心理学Essay范文：Impact of Child Abuse on Elon Musk

本文是心理学专业的留学生Essay范例，题目是“Impact of Child Abuse on Elon Musk（儿童期被虐待对埃隆·马斯克的影响）”,一名男子喉头的尖叫在屋子里回荡，提醒他的三个孩子注意父亲的愤怒。当他把一瓶空的科罗娜酒放在厨房柜台上时，孩子们争抢着找地方躲起来。突然，瓶子撞在墙上，碎玻璃碎片落在地板上。酒精和尼古丁的气味吞噬了整个房间，他解开腰带，在空中折断。皮带抽打着孩子们的脸，孩子们尝到了血液的金属味。他谩骂着，尖叫着说他们最终会成为南非小镇上的游手好脚的人。

A man’s guttural scream resonates through the house, warning his three children of their father’s rage. As he sets down an empty bottle of Corona on the kitchen counter, the kids scramble for a place to hide. Suddenly, shards of broken glass plummet to the floor as the bottle shatters against a wall. The smell of alcohol and nicotine consumes the room as he unbuckles his belt and snaps it in the air. The children taste the metallic flavor of blood as the belt whips across their faces. He hurls insults and profanities, screaming that they will end up as deadbeats in their small South African town.

Within this house, a world-changing entrepreneur grows up to the echoes of violence and fury every night. In spite of his terrible upbringing and the adversity he faces, a young Elon Musk strives to achieve success and prove his emotionally abusive father wrong. Because Musk has parents who practice meaningful work, benefits from hidden advantages in his relationship with his father, and possesses a great amount of demographic luck, he leads a successful career and changes the world with his innovative technology.

Because Musk’s parents practice meaningful work through autonomous and rewarding jobs, Musk is taught the lesson of hard work, which helps him significantly in obtaining success. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell claims that the essential components of meaningful work are autonomy and a relationship between effort and reward (149). Gladwell argues that the value a person places on work has a beneficial impact on the success of their children (150).

Musk’s father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer at AECOM, a firm that allows its employees to come into the office at any hour and choose their own projects, rather than being assigned to one (Storm 42). His ability to control his hours and tasks gives him a high degree of autonomy, which is the first component of meaningful work.

马斯克的父亲埃罗尔·马斯克(Errol Musk)是南非AECOM公司的一名机电工程师，该公司允许员工随时进入办公室，选择自己的项目，而不是被分配给一个项目(Storm 42)。他控制时间和任务的能力给了他高度的自主权，这是有意义的工作的第一个组成部分

In addition to flexible working hours, AECOM pays its employees commission on each project they complete (Storm 66). The harder Musk’s father works and the more projects he finishes, the more money he earns, demonstrating a clear relationship between effort and reward.

When the first computers came out, his eleven-year old son Elon wanted to attend a class at the University of Johannesburg (Dolan). The university replied that they wouldn’t accept any children, but Musk’s father wanted him to persist (Dolan). Musk was eventually accepted, and managed to attend the computer science program’s inaugural lecture (Dolan).

当第一台电脑问世时，他11岁的儿子伊隆想去约翰内斯堡大学(多兰)上课。该大学回答说，他们不会接受任何孩子，但马斯克的父亲希望他坚持(多兰)。马斯克最终被录取了，并设法参加了该计算机科学项目的就职演讲(Dolan)。

With this encouragement, Musk’s father taught him the value of determination when faced with the challenge of negotiating his admission to the class. Attending the lecture furthered Musk’s education and motivated him to pursue his successful career in computer science.

Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, works in the modeling industry, which involves going to interviews with magazines and photography firms (Storm 68). The job is centered around photoshoots: sessions in a photography studio that pay up to a thousand dollars each time. Her work displays a direct correlation between effort and reward, as the more interviews she attends and the more time she spends at photoshoots, the higher her salary rises.

When her children were old enough to work, she employed them at the modeling school she founded (Rogers). The work experience Musk gained from assisting his mother allowed him to excel in his early career, as many other college graduates lacked this valuable work experience.

Musk’s mother forced her kids to be responsible for their own career paths, requiring them to choose their own universities and fill out applications without any guidance (Rogers). Through these actions, Musk’s mother taught him the value of persistence in tasks such as college acceptance. Working hard for his admission to university thus encouraged Musk to do the same throughout his academic years.

马斯克的母亲强迫她的孩子们对自己的职业道路负责，要求他们在没有任何指导的情况下选择自己的大学并填写申请表(罗杰斯)。通过这些行动，马斯克的母亲教会了他在大学录取等任务中坚持不懈的价值。为了考上大学而努力学习，这也鼓励了马斯克在整个学年里也这样做。

Because Musk’s parents work meaningful jobs that are autonomous and rewarding, they teach Musk to work hard and be persistent when faced with challenges, a lesson that greatly benefits Musk in his career.

Although Musk seems disadvantaged by his controlling father and troubled home life, his father’s abuse reveals a hidden advantage in which Musk is able to find success outside of his home country. Gladwell defines a hidden advantage as a situation that seems harmful to a person’s growth, but in reality contains a multitude of beneficial factors (128). Musk’s father was emotionally abusive with his children, often ordering Musk to sit in silence for five hours every night as he lectured him (Blystone). In an interview with Business Insider, Musk reveals:

[My father] got my best friend to lure me out of hiding so he could beat me up… For

 some reason he decided that I was it, and he was going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. I’d get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the [expletive] out of me… and it would just be awful [at home] as well. (Rogers)

Moreover, Musk’s father demanded that Musk attend college in South Africa, but he chose to move to the United States (Blystone). Musk decided to go against his father’s wishes and move to America because of the abuse he suffered and the resentment he held towards his father. This choice was highly advantageous to his career, because South Africa was a corrupt, underdeveloped country that would not have fostered Musk’s entrepreneurial ideas (Blystone).

