EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MATURITY AND THE SOCIAL ATTITUDE TO DISABLED PEOPLE

Orlin Baev

web | Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality

Yesterday by coincidence I came across an article on the Internet on the webpage: www.zagrada.bg, which included an interview with Mrs. Irina Papancheva, a deputy major in the municipality of the capital city of Sofia on the issues of integration of disabled people. I got to think on the shared issues:

1. The marginal position of disabled people in our country, conditioned by the discriminating mentality of the Bulgarian, being reflected at social and administrative level too

2. Lack of social and professional integration of these people

3. Lack of legal regulations in our country to regulate assistance of people with permanent disabilities

4. The inadequate salaries of social workers in the sphere of disability help

5. The stigmatic attitude towards stammering people in Bulgaria and total ignorance about the specific problems of people with such specific speech

Correlates between the individual and the "social individuality"

1. Human psyche is a complex multidimensional system from mutually communicating mental structures and instances, mutually dependant and connected. Human society like the individual psyche is built up of complex weaving of social structures, institutions and mutually dependant systems.

2. The social practice reflects the sum of individual minds of individuals of this society and is subject to the same mechanisms which rule the individual mind, projected in the social sphere. It could be symbolically said, that a social community - on local, state or planet scale is a kind of a group personality with his organs - institutions, psychoenergetics - economic processes and mental governmental structures and their motions - the political and legal structures and processes. If this comparison goes further, the communicative skills of the personality would be parallel to the journalistic and media functions in the perspective of society, the digestive system would correspond to agriculture and rural activities etc. Each function of an individual organism has its precise parallel in the group organism of the so called Group or Social Personality - i.e., Society.

3. In this specific issue we are interested in the mental structures of the individual and their social equivalents. If the association zones of the cerebral system of the correlate to their higher governmental and legal structures, and the old brain structures of the sub-cortex - with the higher officials and mechanisms of the Social Personality, while the vegetative nervous system would be a reflection of the individual psyche of the common man from society. Of course, correlates of this order could be specified in details and extended, but this is beyond the purpose of this article. By these arguments I only illustrate my claim that the social structures of human community are conscious or unconscious projection, a metaphoric reflection of the sum of individual psycho-physical structures and processes of the individuals comprising this society.

Neurotic state of society nowadays and the attitude towards disabled people

1. Contemporary psychology is a diverse bunch of schools many of which present their individual topical and processing model of mental functioning. For the purpose of this paper I would apply only the most simplified model of the psycho-dynamic school and some elements of Analytical Psychology. The above mentioned schools understand human psyche as a permanent exchange between the so called mental structures of consciousness and unconsciousness. Self-consciousness, i.e., the Self, is a basic characteristic of the consciousness, while the unconscious, i.e. "Id" is a mental instance including within the whole previous human experience in the form of drives, instincts, and the still unexploited potential of human cognition.

2. When an individual does not want or cannot integrate a stressful fact conflict or process, together with its affective (emotional) components the mental energy of the conflict content, which is not integrated by the Self, is being pushed down in the unconscious, in the Freudian "Id", in the "Shadow" according to Jung. I am using both mental instances "Id" and the "Shadow" as identical since many authorities in psychology think them as semantically identical. At the personal functional level this dissociation is a result of the moral censorship, believes, unsuccessful strife to control or the inability of mental integration of the Self. Such lack of conscientiousness is typical of an individual apt to be neurotic.

3. In the same way, when a social structure does not want or is incapable of integrating unwanted social community as a result of its people’s mentality, its distorted believes and moral supremacy complex, this community is being made marginal, deprived of economic adequacy, social exchange and professional realization. I refer now to disabled people, but the same process can be referred to the minorities too. Such a social "dissociation" analogous to the mental process at the individual level of functioning) as a result of people’s mentality, active also at governmental and administrative and legal level too is a manifestation of explicit complexes in the mentality of this people. Such people’s mentality and psyche are typical of undeveloped countries. In connection with this I would like to wish to the inhabitants of this European state - Bulgaria who officially made a decisive step towards it progress and economical development by joining the European Union, to make efforts to develop its abilities to integrate in every respect and especially in relation to disabled people.

