Lower Defense Mechanisms Of The Psyche. Part # 3

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

PRIMITIVE INSULATION

Primitive isolation is the lowest defense mechanism of the psyche, which manifests itself in an automatic reaction of the psyche switching to another state.

The different types of isolation can be thought of as a continuum from very primitive to very mature forms of defenses that can manifest in virtually anyone in response to current reality. A person "runs away" into his inner world or switches to some external object without distorting reality, but simply ignoring it, not noticing it.

The mechanisms of action of this defense can be observed at the earliest stages of the development of the psyche, and therefore it is called primitive or pre-verbal.

For example, a baby cries, he is hungry, and his mother does not come to him for a long time. After a while, the baby suddenly falls asleep. This is a vivid illustration of the action of the isolation mechanism, the child is no longer able to remain in an intolerable reality, hungry and deprived of the mother's breast. He "turns off" from it, simply falling asleep.

In a more mature form in adults, isolation can work in the form of a need for physical action or mental operations. For example, women very often, when worried about any reason, start cleaning or washing. Sometimes you can hear such phrases: “I did a general cleaning in the house, and somehow it became calmer…!” Another common example of the effect of isolation is “hovering in the clouds” and “counting the crows” (to start thinking not about what bothers us or what we are experiencing difficulty, but completely about extraneous things). Often schoolchildren who find it difficult to perceive any information in the lesson use this method of disconnecting themselves from reality. In everyday life, many of us, in a situation of boredom or anxiety, think about something, as if for a while "falling out" of the current reality and switching to a completely different object.

As a consequence, interpersonal difficulties are a serious disadvantage of the frequent use of isolation protection. A person who is accustomed to hiding in his inner world is not able to constructively solve problems in relations with his partner and freely express his feelings. An example is Vasily, who every time triggers a defense on his wife's phrase: "Vasya, we need to talk!" The man suddenly gets ready and goes to the garage to "poke around" in the car, just to avoid painful clarifications of relations with his wife. When talking about money, he may fall asleep. Mutual claims have been accumulating from these spouses for years, the family has long been in crisis, the outcome of which will most likely be sad.

People who tend to resort to isolation often as a reaction to anxiety are described by experts as introverts. They choose their professions, guided by the principle "As little live contact as possible." They are comfortable working in the "man-machine" or "man-digital" system, they can become programmers or representatives of various sciences. But the big mistake is that these are people who are callous and cold in character. True, they find it difficult to express their own feelings, but they remain very sensitive to the feelings of other people. The proof is a huge number of outstanding thinkers, artists, writers who very subtly convey through their work many shades of human emotions.

NEGATION

When an ostrich hides its head in the sand, reality, with all its dangers in the form of hungry cheetahs and angry lions, ceases to exist for it. The ostrich does not see the problem, which means that it no longer exists for him. A person with the included defense mechanism of denial behaves in the same way. Ignoring unwanted, disturbing events, pretending that nothing special is happening, a person protects himself from experiences.

Most people use denial in order to make their life more pleasant and comfortable. We tend to deny certain areas of life that might threaten our balance. For example, a mother may deny that her child is developing a disease, even if she has unconsciously already caught the presence of several symptoms. Her non-voluntary attention was also noted by an increase in temperature by several degrees during tactile contact with the child, and a decrease in his habitual activity, and a not very good appetite. Probably all mothers, without exception, would like their children not to get sick. Consequently, they deny less obvious signs of the disease, although in most cases they could have prevented many complications by reacting in advance.

There are many examples where denial has helped people to act in emergencies without losing their composure. How many lives saved and heroic deeds on the account of humanity. In wars and in peacetime, there are people who are able to effectively act in spite of dangers and their own fears, using the protective mechanism of denial. And at the heart of the functioning of the psyche of people such professions as rescuers, surgeons, investigators, pathologists, etc. denial often lies. A surgeon would not be able to perform any operation without the mechanism of denial involved, and a homicide investigator would not be able to think soberly without ignoring most of the feelings about human cruelty.

Denial has extremely negative consequences if it is the main operating mechanism of defense. A striking example is an alcoholic patient who denies alcohol problems. Or his wife, who denies that aggressive outbursts of her husband, who is intoxicated, are dangerous not only for her, but also for the children.

There is another form of the denial mechanism in its extremely negative manifestation. A person for a long time can unconsciously level very important aspects of life for himself, being in mania, a certain state of total denial of most needs. Moreover, these needs can even be a guarantee of basic functioning, namely: good nutrition, eight hours of sleep at night, a balance between physical / mental stress and quality rest, the need for stable attachment and support, as well as the need to be alone in contact with oneself, etc. ignoring such basic human needs can often lead to depression, although during the period of mania, a person can give the impression of having supernormal abilities.

