Applied Psi-parasitology

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

Applied psi-parasitology

It is no coincidence that these people are nearby.

They are tied by deep, invisible threads

firmly holding them together.

While researching relationships in the process of psychotherapy, I often come across the phenomenon of complementarity - a variant of a kind of psychological symbiosis in a couple. A typical example of such a symbiosis is marriages with relationships of emotional dependence, which I have repeatedly described, including on the pages of this psi-portal.

Quite often, when working with clients who have come to therapy with a request for a problematic relationship with a partner, a metaphor from biology pops up in my mind, reflecting the essence of the interaction in the Parasite-Host pair. This is a kind of relationship between different species, in which one of them - the parasite - for a certain time uses the other - the host - as a source of food and habitat.

Further in the text I will conventionally name the participants of this kind of human interaction in a pair metaphorically - Parasite and Host. In psychology, such a couple is usually called the Victim and the Rescuer. My analogy, in spite of its dissonance, seems to me more accurate.

As a rule, the Host requests the therapy. The essence of the complaints presented to them can be defined as the use of his partner - the Parasite. A characteristic feature of such interaction is that despite the obvious and conscious use of the Parasite by the Master, he nevertheless cannot part with it. In this case, the options for couples can be very different: spouses, love partners, business partners, parents-adult children.

In my article, I will try to answer the following questions:

• What is the psychological profile of the Parasite and the Host?
• What attracts them to each other and keeps them close?
• What life tasks do they solve in these relationships?
• Is there a chance to end or change this relationship?
• When does this chance appear?
• What are the ways out of the "complementarity trap" for the Parasite and the Host?

Psi-portrait of the Parasite

A parasite in biology is an organism that lives on the surface or inside another organism and feeds on it. And this is its essence. The most striking features of the Psi Parasite are the following:

• Psychological infantility, personal immaturity, which manifests itself in certain traits and ways of contact with the world and people described below;
• A tendency to manipulate relationships. Most often, the tools of the Parasite's manipulation are resentment and arousing self-pity in order to maintain the Master's feelings of guilt, duty and responsibility;
• Failure to take responsibility for oneself and one's life and its redirection to a partner. The parasite avoids personal responsibility in every possible way, shifting it onto the Master;
• Weak I. Inability to volitional actions and I-efforts. Inability to set goals and achieve them, plan your life realistically;
• The predominance of the children's "fairy-tale" picture of the World. Waiting for a miracle, living in illusions, calculating for free.
• Belief that someone or something will change his life for the better;
• Passive attitude to life, inability and unwillingness to do anything to change it, manifested in the attitude: "We are not like this - this is how life is!"

Psi-portrait of the Master

A host in biology is an organism that provides its vital resources for a parasite. In human relations, the Master is characterized by the following:

• Increased sense of guilt and responsibility. Willingness in a relationship to fall into guilt and take responsibility for your partner and for his life;
• Failure to resist manipulation by a partner. Increased willingness to be led on appeals to the weakness, inability, inferiority of the partner;
• Problems with aggression. Insensitivity or weak sensitivity to aggression and the inability to show it in a relationship;
• Problems with psychological boundaries. Insensitivity to the boundaries of the territory of your I and / or inability to protect them in the event of the invasion of a psychological aggressor into the I space;
• Weak sensitivity to the needs of your I. Lack of understanding of your life goals, tasks, life meanings. Search for the meaning of your life in life for another;
• Increased tolerance for psychological abuse. Amazing ability to stay in toxic relationships for a long time.

Outwardly, the Master's portrait looks more socially acceptable. And the very word Master sounds more euphonious than Parasite. However, the psychology of the selected characters is more important to us outside of social and moral assessments. With this approach, it becomes obvious that both the one and the other options are examples of disharmony and deficiency of the self.

Relationship in a pair of Parasite-Host

The relationship, despite the seemingly observable complexity and toxicity, is nevertheless surprisingly stable and often long lasting. After all, it is no coincidence that these people are nearby. They are tied by deep, seemingly invisible threads that firmly hold them together. Through this strange relationship, they try to solve their previously unresolved developmental challenges. And their partner is perfect for that.

And each of them has its own unresolved development tasks.

For Parasite such a task will maximum extension of childhood, its infantile phase of development. This is a child who "sucked" parental love, care and attention. In his experience of relationships with parents who tried in every possible way to be perfect, he could not be disappointed in them and experience the frustration of their imperfection - to overthrow the parents from the throne of their omnipotence, stop “praying” to them and switch to their own nutritional resources. Because of this, he continues to be in the illusion that the parents, and now all other people who fit the parental figures, owe him. He persistently expects from others and the world in general for further free investments in his life and persistently wants to take without giving anything in return.

