstract:This paper attempts to account for the upsurge of adolescents’ problem behavior in high-income countries in terms of Lifton’s paradigm of symbolic immortality. Whilst most of the works dealing with this subject focus on the level of the individual adolescent and his or her surrounding, Lifton shows that societal processes can affect the individual. Drawing upon his approach, it was argued that desymbolization—the collapse of society’s symbols system—produces “divided selves,” individuals who harbor an ‘aggressor-victim double’ in their psyche, wherein an internal conflict between the aggressor and the victim engenders self-destructive impulses. In this study it is hypothesized that problem behaviors are external manifestations of underlying self-destructiveness. Thirty-four Jewish-Israeli adolescents involved in sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, anorexia nervosa, and violence were interviewed. It was found that despite individual and social dissimilarities, and the different problem behaviors, the participants were marked by inner-directed destructiveness as well as a sense of meaninglessnes of life and lack of symbolic relationship to what transcends their here-and-now selves.Significantly, violent adolescents, whose aggression is other-directed, were found to be marked by underlying self-directed aggression as well. If the findings of this study are representative of Israeli society at large or of other affluent societies, than the epidemic proportions of youth problem behavior may indicate that these societies are undergoing desymbolization, a psychocultural breakdown.
Key words: Symbolic immortality, self-destructiveness, aggressor-victim double, adolescence, problem behavior, Israel
Correspondence: Moshe Hazani, PhD, Department of Criminology, Bar Ilan University, IL-52900 Ramat Gan, Israel. Tel: 972-3-5318221; Fax 972-3-5352114. E-mail:
INTRODUCTION
In the wake of the surge in problem teenage behaviors in affluent countries—including drug abuse, suicide, eating disorders, violence, and more—many researchers are exploring the underlying causes. Most studies focus on the micro (and semi-macro) level risk factors for problem adolescents, such as childhood abuse, low family income, large family size, a convicted parent, disrupted family, low nonverbal IQ, and individual factors such as daring and troublesomeness. The studies, however, cannot account for the epidemic of problem youth behavior in recent years or its prevalence in social strata not marked by the above risk factors.
I believe we should adopt an important aspect of the Durkheimian approach and look for risk factors also on the macro societal level, as
Durkheim (1) did. It is not a full adoption of Durkheim’s perspective, because he is concerned only with the macro level. As he writes, “disregarding the individual as such, his motives and his ideas, we shall seek directly the states of the various social environments… in terms of which the variations of suicide [or any problem behaviors, for that matter] occur “ (p. 151). While we relate youth problem behavior to what occurs on the macro level, as Durkheim recommended, we do not disregard the individual: Lifton’s paradigm (see below), makes it possible to connect the macro and micro levels. To date, though, few authors, e.g., Greening and Dollinger, (2) have done so.
Most researchers view various problem behaviors as separate and distinct: anorexia nervosa is separate from sexual promiscuity, drug abuse from violence, etc. there are studies, however, show that they are interlinked: pathological gambling, to alcoholism and delinquency (3); drug abuse, to AIDS and teenage pregnancy (4); self-mutilation, to eating disorders and suicide (5); addictions (including anorexia) to violence and sex (6). Problem behaviors are not all the same, but studies conducted in Israel (7) suggest that many of them are manifestations of a single, multifaceted root.
This article probes the underlying common denominator of the various problem behaviors, and, using Lifton’s paradigm of symbolic immortality, attempts to account for the epidemic.
PARADIGM OF SYMBOLIC IMMORTALITY BY LIFTON
Lifton (8) claims that human beings require a sense of immortality in the face of inevitable death. This sense represents a compelling, universal urge to maintain an inner sense of immortality and a quest for symbolic relationship to what has been before and what will continue after our finite individual existence. The striving for a sense of immortality is in itself neither compensatory nor irrational, but an “appropriate symbolization of our biographical and historical connection” (8, p. 17).
Lifton enumerates five modes of symbolic immortality, of which only three will be presented here. The biological mode is the sense of living on through one’s offspring, or in one’s tribe, organization, people, etc. The theological mode is expressed in the ideas concerning life after death and in the more general principle of the spiritual conquest of death. The third mode is that achieved through a person’s works (e.g., arts, thought, institutions).
It must be stressed that the modes of symbolic immortality are not merely problems pondered when one is dying (“man’s ultimate concerns,” in Lifton’s terminology); rather, they are constantly perceived (albeit often unconsciously) inner standards by which we evaluate our lives and maintain the feelings of connection, meaning, and movement so necessary to everyday psychological functioning (“man’s proximate concerns,” in Lifton’s terminology). In other words, the modes are the links that bind us to life, whatever our age, health and state of mind.When people lose their sense of immortality, their everyday functioning is impaired, due to diminished vitality and the anxiety associated with death and death equivalents: separation, stasis and disintegration.
