Over the
past few days in class, our primary focus has been learning about psychoanalysis.
Human minds are more complicated than I ever could have imagined, and it baffles
me that anyone could no so much about the things we subconsciously do all the
time and why we do them. A large portion of our time in class has been spent
talking about the defense mechanisms our mind subconsciously deploys in order
to deal with certain things. These defense mechanisms range from being a total
psycho who can not function in society to things that everybody does everyday.
There are four classifications of these defense mechanisms; pathological,
immature, neurotic, and mature.
I found it
interesting that, even though some behaviors are considered that of someone who
can not function in society, we all engage in these defense mechanisms to a
certain degree. Like I said above, the human mind is incredibly complicated and
it can do some wild things. Obviously someone who completely denies reality or
reshapes facts to fit their needs is insane and needs help, but I think we all
do this, at least consciously sometimes. I know when something bad happens to
me, it is a lot easier to deny it than to deal with it. Moving on to the
immature class of defense mechanisms, passive aggression is a behavior that no
one is new too, yet it is falls in a class towards the more insane side of the
spectrum. The third class in neurotic and this is simply considered odd
behavior. One behavior in the group sparked a lot of discussion; dissociation.
Essentially, the person creates multiple identities to deal with different situations.
I thought this was a misprint in class and this was meant to fall in the first,
more crazy, class. After talking about it, I realized that nearly everyone does
this to at least a small degree. If you are in a situation that requires you to
speak publically, your mind can trick yourself into thinking you are actually someone
who is a good public speaker. Our minds are incredibly powerful.
Great blog post! I also find it super cool that there are so many ways the human brain works to keep us sane. What baffles me about the defense mechanisms is the way they work subconsciously. Someone could have several pathological mechanisms and not even know it! Whenever I learn about stuff like that, I can't help but wonder if I could have any of those symptoms. Anyone who actually has these disorders doesn't believe they actually have a problem.That is so creepy....
ReplyDeleteI was also very interested when we learned about dissociation. I could not believe that people did not realize that they had multiple personalities. I found it even more surprising that people who suffer from this are considered capable to function in society. You make an interesting point about everyone exhibiting it to a small extent, though I am not sure if I agree with you. Dissociation is a completely new identity not just adding a new quality to your existing personality. Tricking yourself into believing you are good at something, then actually being good at it is more like the placebo effect.
ReplyDeleteI was also baffled by how some of these defense mechanisms were classified. Specifically, I was surprised at how passive aggression is considered an immature (level 2) behavior. This is something that I feel like everyone engages in, so I am unsure of how it ranks so highly. I question whether it makes sense to rank it higher than mechanisms such as dissociation and repression.
ReplyDeleteIt is really incredible how complex our minds are. It is also amazing that our minds have so many defesne mechanisms to help us overcome stress and trama. For me I was suprised of the complexity of the spectrum for these defense mechanisms. Obviously there are right and wrong ways to deal with these problems, but there are so many different ways our minds can channel these emotions in our head. I would definetily agree with you and what Dan said in his comment about passive aggression being a stage 2. I think at least everybody has engaged in this defense mechanism once or twice, so i was suprised that it was ranked so highly and inmaturely.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing how our minds do so much without us realizing it. Learning about the four classifications made me curious about which one I would fit in the most. I hope it would be mature, but I wouldn't be able to determine which category I would fit under. I found it especially interesting that our minds can simply put things so deep into our subconscious that we do not remeber them, but our actions are still influenced by those experiences.
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