Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms

 Freud and Anxiety

Freud (1923), saw personality (or Psyche) as formed of what he calls "id" (Latin of "it"), "ego" (Latin of "I"), and the "superego" which is related to conscience, parental rules, and society rules and ethics. 

The ego faces reality and deals with it. It also has to deal with the biological needs of the body represented by the "id", and to conform with and handle society issues represented by the "superego".

When the ego faces conflicting demands of the id (biological needs and desires), and the superego (societal rules, judgments, and restrictions).it might feel threatened, overwhelmed, and collapse under the weight imposed on it by this all.

This feeling signals that the ego safety and survival, and hence, the whole being safety and survival are endangered and threatened. This feeling is called anxiety

Freud mentioned three types of anxiety:

Realistic Anxiety:

We can also call it fear. It represents the natural fear we might feel when faced with a dangerous situation, as encountering a hungry lion in the wild.

Moral Anxiety:

When we feel threatened from within, from our internalized social world of superego. This is where feelings of guilt, shame, and fear of punishment comes from.

Neurotic Anxiety:

The fear of being overwhelmed by impulses of the id. You then might feel you're going to lose control over reality, lose temper, or even lose your entire mind.

Neurotic is the Latin word for nervous.

This is the type of anxiety which fascinated Freud most.

Ego Defense Mechanisms

The ego deals with demands of reality, the id, and the superego to the best it can do. But when anxiety becomes overwhelming, however, the ego defends itself by blocking impulses that are threatening to its integrity and wholeness or distorting them into more acceptable less threatening forms.

Freud, his daughter Anna, and his disciples, have discovered some of these mechanisms like denial, repression, intellectualization, displacement, projection, reaction formation, altruistic surrender, undoing, introjection, identification with the aggressor, regression, rationalization,  and sublimation.

Denial

When we face a situation that is far beyond our ability to deal with, we may deny the existence of the that situation all along. A very dangerous and subconscious process, as no one denies reality and get away with it for long. 

Anna Freud describes "denial in fantasy" When a child transforms his evil father into a loving teddy bear, or when a helpless child imagines himself a superhero.

Repression

Our Phobias could be repression of past traumas. Someone having irrational fears of swimming perhaps doesn't recall his experience of near drowning as a kid. Someone who cannot explain his fears from dogs doesn't remember that far day in his childhood when a dog bit him.

For it to be a true defense mechanism, it has to be completely unconscious, that's why our phobias appear irrational to us and others.

Intellectualization

Also called "isolation", is separating emotion from a difficult or threatening impulse. Treating something that should be a big deal as if it were not. Someone who is completely calm during an emergency situation, only to fall into pieces afterwards, when the situation is over.

Displacement

Id says, "I hate dad, he beats me."

Superego says, "but he's a great daddy."

Ego says, "all men suck."

She cant admit she hate her father, she hates all men instead. Or, he can't admit he hates his mother, he hates all women. He displaces his hatred to all women.

Turning against the self

Is a form of displacement directed against our own self. Anger, hatred, aggression, that we are supposed to feel toward someone else is displaced instead, unconsciously, into our own dear self. This was used by Freud to explain feelings of guilt, inferiority, and depression.

Depression as a form of anger we refuse to acknowledge, directed to the self, is a widely accepted concept.

Projection

Anna Freud called this "Displacement outward".

The tendency to see our own unacceptable desires in someone else.

This is the reverse of turning against the self. The desires are still there, but they are someone else's now. 

Altruistic Surrender

Some other form of projection that may, for the first glance, look the opposite, where the person attempts to fulfill his own needs, vicariously, through others.

The extreme example is the person who lives his whole life for another and through him.

Reaction Formation

 Anna Freud called it "believing the opposite". 

Changing an unacceptable impulse into its opposite. An abused child may run to the abusing parent, and instead of being angry, he showers him or her with love and affection.

Undoing

Magical gestures or rituals that are meant to cancel out unpleasant thoughts or feelings after they've already occurred. 

We normally do this consciously when we try to make amends for some rude behavior, but some do it defensively and unconsciously, not in the sense of amendment or asking forgiveness, but just to feel good about themselves after causing people around them too much pain and suffering. When others aren't fooled by their acts of cancelling, they go around telling people how they're surrounded by a bunch of ungrateful family members, for example, or friends, who never appreciate their good deeds.

Introjection

Or, sometimes called, "Identification"

Taking into your own personality characteristics of someone else, because doing so solves some emotional difficulties. A child imitating his parent, a teenage imitating her favorite celebrity. In doing so they tend to alleviate fears, feel stronger or more accepted, and building an identity.

