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Issue 110 –

Part 1 – Affairs and Attractions 

by

Hal & Sidra Stone

 There  is a most memorable  interchange  in the Kazantzakis novel, Zorba the Greek. Zorba is talking to the narrator  of the book, a rational  writer  who is fearful about getting  into a relationship with the deliciously attractive village widow. He says: “You don’t want any trouble!  And pray, what do you want, then? Life is trouble,  death,  no.”

This  pretty  much  sums up the question  of attractions and affairs in primary  relationship.  If we are alive, we are going  to  be attracted  to people  on many  different  levels. We may be drawn physically,  emotionally,  psychologically, spiritually,  or any combination of the above. How we handle these attractions is one of the most complex issues of primary relationship.

 So, we are bound to agree with Zorba.  Life is trouble;  death  is not.  You will see, however, how a  knowledge of the selves and of bonding patterns  can help you to navigate in these particularly  difficult waters and how these, too, can help you to use your relationships  as teachers.

 To begin with,  our different  selves feel very differently from  one  another  when  it  comes  to  our  attractions  and affairs. Our  sexual and lustful selves are generally not at all monogamous;  they  are frequently  attracted  to other  partners, and they generally want to be sexually involved.

 Our free spirit, in a similar fashion, wants to do whatever it wants to do whenever  it wants  to do it.  It does not  like to feel imprisoned  by the boundaries  of relationship.

Our  selfish side wants  to do what  gives it pleasure.

Our  rational  and “New Age” sides may feel that jealousy is inappropriate,  that personal freedom is everything,  and for this reason anything that anyone does is just fine. For these selves, life should be excitingly spontaneous,  free of constraints,  and unconcerned with consequences.

 On the other  hand,  our inner conservative wants us to have nothing  to  do  with  affairs  and,  depending   on  our background,  might even be judgmental if there is any hint of attractions.

The responsible parts of ourselves will generally reject any kind of feeling or behavior that would even suggest that we might not be behaving responsibly in our primary relationship.

The  good father and good mother  also would have a difficult time with  outside  involvements.

We might also have a strong ethical side that rejects affairs, and possibly even a strong control  side that refuses to allow any kind of attraction  to be experienced.

We have only just begun to see how complicated this can become.  In a wonderful  Catch-22 fashion,  our inner critic may criticize us because we are having affairs or even feeling attractions.  It might,  however, also criticize us because we are not  feeling attractions  or because we do not  have the courage to have affairs.

We can even be drawn  into affairs without  feeling particularly attracted.  Our  pleaser can involve us in an affair for no other reason than the fact that he or she could not say no, because this might mean hurting  the other  person.

The  son or  daughter  side of us  might  get involved to have someone take care of us, and the power side might get involved largely to dominate someone else.

Along with  all of  these  is the  driving  power  of  our  sexuality, amplified and supported  by many of these different  selves.

 On yet another level, we might find ourselves drawn to someone who touches a very deep soul space in us or brings forth intense feelings of love that we have never experienced before.

Our inner child may feel sparked by someone outside of our primary  relationship.  Our magical child may be cued off by  someone  with  a rich  imagination  and  an intuitive nature.  Our  playful child might be met by someone who is capable of bringing out this part of ourselves.

Many of our selves, then, may be powerfully attracted to the  idea of an affair.  However,  one of the most  powerful selves that  needs  to be  considered  in  the  whole  issue of attractions  and affairs is the vulnerable child, and he or she has a whole different  kind of experience of this matter.

A fine kettle of fish! How are any of us even to begin to deal with these intricacies of the human psyche? Where can we possibly turn to try to sort out these complex conflicts and begin to make decisions  that truly  represent  who we are, rather  than  decisions that represent  the automatic  and unconscious responses of the primary  selves who are currently running  the show?

The more aware we are of these different selves, the more direct experience we have of them, the more real choice we have about what we do in life. It is not up to us to tell you how to live your life and what is the right or wrong way to behave. What we can say is that the more awareness and experience you have of who you are, the better off you will be in making these decisions, and the more you will be in control of your life and your environment.

Let us begin our examination of attractions and affairs from the standpoint  of the vulnerable child. We have chosen to start with the child because of its very important  place in relationship in general and primary  relationship  in particular.

