Early Recollections

Interpretive Method and Application

Harold H. Mosak, Roger Di Pietro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780415952873
• eBook ISBN: 9781135440916
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Our present and our past are manifestly intertwined. Memories are not identical simulations of the past, but are stories shaped by our current perspectives of others, the world, and ourselves. As a result, the gathering of early recollections can be used as a projective technique that indicates our strengths, goals, lines of movement, fears, and a host of other relevant psychological data. Early Recollections are a quick, accurate, and cost-effective personality assessment demonstrated to have similar reliability and validity to other personality measures.

Both a comprehensive and accessible text, Early Recollections: Interpretative Method and Application presents a constructivist approach and systematic development of early recollection theory. Mosak and Di Pietro invite students to think and actively engage in problem solving rather than merely read for content. Supported by step-by-step examples, this book also offers a perspective suitable for application by Adlerian practitioners, non-Adlerian clinicians, and all other mental health professionals and students seeking a new framework for evaluating personality.

1

What Are Early Recollections and What Can We Learn From Them?

Early recollections (ERs) are stories of events that a person says occurred before he or she was 10 years of age. Everyone has ERs, and people often use them to illustrate a particular point, express an emotion, explain their behavior, or just reminisce. These stories frequently begin with “I remember this one time when …” or “I remember during my fifth birthday party …” or some other account of a specific event that they recall from their youth.

Early recollections are different from reports, which people often confuse with ERs. Reports are generalizations such as “My father and I used to go fishing almost every Sunday” or “As a kid, I went to the movies all the time.” While reports may be useful in understanding the person, they are not relevant to the focus of this book. Early recollections are specific incidents that clients tell us, and they are very useful in understanding the people telling them. In this book we will present the idea that ERs are a series of small mysteries that, once solved, can be woven together to produce a detailed tapestry of how a person perceives the world, others, and himself or herself. As you will see, ERs are filled with symbols and metaphors that, correctly interpreted, describe fundamental aspects of individuals.

Why before 10? That is the age at which people develop the ability to record actions and perceptions in chronological order. Before the age of 10, most people do not have continuous memory. That is, they cannot remember the sequence of events properly. Therefore, when adults reflect back on events that occurred prior to the development of continuous memory they patch up, alter, or in some way corrupt the “true” event by projecting material onto it. Memories function in an interesting way. People recall events, but not as clearly as a photograph. Adults shade, highlight, and fill in some aspects of those things they remember from their youth. To keep the story coherent, they have to fill in the missing parts of the story that their memories cannot furnish. They are not conscious of the information that they use to “patch up” (or in “psychologese,” “confabulate”) the story. And that is perhaps the most interesting and most revealing part of the ER. Because people cannot remember all parts of the recollection, they tend to attach or project certain details or feelings or concepts onto the recollection to make it coherent. In addition, those things that people choose to remember, or not remember, about the event add meaning to the recollection. Those additions or subtractions and the selection of events that are remembered provide clinical data that can be used to understand people.

The information gathered from ERs reflects a person’s current view of others, the world, and himself or herself. Our stance is that ERs do not explain a person’s childhood, nor are they meant to elicit causal explanations. That is, ERs do not suggest that because something happened in childhood, an individual must act in a particular way. We accept each person’s ability to choose his or her actions and reactions.

Early recollections give us an idea about an individual’s current perceptions. It is important to understand that the content of the remembrance is a projection; therefore, it makes no difference if the recollection is real or imagined. Whatever is told is clinically useful because the material comes from the client. That is, the stories told of events are projected through the film of the client’s personality.

Think of the actual event as the white light from a film projector bulb. Just as the light from a projector takes on the hues of celluloid, stories cannot emerge from within a person without being colored by how that person views the world. For example, if people are depressed, they may darken the actual event by focusing on the negative. On the other hand, if people are anxious, they may choose to see the event, and life, as dangerous and threatening. It does not matter what the event was, or if it happened at all, because the themes of those ERs that are presented can be interpreted. People choose not only what to remember but how to remember it!

Two examples that demonstrate that ERs don’t have to have actually occurred or happened as remembered can be seen in the following recollections.

The first is a birth memory:

I remember being born. I was in my mother’s womb. It was moist and warm. Suddenly I was being wrenched free. Two hands were grabbing me. That’s all I remember.

The second is a prenatal memory from someone diagnosed with schizophrenia:

This was before I was born. I was in my mother’s belly. There was a fire in the apartment building across the street. My mother walked over to the window and watched. Firemen were climbing a ladder. There were a lot of people on the street. It was exciting!

