So what are these famous stages of separation? Here is a quick list.

Stage 1: by the age of about 18 months, a child should become comfortable with the idea that Mommy leaves sometimes and then comes back. If every time Mommy leaves the room, the child collapses in hysterics, this isn’t a sign that he really loves Mommy. All kids love their Mommies. It’s a sign that something is not going right.

In adulthood, failure successfully to go through this stage translates into clinginess in relationships. abandonment issues, anxiety, depression, and when it’s coupled with feeding issues into eating disorders, smoking, alcoholism.

Stage 2: by the age of 3, a child arrives at a complete realization that Mommy is a separate person. This is a moment when he begins to experiment with asserting his will. He says no to everything, rejects food, insists on his own clothing choices, throws tantrums. 

If this stage is thwarted, in adulthood this is somebody who is uncomfortable with leadership roles, has trouble speaking in public, feels judged, finds it hard to carry things through.

Stage 3: by the age of 5, a child begins to confront the role of “the excluded third.” She figures out that Mommy and Daddy are a couple and learns to deal with the trauma of that realization. She begins to say things like, “Mommy, when will you finally die so that I can marry Daddy?” She begins to cling to Daddy and tries to disrupt the activities that the parents do as a couple.

If this stage is thwarted, in adulthood this is somebody who recreates triangular situations and feels rejected.

Stage 4: at around 6-7, the peer group displaces parents from the center of the child’s life. Simply put, friends become more important than parents. A child becomes defiant, loves to contradict, criticizes the parents, rolls her eyes. When this begins to happen, many parents feel sad and think they are doing something wrong. But it’s the exact opposite! They are doing everything right and should feel very proud. (If this happens a bit later, at 8-9, that’s fine, too.)

Stage 5: there is a wider range here because different kids approach puberty at different speeds, so this is a stage that is around ages 9-13. This is when the most important thing becomes being a boy or a girl and developing an interest in boys or girls. 

Stage 6: this is a loooong one. It’s the transition to adulthood and it will take as long as the enormous hormonal transformations are occurring. This shit is very individual and it takes place between 13 and 18 years of age, approximately. This is the final stage of separation where a child needs to come into his own as a fully separate human being. He does this by rejecting everything about the parents. Even the sound of their voices becomes grating. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t love his parents. Of course, he does. But he needs to position himself as a separate human being, and the only way is to declare his difference from his parents.

I have a colleague who says, “My teenage son is so rebellious. He locks himself in his room and doesn’t even want to talk to us. He is always angry at me. He is secretive, and I don’t even know who his friends are. What have I done wrong?”

And I’m like, “Lady, you’ve done everything right, and this is your evidence. Go buy yourself a gift and throw a party. You did good with this boy.” She doesn’t believe me and thinks I’m trying to be nice. Which is patently silly because when did I ever try to be nice?

The really sad thing about this is that it’s precisely the good parents who do everything right and let their children separate that feel guilty because their children don’t conform to the stereotype of a “good”, permanently polite, obedient, and convenient child. As if a thriving individuality could ever arise from obedience, politeness and convenience.

And to conclude the endless post, I want to remind you that a famous psychoanalyst once said, “The most important role a parent can play is preparing a child to the parent’s eventual death.”

The worst cases, though, are not the ones where there is not enough love going from parents to children. Those cases are bad, of course, but not the worst because these are children who have a chance of healing in adulthood.

The worst cases are the ones where parents clearly love, adore and cherish their kids yet fail to fulfill the most important role of a parent. And that role is letting children pass through all the stages of separation successfully and in a timely manner. The damage done to them is enormous but it’s so invisible and so hard to identify that they can never figure out what’s wrong with them. And they spend their lives feeling guilty for constantly failing at things and not even knowing why it happens.

“The upper middle class families have become greenhouses for the cultivation of human capital. Children raised in them are on a different track to ordinary Americans, right from the very beginning,” he writes.

This is all ridiculous, just ridiculous. Have people lost their powers of observation completely? Why do they write such crap?

The most successful, happy and content people are the ones who were fueled by the greatest amount of love as children. There’s nothing else that works. The fuel of success is childhood love. Prep schools, tutors, it’s all a joke. 

This is why the discussion of, say, the genetical component of intelligence is a waste of time. Of course, intelligence is passed down genetically. But who cares? That genetic heritage will go to waste if the person isn’t propelled by the only thing that fuels success. 

If you want to give your kids opportunities in life, shower them with love, unconditional acceptance and adoration. 

So I decided to relax by scrolling down my Facebook feed. Item #2 was an ad from Audible titled How to Build Self-discipline. The worst part was that I immediately started an inner monologue about how I had worked all day and had only opened Facebook a second before and I’m not really lazy. Finally, the guilt became too much and I closed Facebook. 