This is the mechanism by which we develop superego.

Identification with the aggressor

A form of identification that represents adoption, not of positive or general traits, but of negative traits. If you are afraid of of someone, you can partially conquer this fear by becoming him.

Stockholm Syndrome

Is a more dramatic form of identification with the aggressor, when, after the hostage crises in Stockholm, captives were sympathizing with their captors.

Regression

Is to move back in psychological age under stress. When severely stressed or frightened, we sometimes behave childishly.

According to Freud, when we are overwhelmed with severe stress, we retreat to that time of life when we felt safe and secure.

Rationalization

The process of justification of attitudes, beliefs or behaviors that might otherwise be unacceptable by applying false justifying reasons.

Sublimation

Substitution of an impulse not accepted by superego or society with a more acceptable, socially appreciated one. Like sublimation of aggressive impulses through games and sports.

Freud thought defense mechanisms are all useful in protecting the ego from pressure of inner impulses and society. His followers thought some of them are useful as altruism and sublimation.

Sigmund Freud and Subconscious

 Sigmund Freud Philosophy

And Theories of Child Development

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is famous for his theories about the subconscious mind.

He moved with his family to Austria, Vienna, at the age of four or five years as far as he remembered. A brilliant student, he entered medical school there.

He was working under the direction of a physiology professor named Ernst Bruck in medical school in Vienna. Bruck was embracing what we now call reductionism where he tried to reduce all human life to biology and chemistry.

Freud spent many years trying himself to reduce personality to neuroscience, a cause which he eventually gave up on.

He was very good at his research on neurophysiology. But only a limited number of positions were available in medical school in Vienna at the time, and there were others ahead of him.

Bruck helped Freud to get grant to study with the great psychiatrist Charcot in Paris, then with his rival Bernheim in Nancy. Both were investigating the use of hypnosis on people with hysteria.

He finished his residence in neurology, where he worked as a director of children's hospital in Berlin, and came back to Vienna. He practiced neuropsychiatry with the help of Joseph Breuer.

Freud books brought him both fame and ostracism. And with a number of very bright sympathizers, he started his psychoanalysis great project.

Sadly, Freud did not accept well those who didn't agree with his thoughts and theories. Some separated with him friendly, while the others went to found competing schools of thought.

The Unconscious Mind

Although Freud did not invent the idea of conscious versus unconscious mind, but he was the one who made it popular.

The Conscious Mind

Is what we are aware of at any particular moment of time; perception, feelings, fantasy, thoughts, memories.

The Preconscious

Is the memory available at our reach. What we can easily call to our conscious mind but were not otherwise thinking of before calling it.

Freud and the Theory of Subconscious

Freud suggested that the largest part of our mind lies in our subconscious. Everything not easily available to our awareness including what was already started there as desires and instincts, and things we unawaringly hide there when we can't bear looking at them and when it's painful to live with them, including sad or bad memories and painful emotions associated with traumatic events.

Freud considered the unconscious to be the source of our motivations.

When Did Subconscious Start?

Instincts and drives, what Freud also call wishes, starts when we were born, with the infant, and is called "it" or "id", which is a call to take care of what we need immediately without delay. Have you ever seen a hungry infant crying himself blue? He wants food, and he wants it now. Well, I don't like to call the infant "it" or think of him or her in the terms of some brainless entity, and I always dream of the day when we can completely decipher their brains.

Freud viewed the baby's id as pure, and as the psychic representative of biology.

If we mentally visualize the full personality as an iceberg, the id will represent the large immersed unseen part of it, completely unconscious, at least most of the time. When you are hungry and deny your need for food, this will begin to attract more and more of your attention until a point comes, if you don't have something to eat and you kept denying your call for food more and more longer, that point will come when you can't think of anything else but food. This is a drive breaking into consciousness.

A small portion of  the mind is open to the world through the window of senses. Around this little bit of consciousness in the first year of our life, some of "it' becomes "I"; some of the "id" becomes the "ego".

The ego relates us to reality in our early life by means of our consciousness. We reach for objects to satisfy our wishes that the "id" creates to represent what we need.

Unlike the id, the ego functions according to the reality principle: "take care of the needs as soon as an appropriate object is found."

As the ego struggles to keep the id (and the baby) happy, it meets with obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets objects that help it attaining it's goals. The ego keeps record of both obstacles and aids and a track for rewards and punishments it met in it's way towards achieving goals, by the most influential objects in the world of the baby: mom and dad.

This record of things to avoid and strategies to take forms what we know as "superego", which is not completed until about seven years of age. Although, in some people it's never completed.

