A

Mercy Strategy 51

these possessions away and the child reacts by clutching on to them and
saying “Mine!” Mother and father are a major source of defining
experiences. As far as the child is concerned, they have the emotional
significance of gods—huge, strong beings who are all-powerful and all-
knowing, with the power of life and death.
In early stages of life, the personality of the child can vary radically as
different situations trigger differing mental fragments, each with its own
set of feelings and emotional reactions. Even normal everyday experiences
occasionally have sufficient emotional strength to overwhelm the internal
Mercy world of the child and trigger a crying spell or an emotional
outburst.

A defining experience sets the standard for rating similar experiences.

This is the event about which I have the strongest feelings.

e.g. A holiday for me may be the week of glorious weather at the cabin

by the lake.

All other holidays are compared to this single experience.

e.g. A car may be that old rusty „lemon‟ which continually broke down.

Say the word „car,‟ and this memory comes to mind.

One can see why the Mercy person is often quite shy as a child. His
immature conscious mind is constantly being bombarded with emotional
experiences which threaten to overturn his internal stability. The natural
defense is for him to „stay within sight of home‟ mentally: He can then
counter emotional threats by thinking about strong emotional experiences
already present within his internal world. When he feels insecure, he can
„run‟ to his defining experiences for shelter.
External objects can also be used to help remind Mercy strategy of
„safe‟ memories. The Mercy child may drag around his security blanket, or
clutch on to mother when a stranger appears. Like all of us, when his
emotions are threatened, then he retreats in some way to mental safety.
However, unlike others, the Mercy person is capable of taking this
response to its logical conclusion: He lives in the Mercy room, and can
decide to ignore most of the world and pull back to a set of emotionally
safe memories. If his external world is full of hurt and misery, then he may
in fact choose to withdraw from it completely. I suggest that this is the
mental mechanism behind schizophrenia. The schizophrenic suppresses
Mercy memories which make him feel bad, and uses concentration to
dwell upon those memories which feel good and secure. In essence, he puts
up a false wall within the „room‟ of conscious thought and pretends that
the part of the room which is behind the wall does not exist.A

A We are looking here at the mental circuits involved in schizophrenia. We

are not examining the cause of schizophrenia. An individual could block