Post date: Dec 26, 2011 3:37:23 AM
This Paper was presented at the 50th Annual Convention of American Association for Chinese Studies, California State University, Fullerton, October 17 – 19, 2008.
Abstract
Given marital infidelity being an age old phenomenon prevalent across different races and cultures, the issue of infidelity seems to have been even more rampant among Chinese Americans and Chinese and Taiwanese men from Taiwan during the past two decades. One dominant precipitating social factor seems to be business men away from home years or months at a time. Other than the unique social and economical currents faced by this generation of Chinese Americans, the emotions underlie infidelity are explored from the psychological perspectives of separation-individuation, oedipal infidelity, and object relations theories.
Compulsive gambling, although the elements of social current are not as clear as marital infidelity and is more of a latent phenomenon among Chinese Americans, nonetheless the prevalence of such addicted behaviors has created concern in the communities. A review of literature was conducted to better grasp the psychodynamics of such destructive yet elusive behaviors. Freud considers gambling as an exemplification of oedipal complex and inclination to bisexuality. The development of literature following him alludes gambling to masochism, pregenital anal-sadistic impulses, destructiveness and self-punishment, emergence of repressed omnipotent fantasies, and attempt to avert depressive state. In addition to the above mentioned theoretical derivations, the author also addresses gambling from the perspective of object relatedness.
Infidelity among Chinese Americans
Marital infidelity is an age old phenomenon portrayed throughout history in novels, plays and movies. Its happenings may well date back to the beginning of the institution of marriage. In her book, Lust in Translation: from Tennessee to Tokyo[1], Druckerman surveys the concept as well as prevalence of infidelity across the Western and Eastern cultures including South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, France, Italy, and the United States. Druckerman finds that the word infidelity has different connotations and practical meanings to people of different languages and cultures; however, infidelity exits, with different rates of prevalence, in all the counties she surveyed. Contrary to the stereotypically held notion of philandering Frenchman, the monogamous relationships and marriages among the French last even longer than the U.S. couples. In South Africa, the extramarital affairs were found to be high. Druckerman also found that the booming economy in China enable many businessmen in Hong Kong to keep mistresses in "second-wife villages" in mainland China.
Marital infidelity also seems to have been a rampant social phenomenon among Chinese Americans in the United States in the past two decades. The occurring of the high infidelity rates is inferred to be applicable to businessmen in Taiwan as well. An explanation of the high rates of extramarital affairs among Chinese Americans in recent decades seems to be associated with the onset of economic boom in China. As men went to China on business trips, they were away from home for months at a time. It seems the availability of young Chinese women in China and their eagerness to be sexually involved with married men from abroad further propagated infidelities.
Marital infidelities were reported in news media and talked about as gossip among Chinese Americans. I have seen patients who suffered from such betrayals. A number of years ago, a Chinese American man’s infidelity led to a double-murder incident in Southern California, which created a sensational uproar in the Chinese-American communities. This businessman had a mistress in China while abroad. He brought her with him when returning home to the San Gabriel Valley. He arranged for his mistress to live in a house on the same block where his wife and kids lived. For a while this man managed to have two households in a close vicinity. Eventually his wife found out about the mistress. She subsequently killed the mistress and her baby.
A conventional saying among Chinese Americans is that eight or nine out of ten married men who go to China for business end up having extramarital affairs of some sort. In my practice over the past few years, I have seen men and women relate to such happenings. Men were the ones engaged in such infidelities and women were suffering from their husbands’ unfaithfulness. Infidelity goes both ways, committed either by the husband or the wife. In this study I will focus on infidelities among Chinese American men. The rate of infidelity for this group of men may have been precipitatedly increased as a result of the unique social and economical phenomena faced by this generation.
Integrative Spirituality[2], a nonprofit spiritual support group posted a study online. This study was conducted by Euro RSCG Worldwide, a global marketing communications network. The result of this survey reveals that Chinese men and women are more likely to believe that monogamy is the natural state of human beings. It is indicated by 70% of Chinese who support this notion, compared to 57% of Americans, 44% of the French, 42% of British, and 40% of the Germans. However, contradictorily, Chinese appeared to be sexually liberal in regards to extramarital affairs, along with two other groups studied, French and German. Twenty-three percent of Chinese thought extramarital affairs are acceptable, while only 11% of British and 9% of Americans believe he same. The implications to such paradoxical beliefs and findings require further investigation. An intuitive interpretation would be that the Chinese, while being more conservative in their beliefs about sexuality and marriage, they are also more likely to be accepting and compromising in the circumstance of infidelity.
