Part 8
Recall earlier that I explained how the Parent and Child ego state is developed, my own had elements that many here consider incorrect, I was told that god is Jehovah and that He wants the best for us, that I am not to become a non jw because they are bad, I was only taught the jw religion, association was exclusively to jw’s. At a very young age I saw mum being scolded by hot water from the 2 nd floor balcony during preaching reinforcing my Parent that my parents are right, Also “worldly” people were somewhat different to me. As a little child if a belief is presented to the contrary to what the parent said (thus part of the child’s Parent ego state) the tendency is that it is safer to believe in a lie of the parent than in the child’s own eyes and ears.
And the problem does not stop here, you are taught early on who to listen to, who to associate, what to read, applying rules of conformity on how you should dress, how you should behave and how you should think, while dedicating a lot of your time on the beliefs that your parents has passed to your Parent.
As we get older we may confront situations that contradicts our Parent ego state, let’s say you meet a person from school and his parents in which they are nothing like what jw’s described as worldly (swearing drunkards, gamblers etc). There is a discrepancy of beliefs. An internal conflict occurs, the Parent tells you one thing and the Adult another, while the Parent strong influence threatens the Child in a continuing dialogue that the Adult shuts up, so you continue to believe that jw’s are the nicest people in the world. This discrepancy is the Parent externalised as true overlapping the Adult, a contamination referred to as prejudice. (Fig. 5.5)
Prejudice as the word implies are judgements on worldly people, apostates, homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, gamblers, liars, drunkards, concerned as they want to follow Jehovah’s rules, but once you remove God or a version of god out of the picture these views are all understood by what they really are, prejudices.
As Thomas Harris wrote: “ We all know how difficult it is to reason with a prejudiced person. With some people one can present a logical and evidential case regarding racial issues or left-handedness or any other subject that the person holds a prejudice about; yet, the Parent in these people steadfastly dominates a portion of the Adult, and they will surround their prejudicial cases with all kinds of irrelevant arguments to support their position. As illogical as their position may seem, the rigidity of their position is in its safety.” I’m OK – You’re OK, 1995, chp 6 p. 96, Arrow books.
When the Child contaminates the Adult, TA refers this as delusions, irrational fears like the fear I had before of reading this forum as I feared losing my faith because the watchtower magazine warned me so, or the fear of Armageddon, the idea that the world is an evil place under Satan’s control, etc. (Fig. 5.5)