Love And Fear Of A Hysterical Personality

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

A hysterical personality and hysteria are words that have long been included in our everyday life. Often, under hysteria in our general understanding, we do not mean at all what hysteria is as a phenomenon in reality.

A hysterical personality (hereinafter I. L.) embodies all those manifestations of mass culture that we like: this is a carnival mood, this is a flight of creative inspiration, and noisy and noticeable behavior. Here you can draw a parallel with manic inclinations, but they are still distinguished by the reasons why all this action occurs. I. L. the main reason for this "carnival-like" behavior lies in the huge need to obtain confirmation of their importance in the eyes of other people, which is directly proportional to the amount of attention given to this person. Attention in this case is regarded as a sign of significance and, therefore, love. But there is never too much love, especially for a hysterical person. In pursuit of recognition of his significance and, as a result, for confirmation of his existence for himself I. L. strive to receive not just attention, but undivided dominion over the eyes, ears and consciousness of the person who is imbued with this "creativity". Further, there is rapid fatigue from such intent contemplation both in the contemplative and in I. L., as a result of which repulsion and depreciation are born. I. L. demands undivided worship of himself and, without getting a 100% result, informs his partner about the unwillingness of further joint "action" due to the fact that the partner does not love I. L. Love in this case is equivalent to attention and is focused on I. L. This closes the cycle, and the search for a new partner begins, who will, of course, be more attentive than the previous one, and who, unlike the previous one, will be able to appreciate the enormous talent of I. L. With a new partner, a feeling of significance will come, a fleeting improvement in well-being, supported by the illusion of love, and all the same old disappointments in human imperfection in the form of the impossibility to constantly, without stopping, support I. L. on a pedestal of delight and adoration. A remarkable fact of this whole wonderful love story is that on the part of the hysterical personality itself there are no manifestations of love as such, there is a real interest in having a permanent fan club in the person of a partner and there are real requirements for the quality and amount of attention that must be given to I. L. every day without reminders. From time to time, with the moment of the onset of the first careless neglect on the part of the partner, the period of the cold war and sanctions on the part of I. L. followed by a complete break in diplomatic relations.

An actor needs viewers, and so does I. L. we need spectators, witnesses of triumph and fall (which is also an integral part of a hysterical show, since there can be no happy end in it by definition).

Let's go back to the past of such a hysterical personality and try to understand what could have led to such specific behavior of I. L. The reason, perhaps, could be a very specific in terms of conflicting messages to the child from the parents and a cold attitude without the presence of rewards for what can be encouraged. For example, a child grows up in an environment of general employment, where no one cares especially about him and his upbringing, i.e. there is no stable mentor and educator present. Parents in this case, when raising a child and reacting to his actions, are guided by momentary preferences, which sometimes do not have longitudinal logic and consistency in their behavior. This can be expressed in the fact that a child who is guilty for one offense will be punished, and the next time not encouraged or even deliberately ignored in assessing what happened. Today, one is conditionally bad, and tomorrow it is conditionally neutral or good. A child in such a situation cannot bring his idea of the world into a single system and begins to think that he is doing something wrong and still insufficiently, because. parents may not pay attention to his actions. Over time, a strong understanding is formed in a child's life that only something really outstanding and egregious can deserve the attention of others, and it is still unknown how this something will be appreciated, so you always need to be ready to devalue yourself. Cognitive dissonance from conflicting messages from parents and detachment and unwillingness to take part in the upbringing of the child (here we mean the lack of intimacy and love on the part of the parents) give rise to a personality structure, which subsequently, possibly, will exhibit steroidal traits.

As in other cases of the development of accentuated behavior, in this case the foundation of accentuation was laid in early childhood and continued to be polished in the future. The substitution of admiration for relations and a constant search for one's significance in the devotedly looking eyes of other people lead I. L. to the sad realization of the fact that there are no people in the world who can fully understand them. The course of life is marked by a constant search for confirmation of significance and inevitable disappointment in what was found. But how brightly all this is happening!