Dynamics Of Jealousy

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

The manifestation of the experience of jealousy is almost always unconscious, as are its roots. Sometimes jealousy is so strong and inexplicable that the jealous person may even realize that the strength of the experience does not quite match the situation. For example, a man's wild jealousy about his wife for some people with whom he does not know, whom he did not see, and who were in her past, before she met him. This fantasy that she once met with someone, voluptuously as well as with him, had sex, kissed someone, licked, etc., causes strong jealousy, which, in turn, can even lead to sexual dysfunction. Events from the past by a jealous person can also be experienced as betrayal, so strong and painful it is.

Since such complex experiences are deeply rooted in the unconscious, it is rather difficult to talk about them, since a person experienced a very early traumatization, when feelings did not yet have the guise of words.

A person may not always recognize his jealousy, because it can be easily hidden behind something else, for example, behind a phobia.

Jealousy can be broken down into three registers:

Merge

Invasion

Need

Each register has its own dynamics and meaning, and each is peculiar to one degree or another to all people.

Merge register represents a peculiar way of perceiving a partner as a part of himself, as if he (the partner) cannot exist by himself, does not have his own autonomy. In this case, the jealous person's aggression is directed at his partner, as his part: “How is it, part of me wants to act without me? How is it that you, as my continuation, can want something, see someone? This is always a narcissistic experience, since the partner is like a split-off part of my self. This is a childhood experience when the mother is an extension of myself. People who enter jealousy from the merger register were deprived of maternal love and attention, and the stronger the deprivation was, the more aggression the jealous person shows, the more painful and anxious he is. It is worth noting that the partner at the moment of register updating is depersonalized, since it is not perceived as an autonomous, separate person, but becomes as part of the jealous self. At the same time, the jealous person seems to gain control over the object, although in the unconscious this is the control that he would like to have over himself.

In a healthier form, the fusion register can be actualized, for example, at the moment when we are in love with another person, we like ourselves at this moment because we like the object (we feel better next to the object of love), and this gives the effect of some merging with him. But we miss the moment that it is the other person who makes us better in our eyes, and not ourselves, and if the other leaves us, we get angry with him: “How dare you leave me?”.

Intrusion register - a dynamic structure in which there is I, You, and someone else. It differs from the merger register in that the object of love is no longer perceived as a part of oneself, but as a separate one, having its own boundaries, and at the same time, a third person appears in a relationship who wants to take this object of love away. The third, by the way, may not necessarily be some kind of lover, but anyone, or whatever: a child, work, hobbies, friends. The invasion register is characterized by aggression no longer on the partner, but on the third, who is trying to invade the relationship of two, and the jealous one often wants to exterminate the third, destroy, grind into powder. At the same time, the jealous person's attention is focused on analyzing the partner's actions, but without trying to control, as in the merger register. This register exhibits an oedipal stage, which is considered to be quite mature.

Need register … The earliest genetically, from this and the most difficult to describe. Being needed by their mother is the main thing for a child, and if this is not so, then already grown children carry their abandonment and uselessness all their lives, and at a time when healthier people simply enjoy life, the more disturbed spend a colossal amount of their mental energy on then, to cope with their condition. The register of need covers the need for security and intimacy in relation to the object: You are, you exist and I need you.

All people need a person next to whom at some point we can become weak, "get on the hands", can cry, can get angry, in general, regress, behave like a child, and this is normal. Intimacy as trust and confidence that anyone will accept me - in fact, it is a relationship between a mother and a child. The mother gives the child the opportunity to be, to exist, she is the environment for him that he uses, and then the ability to act grows out of being. When we were on the hands of a partner who understood and supported us, we kind of recharge and move on. In a more pathological version, when there is an obvious failure in the earliest relationship between mother and child, growing up, he is in a frequent deficit state of need, experiences shame, naked insecurity. Aggression in this register is directed at oneself: "I'm not good enough to be loved."

These three registers represent the dynamic triad of primary jealousy. Activation of one register along the chain activates the other two, these three registers are always present in the process of jealousy. For therapeutic purposes or for the purpose of self-knowledge, it is not so important why we get into jealousy, how important it is to understand from which register we enter this jealousy, since this is of fundamental importance, and we go into jealousy from different registers, but more often from one and the same, it indicates to us where we have "thin".

For example, the activation of the merge register, which is expressed in some passive expectation of emotional support, increases the need for merging, ignoring the separate object, and the occupation of the object leads to an increase in the fear of intrusion by a third. The third, in turn, can be anything that can disrupt the merger, causing feelings of anxiety and aggression.

If the intrusion register is activated, it strengthens the need register, then the merge register. Each person has his own dynamics of the work of these registers with different durations of each until a certain limit is reached, then there is a decline and transition to a latent state until the next situation, which activates everything anew.

In the process of jealousy, we regress, and our childhood states are actualized here and now, we react, and we react in very different ways, often these are just emotions, but there are also manifestations of violence. Often we are not aware of the reaction, during, sometimes after, because we do not always understand what is happening to us, or we do not have the ability to monitor our feelings and actions. Psychotherapy makes it possible to start seeing yourself from the outside, to track your reactions first after what happened, then - to catch yourself during the reaction, and then before, which means that a person can have a choice to enter into a response to a situation or not, and he himself situations will no longer provoke strong reactions, since the raising and re-living of certain moments reduces the tension in this area of trauma.