Judith Bardwick wrote Psychology of Women in the 60's. She thought then that fears of abandonment were basically associated with the feminine mind, especially the mind in its nubile or mating years. She thought a somewhat corresponding fear among men was the fear of suffocation, a fear and an unsatisfactory feeling that a young boy can experience with parents who are felt to be overprotective, overly constricting or confining or strict in what is allowed and what is forbidden. Of course, a boy or man can be abandoned, too and a girl or woman can experience emotional suffocation. In fact, looking up "abandonment" and "suffocating parents", I found at first glance all the comments under the latter to be from young women.
I often think of this pair of fears when trying to understand real people, celebrities and characters in stories. Kahneman and Tversky did Noble prize work on psychological insights into behavior, which is covered nicely in Kahneman's book, "Thinking: Fast and Slow". They helped make well-known the phenomenon call "anchoring". If movies, parents or siblings set one's expectations for personal freedom high, encumbrances and oversight by parents may chafe. Some people of high spirit may quickly take umbrage at curfews or questions or criticisms that others take in their stride. Personality and background and what one's peers seem to be doing and accepting help to set the anchor point, the expected level of freedom and custody.
You can't tell what fears and irks are in the back of a person's mind. That my brother never had to face the deadlines and scrutiny I did may still be affecting my judgment decades later. Even the person himself might not realize where he got his anchor point of expectation from, or when. He might not be able to look at a question or decision today without unconscious influence from feelings resentments and injustice from years ago.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
