Lower Defense Mechanisms Of The Psyche. Almighty Control And Somatization. Part 4

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

Omnipotent control (mystical thinking)

It manifests itself in a person's unconscious conviction that he is able to control everything or somehow (even against his will or unconsciously) influence everything that happens around him (sometimes not even with himself).

Due to the long-term reliance of a person on this mechanism, two polar tendencies can develop. The first is that a person feels constant responsibility for everything around him and at the slightest failures or deviations from what is planned in what is happening, experiences a feeling of guilt, shame or anger. The second tendency is expressed in the inexorable desire of a person to constantly experience a sense of omnipotent control through manipulation, asserting his own power over other people and events, up to the commission of crimes.

In early infancy, the child is not yet able to separate himself from the world around him and everything that happens to him is perceived by him as justified consequences of his desires and needs. This phase of the child's development in psychoanalysis is called "primary narcissism / egocentrism", which is a necessary condition for the emergence of self-esteem. In the future, the baby is disappointed in these views, waiting for his mother, as a savior who disappears in the bowels of the kitchen and does not always have time to come running at the first groan of her grown-up child. The child gradually moves to the fantasy of the omnipotence of his parents (the phase of "narcissistic idealizations"), on which the well-being and satisfaction of practically all the child's needs during this period depends. With a favorable passage of all stages of development, the child comes to an adequate perception of his own capabilities and the capabilities of the people around him, normally retaining a certain sense of the infinity of his own capabilities, which allows him to develop internal motivation and faith in the ability to influence his life, that is, healthy narcissism.

Omnipotent control, like any protective mechanism of the psyche, is designed to save a person from experiencing various intolerable feelings, primarily from the main traumatic experience - a feeling of powerlessness. An adult who resorts to this primitive mechanism unconsciously tries to protect himself from feelings of helplessness and helplessness in life. And who in school did not keep crossed fingers behind his back before receiving the coveted grade or did not "speak his hand" to draw out a lucky ticket at the university exam? Invented rituals and observance of popular signs are a harmless consequence of the work of omnipotent control, or, in other words, mystical thinking - attempts to influence events and other people, albeit in a magical way, as they did in primitive cultures with primary, associative thinking. This is what various fortune-tellers and lady-prophets specialize in, promising to turn the course of events in the right direction with magic talismans and rituals (which reminds the child's perception of an adult as a demigod, which can absolutely everything and totally affect the entire course of life events).

Almost all athletes have their own mystical rituals "programmed" to win. Hockey players, for example, do not cut their hair or shave during competition. Elena Isymbaeva is a multiple Olympic champion, before the jump she covers herself with a blanket and utters certain magic words to take a new world record. And Sirena Williams, the world leader in tennis, has a special meditative ritual - you have to knock the ball on the court five times before the first serve. And it "works" for them! (Because through self-hypnosis they give themselves an effective attitude).

But fantasies about their own omnipotence, over-control over the situation and the people around them can be heard not only with rosy consequences. A person accustomed to living under the yoke of total control sooner or later faces an unexpected outcome in life's circumstances and unreasonably considers himself to be guilty of everything.

An example is a thirteen-year-old girl who is experiencing intense conflicts in her parents' relationship. In recent months, Nika has been living with the fantasy of a divorce, which promised all members of her family to find at least some long-awaited peace of mind. And by a tragic accident during this period, her father gets into a car accident and dies. The girl takes all the blame for the death of her father on herself, making sure that her thoughts have materialized, but with some disruption in the universe and instead of divorcing her parents, her father died. There is a lot of work ahead with a psychologist, which should help Nika survive the grief of loss and admit that she is not at all to blame for what happened.

Another example is a young, successful woman Tatiana, who from an early age was accustomed to taking care of herself and her mother, came to see a psychologist. In the past six months, Tatyana has developed many symptoms that prevent her from working effectively and from being a "worthy mother, wife and daughter." Aggravated insomnia, a constant feeling of fatigue, severe pain in the back and recurrent cramps made, according to Tatyana, "an irritated, aged woman, deprived of vital energy." During the consultation, the psychologist managed to find out that six months ago, at the height of the financial crisis, she was demoted and began to earn half as much. As they say, trouble does not come alone, a month after the first unexpected blow of fate, her mother's heart problems worsened. There was no longer any financial opportunity to put my mother in a European clinic; the local, according to Tatyana, was treated as a “poor” hospital. It was then that all the symptoms and knocked on the well-oiled life of a woman. During several months of work in psychotherapy, she was able to discover the feelings that lurked behind the symptoms of depression. Shame for not calculating and foreseeing the economic crisis and not taking any action at work in order to save a place. Guilt for not being able to provide the mother with decent medical care. And, in the end, she was completely intolerable to the thought that she was not an "iron lady" who could, as it seemed to her before, to foresee everything, correctly plan and control, even in such unpredictable circumstances. Tatiana denied this fact for a long time and met with irritation the support and empathy of her loved ones, more and more aggravating her psychophysical state. It will take her time to say goodbye to the illusions of her omnipotence, accept her limitations and learn to rely on other people, allowing her to feel weak at times.

The famous psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams believes that a person whose central defense mechanism of the psyche is omnipotent control gets great pleasure from manipulating people and feeling his own power. Therefore, such individuals strive to get into big business, politics, bodies and the show industry, where they can easily and legally exercise their influence.

A healthy belief in one's own strengths and abilities, coupled with perseverance, helps many people achieve their goals. And it is still better in difficult times to rely on the encouraging words echoing from childhood: "If you really want to, you can fly into space!", Cherished by omnipotent control, than to be paralyzed in your own life, realizing your limitations. However, as they say, it is important not only to find the strength to change what is possible, but also the patience to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom not to confuse one with the other.

