Saying “You’re bad!” to a child (and all its possible variants) is a
frequent personal devaluation for which
the consequences are generally not understood. Such a statement suggests that
something is wrong in the child, but that the child is responsible for it, so that he deserves
personal rejection.
The really absurd thing about the hostile statement “You’re bad” is the
implication that he/she isn’t acceptable because of something that makes he/she
the person that he/she is. If we are “bad”, we are in a terrible
situation: we cannot do anything (because
that is who we are), but we ought to
do something to not be guilty.
The idea of being something and not having to be like that is rooted in
moral thinking because it is accepted in childhood. Devalued children cannot
deal with loneliness when their parents are not actually interacting with them and
treat them badly for no good reasons. Children, then, unconsciously choose to live with their (not existent)
evil in order to give sense to the (meaningless) parent’s devaluation.
The devaluation of behaviour (“Don’t
play with electric socket because it’s dangerous”), even if shouted, does not
create loneliness as a whispered personal
devaluation. In fact, the sentence “You’re
bad with your brother” implies something wrong in the child’s nature.
In adult life, people who continue to be scared of hell (defined as a
place in which they will even be punished by God for their evil) can only be
reassured in one way: recognizing that they have already experienced the hell in their childhood. Whatever the life
they may have after death it will be better.
