Richard Malter, Ph. D.
Malter Institute
Cottonwood, Arizona 86326
rickmind@cableone.net

American Psychological Association
Annual Convention
Washington, D.C.
August 25, 1982

The Concept of the Judge in the Diagnosis and Treatment of
Behavior and Emotional Disorders

In his clinical work with clients in psychotherapy, Dr. John R. Cooper has isolated and defined several child ego state "characters" within individual persons. These "characters" become barriers to living a meaningful and fulfilling interpersonal life. The most dominant of these characters is the Judge. Cooper asserts that it is the Judge who really controls one's life and destiny, most often out of one's awareness. The Judge embodies all of the absolute and prejudicial positions about love and life. It is both restrictive and permissive depending upon which case is necessary to restrict the natural flow of love and life energies. To thwart the Judge is to suffer the threat of annihilation.

Theoretically, the Judge becomes consolidated in personality development at about eight years of age. Intellectually, the Judge operates at a very concrete level, thinking in terms of absolutes - good or bad, right or wrong, success or failure. It masquerades as logical and reasonable, but it is intolerant of any shortcomings. It tends to be extremely moralistic. Emotionally, the Judge is extremely cold, insensitive, and totally uncaring.

The Judge in personality functioning is distinct from a "healthy" conscience that is spiritually and morally appropriate reflecting a caring sense of what is right. The Judge is totally pathological. It is experienced as cold, insensitive, uncaring, and demanding of total submission and compliance. It is a collector of evidence against oneself and others. The Judge tries to act as a reasonable and rational part of one's psyche. It appears to be rational and very convincing until its "shoulds" and "should nots" are challenged. It is full of devastating ploys which it uses to inflict retribution whenever the individual defies his/her Judge. It is the trigger to intense anxiety and panic, depression, suicide, and psychosomatic disorder. Therefore, identification and confrontation with one's Judge is a critical phase in psychotherapy.

There are two basic reactions to the emergence of the Judge. One is to feel increased tension, anxiety, and insecurity. The other reaction is to "go dead" or experience a psychologically created numbness of feeling, sensation, and body awareness. The deadening process takes place because it would become unbearable to continuously feel the Judge's threat of doom.

Since the Judge develops and becomes consolidated while the individual is still a child with feelings of dependency and impotence, immature perceptions of significant adults, and concrete "either-or" thinking, the feelings and messages that go into the formation of the Judge are not critically scrutinized and tested. The Judge thus becomes endowed with great power enabling it to keep the child "in line". Later internal conflicts with the Judge tend to feel like life and death struggles. Psychologically, the Judge may be related to the Freudian concept of Thanatos. However, unlike Freud's conception, Cooper's concept of the Judge does not represent an instinct, but rather a fragmented child ego state character. It can be implicated in virtually all psychogenically based behavior and emotional disorders.

According to Cooper, the individual's natural person is in direct opposition to the Judge. The natural person would embody Freud's concept of Eros. The Judge attempts to control, stifle, and , if necessary, even to kill the individual's natural person. Obviously, the extreme of this latter process is suicide. One of the uses of the Judge concept is that it enables us to understand how some events which objectively are superficial and trivial can lead to one's feeling condemned to death resulting in panic and terror or deep depression and despair. Under such conditions, self-destructive and suicidal behavior follows.

Theoretically, the Judge is the keeper of one's "life script". Any serious attempt to alter one's life script, either through education, job change, change of location or marital status, or psychotherapy, may trigger an attack by one's Judge. Also, a failure to fulfill one's script expectations will trigger the Judge's retribution. The Judge's threat may feel totally unbearable and inescapable because it is out of awareness. Panic and/or deep depression are the result of the Judge's impact on the individual. The potentially lethal consequences make it imperative to identify, confront, and defuse the power of the Judge.

Some families, cultures, and religious organizations tend to be more "Judge-dominated than others. Therefore, such families, cultures, and religious organizations tend to produce more psychopathology. In this context, there is a kind of emotional family heirloom which Cooper refers to as the "suicide button". It is passed from generation to generation, usually outside of awareness. Under certain stressful conditions, the individual may feel condemned by his/her Judge and press his/her "suicide button" in order to escape the unbearable terror and/or despair and feeling of doom. This often results in catastrophic consequences which, to the survivors, make no "logical" sense.