Issue 109 –

 Where has Love Gone Part 14

The Inner Critic and Its Effect on Bonding

by

Hal & Sidra Stone

The inner critic is the part of each of us that criticizes us and judges us for the way we think,  act, and feel. It is a very powerful self in most people and, once again, most people are not aware of its operation.  Some people are aware of the fact that they are critical of themselves,  but they do not realize that  this  criticism  comes from a real,  live person inside themselves.

Initially, in our younger years, the inner critic’s function is protective. Our primary selves are telling us the way we should be in the world and the inner critic is criticizing us for not following these instructions. The inner critic is a function of judgmental  parents  and siblings and of the family in general.  It is a function  of collective cultural  attitudes  and patterns.

For  example,  if a woman  reads  all the  fashion magazines and discovers that attractive women weigh 97 pounds,  then  the inner critic uses this information and criticizes the woman for weighing 110  pounds.  It generally teams up with the perfectionist in creating impossible demands.  In the case of women,  its strength  is added to by centuries of patriarchal consciousness that have negated and demeaned women in many areas. With a good inner critic on the inside, nobody needs an enemy on the outside.

Why do we devote this time to the discussion of the inner critic? What does this self have to do with bonding? One of the very significant ways that we bond with people is through their criticism of us. If our actual parents  are critical of us, this tends to throw us into an identification with the victim son or daughter.  Once this critic is established inside of us, any outside criticism is reinforced by its inner criticism – not that it usually needs any help.  Let us see how this works.

Nanda has been raised by parents who were both very loving and,  at the same time,  very demanding and perfectionistic. They never told her directly that she was no good or at fault. If she came home with “Bs” on her report card, then the question was why weren’t  they “As.” If she got an “A,” the  question  was  whether  she had done better than her friends.  Nothing was ever quite good enough. In this fecund earth,  her inner critic flourished. She married a man who was strongly identified with the judgmental father.  Their basic bonding pattern was judgmental father I victim daughter and guilty  daughter.   She could never do anything quite  right. His criticisms were not always angry or even very overt. The father side needed to dominate her and dominate it did.

What is very important for us to realize, however, is that the bonding pattern between them was maintained with great power by the inner critic in herself that was constantly operating in such a way as to undermine her and support the judgmental father in her husband.  They were allies in their need to keep Nanda  down, to keep her a victim daughter.  If Nanda had been separated  from her inner critic,  her husband’s criticisms would have had far less power. She might even have found his comments  funny. Years later,  Nanda came into our program for therapy and training.  During a Voice Dialogue session, the facilitator was talking to Nanda’s inner critic. What follows is an excerpt from that conversation.

FACILITATOR: You seem like a very  powerful voice in Nanda. Have you always been this strong?

CRITIC:   Oh,  I’ve been very strong since she was a little girl. I had good teachers.  Her parents were fantastic.

FACILITATOR:  What about during her marriage? Did you operate then?

CRITIC:  Well, during her marriage I was always behind the scenes,  but I didn’t really have to work too hard. Her husband was so critical that it made my job easy. Actually,  now that she’s separated from him I have to work much harder than I did before.  He’s not around,  so it’s all up to me.

This  little vignette is a beautiful  portrayal of how the inner critic operates and how much power it has. Without any awareness of this critic, we are always trying to deal with the judgmental parents of the world as a strictly outer phenomenon.   Once Nanda could catch hold of this critic, she was simply unavailable for bonding with the judgmental fathers of the world,  of whom there  are multitudes,   just waiting to find their appropriate victim sons and daughters.

Cynthia  was  a  strong  feminist.  She was in her early twenties and had gone through  some very negative experiences with  men. She saw men as victimizing women and being totally anti-feminine.  She built up a strong emotional charge around this  issue.  The problem was that she was pulling these negative kinds of experiences into her orbit, and she was finding herself the victim daughter over and over again. She would move from victim daughter to rebellious daughter and then to the attacking mother within seconds of each other.

What finally began to shift things for Cynthia was when, during a Voice Dialogue session, the facilitator talked to her inner patriarch.  Here was a voice that boomed from inside herself and spoke about how much he disliked women, how inferior they were, how he wished she were a man instead of a woman,  and on and on.

Now this voice within her was conditioned  by a patriarchal culture.  Fighting this voice only on the outside was like being in a boxing ring with eyes blindfolded and one arm and leg immobile. It is not a fair fight. Cynthia was trying to deal with men on the outside while a major male energy within her was choking her to death.  This inner patriarch  is one of the forms of the inner critic. When a woman becomes aware of this,  she takes a major step out of the victim daughter bonding to the world of the patriarchy.