Fuck you, Audible.

People who are outraged by Trump being outraged by what Sidiq Khan said and people who are outraged by  people who are outraged by Trump being outraged by what Sidiq Khan said and people who are being outraged by those who are outraged by those who are outraged, etc.:

Have you considered, just for variety’s sake, to respond to the show that these clowns are putting on by investing inwards other than outwards? For instance, every other time or every fifth time that the show begins, one can decide not to purchase the ticket but instead to spend the energy and the time on oneself. The second the show starts, one takes all of the energy that is about to swell outside and feed the vampires and instead takes a run around the block. Or does pushups. Or reads 15 pages of a book one needs for work. Or memorizes 10 words in a language one is learning. 

‘Cause they are getting richer and more powerful. And we are feeding them instead of feeding us. It doesn’t have to be politicians. Any species of vampire (movie stars, famous athletes, etc) will do. 

In Palin’s case, it’s an emotionalappeal to a romanticized, mythical past of “real America.” And that’s why I think the fixation people have on Palin’s complete policy incoherence and ignorance is missing the point. Her policy ignorance isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Palin is conceptually and intellectually poor because her politics are not about policies, but a romantic restoration of the ‘real’ America to its rightful place.

Because you, fuckers, have completely abandoned the toolbox of nation-building. These people can do whatever they want with the tools that you dropped in your eagerness to demonstrate how comfortable you are with fluidity. Who was publishing the idiotic screeds denouncing Thanksgiving and 4th of July? Pushkin? Or was it the same bunch of losers who are now stunned that this has been turned against them?

Finally somebody says something worthwhile about the UK’s terror attacks. From Kenan Malik’s blog:

The influence of institutions that once helped inculcate people with a sense of obligation to others, from the church to trade unions, has declined. So has that of progressive movements that gave social grievance a political form. The rise of identity politics has fragmented society and narrowed our sense of attachment and belonging. The social and moral boundaries that act as firewalls against inhuman behaviour have weakened.

Malik is absolutely right. National governments neither can nor want to do what they are supposed to be doing, which is to guarantee our welfare. Instead, they try to distract us and prop up their fading legitimacy by endless talk about security. While economic insecurities grow unchecked, the weakened national governments that are eagerly rolling over for liquid capital are displacing the conversation to the realm of increased policing and surveillance. 

As Malik correctly states, however, the kind of terrorism that is battering the UK cannot be legislated away. 

The real problem lies in the atomization of consumerist societies where people can see nothing deserving of greater allegiance than their stupid little “identity.” That’s why I’m so angry at the spectacle of Evergreen’s students. No, of course, they aren’t going to engage in terrorism. But it’s a milder symptom of the same disease: I’m convinced that there is nothing more important than my pouty little sense of grievance and to hell with anything that stands in the way of me expressing it. 

It’s the same with Trump voters and all of those people who can’t quit bashing Bernie supporters. Which is not to say that there is anything wrong with criticizing Bernie, of course. It’s the lack of solidarity with people who are just like you that bugs me. 

This identity obsession is the best gift neoliberalism could have hoped for. While we are distracted by barking at each other, our pockets are being emptied. 

You can set your watch by the functioning of a small child’s body. Eating, sleeping – everything runs on an iron-clad schedule. 

To think that we were all this healthy once. . .

So the Portland murderer was a Bernie supporter?? OK, folks, this can only mean he was totally bonkers. Supporting Bernie while being a white supremacist is beyond deranged. 

Obviously, this doesn’t excuse his horrible crimes. Do I even need to say it?

What these little shits at Evergreen, Middlebury, Berkeley and Co are doing is especially offensive because they utilize as a weapon the very real suffering caused by racism. The little shits have no knowledge of or respect for that suffering. They hide behind the real victims because it’s entertaining and relieves the boredom. 

And we all allow them to do it. 

If instead of being feted and rewarded (see my recent post about the awards given to the little shits at Yale), the narcissistic tantrums of the little shits were greeted with universal disgust and opprobrium, they’d stop. If the nasty little twerps knew that screaming like an unhinged maniac at a professor or administrator would mean never getting hired for a decent job or being automatically turned down by every grad program, I promise you, the twerps would find a way to control their outbursts fast enough. 

Remember the woman who posted racist comments about Africa while on an airplane? Remember what awaited her when she disembarked? The little dweebs at Middlebury and Co are doing the exact same thing. 

Every time a bored little twat at Evergreen or wherever throws a tantrum about “racism”, it becomes that much more difficult to bring the conversation back to actual racism. This crucial and painful subject is degraded by outbursts about Halloween costumes and cafeteria meals. 

It’s not ok, we shouldn’t tolerate it. 

It’s not ok.