Here comes yet another angle on one of my big themes, “not blaming.”

This one is in response to an excellent comment from Erika:

Could you do another post on how mentally ill people are not the source of all the problems in their families? Because that side of the blame game is just as big a problem for those of us who get stuck with these labels.

Mental illness is a situation where it cannot in any way be assumed that friends and family have the same interests as the person afflicted or can speak for them in any way.

Even a family which has not been abusive before the mental illness diagnosis can easily use the diagnosis against the sufferer in a wide variety of contexts.

The sufferer often takes on a scapegoat role within the family, much as mental illness in general is used as a scapegoat within society.

As an educator, I see this all the time. Kids get labeled as “learning disabled” or “special needs,” and from that point on they are viewed differently. Teachers don’t expect these kids to succeed, and so they often inadvertently set them up for low achievement.

Instead of giving these kids the help they need, the labels provide excuses for not helping them!

It was brave and commendable for Erika to seek help for her mental health issues!

And I hope she is getting some constructive help and support!

But it is clear that now Erika is also suffering the downside of being labeled as mentally ill.

• Labels create an “us vs. them” mentality.
• The labeled person is then experienced as an outsider.
• Outsiders are likely to be dehumanized. They are too easily treated as objects, not as people.
• There is a natural tendency for people to seek self-objects; in healthy relationships people take turns meeting each others’ self-object needs.
• But this balance can easily go awry.
• People may designate rigid, stifling roles:  “strong” and “weak” partners, or “healthy” and “sick” partner.
• These roles prevent everyone from growing.
• But they feel safer and less threatening.
• Everyone stays “stuck” in their unhappy roles, but no …
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I wrote yesterday about a student of mine who was underachieving.

He had been identified as “learning disabled” and the bar of academic expectations had been lowered for him.

He was unhappily performing within the role assigned to him, that of low achiever. He was sullen and outwardly disinterested in schoolwork.

But, as it turns out, Sean is very bright and quite capable. He has some learning quirks, yes, but he’s able to talk about them and participate in devising methods to get around them.

The more I insist on Sean’s taking responsibility for his own learning, the more I treat Sean as a mature and informed partner in the project of his education, the more engaged and successful Sean becomes.

This sort of dynamic may also happen in love relationships.

A lot of my work is with kids identified as learning disabled. Often, these students have been tested, found to have particular difficulties in certain subject areas, and then “accommodated.”

This might mean that they receive extra test-taking time, or they are allowed to type instead of write, or they might be given a reader to read them test questions. I don’t necessarily have any problems with these sorts of testing adjustments, which are intended to level the playing field on an exam.

But often, accommodations are made to a student’s day-to-day school workload. Commonly, the student is excused from certain requirements expected of the rest of the class. It doesn’t appear that the student can handle the level of work, and so expectations are reduced. One of the rationales for this is that giving a kid more than he can succeed at will damage his self-esteem.

Here’s what happens when a bookworm like me gets to thinking.

Reading three books at once sparked some connections for me, which I began talking about in a recent post.

The three books are:

• Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov
• Against Depression by Peter Kramer

Nafisi forms  a study group of young Iranian college women. Lolita is their first selection.

Lolita is a twelve-year-old girl whose real name is Dolores Haze. The narrator, who calls himself Humbert Humbert, kidnaps Dolores and keeps her as his sexual slave for two years.

Here’s the book’s famous beginning:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Have you seen the movie Precious?

Like Lolita, Precious is a horrific tale of sexual, physical and emotional child abuse and enslavement.

But  along the way, Precious, unlike Lolita, does encounter a few adults who reach out to help her.

As usual, I have several books open at once.

I’m just now into this excellent memoir: Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi.

This sent me back to also reread the original Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov.

And I’ve been rereading Peter Kramer’s Against Depression.

Do you know the story of Lolita? It’s a work of fiction, told by the narrator, who calls himself Humbert Humbert. Humbert kidnaps Dolores Haze, a twelve-year-old  girl, and keeps her as his sexual hostage for two years.

In Reading Lolita in Tehran, a group of young college women and their professor form a club in which they read and discuss forbidden books. Lolita is their first selection.

Several of these women’s observations connected for me with those of Peter Kramer, as he writes about the sometimes dangerous “charm” of depression.

I am intrigued by Peter Kramer’s observations on what he calls, in his book Against Depression, “the charm of depression.” I have made the case myself that certain kinds of mental illness, especially certain personality disorders, may be mistaken for alluring depth and therefore reinforced.

Peter Kramer suspects that often “Depression partakes of the erotic” (p. 85). The passivity and helplessness and vulnerability of depression can be sexually enticing. There’s something inviting, suggestive of the Sleeping Beauty myth, in which the prince’s unique, magical kiss is required to arouse the princess:

I’ve been rereading Peter Kramer’s Against Depression for the umpteenth time. He happens to have dual interests, depression and relationships, and their overlap fascinates me.

Kramer observes how the symptoms of depression mimic certain personality features which many people find magnetic. Moodiness, emotional fragility, helplessness, vulnerability, disorganization, self-deprecation, deference to others … many men especially find these traits alluring, because they seem, on the surface, to complement their own strengths so well:

Have you read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston? This is about as beautiful, wise, sad and tragic as stories get. Be prepared, I’m about to spoil the ending!

It’s the tale of a woman’s development of self. Janie is married three times, and the first two marriages are abusive. However, each of these experiences makes Janie stronger, more confident, more sure of herself, more joyous. I wonder a lot why this is so, how Janie could emerge from these ordeals with a heightened sense of identity, instead of being devastated. And of course I realize this is fiction, but what a hopeful image! Is this possible in real life?

I wonder if the answer lies at the end of the book. Janie’s third husband is an open, loving, nurturing man with the nickname Tea Cake. They have a vibrant and sensual relationship. Then, Tea Cake and Janie are attacked by a rabid dog; Tea Cake shields Janie and is bitten, and several weeks later he develops rabies himself.

I’ve been talking a lot recently about “not-blaming.” This is an important theme for me.

I see two big problems with The Blame Game:

• Blaming others makes them defensive and less likely to hear the message or take action.
• Blaming others dumps all the responsibility on them and deflects it from ourselves; it allows us to feel OK about copping out.

I truly believe that very few people set out to deliberately, purposely do harm. And yet, of course, harm happens all the time. But why does this mean somebody must be blamed?