The  inner  critic  throws  each  person  into  the son or daughter  role. It is one of the main ways that we bond from these places. If we believe the inner critic,  then we are not okay and the person  we are with is always right; thus,  we automatically enter into a son or daughter  relationship with that person.

Neil  is constantly  criticized  by his wife for not  being aggressive and forceful enough in his law firm. His wife is not simply upwardly mobile; her ambitions are propelled by a rocket. Neil’s father had a very driving personality,  and Neil was accustomed to this kind of criticism. He had lived with it since he was a little boy, with a brief period of independence in his dating years. As happens so typically, Neil married his inner  critic.  He  will remain the victim  son to the critical mother until he learns to deal with her differently and/ or until he learns to recognize the reality and power of the inner critic within himself. It is as if he has been hit on the head by outer and inner criticism for so many years that now it has become a way of life. It feels normal. When his wife goes into her critical mother,  he naturally  goes into the role of good natured son. In this way, he remains bonded in a son/mother pattern until he is able to separate from his primary  selves.

The tragedy for his wife  is that her own judgmental mother is out of control.  It has taken her over and at some level she hates herself for it. So long as he remains identified with the victim son, Neil does not have the instinctual power to stop her power mother. In bonding patterns, each member of the  team  needs  the  other  person  for  his  or  her  own redemption.   It is as though they  are in a state of enchantment, held prisoner by their primary selves. If they could use their relationship as a teacher,  then Neil would see that his wife carries the  power energy that  he disowns,  he would begin to separate from her power-driven critical pusher and embrace her disowned good-natured  self. They would most likely feel much better not only about themselves but about one another.

It is fascinating to think that in our relationships, we have the ability  to redeem  one another  in this way, to help one another separate from the primary  selves that have exercised total power in our lives, and to free the disowned or unconscious selves that have not been available to us in the past.

Issue 108 –

 Where Has Love Gone Part 13

Bonding Through Our Judgmental Selves

by

Hal & Sidra Stone

This world is a world of judgments,  and we think it is safe to say that one of the primary ways people hook into bonding patterns  is through the judgmental parent that criticizes other people, or through the inner critic that criticizes one self. The combination created by the teaming up of an outer judgmental parent in one’s marital partner and a powerful inner critic within oneself guarantees abject misery!

Judgment comes through the judgmental parent selves. Discernment comes through an aware ego. It is a task of the first order for each of us to catch hold of the difference between these two selves. By doing so, the power of the aware ego is greatly enhanced and our whole relational system is markedly affected.

The people who get bonded into our judgmental selves represent the selves that we have disowned.  As we have shown previously, one of the ways that we can discover our disowned selves is to ask the question: “Whom do I judge?” The  people we judge are direct representations of our disowned selves.

Sara cannot stand powerful women who act in an authoritarian,  judgmental,  and dominating way. Sara is much more identified with her loving feelings and has a tendency to be at the mercy of a strong inner critic who criticizes her for any deviation from warmth  and compassion.  We automatically have a series of bonding  patterns set up here between Sara and any strong judgmental female that she happens to meet.

Let us say that she meets Sue, a strong, opinionated,  and dominating woman.  Sara immediately enters into a bonding pattern   because her vulnerable child is activated by the judgmental mother in Sue.  Since she cannot handle her vulnerability,  Sara’s own judgmental and rejecting mother takes over. It may never be expressed verbally, but she can feel its judgments inside.  The  feelings from this side cause her great  stress,  and the inner child feels correspondingly more vulnerable because it fears retaliation,  attack, and abandonment.

In a situation  like this,  Sara bounces back and forth between vulnerability on the one side and feelings associated with anger and judgment on the other. These kinds of bondings are responsible for a large portion of the stress we feel in relationships in general. Let us add to this an inner critic that says to her: “You shouldn’t  be feeling angry; you should be handling  this situation  better;  when are you going to grow up?”  Sara is now thrown  more deeply into the vulnerable victim daughter and feels more and more helpless in relationship to Sue.  It is in this way that our disowned selves, in projected form, invariably become our persecutors in life by becoming dominant factors in our bonding patterns,  much as Sara’s did.