4. At inter-mental level, the inability to integrate the unwanted facts and conflicts and their dissociation in the unconscious causes gradually neurosis of the individual. The higher level of neurotics heavily burdens the person and amplifies its manifestations. Gradually the light and harmless symptoms and weirdness deepen, the mental discomfort of the individual gets stronger and the whole functioning of the individual is influenced in each sphere of his life until the symptoms of neurosis are being developed. In the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud neurosis is maladaptive unconscious strategy of the psychological mechanism for management with the traumatic situations dissociated affective experiences from the past, manifesting specifically in the evolvement of the type of neurosis through its symptoms.

5. In order to explain the same process at the level of society I would use the concept of "collective unconscious" of Carl Gustav Jung. In the above described process of marginalization and denial of certain social groups such as disabled people in the collective unconscious of the society is accumulated unexpressed affective strain which is symptomatically manifested in the higher level of neurotics of the society as a whole - neurotics, which may escalate into more "neuroses" of social aggressiveness and crime, narcissism, social worry, dissociating alienation between people, hysteric ethic paralysis, maladaptive behavior, neurasthenia and psychosthenia...

6. The present lines do not mean to claim that the attitude towards disabled people is the only factor of the social neurosis and psychosis, which is obvious in contemporary society. I am only claiming that it is a basic and significant element in the process of symptom formation of the social psychopathia in countries from the third world such as Bulgaria (I hope that soon our country will deserve another, more satisfactory classification). Other important elements are the distorted system of values, the suggestively reinforced violence, egocentrism and commonplacedness by the public media and the consciously supported by the society ignorance referring life in general an dour place in it, these and other such factors making our society a puppet for manipulations by the financial establishment of our planet.

Emotional and Social Intelligence and Maturity and the Attitude Towards the Disabled People

1. The foundation of the processes described above, of unconscious resistance against existence of disabled people, their denial and pushing them away at the margins of society is the lack of emotional and social intelligence of the members of society in reference towards their own intra-mental vulnerabilities - lack which causes personal maladaptivity, mental disintegration and neuroticism. These products of emotional and social disintelligence are projected unconsciously and automatically at collective level towards the vulnerable part of society - disabled people. And this, as described, causes their economic, social and professional repression and marginalization.

2. Emotional intelligence (EI) and its result - social intelligence (SI) in contemporary psychology are recognition and management of emotional life in such a way as to serve the wellbeing of mental life of man and his social interaction. This is a correct but two-dimensional concept. In order to complexly define this mental function we need look at it through the prism of the totality of human psyche.

3. Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize one's emotional nature, its motions in the mental organism and to skillfully direct them. On the one hand, emotional intelligence is the art of mental sublimation and on the other hand, if mental substantiation. Sublimation is the mastership to consciously harness your passionate and destructive driven nature (Eros - Tanatos, Libido - Mortido) in the chariot of mind and direct the bridles of free will in the direction of progressing self-knowledge. Substantiation is a process of manifestation and application of the mental integration acquired in everyday life which could be expressed metaphorically as the snail biting its tail. The kernel of both processes is conscious will.

4. Thus EI and SI manifested collectively in social aspect are the ability of social leaders to join the energy of all social groups in the process of perfecting social relations reaching unified harmonious exchange toward a broader integration of society in acquiring social self-actualization (Maslow). This process of social transformation, integration and actualization should be situated in the structural frames of appropriate system of values in accord with the initial life and it should be guided by governors who besides knowledge possess wisdom too. When the authorities are extremely egocentric and unintelligent emotionally and socially, the result is chaos - both in the individual human mind and the social, state and international activities. If individual choice of will stands in the center of self-consciousness of the individual, social choice of will is represented by the political and economic systems at the level of the state.

5. If we do not change our attitude towards disabled people and which have been treated as incapable and inadequate, if we do not include them in the social and economic processes and if we do not abolish the stigma branded by our political and social immaturity, we would never be able to step further on our way of a nation evolving in moral and economic respect!

© Orlin Baev
© Galina Markina - translated from bulgarian
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© E-publisher LiterNet, 29.12.2010
Orlin Baev. Transpersonal psychology. Sacred sexuality. Varna: LiterNet, 2010.