the pathological need to be seen

We have all seen the child balancing on the curb, skipping a stone, trying something new successfully only to cry out, "Look, mom!" or "Dad! Lookit!" The child is excited about the accomplishment and there is a legitimate need to be seen and appreciated.

Early on in my editing career, i was helping to create curriculum for young children. One of my readers (who read and commented on the work in progress) was a wise teacher of preschoolers. Her constant reminder to us was "acknowledge and encourage." She often advised me to restructure a commment to a child by beginning, "I see you ..." or simply by describing some aspect of his or her work and thanking the child.

Since then, I've become convinced that our culture has given rise to a pathological need to be seen. A couple of generations have now grown up who were not seen--at least, not in the sense my wise advisor meant, in the way children need to be seen, acknowledged and encouraged. These people had parents--didn't we all have parents?--but for them, those simple acts of being acknowledged (I see you!) and encouraged (you are doing a good job. thank you) apparently never happened, whether parents who were too busy to look, too self-involved to notice, too drunk or high to care.

Hence, our culture is filled with people whose actions and self-adornment and talk are all calculated to scream out, "LOOK AT ME! FOR GOD'S SAKE, LOOK AT ME! PLEEEEASE!"
(You've probably all seen the photo-filled email going around of young and not so young adults who have large holes in earlobes--encircling beer cans, noses with enormous holes, tattoos and piercings that can only be described as hideous...with the by-line "I will never complain about my children again!") But what is it that these children are saying? They state by their actions that they are willing to do whatever it takes to get people to look at them, regardless of personal pain or the inability created by their self-decoration to move beyond the circles in which they now travel. It's OK to be hideous or scary or self-mutilating as long as people LOOK at you.

Then there are the actors, the singers, the rock stars, the standups, whoever...whose lives seem to be a continual drama, lest their fame somehow float away and their faces disappear from the covers of the magazines. It doesn't seem to matter how stupid, dangerous or self-serving the act, as long as it gets you noticed (as P.T. Barnum said) "There is no such thing as bad publicity." As has been noted in other places en blog, talent, skill or intelligence no longer have a place in the market of the "lookatme!" culture. It is enough to be "famous." That means someone saw you on TV or youtube or whatever and now people recognize your face--for whatever reason. Knock over a bank? Get the Nobel Prize? It's all the same. Is your face famous?

And the Church is not exempt, by any means. We've all watched people at the front of a congregation whose pathological need to be seen is so clearly delineated that it's almost painful to watch...and sadly, this behavior is sometimes confused with worship leading or Christian entertainment or religious performance of some kind (all of which are not the same thing, in case that concept is not yet clear). There is much to be given to those with this pathological need, but it need not be done in public, onstage, feeding the pathology. (One friend attends a church filled with folks who seem to be afflicted with this pathological need to be seen. She reported that the pastor, after realizing what reinforcement was being given to the pathology as people came to the front for prayer, began to simply request that people go to the rear of the auditorium for prayer. The drama level dropped dramatically and immediately as the need to be seen removed itself as a factor in "repentance.")

There's a Ph.D. in this concept, I'll warrant. I would imagine that the therapy for this in adulthood would require that a person to look at you nearly all the time, for starters, describing what you're doing and acknowledging and encouraging; i've long thought that there is a real market for re-parenting...if only the ones who needed it were wealthy enough to pay for such intense therapy! Therea re no answers, no brilliant insights, only a plea--look at your kids. When they talk to you, treat them as politely as you would a stranger, listen to them, answer them. and you'll find that they begin to behave in much more agreeable ways as they imitate your model. As for the adults whose pathological need to be seen is all around, try to catch them doing good, and then thank them, acknowledge them, give them encouragement. Slowly, they too will begin to realize that there are ways to be seen and acknowledged besides the pathological behaviors they've exhibited previously. But know that it takes adults a very long time and that perhaps it's not something that can really be corrected, only improved.
So look at your kids. Describe what they are doing. Thank them for what they do when they do what is good. Save us from another generation of folk afflicted with the pathological need to be seen.