Dean is a strong,  effective, and powerful man who is a physician.   Control is essential for him. He places great demands on his nurses, and he has a reputation for having a very heavy turnover in his office. He hates inefficiency, weakness, and vulnerability.  By some strange magic, a large number of the nurses he hires seem to have a fair amount of these characteristics.  This happens in bonding patterns over and over again. Dean’s judgmental, controlling father literally hires its disowned self over and over again. He wonders why it is that so many nurses have such vulnerable feelings and are so incompetent and needy. He remains locked in a powerful bonding  pattern, judgmental father to victim daughter, until each nurse quits because she cannot stand the pressure any longer.

In Dean’s case, he also has a son who has these characteristics. This is the nature of these patterns. So long as Dean is identified with the controlling and judgmental father, one or more of his children will very likely be thrown into the victim child, another may possibly be thrown into rebellious child, another  may possibly  identify with the strong parent and develop in that direction.

What we want to illustrate here is how powerful these energetic connections and bondings are, how they determine the direction of lives around us, and how much stress they are capable of creating within us.

Sadly enough, we often cannot recognize a bonding pattern until matters have gotten out of hand or exploded, or until  the  two people  are in an abject state of depression. These situations are not fun,  but once people develop a better understanding of the concept of bonding, it is surprising how much faster difficult relational issues can be worked through.  It requires real work and time to create a conscious relationship.  How else, though, can we discover the nature of these patterns  that have affected most of our lives since very early childhood?

The gifts of relationship are many. Certainly one of the major gifts is the possibility of becoming aware of,  and separating from, patterns of feeling, thought, and behavior that have been with us all our lives. This separation brings with it an absolutely amazing feeling of freedom.

Issue 107 –

Where Has Love Gone Part 12

Sacrificing  One’s Selves to Make the Relationship Work

by

Hal & Sidra Stone

Mark and Ben are in love. They are not identified as gay; they just happen to be in a gay relationship.  Mark is older and a fairly successful actor in commercials.  Ben is younger and has managed only minor parts. He goes from one “cattle call” to another and is usually disappointed in his attempts to break into the field.

As Ben’s lack of success becomes more and more pronounced,  he gets increasingly jealous of Mark.  They fight viciously and make up with equal passion. They really want to be together.  Eventually,  however, Ben begins to feel too vulnerable and miserable, and so he gives up and takes over as homemaker in the house. He sacrifices his ambitions and his power side (eventually disowning them) and identifies completely with his nurturing mother self.

We might note here that it is common for members of either sex to have selves that are of the opposite sex. This is not confined to people who are gay.  Mark’s inner child loves Ben’s nurturing mother and is truly  grateful for being so well cared for.  Thus,  Mark disowns his vulnerability and submissiveness and Ben disowns his power.

Basically, Mark now has all the power in the relationship; he is the dominant father to Ben’s submissive son, while Ben’s nurturing mother cares for his needy son. There are occasional outbursts and then Mark will buy Ben an extravagant gift to atone for having all the power.  As a  thoughtful  (if dominant)  father,  he also tones down the reports of his successes so as not to hurt Ben or make him jealous. Ben and Mark are fully bonded and extremely careful of one another’s feelings.

Ben still occasionally goes out on auditions,  and one day he lands a really good part that brings him some fame in the world of commercials. This immediately breaks the positive father I son bonding that has been operating so smoothly. The negative feelings that have been buried  or avoided come to the fore and the negative father/son  bonding takes over.

Mark’s  dominant  father  rails at Ben’s submissive son and wants him to continue to care for the house.  Ben’s judgmental father then attacks Mark’s guilty son and tells him, “You don’t really want me to make it. You just want me all for yourself.”  Mark and Ben fight all the time and nobody wants to take care of the house.

Here,  despite the unpleasantness of the situation, is an opportunity to grow.  Each man could own up to his own vulnerability and each could begin to take care of his own inner child rather than require the other to do so. Each could own up to his own need for success and why,  at a very deep level, this is important  for his feeling of well-being in the world. Each could own up to his own selfish self that really does want to be taken care of completely, or his competitive self that wants to be the bigger star. It would not be pleasant, but each would learn about himself and each would grow.

But this is not what happens.  Both men are now fully identified with their power selves; each man wants to be dominant and each wishes the other to care for his inner child by taking over the housework. There is no awareness; neither has used the relationship as a teacher.  In this situation,  the subpersonalities have taken over and are driving the cars, each completely attached to the outcome of every interaction. The  name of this game is power and control.