But in the United States, Musk was exposed to a variety of business opportunities in a country that promoted innovation. After Musk moved to America, he received more disapproval from his father, who insisted that Musk would end up broke and homeless (Ngo). Musk’s father had zero confidence that Musk could pursue a prestigious career like engineering or make something of himself (Ngo). His father’s condescending remarks motivated Musk to prove those predictions wrong by working hard throughout his early career, leading to his success. While Musk’s emotionally abusive father places him at a disadvantage, his father’s cruelty becomes a hidden advantage that leads him to find a prosperous career in the United States.

但在美国，马斯克在一个促进创新的国家接触到了各种商业机会。在马斯克搬到美国后，他受到了父亲更多的反对，他坚持认为马斯克最终会破产和无家可归(非政府组织)。马斯克的父亲对马斯克能够追求像工程这样有声望的职业或者成就自己没有任何信心(非政府组织)。父亲居高俯瞰的言论促使马斯克在早期的职业生涯中努力工作，以证明那些预测是错误的，最终取得了成功。虽然穆斯克的父亲在情感上虐待他，使他处于不利地位，但他父亲的残酷成为一个隐藏的优势，使他在美国找到了一个繁荣的职业生涯。

Because Musk is born at the perfect time to benefit from the business opportunities of the internet boom and witness the effects of racism in South Africa, he achieves success due to his demographic luck. To define demographic luck, Gladwell gives the example of Joe Flom, a Jewish lawyer who was born into a small generation, giving him less competition among his fellow students and a high demand in the job market for his skills (140).

Musk graduated from university at the start of the internet boom of 1995, leaving Stanford after one week to get involved with the new internet revolution (Biography). That year, Musk started Zip2, a service that generated maps and business directories, which was purchased by the computer manufacturer Compaq for 307 million dollars (Biography).

1995年互联网热潮开始时，马斯克从大学毕业，一周后离开斯坦福，投身于新的互联网革命(传记)。那一年，马斯克创办了Zip2，这是一项生成地图和商业目录的服务，后来被电脑制造商康柏以3.07亿美元的价格收购(传记)。

Musk then started an online transaction service, PayPal, which was bought by the online auction company eBay for 1.5 billion dollars (Gregersen).

Musk’s demographic luck allowed him to sell his inventions for billions of dollars by placing him in the generation that graduated from university around 1995. If he graduated in 1990, he would have landed a job at an old-fashioned engineering firm, and a career that lacked outlets for his innovative ideas.

If he graduated in 2000, all the lucrative positions opened up by the internet boom would have been taken, leaving him with an unfulfilling job.

Another instance of Musk’s demographic luck is living in South Africa when Aparthied was at its peak. Apartheid was a system of extreme racial discrimination that was rampant in South Africa from 1948 until the early 1990s (History). In 1988, when Musk was seventeen, he witnessed a police officer beating up a black man on the street in his hometown, and his father warned him not to intervene for fear that Musk would get arrested (Weinberger).

马斯克在人口统计学上的另一个幸运之处是，他生活在南非，当时种族隔离制度正处于顶峰。种族隔离是一种极端的种族歧视制度，从1948年到20世纪90年代初在南非非常猖獗(历史)。1988年，马斯克17岁时，他在家乡目睹一名警察在街上殴打一名黑人，他的父亲警告他不要干预，因为担心马斯克会被捕(温伯格)。

Musk developed a strong feeling of anger and resentment towards his country’s authorities (Weinberger). Along with the police, the South African military showed strong support for aparthied while utilizing a system of compulsory service in the 1980s (History). Musk’s demographic luck allowed him to witness racial inequality irsthand, motivating him to leave South Africa and avoid compulsory military service for a country he was unwilling to support.

By moving from South Africa to America, Musk gained access to a multitude of business opportunities in a nation that promotes innovation, opportunities that South Africa lacked. Because Musk’s demographic luck allows him to reap the benefits of the internet boom and witness the injustice of Aparthied in South Africa, he is able to significantly advance his career.

从南非搬到美国后，马斯克在这个促进创新的国家获得了大量商机，而这些机会是南非所缺乏的。由于马斯克在人口统计学上的幸运，他可以从互联网繁荣中获益，见证南非种族隔离制度的不公，他能够显著提升自己的职业生涯。

Because Musk learns the value of hard work from his parents, experiences hidden advantages in his troubled home life, and is born with an extraordinary amount of demographic luck, he greatly impacts humanity with his entrepreneurial work and innovative ideas. His achievements are not solely dependent on coincidence or effort, but rather the perfect mixture of opportunities.

The cards that life has dealt him, such as the favorable circumstances of his childhood, have been dealt to nearly every successful person. The traditional belief that success rests solely on hard work is inherently false. If humanity truly wants to foster success, people must learn to leave this concept behind and provide the right opportunities to everyone.

生活给他的牌，比如他童年时的有利环境，几乎是给每一个成功人士的。认为成功完全取决于努力的传统观念是错误的。如果人类真的想要促进成功，人们必须学会把这种观念抛在脑后，为每个人提供正确的机会。

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