Getting backing to clinical discussion, let’s take a look at how cultural changes implied in egoic ones throughout three generations. Boomer and X generations are liberal parents: they appreciate dialogue and are against moral rigidity. Millennials, their sons, by the time are grown up, have introjected models of speed and sexual freedom. For them, that’s how things are. This is an inquiring generation less used to renouncing and more use to negotiating. The new moral behavior script generates, in psychology, a boom of brief/focused specializations in areas such as law, mental health services (hospitalization) and also in couple and family’s therapies whose goal is to mediate parts in order to give room for hard talks and agreements. Without getting into details that exceed our knowledge, the main point is that the change in moral behavior script which had slowly been taking place since the 60s, result in an inquisitive culture. The old moral values vehicles (family, school and Church) become outdated. In the new way of life TV and later, digital and social medias are the new moral vehicles. They offer models and horizons to be aspired. Youth, beauty and fame are elevated to the top of life achievements. Speech and sexual freedom move along side by side with laicism, shrinking considerably the role of Church as a source of essential moral values. At the same time we see parents who, despite being identity models, aren’t taken as models of life aspiration anymore. They are open to dialogue and encourage their kids to search for their motivations but aren’t, themselves, models of success most of the time. Extended family (uncles/aunts, grandpas) and the old childhood identity models (teachers, for instance) are still quite important as affective references but not as aspiration models to adults’ ways of life. We have got a authority’s crisis. What are the consequences of this new reality in new egos’ build? Firstly, kids are exposed to a much more complex moral universe. The superegoical childhood “moral binarism” (right or wrong, black or white) is replaced for “inquisitive model”. The long term consequences are a context of very creative children-exposed to many stimulus all of the time- on one hand, and lacking contour, on the other- once references are very unstable. This point will be developed in the wake. Secondly, the most relevant Identity models- parents- are structurally weak (not morally). They act more as counselling models, many times quite hesitant, which might eventually contribute to emotional instability in critical times for personality structuration- especially in adolescence
To be continued in the next Post
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