This time, it is Mark’s vulnerability that wins out. He is getting older and he is desperately afraid of losing Ben. Now it is Mark who stays at home and takes care of the house. He gives up his need for success,  he sacrifices his craft,  he disowns his selfish and instinctual energies, and he becomes the submissive son/nurturing mother to Ben.

Ben is now the one to identify with power and disown submissiveness. We see this so often in a bonded relationship.  Regardless of the sex of the individuals,  both are willing to sacrifice parts of themselves, to disown them completely, allowing the partner to carry the disowned energy,  in order to keep the relationship smooth.  Although this may well look like a conscious decision, it is most likely, as it was in this instance, a decision made by the primary selves, usually made with great  rationality,  to protect the inner child.

It is interesting to note that when a decision comes out of the bonding pattern  such as this, there is no aware ego, and therefore there is no real intimacy.  If there were, Mark might say something like, “You know, there is a part of me that is truly jealous of you.

That part liked being the big shot in the relationship and likes to be the star. But there’s another part that appreciates all that you’ve been through  and all you’ve done for me and is really happy for your success. I really love you a lot.  Sometimes I’m afraid that now that you’re doing well you might leave me and I really don’t want  that  to happen,   so  I try  to  think  of things  to  make  you  happy.

There’s  another part of me that wants you to feel guilty and miserable that you’ve surpassed me.  It’s really a lot of turmoil and I don’t exactly know what to do. I do know, though, that I want to be with you.”

Again,  we are not saying what anybody should do. Many such  bonded  relationships  continue  quite  pleasantly  for a lifetime.  In addition  to this,  it is quite possible that Mark would have come to a similar decision if he had not  been operating  from his submissive son,  but from his aware ego. But, as we have said before, it is not the decision itself, but who makes the decision,  that is important  in terms of one’s own individual evolution of consciousness.  In the case of Mark and Ben,  neither learned from  the other;  they just traded places in the very same bonding pattern.

Issue 106 –

Where Has Love Gone – Part 13

Good Fathers, Good Mothers, and the Denial of Instinct

by

Hal & Sidra Stone

It is often the case that the identification with the good father and good mother selves can result in a feeling of fatigue and ennui.

There are a number of reasons for this. Taking care of other people all the time and not providing time for one’s personal needs begins to get wearing after a while. Personal selfishness means that we do things for ourselves, and when we do things for ourselves we have more energy.

Identification with these patterns has another consequence. Individuals identified with good mother and good father selves are generally disconnected from their instinctual lives. They have a hard time reacting to people with the honesty of their feelings. There is a strong need to please. This denial of personal needs and the further denial of instinctual life, means that a major system of energy is lost to the individual. In addition to this, a certain amount of energy is needed to keep the disowned instinctual selves out of one’s conscious awareness.

In  our  own  relationship  (Sidra  and Hal),  we have learned  that the existence of this kind of exhausted feeling is a sure sign that we have locked into these good parent selves. It is at these times in a relationship that a major fight is likely to erupt,  seemingly from nowhere,  a fight that brings with it inexhaustible amounts of anger and energy.   It is often this very anger that breaks into the bonding pattern and lets people know that they have “fallen asleep.”

The identification with the good parent and the corresponding continual denial of instinct and selfishness can sometimes lead to physical debilitation and illness.   There are powerful forces in our upbringing that move us toward these good mother/good  father ties and the concomitant disowning of instinctual energies.

Television sitcoms portray remarkable  parents  being good,  kind,  compassionate,  and understanding.   Natural irritability and selfishness are not particularly acceptable in our society. But people in relationship are not always smooth and gentle with one another.  If this  is seen as a negative,  then every time things are not smooth this is seen as a negative interaction.  Let us look at another example of how these parental patterns operate in relationship.

WHERE  HAS  LOVE GONE?        

It is evening and Harry  and Selma have finished dinner. Harry  is feeling rather vulnerable and needy.  He has been worried about his health, and he has been experiencing some slight  symptoms  of dizziness that  go along with a blood pressure that  is moderately  elevated.  He has been checked very carefully by a number of different specialists, and they all agree that there is nothing seriously wrong with him.