Saul in his book, Fidelity and Infidelity[3] made an observation that infidelity is sexual regression and hostility towards one’s spouse. He states the impulse to indulge in extramarital sex is very commonly stimulated by anger at the spouse. But it takes certain personalities to react with infidelity. Some personalities are such that, as noted by Saul, no matter how angry they are, they respond or manage their anger in other ways.
Throughout the case scenarios, he concludes that the core issues in any marriage are manifestations of each spouse’s early childhood experiences. Initially two people are attract to each other through identification. The two can relate to each other because they both, for example, had a domineering father. After the marriage though, each party projects to one’s spouse their internal object, and therefore both parties may experience the other as the controlling and domineering parent.
Saul further outlines the components of an adequately harmonious marriage as (1) love between the two, desire to be with the partner. (2) Sexual attractiveness, a physical good relationship. (3) A sense of romance, a quality of being in love. (4) Parenthood, gratification that comes with reproduction and being a parent. (5) Responsibility, the ability to take care of one’s spouse and children emotionally and physically. (6) Maturity, the capacity to care for self and one’s family in a steady and responsible manner. (7) The fit of two personalities.
Joseph[4] refers to Freud’s theory[5] that parental intercourse is experienced by the child as an act of infidelity on the part of the desired opposite sex parent. Thus the child experiences jealousy and narcissistic injury. While displacing hostility toward the same sex parent, the child splits the desired parent into faithful and unfaithful parts. The child’s identification with the “unfaithful” parent is likely to cause this person to be unfaithful as an adult.
To understand the emotional dynamics of infidelity, the concepts of splitting, part object relation and death instinct are applied to explore the subject matter. Klein[6] states that a mother’s breast is the first object for the infant. The breast is experienced by the infant as the good-gratifying breast and bad-frustrating breast. While the negative emotions towards one’s mother feels threatening to the infant because his life depends on her, the infant splits off his anger and hatred towards the absent mother and retains in him the loving and needing feelings of her. In a part-object relation level, an infant may develop a relation with parts of mother, such as a feeding hand, without integrating her as a whole person. Destructive impulses, derived from the death instinct, may lead to behaviors incomprehensible and disagreeable to a person in an ordinary state of mind. Destructive impulses may have developed early on amid negative and frustrating experiences.
It can be speculated that if a man operates in split states of mind, his feelings of love and hate toward his wife split, senses of responsibility, morality and loyalty split, it is more likely for this person to be engaging in extramarital sexual affairs. With destructive impulses, one is unlikely to be content with oneself or one’s circumstance and may feel propelled to do things that is damaging to one’s marriage.
Further, applying the paranoid schizoid position and depressive position proposed by Klein[7] may also shed light on infidelity. An infant begins with paranoid schizoid position by splitting an object into an idealized one and a persecuted one. The splitting is dominated by the process of projection and introjection. The infant projects part of the self into the object and splitting the object and the self into idealized and persecutory object and self. In the depressive position, an infant realizes that one’s hostile omnipotent impulses could destroy the good and needed object and leads to a sense of remorse, guilt and mourning. These feelings lead to attempt at making reparation and restoring the good internal object. Although Klein states that these two positions are not necessarily developmental phases and a person may go back and forth between the two positions, I speculate that for the ones who have extramarital affairs are more likely under the dominance of the paranoid schizoid position.
Now let us examine infidelity with the concepts proposed by Bion in his model of mind. According to Bion[8], an infant projects his incomprehensible and indigestible emotions, beta elements, to the mother or caregiver. His mother, through her maternal reverie, transforms the beta elements into alpha elements, which emotions can then be understood and digested. In other words, the mother serves as a container to contain the infant’s uncontainable emotions. The lacking of such maternal alpha function leaves an infant with beta elements. As an adult, these emotions may remain difficult and challenging to the person. An example would be a husband experiences frustration, anger and hatred towards his wife, yet has not developed the capacity to deal with these negative emotions in a constructive manner. Acting out sexually by having an affair could be the husband’s way reacting to the situation. In addition to unprocessed and unaddressed emotions, infidelity may also result unconscious fantasies and desires for men and women other than one’s spouse.