Daniel was dating a married woman who decided to end their relationship and was very upset about this. He tried to convince her that there was absolutely no reason for upset - "everything is going for the better, and in general, no one has died …" "At first I felt great, even on the rise," he said, "I went on a trip with friends, and there my friend and I decided to stir up, upon returning, finally, a restaurant … Well, there was insomnia - I did not pay attention, the same number of plans - there is no time to sleep! But now this is a strange state of depression and I do not want anything … For the first time like this! I have already started taking pills …”Daniel categorically did not want to admit that he had suffered at least some loss, and denying the importance of the relationship does not completely avoid any painful experiences as part of normal human experience. But a certain echo of sadness "made its way" through his defenses against his will, while he consciously believed that the state of sadness or frustration was "abnormal."

DISSOCIATION

Dissociation is a mechanism of psychological defense, conditioned by a person's ability to perceive what is happening to him as if it is happening not to him, but to someone else, or to keep his experience of complex or difficult for mental processing events in the psyche in a disintegrated form - the facts are separate, their awareness or emotions about the matter - especially conflicting ones - are separate.

In the scientific world, there are disputes about the conditions for the formation of this protective mechanism. Some experts consider dissociation to be an innate human ability, a kind of inherent instinct for self-preservation. Others are of the opinion that dissociation can only be triggered under the influence of certain predetermined conditions. As clinical practice shows, people who often resort to dissociation in everyday life are those who suffered severe psychological trauma in childhood: victims of violence, survivors of a catastrophe, observing cruel treatment of another person or animal, or being a participant or witness of some kind of emergency. situations.

Dissociation is a normal reaction to a traumatic (abnormal) experience if the traumatic stimulus surpassed all the mental abilities (at the time of the trauma) to somehow process and live this experience.

How does dissociation manifest itself? With severe stress, a person is, as it were, separated from his experiences of horror, fear, pain, powerlessness, up to the phenomenon of separation from the body. People who have experienced dissociation can share about this experience like this: "I saw myself from the outside …", "It all happened as if not with me!", "All the memories are not mine, they are like frames from an old film strip!" …

Like all of the defense mechanisms described above, dissociation has its pros and cons. A significant plus is that a person gains the ability to think soberly and react adequately to the situation in order to save himself. The obvious disadvantage is the frequent resort to dissociation as a habitual reaction to unpleasant events that do not cause such strong experiences in others. It is difficult for such people to endure even insignificant emotional involvement, which has an extremely negative effect on their interaction with others and introduces certain difficulties in building warm friendly relations. The prevailing control over the situation and constant sober assessment prevents such people from emotionally included, they are treated as hardened "breadcrumbs" or even considered heartless. In addition, dissociation leads, to a certain extent, to mental disintegration, which makes a person's behavior contradictory and unpredictable; a close and deep relationship with such a person becomes a difficult task.

Extreme cases of dissociation occur in mental health problems such as psychosis. Prominent psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams describes dissociation as a central defense for people with multiple personality disorder. Alfred Hitchcock in his masterpiece "Psycho", as well as David Fincher in the equally famous film "Fight Club" vividly illustrated the extreme degree of dissociative disorder.

Oleg for a long time, until almost forty years old, idealized his mother, who abandoned him as a child, and he was raised by his grandmother. The mother changed lovers and became addicted to alcohol, giving the child neither attention nor time. In adulthood, Oleg had great difficulties in building close and trusting relationships with his wife, but he was totally dissociated in terms of memories of the damage that his mother caused him. She did not really deal with them in childhood - he "understands everything, her childhood was difficult", she beat him - "because she raised him that way, she wanted him to become better", she yelled at him - "oh, it's just a mother so emotional, you can't take it all seriously”, etc. Often, some of his memories contradicted others, and in this case he“forgot”one of them:“I said so ??! That she called me "backbite" and "stupid"? No, you are confusing something - she was generally so caring …”However, when one day the mother did not take his children from kindergarten, and Oleg came to pick up the frightened and sobbing twins late in the evening, having ruined a business trip, a“puzzle”in his head suddenly "Formed" and he experienced an all-consuming rage at the insecurity of his mother, who had existed in him all this time and from which he was saved by dissociation, which allowed him to deny all the pain and horror that he experienced in early childhood, for example, when he crawled around an insensitive after alcoholic libations of the body or waited for hours at the door when the mother was supposed to come for the weekend and did not come.

The human psyche is a perfect, self-regulating, debugged and poorly studied system. How much more research and experimentation will be needed to get closer to solving many of the phenomena. But it is known and proven that one of the main tasks of the entire human body is to maintain homeostasis, internal balance between all systems, and in this matter the defense mechanisms of the psyche occupy one of the central places.