Identifying, confronting, and defusing the impact of the client's Judge can be very effective in crisis intervention and short-term treatment of acute anxiety and/or depression and despair. Treatment is most effectively done utilizing drawings, clay sculpts, and body work. The latter is important because the Judge usually has an intense somatic component. Body tension, pain, heaviness, or numbness often are the result of the Judge's impact. Since the Judge is a psychological "character" rather than an abstraction, the client can imagine how his/her Judge looks and draw it or sculpt it in clay. Objectifying the Judge in drawings and in clay sculpts enables the client to confront it more realistically from an adult ego state rather than from a child ego state.

This tangible confrontation process tends to unmask the Judge and enables the client to experience it, feeling its ominous threats of death and doom. In the confrontation process, the client re-experiences childhood panic and terror. The task of the therapist is to help the client to challenge the critical messages of the Judge and to expose its phoniness and illusory power.

In many cases, the client will destroy the drawing or clay sculpt of the Judge. This is very empowering and enables the client to feel his/her own potency while defusing the illusory power of the Judge. The client usually experiences a marvelous sense of relief and exhilaration. Along with general anxiety reduction, there is also reduced tension in the skeletal muscles, and, in some cases, even reduced blood pressure.

The concept of the Judge also is valuable in understanding some critical psychological processes related to relationships within some families, organizations, and various cultural institutions. When a Judge-dominated individual is in a position of power and control, he/she tends to use the organization's rules and regulations to control and manipulate subordinates, associates, and clients of the organization. As economic and social conditions deteriorate, there is a tendency for the Judge in individuals to gain in ascendance. This leads to increased tension, anxiety, and insecurity. A person is likely to feel his/her Judge more intensively as external conditions become shakier and more insecure. Communication tends to be more from a Judge-dominated perspective. Such communication tends to distract and to confuse others.

This type of Judge-dominated communication often leads to a take-over of institutions and organizations by the Judge part of the personality within key individuals and administrators. That is, the Judge part of the individual's personality becomes more and more dominant, usually without his/her awareness of the process.

Stress is dramatically increased as Judge-domination occurs. As stress increases, the individual is more likely to feel his/her own Judge. This is because stress and tension in the body are triggered as the major impact of the Judge. Thus, a vicious cycle begins and builds momentum. In Judge-dominated organizations and institutions (including families), not only is there a high level of stress and tension, but there also tends to be distraction and inability to concentrate.
Objective conditions alone are insufficient to defuse the Judge. No matter how bright, talented, successful, or wealthy one may be, the Judge in one's personality can still arouse insecurity, anxiety, and panic if it is operating outside of one's awareness. The Judge can still trigger depression, hopeless, despair, and suicidal feelings. In families and communities which are Judge-dominated or vulnerable to "Judgy" expectations, statements, and accusations, one is likely to find high rates of psychopathology, emotional disturbance, and suicide.

If our institutions become more and more Judge-dominated, there will be increasing insecurity, anxiety, and stress. There is also a significant drop in morale. Recent trends in key institutions such as our schools suggest that they are becoming more and more Judge-dominated administratively. The resulting tensions and demoralized feelings among students and teachers are reflected in teacher stress and "burn-out" as well as increased student drop-out rates. The latter includes dropping out overtly as well as covertly through drugs, alcohol, depression, delinquency, and suicide. A lethal deadening process by the Judge may be exacting a very costly toll psychologically, socially, and financially.

Cooper's concept of the Judge is proving its value in many individual clinical applications. This valuable clinical tool may have even more significance when applied to families, institutions, and organizations.

The Judge also is a valuable concept enabling us to distinguish between deep warm spirituality and cold"Judgy" morality in various religions and cultures. True spirituality is felt as warm, nurturing, and life-affirming and life-supporting. It is also experienced as having a very solid feel to it. A spiritually solid person feels solid to the core of his/her being, whereas a person with cold, "Judgy" morality is experienced as empty of feelings and very threatening. Usually in such a person, there is a history of maternal deprivation and emptiness which is clearly seen in drawings and clay sculpts. There is often a sense of deadness of feeling and numbness of sensation.

The emotionally deprived and empty individual tends to be much more vulnerable to the impact of the Judge. The messages and expectations of the Judge are either internalized leading to depression, despair, and self-destruction or externalized leading to aggressive homicidal acting out. With the Judge concept, we now have a significant new clinical concept and set of treatment techniques to more effectively treat and defuse this destructive and lethal component in personality.