Edwin H. Friedman Quote

By the term regression I mean to convey something far more profound than a mere loss of progress. Societal regression is about the perversion of progress into a counter-evolutionary mode. In a societal regression, evolutionary principles of life that have been basic to the development of our species become distorted, perverted, or actually reversed. Chief among those evolutionary principles are:    self-regulation of instinctual drive;    adaptation to strength rather than weakness;    a growth-producing response to challenge;    allowing time for maturing processes to evolve; and    the preservation of individuality and integrity. Emotional regression, therefore, is more of a going down than a going back; it is devolution rather than evolution. It has to do with a lowering of maturity, rather than a reduction in the gross national product. One needs to view societal regression in three dimensions, not two. At the same time that a society is pro-gressing technologically it can be re-gressing emotionally.