SOMATIZATION (CONVERSION)

Somatization (from ancient Greek σῶμα - “body”) is a primitive mechanism of psychological defense of a person, expressed in the process of suppressing psychoemotional arousal by converting the latter into muscle tension. Psychologists use the following expressions to characterize this mechanism - "discharge to the organ" or "withdrawal into illness."

In early infancy, a child can manifest all his sensations only through the body; there are still very few reactions in the arsenal: crying, calm wakefulness or falling asleep. In addition, the infant does not have a division into psyche and body (the formation of his scheme takes a long time), therefore, symbolic processing of affect by the psyche is impossible, and all states are experienced totally - with the whole body. If the child is in an unsatisfied state for a long time (this happens when the mother, for various reasons, is not sensitive to the baby's needs), then he has no choice but to turn off his sensitivity due to the transformations of his experiences (pain, fear, horror, rage, etc.) into local bodily clamps, which can cause serious disruption of the work of internal organs. The vessels lying in the area of the muscle block are pinched and blood circulation in this place deteriorates (food and oxygen does not flow), which leads to a decrease in local immunity and becomes a good environment for the reproduction of various microorganisms from the external and internal environment. And if the emotional stress is high and lasts a long time, then this can lead to chronic diseases and the destruction of the entire physiological system.

Diseases of the upper and lower respiratory tract, disorders of the gastrointestinal tract, skin diseases and various types of allergies are considered very common psychosomatic disorders in children. In adults, along with the above disorders, there are also somatic problems with the vegetative-vascular, urogenital, endocrine and hormonal systems, which often turn into chronic diseases.

Freud wrote about conversion as a psychological conflict repressed on the organ, which has an associative symbolic connection with the symptom. For example, partial hand paresis may be associated with feelings of guilt for masturbation and various sexual fantasies associated with it. Thus, for a while, the conflict is "resolved" by refusing to implement an unacceptable action, and the secondary benefit from the disease is attracting attention and receiving care.

Indeed, there is a nonspecific connection between the emotional desire of the "inner child's part" of a person to rest, to avoid participation in unpleasant events, etc. person (even if it is a doctor who formally fulfills his professional duty).

However, modern psychoanalysts emphasize that CONVERSION is a higher defense mechanism, since it is associated with repression and symbolization of complete contradictions but conscious experiences, which are then replaced by a symptom, since a person is unable to resolve these contradictions.

SOMATIZATION, as such, being a lower defense mechanism, is a consequence of the unformed system of emotional self-regulation and mental processing of emotions and affects, namely: it is difficult for a person to recognize an emotion, to understand where it came from, and even more difficult - what, in fact, to do with it - how to live and express, that is why it is "thrown out" unprocessed and even unconscious on the "lower floor".

Since all emotions are initially bodily, being biological signals about what is happening with the human body and psyche, in its semantic field (in the active vocabulary) all psycho-emotional experiences that a person does not allow into consciousness are metaphorically encoded into words and expressions, but " throws it out without realizing "on this or that organ. The most typical somatic manifestations of prolonged stress and accumulated unreacted negative emotions are the following:

- Pain in the region of the heart that mimics angina pectoris is usually described by the expression "take it to heart", "heaviness on the heart";

- Headaches are often associated with chronic tension in the muscles that clench the jaw when clenching the teeth. People say: "I'm so angry, my jaw has already cracked …".

- Pain in the stomach, which can turn into gastritis or an ulcer, is characteristic of people about whom one can say "is engaged in self-criticism", "accumulates everything in itself";

- Girdle low back pain is often associated with the fact that a person thinks that he is "driven a lot", but he does not dare to express his protest, and neck pain is associated with the need to "hold his head high" in various situations;

- A reaction to acute stress or external distress can be changes in the contractile activity of the smooth muscles of the intestinal wall, leading either to constipation or to stool disorder (popularly, bear disease). Illustrated by the following expression: “I feel something amiss in my gut”;

- Nasal congestion - "vasomotor rhinitis" is usually associated with an exacerbation of psychological problems (conflicts, work overload, overwork, etc.) The phrase reflecting this state: "Blood from the nose needs to be done, but I don't want to." Also, breathing problems can be associated with a violation of personal boundaries ("someone or something does not allow breathing") or unshed tears;

- Sleep disorders - insomnia is associated with increased anxiety, the unpleasant cause of which is not recognized, "noisy" by the hypervigilance and vigilance of the body;

- Various problems in the sexual sphere are often associated with both actual unconscious experiences or claims in current partnerships, and with a complex personal history of the formation of sexuality - starting with conflicting attitudes towards the body, sex-role functions and feminine / masculine identity and ending with conflicting erotic fantasies or muscle reactions (clamps) due to traumatic sexual experiences.

Given the nature of somatization, two components can be distinguished that underlie this defense mechanism - unconscious experience and muscle tension. Psychologists recommend developing emotional intelligence (expanding the sensory range) and working directly with the body, namely learning to relax. Classes in theater and dance studios, yoga, martial arts, swimming, various types of massage, autogenic training will help reduce the damage from the work of such a protective mechanism.

Scientists' interest in the psychological phenomenon of somatization began to develop since the time of Aristotle. Over the past 100 years, a lot of important and useful information on this topic has been collected, a number of classifications have been discovered, and treatment methods have been developed. But all psychological schools unanimously agree on one statement that the human psyche is deep and multifaceted. And the process of researching the specific meaning of a symptom for each individual person is not a given formula, but every time an unknown and fascinating journey into the depths of the unconscious and intricate corners of consciousness.