Early recollections can be used as a projective assessment because people project their beliefs onto these memories. That is exactly what makes ERs so powerful in understanding people. Festinger (1957) demonstrated that people have a low tolerance for cognitive dissonance. That is, they have a difficult time holding two opposing ideas in their minds. They do as they think, and they think as they do. In other words, people hold onto, and express, stories that are in agreement with how they perceive the world. It is for this reason that incidents are remembered and retold in accord with individual self-perceptions and world views. Therefore, once we have the client’s ERs, we have many of the clues to unravel the mystery of the person.

Choice and Life Style

Everyone has a personality. Some you like. Others you butt heads with. Loosely, personality is how people see the world. For example, if they seem overly suspicious of others, people call them “paranoid.” If people operate with disregard for others in aggressive or destructive ways, they are called “antisocial.” Personality and action are intertwined. How one chooses to act influences how one thinks. Conversely, how a person thinks affects how a person acts. But there is another element to personality: choice. It is how one chooses to think and act that redefines his or her personality, which we will discuss here as one’s life style — the terms are interchangeable.

This book is fundamentally based on the contributions of Alfred Adler. We choose to define personality in Adlerian terms as one’s style of life. Specifically, life style can be understood as the individual’s attitudinal set, that is, the person’s collection of convictions about life. These convictions guide how people perceive the world and how they choose to belong in the world. The life style has four components: the self-concept, self-ideal, Weltbild, and ethical convictions.

The self-concept consists of people’s views of themselves, in terms of what they are and are not. People may say, for example, “I’m charitable” or “I’m not a mean person.” The self-ideal (a term Adler coined in the early 20th century) can be understood as what people believe they should be or should accomplish in order to have a place in the world, to be significant. For example, “I should do better.” The Weltbild (we retain Adler’s term) represents people’s “picture of the world.” It is how people perceive everything external to themselves. This is how people view life and others. In other words, the Weltbild can be considered the set of beliefs a person has of everything external to himself or herself, including what the person believes others and the world expects of him or her. They maybe different than the convictions the person has about the self. It also includes conceptions of and attitude towards others. This includes the division along gender lines, such as “Men are callous,” and “Women are bad drivers.” Ethical convictions are exactly what you think they are. They are an individual’s moral standards, not necessarily society’s, and prescribe appropriate conduct, such as “Honesty is the best policy.”

Currently, there is a mistaken thought epidemic. Much of the way people describe themselves or others mistakenly implies a genetic destiny. Too frequently, people claim that their anger or depression or whatever emotion they’re feeling is inherent in their genes. They consequently look to medicine as the solution. However, can life style be found in DNA? No. Though emotions do spring from within people, they are not genetic. There are no sadness, or happiness, or depression, or envy, or anger chromosomes. Nevertheless, we are bombarded with individuals who shirk the responsibility of daily living, and particularly their misdeeds, and place it on something other than their own free choice.

What is a common excuse for those who refuse to take responsibility for their actions? (Hint: Think legal defense.) What line of thinking might be more appropriate for 18th-century mechanistic understanding than the complexities of the human brain, the world’s most sophisticated 3-pound analog computer?

That line of thinking is causal.

People may be reluctant to take responsibility for their actions and blame a mental condition or a predisposing illness or situation. This is especially true if there is a possibility of punishment. (Think about how some people blame their childhoods or economic problems when faced with a lawsuit.) Many people believe that if X happened, then Y must happen. They try to negate the power of individual choice. We see it regularly when people make excuses for their behavior and do not want to take personal responsibility. One excuse we have heard is “I came from an abusive home, and that is why I beat my wife.” People who think this way are missing an important fact: Not everyone who grows up in an abusive home develops into a spouse abuser. Others might say, “I’ve seen enough of that. It was terrible, and I will never become abusive.” As long as people have free choice, causality will not work as an excuse. Consequently, the power of choice is important in determining life style and can easily disprove the claimed validity for causal events. So even though people may have had certain things role-modeled for them while they were growing up, they are not compelled to repeat them. In other words, people choose what they allow to influence them in order to achieve a particular goal. For example, if someone wants to cheat on their diet, they can blame the food advertisers for putting out such persuasive advertisements, friends who tempt them to eat something they shouldn’t, bakeries that direct such sweet smelling aroma into the air, a sale that was about to end, co-workers who bring in sweets and then “just leave them there until somebody eats them,” the view that “life is too short, so why not live it up,” or adopt whatever rationale is necessary in order to get what they want.

