“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”— Daisy Buchanan, from The Great Gatsby
What, Me Worry?
I found this piece hard to write either because it’s about what you cannot see, or because it’s about what I cannot see. There is an elusive reason why people act like poorly developed adolescents but cannot see they’re doing it. I suggest that we must see this in ourselves. If we don’t, we won’t grow up.
These dark issues of savagery, selfishness, and self-destruction were William Golding’s themes in the book, The Lord of the Flies, Golding disliked children and cast them as villains, but the villains he portrayed are, in reality, exemplified by immature adults. It’s adults who behave like children—not children behaving like adults—who have created a world full of misery and stupidity.
“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What’s grownups going to think?” — Piggy, from Lord of the Flies
“Quiet Piggy!” — Donald Trump, President of the United States, silencing the reporter Catherine Lucey.
“Some children have the most disagreeable way of getting grown-up.” — Lewis Carroll
The age of 12 is considered transitional for many reasons. It’s the average age of menarche for females and a time of hormonal growth for males.
Psychologically, it’s the age when a person transitions from concrete to logical thinking, thinking beyond literal facts to understand sarcasm and metaphor. This is when we develop the ability to “think about thinking,” which leads to increased introspection and a budding awareness of our own thought processes. Twelve is the age of Ralph, Jack, and Piggy, the leading “biguns” in Lord of the Flies.
“Making a mockery of the rule of law and wielding state power to reward friends and punish foes while eroding institutions, (Trump is) a 12-year-old boy: There’s fun trips, lots of screen time, playing with toys, reliable kids’ menus and cool gifts under the tree… yet, as with all children, there are also outbursts in the middle of restaurants. Or in this case, the Cabinet Room.”— Jonathan Martin (2025), senior political reporter for Politico
It is blindness to our own immaturity that underlies our support for public figures with Immature Personality Disorder. And the more people and more prominently they display these flaws, the more normal we consider it to be, and the more broadly we accept it.
This has reached a point where a dysfunctional president fails to be recognized as having a mental disorder. Everyone either ignores him or debates the merits of his dysfunctional actions. Can you not see the danger inherent in this?
“The worst terror for humanity is that we have a past behind us that is with us. And there is always a horrible chance that it will repeat itself – so that the present will become the future.”— paraphrasing William Golding (Lee 2025), author of Lord of the Flies
An Intellectual Metamorphosis
“One disadvantage of your teenage and early adult years is that you tend to experience adversity without perspective. It’s hard to place your own experience in a larger context when you haven’t yet experienced that context.”— David French (2025), opinion columnist for the New York Times
If you think back to your youth you will find that you have confused memories of being 12 years old. This is because you were confused when you were 12, and when you’re confused you have trouble forming memories. Memories are perceptually connected events that make some sense to us. Memories don’t hold together without sense; they’re like dreams.
When we remember, what we remember is more the sense of the situations than the events themselves. We remember more of what it felt like and less of what actually happened. If you could remember an accurate timeline of the events of your young life you would find your 12th year rather empty.
In my case, my 12-th year must have been filled with boredom. I was starting to think and there seemed to be nothing worth thinking about. I have aimless memories of returning from empty days at school to empty days at home, largely alone, interspersed with memories of trees outside and television sitcoms. My father was usually away and my mother, present or otherwise, was always away.
I was 11 when I had my one and only memorable schoolyard fist fight, at the end of 6th grade. It was one of those planned affairs somewhat like a duel: “I’ll fight you at the far edge of the soccer field at recess.” I think I landed one punch. It gave me a great sense of presence. Surprisingly, it didn’t become a habit.
At twelve I must have been entering 7th grade and a new school, high school, the school for adults. I have a memory of sitting in a particularly awful orientation class thinking, “This is worse than grammar school. This is ridiculous!” I don’t know what others my age thought. I suspect they didn’t think much, and never have.
At 13, with a great sense of relief, I gave up shoplifting and started rock climbing. I was introduced to the idea by a 15-year old acquaintance who’d returned from Outward Bound. There were no climbing gyms, programs, books, or anyone else doing it, but I found a few small cliffs and it seemed straight forward: just go up. Like the hormones that stimulated sex, the cliffs stimulated fear. I found great relief in doing something I was able to control.
After that there were many memories, not clear ones but events started to unfold in connected sequences. Climbing made sense as a series of decisions and adventures. School started to make sense as a ridiculous circus of skillless adults and unthinking children.
School was a comedy of menace, as dramatized in Harold Pinter’s “Birthday Party,” a play my parents memorably took me to in New York City. It’s important for an adolescent to see the true adult world, to see that the adult world is neither healthy, normal, nor mentally well-balanced.
In this crucial time one is forming and accepting assumptions about behaviors and motivations. It’s important to recognize, if possible, that you are making and accepting these. If you fail to recognize that these are modeled behaviors, not logical or effective behaviors, then you may never realize these are arbitrary. If you don’t question what you are learning at this point in your life, you may never question it. Clearly, most people don’t question these “adult norms” in adolescence or ever.
Immature Personality Disorder
“So many people reach chronological adulthood without having mastered the core elements of adult emotional functioning.”— Susan Heitler (2016), psychotherapist
Immature Personality Disorder is a real thing. We don’t hear about it because it describes everyone and no one wants to admit it. You’ll surely recognize many people you know as being described by the following symptoms, but see if you can recognize them in yourself.
If you’d like to resolve your childhood trauma, speak with me.
