Interpersonal relationship - Essay Example

Outline I. Prolonging Infancy: A Defense Mechanism of Parental Relationship II. Antagonism between Parents and their Children III. Family Members: Hardly Friends at AllIV. Parental IntrusionV. The Irreconcilable Conflict The family relationship and parent-children relationship is terminated in the animal world when it has completely fulfilled its term of usefulness. However, in human society there is a general inclination to prolong the relationship further than the point where it is socially or personally beneficial.

It is often, particularly for young girls, a matter of tragedy, the overprotection and expansion of the phase of dependency that puts off personality and character growth. It is at times a vampire relationship, in a physical and psychological sense alike. The parents may subsist on the toils of children or they may force their aspirations and compensate for their disappointments through direct or sinister manipulation of the life system of their children. A particular extent of antagonism between my parents and me, as I believe it to be, is natural and strong.

My wanting for freedom and the natural but uncaringly emotional inclination of my parents to protect me and extend the period of my infancy are what I detest the most, being independent-minded as I am. Indeed, the development of varied interests results in to a normal weakening of the parent-child interpersonal relationship. It is perhaps not inappropriate in this kind of relationship that I have with my parents to call attention to the fact that, despite of the common outlook that it must be otherwise; anyway, I personally believe that the members of the family are somehow hardly ever friends.

Count Keyserling, who wrote a book about marriage, which I have read a dozen times, is perhaps accurate when he regarded family relationship as an antagonistic teamwork. My brothers and sisters are very rarely best friends that the exemptions draw in widespread remark; my friends and trusted acquaintances are not my sisters. And I have noticed that my elder siblings are most of the time on more confidential and compassionate relations with other grown ups than with our own parents. Were it not for the strength of other ties, to a certain extent physical and financial but primarily those of practice and social pressure, our family would undoubtedly disintegrate as I and my brothers reach adulthood.

Antagonisms between parents and their children in several instances generate dilemmas whose apparent and only explanation is an untimely family disbanding. The source of unending antagonisms on top of other unfortunate psychic influences is probably to be located in the persistent closeness so almost inevitable in the small family band. The trivial but unrelenting irritations because of intrusion with activity in addition to the hatred stimulated by parental lack of high opinion and consideration for the rights and privileges of children develop into enduring antagonisms and loathing.

It is this, somehow than actual physical neglect that detaches me from my parents; akin to dogs, I think I am frequently tenderly loyal and faithful to those who chiefly abuse and exploit me. I am inquisitively perceptive and my parents are curiously thoughtless. For me, embarrassment is the most hurtful and pounding state of mind which may result in vicious hatred for my parents whose behavior generates the very nature of embarrassment I detest. Miss Van Waters believe this the paramount source of unbridgeable family conflicts (ibid, 337).

ReferencesReuter, Edward Byron. The Family: Source Materials for the Study of Family and Personality. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1931.