Power Not Needs: The missing code in understanding mental and emotional health issues.

‘Power Not Needs Theory’ (PNN), proposes that dysfunctional behaviour in children and adults is procedural memory of power acquisition strategies formed when parental care is offered conditionally. The conditions we call ‘Contracts’ and the strategies, ‘Weapons’. Childhood ‘misbehaviour’ is considered Weapon deployment rather than the seeking of comfort, love and safety. Contracts will contain one of four types of parental obligation and the child’s obligation(s) will be one or more of the, approximately, one hundred different types. Deprived of autonomy, authenticity and self-esteem the child fills the power vacuum with the only available sources of power which are five innate abilities that they weaponise. The Weapons predict exclusive sets of behaviours and concomitant mental, emotional and physical disorders. PNN proposes that the pathology is not the individuals dysfunctional behaviour but the Contracts, and that both Contracts and Weapons can be transformed via retroactive interference using a single initiatory experience, not years of therapy.