Tag: Psychology

Yes, more of the same charming children.

Raccoon mothers tolerate each others’ children for only so long.

For that matter, they only tolerate their own children for so long.

A wonderful example of psychosocial distance, that.

Psychosocial distance is about how far we keep people out and how close we let people in.

My favorite example is “My child’s a genius, your child’s precocious, their child’s a pain in the ass” because it demonstrates the three primary regions (or boundaries) to our personal interaction with other people.

Western culture metaphorizes the nearest social boundary with whether or not we’re willing to be naked in front of another, ie, vulnerable. Westerners maximize trust with those whom they are willingly naked, and the metaphor is “They’ve seen me naked” meaning “They know everything about me.”

Reminds me of a long-time friend who once told me, “I’ve known you fifteen years and I still feel I’ve only seen the surface of the waves, not even six feet down.”

His admission shocked me. There was no one else in my life (at the time) with whom I’d been so vulnerable, so exposed.

“What else would you like to know?”

And there it was. He didn’t know what else there was to know, only that there was more, lots more. He could sense it, at times glimpse it, but never fully see it.

Or so he said. “You have so many layers, I don’t think anybody will ever know everything about you.”

For everyone else’s sake, I hope not.