Another concept of Bion is Attacks on linking. An example of attacks on linking in a therapeutic scenario is while a patient feels being understood by one’s therapist or analyst and feels connected to him, this patient may simultaneously experience jealous, angry or disinterest in the therapist. This patient’s state of mind could be understood as being attacked by a part of him feeling left out and jealous. In marital scenarios attacks on linking could also be operative. Suppose a husband feels attached to his wife, which feeling stirs up jealousy in another part of him. So the jealous part of him strikes out to attack on the attachment by, for example, having an affair.
Akhtar and Kramer[9] collected papers presented in a symposium discussing fidelity and intimacy. The authors explored the issues from the perspectives of Mahler’s developmental model of symbiosis and separation-individuation[10]. According to Mahler, symbiosis refers a baby’s sense of omnipotence where mother is fused with oneself and functions as a “dual unitary system.” Separation refers to the differentiation of self from the symbiotic object. In individuation, a toddler internalizes one’s parent, which becomes the child’s true ego identity.
The state of symbiosis, according to Mahler, goes on from the second month to the sixth month of the first year. During this phase, “I” is not differentiated from “not I’ and there is a sense of “we-ness.” Separation and individuation processes supposedly take approximately two years. The separation and individuation processes also include subphases of hatching, practicing, object constancy, and rapprochement. The more optimal the symbiotic phase, a holding environment provided by mother, the more likely the infant is prepared to “hatch” from the symbiotic orbit. During the practicing subphase, a toddler is at the height of his own magic omnipotence. He explores his surroundings away from the mother. During the period of rapprochement, the toddler has a renewed need for his mother. He returns to her with his new acquisitions and experiences. A child is said to have reached object constancy when the maternal image has been internalized. This internalized image later becomes available to him in her absence for love and comfort.
Among the collected papers, Kramer[11] states in her article, the Development of Intimacy and Its Relationship with the Ability to Have Friends, that the incapacity for intimacy results from developmental deficits and often leads to marital infidelity. Referring to Eisenstein’s work in 1956, she quotes, “Emotionally immature people are incapable of experiencing satisfactory interpersonal intimacy, including heterosexual activity” (p.102). While infidelity does not necessarily warrant psychopathology, Eisenstein points out the close links between primitive personality organization and infantile impulsivity associated with flagrant extramarital sexual affairs.
Kramer further states that a baby’s secure and trusting relationship with one’s mother enables the child to develop a foundation of trust and the capacity for feeling close to others. The child’s sense of security derived from the relationship with his mother also provides a safe base for the child to explore the outside world. Kramer concludes that “infidelity is created by an emotional anlage in which errors in development that repeated have not permitted intimacy and fidelity to be complete.” (p.17).
Gambling Among Chinese and Chinese Americans
Pathological gambling, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV)[12], is classified under Impulse-Control Disorders Not Elsewhere Classified, the characteristic symptoms include:
(1) is preoccupied with gambling (e.g., preoccupied with reliving past gambling experiences, handicapping or planning the next venture, or thinking of ways to get money with which to gamble)
(2) needs to gamble with increasing amounts of money is order to achieve the desired excitement
(3) has repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back or stop gambling…(p. 618)
Whether pathological gambling or not, a stereotypical self understanding is that, as a whole, Chinese love to gamble[13]. This stereotype is actually supported by studies, business developments as well as observations of social trends. A study conducted by a research group at the University of California, Los Angeles[14] indicates that 1% of Americans meet the criteria as pathological gamblers; 2% to 6% Americans are addicted to gambling; the percentage of addiction to gambling among Asian Americans, however, rises as high as 21%. The finding of this proportionally high number of Asian Americans addicted to gambling certainly calls for further investigation and understanding. Chong[15] indicated a survey reveals that 90% of Chinese visitors to the United States make Las Vegas a “must” stop for them. For most American tourists, Las Vegas is a tourist stop and gambling is recreational. But for many Chinese, gambling is almost the only reason they visit Las Vegas, particularly those American Chinese from the Chinatowns. Among the Chinese who go to Las Vegas to gamble, most of them have gambled frequently in other gambling cities in Southeast Asia and Macau. Two U.S. Casino Moguls, Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, reportedly pledged to invest over $1 billion U.S. dollars in Macau. It seems they are betting on Chinese for their gambling business based on experience and business judgment. This trend of investment seems to reinforce the notions held by some that “Chinese are the world’s most passionate gamblers,” and that Chinese are known to be a gambling nation[16].