As often  happens  when  he is concerned  about  himself  physically, Henry withdraws into himself because he does not want to bother Selma with all this. This desire not to bother or worry Selma is a pattern of the good father aspect of Harry.  His tendency is to stuff many of his worries down his own throat out of this good father identification.

On this particular evening,  Selma wants to finish some desk work. Harry is very agreeable to this (good fathers are always very agreeable to things!) and he even volunteers to do the dishes.  Selma is used to being taken care of in this way, and her thankful loving daughter responds with warmth and kindness.  This  is the difficult part of catching hold of these positive bonding  patterns in relationship;  they often feel so good. Things  seem to be working so harmoniously and there is such good feeling and affection.

Harry  goes upstairs  to read.  Selma is a good manager, and once she is at her desk she begins to take care of all kinds of things. She falls into the identification with the managing mother.  In this way she takes care of Harry.  She makes sure that there is enough money and that their investments are in order.  Harry  manages things very well in his own business, but  in the realm of personal  finances,  Selma is in charge.

The  evening passes and Harry  begins to feel resentful. Since he has locked into good father already, his options are fairly limited. If he were not identified with the good father, he could simply go downstairs and tell Selma that he wants to spend some time with her.  This option is not available to him, however. Instead, his feelings are hurt and he begins to go into a withdrawal.  His “poor me” self becomes stronger.

Then,  gradually,   a change occurs.  From the poor me/ hurt child a new part begins to take over, the angry father. He now resents Selma and  her  never-ending  attention  to details.  Gone is the gratitude,  affection,  and  warmth.   A while later,  when  Selma comes into their  bedroom,  she  is greeted by a sullen  and withdrawn  father.  She immediately drops into a guilt reaction and the verbal attack is launched by the new Harry.   “You are really an insensitive tight-ass. Why do you have to spend so goddam much time at that desk of yours?  You’d think the world was coming to an end.”  Is this the same man who two hours before was kind and loving and compassionate?   No,  it is not the same  man.  Harry  #1 was identified with the good father. Harry  #2 was identified with  the “poor me” child.  Harry  #3   is identified with the negative father.

So long as we are unaware of these selves,  we are bounced around amongst them as though we were ping pong balls. Each self takes its  swing at us and away we go. If Selma is unaware of these selves,  then she automatically falls into the selves that complement  the selves with which  Harry  is currently  identified.   In this situation,  she will become the victim  daughter to Harry’s   negative  father.

Possibly she might shift into a rebellious daughter and get defensive and fight back.  Alternatively,  she might shift to the attack herself and fall into her own angry mother side. If her awareness is operating,  however,  and if she has some experience of these selves in herself and in Harry,   she might not have to fall into the bonding at all. She might say to Harry:  ” Look,  I don’t know what you’re angry about but it’s obvious that I’ve hurt your feelings.  I’m sorry that it happened and it would be very helpful if you could let me know what happened!”

One can never predict what is going to happen when one of the partners separates from the bonding.  In general,  it is quite difficult for the other partner to remain locked into the bonding for a long period of time. When  the  awareness level separates from an ongoing negative bonded interaction,  humor has a chance to enter into the situation. Negative bonding patterns,  if anything, are not funny. They are usually experienced as quite deadly. Yet, once awareness is present, the most deadly situation can become marvelously humorous.

George and Frieda are driving out one morning to have breakfast. George is in a strong, angry  and withdrawn father. He looks like a black cloud. Frieda is not hooked this time.  She says to him, with some humor:  “You know, it seems to me we can have a miserable day or a fun day. I’d like to have a fun day. How about you?” It is the tone, the energy that lets you know whether such a comment comes from an aware ego or from a pleasing mother or daughter.  In this case, it was the aware ego, and it was very difficult for George,  try as he might,  to remain locked into the withdrawn  father.

We must remember that it is never the content of the words that counts. It is the feeling or energy that accompanies them.  

Words spoken through an aware ego have an enormous, and surprisingly effortless, authority  and power. Parent/ child states are always involved with issues of power and control. The gift of awareness is that it is not concerned  with power or control. Thus,  an aware ego does not need to control anyone, nor does it wish  to or need  to be dominated  by anyone.  It is non polarizing.

Harry  controls his environment  by being identified with the good father. His real feelings lie hidden, and the people around him are essentially manipulated  by his goodness.  The more of our selves that we share through an aware ego, the less we control  people because we have no hidden agenda operating.  The  parental  and child sides of ourselves always have agendas operating.