Acknowledgement Versus Invalidation, 2
Seeing someone is receiving a communication, greeting that someone is acknowledging his or her existence. Allowing to talk, listening, answering questions, properly acknowledging what is said – a simple thing, such as a, “I see” –, all of these are forms of acknowledgement.
Imagine spending a whole day utterly ignored by your fellows, you and all your attempts to communicate, and then imagine spending the same day fully listened to and acknowledged, with all your longings to communicate successful. Imagine how would you feel in each case, and then multiply that effect over a time span of a lifetime: the therapeutic value of acknowledgement and the invalidating effect of its absence may work also by slow undetected accumulation in the long run. Lack of acknowledgement is most decidedly a form of invalidation. And unfortunately acknowledgement is one of the most scarce fundamental necessities; if you look carefully and extensively around, you can easily assess how much loneliness, despair and insanity this exact factor accounts for in society.
No matter how obvious, an acknowledge has to be such from the viewpoint of the receiver: if one begins to receive anything else in response to one’s communication, including agreement or disagreement, without being aware of having been acknowledged, no acknowledgement took place, with all its consequences.
It is very important to clarify that acknowledgement is not agreement, and that the therapeutic or invalidating effects result from the acknowledgement or its absence, not from agreement. Not only “I understand” does not mean “I agree” nor “I disagree”, but it seems that communicating with our fellows is even more vital a basic than their agreement is. It is obvious that if one handles something is because one considers handling it important, and that no one is an island, thus agreement of one’s fellows is fundamental to anyone; it is slightly less obvious that acknowledgement is even more fundamental than agreement. After all, even disagreement is a form of acknowledgement: you can’t disagree with what does not exist for you.