According to a survey conducted in 2003[17] by the Center for Health Protection in Hong Kong, nine out of ten men reported they have engaged in some kind gambling such as betting on a horse race, playing ma jiang, playing poker, or going to a casino at some point in their life. One out of fifteen adults reported having parents who are pathological gamblers.
With the large and increasing number of Chinese gambling in various casinos, these casinos reportedly began to catering to the needs of Chinese customers. Many casinos have employees with the language capabilities, and they attend to Chinese customs and practices. Recently, as online gambling becoming increasingly popular, more Chinese began to play casino games online. Certain websites like “Golden Palace” supposedly to have installed a Chinese version of their website[18].
Gambling history among Chinese may go back as early as the Chin and Han dynasty[19]. Journalists, authors and concerned individuals began to speculate the reasons to the high gambling rates among Chinese Americans. Some attributes gambling to language barriers, cultural differences and difficulties adjusting to the Western life style. Others say gambling serves the function of social activities for Chinese Americans and a coping mechanism for boredom. Yet others consider gambling results from fantasies of becoming wealthy by sheer chance of luck.
Harris’s article[20] provides a review of psychoanalytic literature on gambling. Referring to an earlier work by Von Hattingberg[21], who proposes that the inherent fear in risk taking in gambling is eroticized and which propensity may be rooted in denied pleasure in urethral-anal-striving in infancy. The eroticized fear in turn gave rise to masochism, pleasure in pain.
Simmel[22]states that “on the developmental path of mankind, games of chance are a reservoir for the anal-sadistic impulses held in a state of repression,” (p. 514) and that gambling provides autoerotic gratification and satisfies narcissistic bisexual impulses. Freud in his case study of Dosteovsky and Parricide[23] linked gambling to a manifestation of neurosis with bisexuality through Oedipus complex. Freud also sees Dosteovsky’s gambling as a way of self-punishment.
Israeli[24] observed that patients who suffered from depression often engaged in habitual gambling. Israeli states that these gamblers seem to obtain relief by the loss of all the money they have. Greenson[25] similarly states to the effect that gambling, like many other compulsive behaviors, defends against depression. In addition to a regressive state of omnipotent fantasies, it is speculated that gambling also gratifies homosexual, anal-sadistic, oral receptive drives as well as masochistic destructiveness.
Rosenthal[26] reviewed Dostoevsky’s The Gambler, while comparing this work with Crime and Punishment, another book written by Dostoevsky at the same time. Rosenthal referenced Robert Jackson[27], a Dostoevsky’s scholar, who considers the Gambler the best case history of a compulsive gambler in literature. Rosenthal noted Alexis, the protagonist in the Gambler, often labeled himself as “a man or a nothing” based on a turnout of roulette, which seems to reflect Alexis in split state of good and bad, or success and failure. Alexis feels insignificant and being ignored by others. He is contemptuous of the conventional values and has need to do things quickly. To avert the feeling of being ignored, he would conjure up provocative and shocking stories to become the center of attention. These descriptions seem to indicate Alexis’ inadequacy, impulsivity as well as his narcissistic propensity. Like many compulsive gamblers, Alexis has omnipotent fantasies where he likes to have what he wants without having to pay or work for them.
Rosenthal further noted that Alexis’ relationships with women paralleled his gambling. He is enslaved to both. His dichotomously split state of mind once again manifested itself: he either hates a woman passionately with murderous impulses or loves her with the same kind of passion. He would die for her only if it pleased her. What is strikingly apparent in Alexis, as noted by Rosenthal, is his destructiveness in both love and hate and the lack of constructive and restitutive thoughts and actions.
Rosenthal infers that underneath Alexis’ contempt for a love object lies his fear and vulnerability, which he struggles to control. It seems positive and loving emotions are precarious to him. The shadow of fear accompanied him from one love affair to another, which alludes to his fear of love object and intimate relationship. Inherent in all relationships, as seen by Alexis, is power struggle; one’s domination over another. Therefore being in love means being enslaved by someone else. Rosenthal further states, “One’s sense of one’s self is threatened, and the more intimate the relationship, the more it is experienced as suffocating and claustrophobic. “(p. 600).
