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ADULT
EMOTIONAL MATURITY |
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ADULT
EMOTIONAL IMMATURITY |
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COMPLETE DEFINITIONS
CONTAINED IN:
M.S.
Horton. (2004) Doctoral Dissertation. Amáte Growth
Work: A Healing Process for Adult Emotional Immaturity.
Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center: San Francisco.
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BACKGROUND
The definitions of adult emotional maturity and
adult emotional immaturity offered here differ
from most traditional definitions. They were created as a response
to the frustration experienced when trying to understand and use
definitions commonly found in the literature, and in an attempt
to define the terms to be most relevant for use in Amáte
Growth Work.
A typical traditional definition contained in The Penguin Dictionary
of Psychology by A. Reber (1995, p.439), defines maturity as
“the state of adulthood, of completed growth; the end of the
process of maturation.” It states defining maturity is largely
a matter of value judgments “made of persons to reflect how
successfully they correspond to socially and culturally accepted
norms. What is considered emotionally childish in one society may
very well be an aspect of emotional maturity in another.”
The implication is that there is an identifiable endpoint in the
emotional maturation process, and defining adult emotional
maturity is highly subjective, culture specific, and therefore
there can be no universally applicable definition of emotional maturity.
That is not the position held here.
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Most traditional definitions of adult emotional maturity are
based on capacities and abilities that can be externally observed
and evaluated. These definitions have not identified and focused
on the inner emotional condition required
to produce the capacities and abilities…. that result
in the attitudes and behaviors. They do not capture
the essence of adult emotional maturity.
Because the traditional definitions describe superficial responses,
rather than the core condition necessary to produce those responses,
becoming emotionally mature has been mysterious and illusive,
and helping others achieve it has been frustrating and difficult.
For example, the ability to love is part of most traditional
definitions of adult emotional maturity. However, in those definitions
there is no mention of the emotional condition necessary to
produce the ability to love…or who judges the individual’s
ability to love…or for that matter…how love is defined!
The definition of adult emotional maturity proposed here focuses
on the inner emotional condition:
Adult emotional maturity is the inner emotional
condition of sufficient love and security necessary to successfully
take emotional growth producing risks throughout life.
The inner emotional condition of sufficient love and security
produces the abilities and capacities that result in the attitudes
and behaviors mentioned in other definitions. For example,
the ability to love successfully depends on the presence of
sufficient inner emotional resources to survive risking being
hurt or rejected, etc. Emotional maturity is the inner
emotional condition of sufficient love and security necessary
to successfully survive risking loving.
The issue of successful risking in this definition is
an important one. Emotional stoppage means stoppage
in the process of taking essential emotional growth producing
risks. Without resolving the stoppage…and without risking…achieving
Adult Emotional Maturity is not possible.
In Amáte Growth Work, successful risking
is accomplished when the individual has arrived at the same
emotional and chronological age through Inner Work, has connected
with and maintained a loving connection with the Inner-Self,
has developed the tools to independently access, evaluate, and
act appropriately on inner guidance concerning
taking emotional risks, and can survive the consequences of
taking emotional risks in a self-loving and peace producing
manner.
Individuals who are emotionally stuck and struggling to live
successfully without adult emotional maturity, or who are working
to achieve emotional maturity in adulthood, might find the idea
incredible that emotional maturity is the normal and
expected inner emotional condition of human beings.
However, Dr. Leon Saul (1960), a mid 20th Century
champion of emotional maturation, agreed, “It is not unduly
optimistic to picture this ideal as the normal mental and emotional
state of man” (p. 19).
Alice Miller, in her pioneering book on the
effects of childhood experiences, The Drama of the
Gifted Child, (1997) described the always loved
and secure person:
People
whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who
were protected, respected, and treated with honesty
by their parents, will be—both in their youth
and adulthood—intelligent, responsive, empathic,
and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life
and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others
or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves
but not to attack others. They will not be able to do
otherwise than to respect and protect those weaker than
themselves, including their children, because this is
what they have learned from their own experience and
because it is this knowledge (and not the experience
of cruelty) that has been stored up inside them from
the beginning. Such people will be incapable of understanding
why earlier generations had to build up a gigantic war
industry in order to feel at ease and safe in this world.
Since it will not have to be their unconscious life-task
to ward off intimidation experienced at a very early
age, they will be able to deal with attempts at intimidation
in their adult life more rationally and more creatively.
(p. 131) |
Far too few begin and live life with enough love and
security. Far too many others must find a way to
create a loved and secure core if this ideal is to be achieved.
