What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [118]
All of these studies find massive effects of genes on adult personality, and only negligible effects of any particular events. Identical twins reared apart are far more similar as adults than fraternal twins reared together for the qualities of authoritarianism, religiosity, job satisfaction, conservatism, anger, depression, intelligence, alcoholism, well-being, and neuroticism, to name only a few. In parallel, adopted children are much more similar as adults to their biological parents than to their adoptive parents.
These facts are the latest, if not the last, word in the renascent nature-nurture controversy. They come from a convergence of large-scale studies using up-to-date measures. These studies find ample room for non-genetic influences on adult personality because less than half the variance is accounted for by genes. But researchers have not found any specific nongenetic influences yet (nongenetic influences can include fetal events, child rearing, childhood trauma, schooling, adolescent and adult events, and measurement error, among others). Some of these specific factors may yet emerge as important to adult personality, but to date, none have.5
If you want to blame your parents for your own adult problems, you are entitled to blame the genes they gave you, but you are not entitled—by any facts I know—to blame the way they treated you.
Childhood Sexual Trauma
There is one childhood trauma that is often singled out as a special destroyer of adult mental health: sexual abuse. What I am about to say on this subject can easily be misinterpreted, misquoted, and wrenched out of context. So this preface: I believe sexual abuse is evil. It should be condemned and punished. Abused children and adult survivors need help, but help that works—not “pop psychology” help.
Today I would be labeled a sexually abused child. Myron “molested” me every weekday for about a year when I was nine. I walked four blocks to School 16. On the corner, Myron sold the Times Union for a nickel. He dressed in dun-colored rags, was unshaven, and stammered badly. Today my colleagues would label him “a retarded adult with cerebral palsy.” In the early 1950s, people in Albany, New York, labeled him a “bum” and a “dummy.” But he and I had a special friendship. He kissed me and we hugged for a few minutes. He told me his troubles and I told him mine. Then I went off to fourth grade.
One day, Myron disappeared from his corner. I looked for him frantically, and a policeman on the beat nearby told me that Myron had “gone away.” I was heartbroken. He hadn’t even said good-bye.
Five years later, I saw Myron as I got off a bus to go to the Palace Theatre way downtown. “Myron!” I shouted joyously. He took one look at me and ran away as fast as his limp allowed. A pile of unsold newspapers, flapping in the cold winter wind, remained.
Today, of course, I can fill in the gaps. A passing neighbor must have seen Myron “molesting” (i.e., hugging and kissing) me. She told my parents. My parents told the police. The police told Myron that if they ever saw him with me again, they would send him to prison—or worse (Albany was not a gentle place in the 1950s). No one told me any of this.
I forgot about it until ten years ago, when child molesting became a much discussed topic. First came reports on incest among the poor, then alarming statistics on the middle class. There were warnings about uncles and stepfathers—since the molester was usually found to be a friend or a relative. Then one celebrity after another revealed that her father had abused her and left hideous psychological scars. Then therapists began to probe routinely for forgotten sexual abuse in therapy—and usually found it. Then, in lawsuits, grown-up children began to claim that they now remembered the parental abuse thirty years earlier that had ruined their lives.
A body of research grew up to bolster the public alarm. In a typical study, the mental health of adult women who are incest survivors is checked. The results are uniform: These women