Watching The Film "Wild Life" With A Psychologist - Relationships, Society

• "Wild Life". USA, 2018
• Director: Paul Dano
• Cast: Ed Oxenbuld, Jake Gyllenhaal, Carey Maligan and more

How easy it is to shift responsibility for your life onto someone else! Even if this other is the son of two infantile parents and he is only 14 years old. What if the child becomes a symbolic parent for his own father and mother?

An American province of the sixties, a small family of three is going through a big crisis. The father cannot hold on to any job, blaming employers, although his own misconduct leads to dismissal. We see an immature personality, not taking responsibility, with a fleeing type of behavior. Jerry cannot provide for his family and is angry with his wife for her displeasure. But he enjoys playing ball with his son.

This behavior is typical for a dependent personality, and our guess is confirmed: the hero escapes from the difficulties of adulthood into drinking alcohol and aimlessly watching TV

As a result, he goes to dangerous work - he signs up as a volunteer to fight forest fires and leaves. What is this - a feat? Or another escape combined with risky behavior?

The wife is also an infantile personality. She cannot take responsibility either for the household or for her teenage son; she is looking for someone who will take care of her. This is a "clinging personality type", a liana person, not capable of independence.

She shifts responsibility for herself to others, including her 14-year-old son: he is taking care of her like a child.

The fact that her husband left for work, Jeannette perceives as betrayal and abandonment, but this is a child's perception, not an adult. And since she is pretty, she resorts to the simplest way: she uses her attractiveness to find a rich lover. “He will take care,” Jeannette frankly explains this decision to her son.

The Jerry and Jeannette family is a marriage of two children, even if they are 35 years old, but not one has reached psychological maturity. Such a union is successful at the beginning: after all, children are fun and interesting together. But they are not ready for the difficulties of adulthood.

The marriage of two infantiles is doomed to failure. It boils down to mutual claims and discontent, and the claims are predictable: "You don't care about me", "You think about yourself, not about me."

Therefore, the heroes of the film "Wild Life" do not evoke sympathy. They have what they deserve. But their son Joe is a touching character. The child of infantile parents either himself becomes the same, or develops according to the counter-scenario of early adulthood. He is forced to take responsibility for himself and for his parents early on.

It is the early growing up that we see in the hero of the movie "Wild Life". He himself solves not only his own problems, but also economic difficulties, tries to reconcile his parents and cares about them touchingly. At the age of 14, he abandons his hobbies and gets a job.

The son becomes the symbolic parent for the father and mother. This parent-child relationship is called “inverted”. Parents complain to him about their life and about each other, include them in their problems and conflicts. They even try to shift responsibility for decisions

In such a family, healthy boundaries between parents and a child are lost, he is included in their personal life. Jeannette seduces her lover in front of her son, and the father tries to find out from the minor son whether his mother had sexual intercourse on the side.

In the family system, infantile parents put a child in the place of their parents, that is, his grandparents. He does not have the opportunity to go about his personal life: Joe calls out a girl from his class that he likes, but he does not have time for dates, he solves adult problems for adults.

What happens to such "grown-up children" in real adulthood? They build codependent relationships: they live not their own lives, but someone else's, they constantly care about someone, but not about themselves

What if you grew up in an inverted parenting model?

• Give parents back responsibility for themselves. To take care of them only in accordance with objective necessity.
• Do not become a buffer between parents: leave them to solve their conflicts themselves.
• Live your life and learn to take care of yourself.

Read also:

• "Why do I only meet infantile men?"
• Lost in childhood. Why some adults stay in childhood
• When childhood doesn't go away. How to deal with infantiles