One’s sense of immortality can be impaired due to personal circumstances (e.g., children who were incestuously abused may plunge into what Lifton calls a “death-in-life” existence). However, societal phenomena can also engender impairment of people’s sense of immortality. Individual modes of symbolic immortality are derived from collective symbolizations.
This is why historical dislocations—periods in which people have special difficulties in finding symbolic forms within which to locate themselves—produce death anxiety among individual members of society. Significantly, it is not physical suffering that leads to the miserable “death-in-life” existence, but desymbolization—the collapse of the symbolic universe that endows life with meaning. Anthropologists call it “breakdown of meaning”—a phenomenon they observed striking non-Western societies under the impact of the West. To extricate themselves from their wretched existence, people react in a variety of ways (9, p. 22). Lifton focuses on the adoption of a new symbols system, which relieves the miserable of their suffering. However, prior to this relief, desymbolization can be followed by a stage of “cultural distortion” (10), characterized by a high rate of crime and social deviance (11). While this stage is often transitory in nature, it is the focus of our attention.
THE AGGRESSOR VICTIM DOUBLE
While anthropologists focused their attention on the societal level, others dealt with the individual one. Lifton, avers that desymbolization and the attendant impairment of the sense of immortality make human beings adopt a victim identity. Hazani (7), claims that in addition to the victim identify, desymbolization also produces an aggressor identity. That is, an individual whose sense of immortality was impaired comes to harbor what he calls an aggressor-victim double in his/her psyche.
Wardi (12) found this double among Holocaust survivors: “The extermination camp incarnated Jung’s theory of the aggressor-victim archetype in problem dimensions. Aggressor and victim are merely a pair of archetypes embodied in the same human being” (12, p. 97).
The opposing introjects produce “divided selves,” internal “battle-ground[s] for what [the subjects] feel to be two deadly hostile selves”—with the resulting “self-loathing” and “self-despair” that lead to self-destruction (13, p.176, 162). The battle is indeed a deadly one, because the person “is the victim of an internal persecutor, an alien and destructive inner presence, the hidden executioner” (14, p. 321-2). In the words of Maltsberger and Buie (15), “the hating introject calls for the execution of the evil self” (p. 26)—that is, the internal strife can lead to suicide or to partial suicide, i.e., self-destructive behavior.
The following sequence results: Desymbolization impaired sense of immortality self-destructive impulses that can manifest themselves in behavior.
METHODS
This study was conducted in Israeli neighborhoods at opposite extremes of the socioeconomic spectrum: a disadvantaged neighborhood that is home to Mizrahim (Jews whose families originate in the Middle East and North Africa) and a solid middle-class neighborhood, inhabited mainly by Ashkenazim (Jews originally from Europe and America). Quite a few teenagers living in the neighborhoods were involved in problem behaviors. Local informants (most helpful were teenage girls, often the subjects’ siblings) helped us select adolescents who were involved in sexual promiscuity, drug abuse, anorexia nervosa, and violence. Thirty-four adolescents aged 14–19 were selected: 19 boys (10 Mizrahim, 9 Ashkenazim) and 15 (7 Mizrahim, 8 Ashkenazim) girls. Anorexia nervosa and sexual promiscuity were typical of the girls, drug abuse and violence—mainly of the boys. Some of the boys, too, were promiscuous, but this was not considered to be a problem behavior for them, whereas it frequently involves the girls in pregnancy and abortion. The behaviors were also to some extent specific to the neighborhoods: anorexia was found mainly among the well-off girls and violence among the boys from the poor neighborhood.
The method employed was unstructured interviews, along the lines recommended by Spradley (16). Interviews, however, can be misleading, since the subjects are not always willing to speak about their misbehavior and often tend to present themselves as not involved in any problem activity. To deal with this problem, we interviewed them at least twice: the second time, they already knew the interviewer, which made it easier to extract the relevant details. This was also facilitated by the fact that some of the interviewers were almost their own age and familiar with the subjects’ environment. We took pains to avoid direct questions, because our approach was phenomenological: We were interested in how the subjects perceived themselves. Experience (17) indicates that direct questions are a poor means of achieving this goal, because respondents try to satisfy what they believe to be the questioner’s expectations. By contrast, informal conversation makes it easier for them to express themselves and expose their world.
We also interviewed informants who knew the subjects well, including siblings, parents, social workers, teachers, physicians, rabbis, and local police officers.
All the data were cross-checked, as recommended by Douglas (18), yielding coherent pictures of the youth’s behavior and their symbolic world.
