    28

    Loving the Child Within Is Not Enough

    Current psychology is often blind to the existence of the larger

    being of which we are a part.  Because of that blindness, many highly

    regarded therapeutic experts have a habit of dictating impossible cures.

    A group of prestigious doctors, for example, appeared on TV's Phil

    Donahue Show67 determined to show how you can confront stress as

    one human in isolation.  If you're a housewife and society seems

    convinced that your daily chores are on a par with garbage collection,

    the specialists gave the impression that all you have to do is sit at the

    kitchen table and talk yourself into self-respect.  One homemaker stood

    up in the audience and put the prevailing notion in two short

    sentences.  "It all depends on the image you project," she said.  "If you

    think well of yourself, other people will think well of you."

    Thinking well of himself was not enough to save Scipio

    Africanus from the contempt of the Roman Senate.  Nor will it be

    enough to magically alter the degree of respect the Western World

    accords to those who clean house, cook, and raise children.

    One of Donahue's guest authorities declared in no uncertain

    terms that "you don't have to be a victim of what society or what

    anyone else thinks of you."  But according to psychologist Sol Gordon,

    founder of  The Institute for Family Research and Education, projecting

    a positive attitude works not because of changes it makes on the

    individual psyche, but because of improvements it generates in

    relationships with others.

    The best way to turn the self-destruct mechanism off is not to

    weep over childhood traumas until we can finally love the child

    within.  It is to realize that the self-destruct devices are turned on and

    off by current social forces: our sense of how we measure up to the

    standards of those we respect, and our relationships with friends,

    husbands, wives, and even our dogs and cats.  (The idea that

    relationships with animals can protect our physical and emotional

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