And his host partner with excessive guilt and hypertrophied responsibility is ideal for this. There is a trauma of attachment with rejection, rejection or depreciation in his life story. And he unconsciously retains the hope of gaining an experience of healthy attachment in a relationship with a partner. However, his low self-esteem and feeling of inferiority do not allow him to choose psychologically mature and self-sufficient partners for close relationships. For this, the Parasite partner is ideal, in contact with whom you can avoid encounters with your fear of abandonment. He creates in the Master the experience of the need for him so much that it seems impossible to him to abandon him: He needs me so much that he will never leave me! All this is experienced as a great and strong love.

The sad truth of life is that neither the Master nor the Parasite can solve their unfinished developmental tasks in these relations. The owner, due to insensitivity to his Self and inability to aggression due to a deep and often unconscious fear of being abandoned, is not able to provide a zone of his proximal development in a relationship for the Parasite and, through frustration of his expectations, create conditions for his psychological maturation. In turn, the infantile Parasite, incapable of true closeness, can never "close the deep wound of rejection" of the Master and satisfy his need for healthy, stable attachment.

Therapy objectives

Client Host in therapy

Basically, as I have already noted, the Boss client comes to therapy.

The host, having realized at the first stage of therapy his trap of complementarity and his contribution to this hopeless and toxic relationship for him, nevertheless continues to hope that the parasite will go away on its own.

These hopes are not destined to come true. He himself will never leave! This is contrary to its essence. Is that to another Master. The opportunity to leave this relationship or to change something in it can appear in the client-Master in the course of therapy (as a rule, long enough), when it is possible, in contact with the therapist, to work through their unfinished developmental tasks. And he has not so few such tasks for therapy. Here are just the main ones:

• Experience secure attachment and acceptance in a therapeutic relationship;
• Improve and strengthen your unstable self-esteem;
• Return sensitivity to your self and his needs;
• Realize, appropriate and learn to manage your aggression;
• Realize the boundaries of your self and learn to defend them;
• Build the prospect of your development through awareness of your needs, values, and the discovery of your meanings.

Working out these tasks in therapy enables the Master to change the nature of these pathological relationships or complete them.

Client Parasite in therapy

Seeking psychotherapeutic help by such a client seems to me rather an exception.

Having not survived the experience of frustration in relations with parental figures, these already physically adult people turn out to be psychological children, infantile, with an unformed will, with undeveloped empathy, incapable of self-efforts. This greatly reduces their chance of healing.

Such people, as a rule, do not reach psychotherapy, remaining in the position of potential clients. Usually they actively complain about the life of other people, including psychotherapists, in various psychological forums. They accuse psychotherapists of indifference, insensitivity, heartlessness and cynicism, they try to reproach and shame in greed, that they do not "treat" for free, while manipulating the Hippocratic oath. Thus, they are trying to manipulatively dilute the therapist with pity, include the Rescuer in him, and shift all responsibility for their life and their problems onto him.

If, nevertheless, such a client comes to therapy and is ready to allow at least a minimal contribution to his existing problems, then he is waiting for maturation therapy. It is not easy and not fast. As, however, the very process of natural growing up. The Parasite client will expect the same from the therapist as from his host partner. In the course of therapy, he will automatically resort to various manipulative tricks in order to avoid personal responsibility, trying to impose it on the therapist.

These clients evoke conflicting feelings in the therapist, ranging from irritation to sympathy. On the surface lies irritation, deeper - sympathy. They are outwardly adults, but internally, psychologically, they are children. They didn't notice how their real adult teeth grew. And they can already actively "bite into the world around them, tasting it," but they still try to bite them on the breast that feeds them.

Main development objectives:

Purpose: psychological maturation, which becomes possible if the following tasks are solved:

• Experiencing and living the experience of frustration;
• Disappointment and getting rid of illusions;
• Formation of an active and responsible life position;
• Correction of the picture of the world from a childish, fabulous towards a more realistic, adult.

The therapy for such a client is deficiency therapy. And it is much more complicated. It is necessary to cultivate in the client in therapeutic contact those qualities that were not activated and not developed in the process of his life: empathy, will, responsibility. This is not an easy task, but with good motivation of the client and a high professional level and rich experience of the therapist, it is quite solvable.

Love yourself, and the rest will catch up !!!