What else is related to a person’s thoughts and behavior? Each person must ask himself or herself, How did I choose to react to previous events, and, more important, how did I perceive those experiences? People act and understand based on their perceptions. For human beings, perception is reality. Perceptions of others and of the world guide the individual to act in certain ways. How one perceives leads to real consequences.

Each person develops through childhood and into adulthood encountering innumerable experiences. People learn (or do not learn — human beings have the ability to choose, consciously or unconsciously) from these events a great number of things, such as what is important in life, what is to be avoided, how to interact with others, how they see themselves and the world around them. It is how a person chooses to interpret and act, as well as react, to situations that influences the development of that person’s personality. It is what the individual has learned from the environment, plus the individual’s interpretation of that environment, that shapes a person. Simply put, there are no strands of personality DNA in human genes. How each person chooses to perceive and incorporate those events shapes that person’s life style. Consequently, that person’s personality guides perception and behavior to reach whatever goals he or she chooses in life.

One learns who one is, what is important in life, and how to succeed at it through interpreting these events. These interpretations forge individual character. These interpretations are as varied as individuals are, and they explain the variability of human behavior. Just as people see things differently, they act differently in regard to these events. For example, when two hijacked passenger jets flew into the World Trade Center, some people left the towers as fast as they could by stairwell. Others helped those who were hurt leave the building. Some chose to stay with people who could not leave the building. Others jumped to their deaths. Some individuals decided to remain inside a burning and crumbling building, while others chose to rush into those burning buildings and save as many people as possible before the towers collapsed. Each of these people had a different perspective and a different goal. Their personalities, or life styles, guided how they perceived and interpreted the event and how they chose to react to it.

Early recollections hold valuable information for those who are able to determine their true meaning. Early recollections hold the key to understanding how individuals choose to see themselves and the world and what they value in life. Choice is the fulcrum that changes the balance of the individual. Choosing what to focus on determines an individual’s emotions and actions. Early recollections help us to determine what is important to a client. Early recollections, once told, tell on a person. They provide evidence of a person’s priorities, goals, and methods in achieving goals. They are the solvable mysteries of who one is, where one stands, and where one is heading.

Life Style Projected Into ERs

Take a moment and close your eyes and think of, actually be able to visualize, an event in your life that occurred before you were 10 years of age. Please take your time.

Got one?

OK. That event you have recalled makes a statement of who you are and what you believe. Welcome, you have just entered the world of projective testing. The event you remembered is most likely not accurate and has been filtered through your personality or, as we refer to it, life style. Whatever event you recalled, temporally large or small makes no difference, tells much about you.

How, you may ask, does some random memory have the power to indicate to others how you see the world and act within it? It’s rather simple, really.

Early recollections are stories of events that may, or may not, have occurred. Memories are very flexible and are not always reliable or accurate. Have you ever forgotten where you put your keys? Can you remember all of your first-grade classmates’ first and last names? You probably could in first grade!

Having unreliable and inaccurate memories can be advantageous. For example, people can remember events in such a way that stops them from doing something that could hurt them or that gives them confidence to do a project. If you recall an event from your past where you scarred your chin by going over a jump on your bicycle, you are more likely to refrain from similar dangerous behavior when that memory comes to mind. Or you may remember how you spelled the word “buzzard” right in a spelling bee in third grade and are then instilled with confidence to move forward on some measure of your abilities, such as a licensing exam.

People may also forget those things that do not help them or that contradict their self-perceptions. Here are some examples: Depressed people may not remember when they conquered previous challenges. Paranoid individuals may not remember events in which their trust in others paid off. Athletes who are participating in an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 What Are Early Recollections and What Can We Learn From Them?
• 2 Test Administration
• 3 The Headline Method
• 4 The Typological Approach
• 5 The Life Style Convictions Approach
• 6 Sequential Analysis
• 7 Sample Analyses
• 8 Details in ERs
• 9 ERs and Diagnosis
• 10 Client-Therapist Relationship
• 11 ERs in Marital Therapy
• 12 ERs and Vocation
• 13 Pre- and Postintervention ERs
• 14 Pre- and Postintervention ERs: Part II
• 15 Common Response Themes
• 16 Common Thematic Topics
• 17 Reliability and Validity
• 18 The Quantifiers
• 19 The Freudians
• 20 Alfred Adler and the Adlerians
• 21 The Applied Group
• 22 The New Adlerians
• 23 Other Methods of Gathering and Interpreting ERs
• 24 Dénouement
• References
• Index