Conclusions
I selected two seemingly unrelated subject matters which appear to be prevalent, and moreover, concern the Chinese-American communities. The literature review, however, reveals the underlying emotions for these two categories of rather destructive behaviors have much in common. Both marital infidelity and addiction to gambling seem to reflect elements of developmental arrest. Infidelity, examined with Kleinian object relations theory, seems to reflect emotional states of paranoid schizoid position, without achieving depressive position. To obtain a more mature and steady interpersonal relationship as well as a stable marriage, the emotional states characteristic of depressive position are required. In the depressive position, one is able to integrate the love and hate towards one’s love object, fears his hostility has destroyed the loved one, mourns for the loss, and attempts at rapprochement.
From the Bionion perspectives, infidelity could be understood with the concepts of beta elements and attacks on linking. Beta elements refers to the emotions indigestible and uncontainable to a person, while attacks on linking refers to behaviors destructive to connections made between the person and others. Amid the uncontainable emotions or destructive impulses, a person is likely to do things potentially damaging to oneself. And infidelity would be an example. Saul considers infidelity as sexual regression and hostility towards one’s spouse. Studies applying Mahler’s developmental model suggests infidelity results from emotional incapacity for intimacy, emotional immaturity, primitive personality organization and infantile impulsivity.
The literature indicates the underlying emotions of gambling as compulsive behaviors, defense against depression, sense of guilt and masochistic self punishment, heightened state of bisexuality, and infantile omnipotent fantasies. The review of the protagonist, Alexis, in the Gambler, reveals his vulnerability and ultimate fear of intimacy in interpersonal relationship amid his rampant gambling.
[1] Druckerman, Pamela. Lust in Translation. New York: the Penguin Press, 2007.
[2] www.integrativespirituality.org
[3] Saul, Leon J. Fidelity and Infidelity—And What Makes or Breaks a Marriage, New York:: J. B. Lippincott, Co., 1967.
[4] Josephs, L. The Impulse to Infidelity and Oedipal Splitting. Int. J. of Psycho-Anal. 87:423-437, 2006.
[5] Freud, S. Three Essays on the theory of sexuality. Standard Edition, 7:135 – 243, 1905.
[6] Klein, M. Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In Envy and Gratitude and other Works. 1946 – 1963, New York: The Free Press-Macmillan, 1984. pp. 1-24.
[7] Klein, M. Notes on some schizoid mechanisms. In Envy and Gratitude and other Works. 1946 – 1963, New York: The Free Press-Macmillan, 1984. pp. 1-24.
[8] Bion, Wilfred R. Elements of Psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1963.
[9] Akhtar, S. and Kramer, S. Eds. Intimacy and Infidelity: Separation –Individuation Perspectives. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc. 1996
[10] Mahler, M. On Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation: Infant Psychosis. New York: International Universities Press, Inc. Vol. I. 1968.
[11] Kramer, Selma. The Development of intimacy and its relationship with the ability to have friends. In Intimacy and Infidelity: Separation – Individuation Perspectives, Akhtar, S and Kramer, S. Eds. Northvale, New Jersey: Jason Aronson, Inc. 1996.
[12] Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994.
[13] The Gambling Gene, Shanghai Star, 2003, March 20.
[14] Chinese Media Net, Inc. June 13, 2006.
[15] Chong, Samuel. Gambling, Casino, and Chinese. An online article.
[16] The Gambling Gene, Shanghai Star, 2003, March 20
[17] http://www.hkmensheath.com
[18] Chong, Samuel. Gambling, Casino, and Chinese. An online article
[19] Chinese Media Net, Inc. June 30, 2006.
[20] Harris, Herbert, “Gambling Addiction in an Adolescent Male” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 33:513-525.
[21] Von Hattingberg, Herman, Analerotik, Angstlust and Eigensinn. Int. Ztschr. F. Psa.II 1914 pp. 244-258.
[22] Simmel, Ernst. On Psychoanalysis of the Gambler, paper read at the Sixth International Congress of Psychoanalysis, the Hague, September 1920.
[23] Freud, Sigmund, Dostoevsky and Parricide, Coll. Papers V pp. 222-242, 1928.
[24] Israeli, N. Outlook of a Depressed Patient Interested in Planned Gambling. American J. Orthopsychiatry V, pp. 57-63, 1935.
[25] Greenson, Ralph R. On Gambling American. Imago IV 1947, pp 61-77.
[26] Rosenthal, R. J. “The Gambler as Case History and literary Twin: Dostoevsky’s False Bearty and the Poetics of Perversity,” Psychoanalytic Review, 84:593-616, 1997.
[27] Jackson, R. L. The Art of Dostoevsky: Deliriums and Nocturnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.