The Identification of Developmental Psychology for Communism.
By Loi Tran
Basing on the premise: “Development is a product of the interaction between the person and his environment.”(4), I made my own assumption “People who have been living in communist/terrorist culture develop their cognition and morality in progressive unhealthiness/negativeness”. In this paper I only focus on examining cognition and the three stages theories by Freud (Psychosexual theory), Erikson (Psychosocial theory) and Piaget (Cognitive Development theory) to support my assumption; and the model for this assumption is a balloon on an up-side-down tripod.
- Comparison of Psychosexual, Psychosocial and Cognitive Stages.
Approximate Age |
Freud (Psychosexual) |
Erikson (Psychosocial) |
Piaget (Cognitive) |
Birth to 1 or 2 years |
Oral Stage |
Trust vs. Mistrust |
Sensorimotor |
1-3 years |
Anal Stage |
Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt |
Preoperational (2-6 years) |
3-6 years |
Phallic Stage |
Initiative vs. Guilt |
|
7-11 years |
Latency |
Industry vs. Inferiority |
Concrete Operational |
Adolescence |
Genital Stage |
Affiliation/Abandonment Identity/Role Confusion |
Formal Operational |
Adulthood |
Genital Stage |
Intimacy/Isolation Generativity/Stagnation Integrity/Despair |
Perry & Kohlberg |
II. Definition of culture – Comparison of communist culture and some of other cultures.
Culture is the beliefs, values, behaviors, and material objects that define a people’s way of life. So culture includes what we think, how we act, and what we own. Culture is also a bridge linking the past, the present, and the future (1). Some different features between communist/terrorist culture and some of other cultures are presented in the below table *:
|
American |
Traditional Vietnamese Culture |
Communist/Terrorist Culture |
Belief |
Believe in God and Bible |
Believe in God, Buddha, Bible & Ancestor. |
Believe in Marx, Lenin, Mao Zedong, HoChiMinh. Believe in delusion of Communism. |
Moral Core of Philosophy |
“Sin” |
“Sin”. “Suffering”. “Better a lean peace than a fat victory”. |
“Evil is not only a sabotage force but it also manifests the motivation to develop the human history… (2) “Religion is a drug.” “Communism must be a violent dictatorship.” |
Values |
Individualism and nationalism are valued. Freedom of feeling, thinking and doing. |
Family bond individualism & nationalism are valued. Freedom… |
Only Communist party is valued. Communist party controls physical and mental of every person. |
III. The cognitive development and personality of people in communist/terrorist culture through stages.
The communist culture impacts deeply and pervasively in the life span of a person; however in this paper I only present its impact on stage one (oral-trust/mistrust-sensorimotor) and stage two (anal-autonomy/shame/doubt-preoperational).
Stage I. Communist nature is control; and the theory that the communists use to control human beings in stage I (oral, feeding or taking in, by Freud) is the principle of classical conditioning by the Russian physiologist (Pavlop). As an animal, a person is easily controlled by a regular lack of food as the strategic governance by the communist leaders. Of course, the poor quality and quantity of food retard the physical and intellectual development of both children and adults. In order to survive people have to resort to extreme measures including stealing, lying, prostituting, bribing, and destroying ecological system (cutting tree to sell, killing animals to eat …), etc …; the personality of the people begins to transform into the nature of animals. This type of communist conditioning causes the id factor of personality theory to increasingly cover the ego and super-ego because the id represents the communist while the ego and super-ego represent all good things in life such as religion, conscience, and family ties. The people’s thoughts are centered on finding food; this means that the communists are limiting their people’s cognitive development (here-and-now cognition, sensorimotor stage of Piaget). A social consequence of this stage is the people’s mistrust toward the communists. People mistrust communists but still have to depend on communism or are slaves to the communists (attachment: parents still depend directly on communists and children depend directly on parent or indirectly on communist environment) to survive. They don’t have a choice; this is the paradox of this stage.
Stage II. During this anal stage (taking out stage) the communists still control people even for individual pleasures. People had to ask permission from the communists to go somewhere like vacationing to relieve their stresses. Any stress expressions relating to the pressures of communist society are accused as opposing the communist government; so stresses increase and are accumulated then make people self-harm, suicide or homicide cruelly later. Of course, people can only use the terms and talk about what the communist government permits; so the natural and healthy autonomy is killed or constricted. When people’s autonomy is eliminated they can feel shame at the beginning; however late, little by little the less shame is felt because the emotional abuses happen frequently and universally, eventually shamelessness or impudence is formed and becomes a kind of specific culture for communist/terrorist societies. This culture represents cultural depersonalization of people and can be called as animal behavior. This culture is only formed when the individual cognition is replaced by the predetermined cognition of the communist party. Remember that the choice of the 4 year-old child to answer which one of a series of photos showed the scene that the doll seated on another side was viewing, in the famous experiment Three Mountains of Piaget (3); the child still had freedom of thought (although the choice is wrong because of the immature of the child). On the other hand the choices made by mature people living in communist/terrorist government are conditioned like the dogs in the Pavlov’s experiment (cognition of people is numbed or cognition of mature people from higher stages is repressed to preoperational stage).
IV. Conclusion.
Basing on the nature of the communism/terrorism as presented in the table *, the human development in communist/terrorist culture environment will be also numbed or progressively regressive in the subsequent stages, then it will explode or self-exterminate and is demonstrated as the following:
Negative/Unhealthy Numbed Positive/Healthy |
-∞ <---------------------------------0--------------------------------> +∞ |
Communist/terrorist American/Vietnamese |
culture environment traditional culture environment |
V. Development Model: A balloon (person) on an up-side-down tripod. (See appendix)
There are two parts to this model. First, a tripod which is composed of three legs and base to set objects upon. The three legs represent the three theories Psychosexual, Psychosocial and Cognitive Developmental. The second part to this model is the balloon which represents a person. A normal setup for this model would be a balloon comfortably set on the tripod’s platform just like a person would be able to comfortably develop and mature in democratic and free countries like America or traditional Vietnam. However, to represent a communist society, the balloon is set atop the legs of an upside down tripod. The stages of development are the same in both instances, but the balloon is far less stable in the communist portrayal than in the “free” country’s portrayal. With enough pressure over time, the balloon on the communist tripod can not survive or develop but explode by its environment (the three arrow legs) or self destroy from inner stresses. Meanwhile, the normal tripod will have comfortable platform for the balloon to rest upon and to develop in healthy.
References
- John J. Macionis. (1995). Sociology, Culture (p.62). Prentice-Hall, Inc., New Jersey.
- Ho Chi Minh National Political Academy. (2000). Marxism-Leninism Philosophy. National Political Publisher, Hanoi, Vietnam.
- Kathleen S. Berger. (1994). The Developing Person through the Life Span (p.234). Worth Publishers, New York.
- Patricia King, William Perry’s Theory of Intellectual and Ethical Development, p. 200, col. 1, ln. 35-36