RESULTS
Four Modes of Self-Destructiveness
1. Promiscuous girls manifested self-destructive tendencies. Self-inflicted bodily injuries were frequent: cuts on the arms and punctures “for the fun of it.” Some took drugs. Some had had abortions or even several. When asked why they did not take precautions to avoid pregnancy, a common answer was, “what do I care if I die?” They also ignored the danger of contracting AIDS, shrugging their shoulders when it came up. All the explanations they heard about the dangers fell on deaf ears. A physician who treated them reported that they said, “[if we die] we’ll be rid of this shit.” Their self-image was low. They saw themselves as the boys’ “trash cans”: “they toss their garbage into us and walk away.” The girls from the middle-class neighborhood, with a different lifestyle, were concerned about their physical health (always carrying condoms with them, for example); but they, too, manifested self-loathing. “I try to get away from this [wholesale sexual relations] and always fail. The next morning I hate myself and want to die, because I failed again. I’m worthless.” Another said: “I get laid so I’ll be worth more, to feel that someone really wants me; but I know that what they want is a lay, not me. So then I feel even more worthless.” Again: “The boys know what goods to pursue, so they come to me.” When asked when they started feeling they were worthless, one answered: “As long as I can remember myself. But now I don’t have to pretend to be good, and that makes things easier, because it was always hard to pretend.” Her estimation of herself as worthless freed her of the enervating need to play a role she saw as antithetical to her true self.
2.Users of hard drugs (as distinct from occasional consumers of soft drugs) spoke about running away from life. According to an (unpublished) study of this author, occasional consumers of soft drugs are not substantially different from other Israeli teenagers who belong to the same social stratum.
“This shitty life, I hate it and those who made me. Instead of dying [once] I’m dying in installments [drug-use occasions]. But that’s when I’m really alive, because it’s groovy.” For this subject, cutting loose from the world, partial death is life. A similar statement: “When you see you’re worthless, what can you do? That way [using drugs] you forget everything and when you come back you want to run away again.” Some said that drugs were their lifelines to society; taking drugs with others creates a bond among the users and thereby binds them to life. The fact that they’re all alike, too, helps: “No one here will say I’m worthless; we’re all the same.”
3.Anorexic girls spoke about “It,” something located outside themselves, that had it in for them. They wanted to fight back, but could not. Their lack of self-esteem was conspicuous: “If I were pretty [thin] I’d be worth something; this way no one is interested in me.” Some of them were attractive and successful girls, but despair was gnawing at their insides. “Who am I and what am I worth?” They all knew they were risking death. “My life hangs by a thread,” wrote on of them. “Only a kilogram separates me from death.” But, many said, “It” is stronger than they are. Some said they “deserved it” but couldn’t explain why. A physician who knew several of the girls said that talking about the dangers of anorexia interferes with their treatment, because it is liable to enhance the attraction of the risk.
4.Most researchers do not view violence as associated with self-destructive impulses. In fact, the connection is not immediately evident. During the course of the conversations, however, the violent teens reveal their self-image of contemptible losers. For example, a quiet and introverted boy who would suddenly start hitting others said: “[The class] went to a performance [at the municipal theater]. At the end the [performers] called me to come up on stage and demonstrate something. I felt revenge.” This boy was tall and good-looking; it was no accident that he was selected to come on stage. But he felt “revenge.” Against whom? For what? He had trouble answering, but it finally turned out that he was “taking revenge” against his classmates, who—so he felt—made fun of him. Now, when he was the one called on stage, he “took revenge” on them. His teachers did not consider him to be inferior, but he was convinced he was, leading to his extreme outbursts that sometimes ended in blows.
Violence was also found among the girls. One girl who frequently got into scuffles with her friends—once she tore out a friend’s hair with a piece of scalp attached—showed the physician gashes on her arm. “I did this in arts and crafts with the drill,” she said. “Why?” “I felt like it.” A violent boy said: “In class I feel second-rate, afraid to open my mouth.” (His teachers were full of praise for his verbal abilities.) “So when I just can’t any more I erupt, to show who’s better.”
Encounters between youth from the disadvantaged neighborhoods and those from well-off neighborhoods (usually in school) were marked by manifestations of violence, generally by the former against the latter. This violence is familiar and considered to be “understandable,” given the structural tension (large disparities in family income, origins, and education) between the two groups. But the fact that many children from disadvantaged neighborhoods integrate successfully with their middle-class classmates, without tensions, suggests that there are non-structural causes of violence.
We found that the violent youth have a personal background. It is true that in the interviews they claimed they were “punishing” the “nerds” for their arrogance—on the surface a structural factor; later, though, it became clear that they see themselves as the “wretched of the earth” even vis-א-vis their own neighborhood. One, who habitually dressed in worn black clothes, refused when his mother urged him to put on a nice shirt. His explanation: “Who am I to dress nicely?” Another shaved off his hair and eyebrows to look like the hero of the movie, Natural Born Killers. When asked why, he said: “Because he [the hero of the movie] ‘showed them’ and also escaped this shitty life.”