Denial

Denial is an essential concept to explain the dynamics of a dysfunctional family. A family becomes dysfunctional because it is denying some core problem. The classic case is the alcoholism of a parent. Adult Children of Alcoholics reports that fully 50% of those growing up in alcoholic families will deny there is any alcoholism present.

But do not be misled; alcoholism is not the only possibility. It is only the one most visible to our materialistic society. The real issue is a parental vice of any kind. See the Seven Deadly Sins for the traditional list.

The family exists to support a parent in a vice or vices; essential to this is denying that it is a vice, or that they have it.

But if denial is such a necessary concept, why has it not been known throughout history? Why do we hear it only in the last few decades; why does it sound so much like “pop psychology”?

This is a misconception. A Google engram shows that usage of the actual term, “denial,” is no more common today that it was in 1850, or 1800; frequency of usage has been mostly consistent, with perhaps a gentle valley stretching from the beginning into the middle years of the 20th century.

 

That has to mean that, if it is being used more frequently in some new sense in recent years, it must for some reason be used less in some prior meaning; an improbable idea, and something that surely could not simply happen by chance. A prior concept has been appropriated by psychology.

Denial, of just the sort seen in a dysfunctional family, is modelled prominently by St. Peter in the New Testament. It appears in all four gospels.

We’ll quote Mark’s version, as Mark’s is most succinct:

While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant girls of the high priest came by. When she saw Peter warming himself, she looked closely at him.

“You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus,” she said.

But he denied it. “I don’t know or understand what you’re talking about,” he said, and went out into the entryway.

When the servant girl saw him there, she said again to those standing around, “This fellow is one of them.” Again he denied it.

After a little while, those standing near said to Peter, “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.”

He began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know this man you’re talking about.” (Mark 14: 66-71). 

This is just the sort of adamant and repeated denial of the obvious seen in any dysfunctional family. 

Moreover, it is from the same source.

The government—as in the family the parent—has done something wrong. They are rejecting and executing an innocent man on a false charge. Rather than standing against this government action, Peter denies the slightest inference that he might. Nobody is more loyal to the government than he.

The gospel makes it clear enough why this happens, in either case: in the first place, out of fear. Every family, to preserve the family delusion, has a scapegoat, selected by the guilty parent. The surest way to become the scapegoat is to be caught telling the truth—about the secret vice, or about anything. In the gospel, this social scapegoat is Jesus: Jesus is the ultimate scapegoat for all mankind. The treatment dealt out to the scapegoat within a family, or within society, then serves to keep others in line: they fear that, if they point out the family dysfunction, or the resulting act of scapegoating, they may be given the same treatment, be scapegoated in their turn. This then fuels the family denial.

Some may remember how this worked with homosexuality back in high school—at least as late as the Sixties or Seventies. If you did not go along with the general derision towards some unlucky classmate who acted fey, you risked being declared a fag yourself.

And so the family is kept in line: denial.

There is a yet more fundamental example of denial in the Bible. It happens in the Garden of Eden.

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:8).

This is right after they have eaten the forbidden fruit; as obvious a denial of reality as we see in a dysfunctional family. God is omniscient; hiding in the bushes is not going to work. 

Here, the cause of denial is guilt; awareness of sin.

This too is a common cause in a dysfunctional family. Aware of their own settled vice, the problem parent will almost instinctively encourage or lure their children into immorality of some kind. Once they succeed, the child is doubly afraid to acknowledge the family truth, for they have their own secrets to conceal. The parent can, in effect, blackmail them; and truth itself, in any form, comes to seem a threat.

The term “denial” may sound cheap to us now because modern psychology, in appropriating the term, has subverted it, by eliminating the essential moral issue. To put it plainly, psychology itself is in denial, and for the classic reason. The issue is sin, or vice.

Indeed, arguably, it is Adam’s and Eve’s denial of sin by hiding in the bushes that is the real original sin, the one that caused the Fall, and not the eating of the apple. Sin is inevitable, and was for them, given free will and a lifespan projected to be infinite. You sin, and you ask for forgiveness; a merciful God forgives. The problem is the denial, the refusal to acknowledge the sin, that commits one to the path of vice. This is just what original sin is understood to do.

The ur-sin of denial is then the reason anyone rejects Jesus and salvation:

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. (John 3: 19-21).

Denial is, it seems, the sin of all sins; it is the turning at the crossroads onto the high road to Hell.

This is the most terrible consequence of growing up in a dysfunctional family.

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. …

“If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18:1-6)