Nevertheless, some have had a second chance to enter
the flow of an emotionally mature adult life, and through
Amáte Growth Work, that second chance is available
to others.
The primary goal of Amáte Growth Work is to
help adults create the inner condition of sufficient love
and security that will permit them to identify and successfully
take appropriate emotional growth risks independent of any
external support, or, to help them become emotionally
mature. When this goal is reached, Amáte Growth
Work ends, and clients join as equals those who have always
felt loved and secure.
Amáte Growth Work does not promise emotionally
mature clients they will take emotional growth risks, that
is up to the individual. However, the development of a sufficiently
loving and secure inner emotional condition, and the development
of appropriate emotional risk taking tools, make risking possible
if and when that choice is made by the client.
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ADULT EMOTIONAL IMMATURITY |
From the preponderance of studies in the literature that identify
problems related to adult emotional immaturity,
it might be assumed that defining adult emotional immaturity
would be more straightforward than defining adult emotional
maturity. Age inappropriate behaviors such as road rage are
certainly easier to identify than abilities such as dealing
constructively with reality or loving others. However,
most traditional definitions of adult emotional immaturity are
no more accurate or useful than those for adult emotional maturity.
Most definitions equate adult emotional immaturity with age
inappropriate attitudes and behaviors observed by others. For
example, one might say, “That person is so emotionally
immature, she throws childish tantrums when she is angry!”
In this example the adult is being judged to be immature because
she is being observed to respond when angry as a child would
respond. The observer is labeling the person emotionally immature
on the basis of observed behaviors.
While most definitions may describe behaviors that stem from
adult emotional immaturity, the actions themselves, while observable,
are not adult emotional immaturity. It is actually the stoppage
in the emotional development process caused by excessive fear
that results in externally observed negative consequences such
as tantrums, etc. The following definition of adult emotional
immaturity centers on the causative element in emotional stoppage,
excessive fear:
Adult emotional immaturity is the inner condition
of excessive fear that prematurely halts the process of successfully
taking emotional growth risks throughout life.
Initial emotional stoppage typically occurs during childhood
or adolescence. However, excessive fear can cause emotional
stoppage to occur at any time, whether one has experienced emotional
maturity in adulthood or not. Fortunately, once an
individual achieves emotionally maturity in a loving and secure
early environment, or through the use of a healing method, such
as Amáte Growth Work later in life,
future permanent emotional stoppage is rare.
If the inner emotional condition becomes excessively fearful
in anticipation of taking a significant risk for example, the
fear is confronted, the risk is taken, and emotional maturity
returns. The individual remains predominantly at peace.
However, even for an adult who has experienced extended periods
of emotional maturity, it is possible to become excessively
fearful and temporarily emotionally stopped.
What is vital to understand, is that an individual, at
any moment, reflects either an inner state of
emotional immaturity or emotional maturity and is either growing
emotionally through risking or is stopped at the point when
excessive fear has blocked continued risking.
While the attitudes and behaviors that result from the
two inner conditions may vary from individual to individual,
or culture to culture, the shift in personality from fearful
to secure and loved, or loved and secure to fearful, in agreement
with Carl Rogers (1961, p. 187), appears to be universal.
Adult emotional maturity, then, is not a term
used for a static state reached at some endpoint in adulthood,
but is a term identifying an inner state always subject to change.
Maintaining consistent emotional maturity in adulthood,
according to this definition, is the same as maintaining a consistently
flowing spiritual life, or living Carl Rogers’ good life
(1961, p. 189). It is lived moment by moment, is the responsibility
of the individual, and produces peace.
Most adults who have been emotionally mature and have developed
the tools to confront excessive fear, no matter how painful
the circumstances causing the fear, will risk successfully and
return quickly to emotional maturity and the presence of peace,
a concept described by Carl Rogers (1961, p. 196).
Because peace is the true prize of the emotionally mature
life of risking and growing, once it has been achieved and experienced
on a consistent basis, choosing not to do whatever is necessary
to have it, no matter the price, becomes for most unthinkable.
A
complete discussion of this topic is contained in:
M.S.
Horton. (2004) Doctoral Dissertation. Amáte Growth Work:
A Healing Process for Adult Emotional Immaturity. Saybrook Graduate
School and Research Center: San Francisco.
View
in Adobe PDF Format
Miller, A. (1997). The drama of the gifted child: The search
for the true self. (Rev. ed.). New York: Basic Books.
Reber,
A. (1995). The Penquin dictionary of psychology (2nd ed.).
New York: Penguin Books.
Rogers,
C. R. (1961). On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Saul,
L. (1960). Emotional maturity (2nd ed.). Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott.
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