Compassion before vengeance : a Scottish achievement

Last year's decision by Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish government's justice secretary, to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who had been convicted under Scottish law of the Lockerbie bombing, has raised its head in the news again. The decision has been condemned by both Barak Obama and David Cameron during the British prime minister's visit to the United States of America earlier this week.To be clear the Lockerbie aeroplane crash on Wednesday, December 21st, 1988 was the consequence of an outrageous and murderous act which demonstrated the worst of humankind. I continue to mourn the loss of each one of those innocent unique human beings who perished on that day. They are lost to us forever. They can never be brought back. My own grief is brought even more sharply to mind every time I pass by Lockerbie on the way up to Scotland from my home in Devon. They will never be forgotten. 

     However the Scottish government's decision to free Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi showed the terrorists the best of humankind - compassion for a sickly human being - even though he may have shown himself to be a most deadly enemy of humankind (thought no proof of this was ever provided). I am not a Christian but I understand compassion is part of the Christian creed which, I am told, underpins the ethos of the governance of both the UK and USA. Even if the Scottish government's act of compassion does not influence the cruelly destructive behaviour of terrorists it certainly should make us all feel better human beings. 

     Just to be sure, I am, as a citizen, impressed with, and proud of, a government which exercises compassion. I feel both despair and guilt if I am served by a government that seeks vengeance anywhere it can exercise it and which in my name tortures, or condones the torture of human beings it has wrongly or even rightly apprehended. I am sad to say our United Kingdom government does this.

    

Cable disconnected on the question of graduate pay

     Vince Cable, the government minister for Business has proposed that rather than pay for their tuition at university all graduates should pay a graduate tax once they are in work.* There may be some sympathy for Cable's view that the interests of fairness would be best served if such a tax were to be levied at a rate which reflected the graduate's capacity to pay it. It would not he says, “ be right that a teacher or care worker or research scientist should be expected to pay the same graduate contribution as a top commercial lawyer or surgeon or City analyst.”

      I fear I will be accused of exposing my naivety if I suggest that Cable fails to connect with the more important question, “Why is there such a huge salary differential between a top care worker and a top commercial lawyer?” 

*See for instance, (Cable begins universities revolution, The Guardian, 16.07.10).

The nature of giving and receiving love

     From the first as infants we look to be lovingly cherished. The paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, suggested that a human being could not give love to another if she or he had not received love. From birth most of us receive good enough love from parenting figures.
     
     For many reasons some infants are not given sufficient devotion. A parent's unresolved difficulties from her or his own infancy and childhood may obstruct, to one extent or another, his or her capacity to offer genuine love.  One of the most despairing of experiences for a child is to receive attention that is given grudgingly from someone whom he or she might reasonably expect wholehearted love, (for instance a principal parenting figure). Such a parent shows no satisfaction in the infant's pleasure, and by refusing to acknowledge the infant's attempts to give back loving responses the parent manifestly demonstrates a refusal to love.  The probable and natural outcome for an infant experiencing this is the development within the infant of a mistrust of the promise of mutuality in loving relationships. In turn a tendency may develop in the infant which is represented by unreasonable demands for love. "Love me and me alone or you will be dismissed from my life." Those who have looked after troubled children and young people in group care settings will recognise this cry. 

    In my view if this tendency is not interrupted, as an infant grows through childhood, youth and then into adulthood, she or he may look for self-sacrifice in others as the only evidence of love.

     To have a care for someone naturally, willingly, lovingly without having to think about it is as pleasant for the giver as it is for the receiver and so it brings its own internal rewards. This is not to suggest an impossible idyll. What is important is as psychoanalyst and paediatrician, Donald Winnicott suggested, is that the love given  is 'good enough.'
    
      When someone - who has previously only experienced attention that is reluctantly given - receives good enough love and care, may find it difficult to receive because they are suspicious of it. Is it authentic or is it just like previous false promise?  It comes as a surprise for it is a new experience and has not been an element in the child's earlier life. The child, in not knowing how to receive it, not knowing how to internalise it or reciprocate it, resists it.  The gift of willingly given love has no value for him as a source of warmth and security. He does not trust it. Its secondary material value may stay with him but he cannot accept its spontaneity and its invitation to reciprocality because he can only demand that others should enjoy loving him to the exclusion of all else. For survival reasons a newborn infant naturally demands this but a fault has developed over the period of a person's life if he or she is still demanding absolute attention.

     This is not to say restorative efforts should not be made but they will take time what has developed over years cannot be 'fixed' by  time limited scripted guides. We are we dealing with deep primitive feelings from our pre-verbal experience. It is my own belief that psychodynamic therapy as a group practice or as a one-to-one exercise can, over time, help those who have been deprived of love and help them to develop a feeling of their own real intrinsic value as they experience the determined care and concern another or others have for them in the face of their resistance. In this way they can begin to love themselves. Reparation becomes possible as does the capacity to have a care for others.


Updated 25.3.13 and 27.5.20