Aspects of Superego

There are two aspect of superego. One is the conscience, which is internalization of punishments and warnings. The other is called "ego Ideal", which drives from rewards and positive models presented to the child.

The conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the ego with feelings like pride, shame, and guilt.

Freud also presented what we know as defense mechanisms that are used to protect the person from negative feelings and alleviate anxiety.

What type of person are you?

 What Makes You Different?

Can people know what type of person you are from things you wear or subjects you share in your social media? Can they define who you are from the way you talk or the way you walk? What makes you different in relationships, lifestyle, hobbies, or job interviews?

How do you stand out among others, what is that so special in you?

Do you have enough self-knowledge and self awareness, and enough insight that make you walk the path confidently?

Do you have a reasonable amount of self-esteem that is not too low to make you feel hurt or broken and not too high to make you hurt or break others in your way?

What is your personality type, and who are you in terms of relationships?

Let's start with self-esteem. What is it?

Is it about you feeling responsible and dependable that you can take actions with courage and face life without fears, and that others can count on you?

Is it about you being assertive and able to create healthy boundaries?

Is it about you accepting who you are no matter how different you could be and embracing your real self?

Is it a deep sense of well-being or a result of repeated positive life experiences?

Well, it's about all these and even more. It is simply how good the relationship is between you and yourself.

A sound relationship means you're OK.

Too much self-esteem could take you to the dark worlds of narcissism and psychopathy, and too low self-esteem will take you into the hell of depression and anxiety.

Today's psychologists takes us beyond self-esteem and into mindfulness and self-efficacy.

There is also concepts of self-determination, self-actualization.

Are we aware of our self-esteem, and what is esteem?

Esteem is self-like, believing you're competent, respecting who you are.

How self-esteem drives us?

Self-Regulation

Self -regulation is the control of thoughts, emotions, and behavior through our way to achieve our long-term goals.

This involves containing our disruptive thoughts, emotions, and impulses, especially when we are regulating our social relationships.

People need each other to survive, they need to belong to a social group, and it is believed that self-esteem plays an important role in the sense of belongingness.

What Could Go Wrong ?

We always feel average is the normal. Everything around us is meant for average people. We might like to be a little more than average, but not to much. We like others whose personality is close to normal, but, still, we like to be a little above average: more extraverted, more open, more agreeable, more conscientious, and less neurotic. We want to be the alpha and the beta.

But too much extraversion leads to too much social interactions with less time for reflection. And too much ambition could lead to material success but leaves its heavy toll on personal life and family life.

Too little neuroticism is not a bless as we might think it would be. We often get anxious when we need to protect ourselves from eminent danger. Extremely low neuroticism can lead us to take very high risks to the extent that we might endanger our own lives or maybe others' too.

The best thing is to be moderate, and to be flexible. Extrovert during a social event, and introvert during a lazy day of our weekend.

Neurotic in unfamiliar and dangerous environment and less neurotic in safe environment, and it would be a bless for us to know the difference.

We are mainly stable, or at least we should be. It is not considered normal to be molding into every occasion. But we have control over the action we take and language we use in different situations. We know what to say when we are in formal situations, and when to feel casual, and when to tell this joke to a friend. We are quiet and respectful in solemn moments but celebrating during a party, or at least this is what supposed to be. 

But what can go wrong, and how?

When one or more of the Big Five traits that makes our personality go to the extreme, things might go unfavorably.

Too much neuroticism might lead to anxiety disorders, depression, some personality disorders, and maybe eating disorders.

Too much extraversion combined with lower agreeableness and lower conscientiousness might lead to dark traits like Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy; and in extremes these can manifest as personality disorders as Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder.

Schizotypal Personality is a variant of  normal, but too much Schizotypy and too much Psychoticism might lead to Schizophrenia.

We will discuss later (You and I) different types of normal, abnormal, and love personalities, so stay tuned.

Please write me a message if there is any other topic we need to discuss here. I'd like to hear from you.

 

WHAT MAKES US US

What makes us different? 

What makes us the way we are? 

You are not me and I am not you. You're not your father although you might resemble him or you might identify with him, or maybe afraid to be him. And I'm not my mother despite the fact that I might have her nose, her eyes, her smile, and her temper, but I'm not her, I am totally a different person.

So, what makes you you? What makes me me?..

What makes us us?

They say that the science of personality have come of age and became mature. But they also say: don't go so excited, it's only the tip of iceberg that you can really see. 

Despite all that, this tip of iceberg we see before us is so fascinating and so rich. Just approach eagerly and carefully and try to find out what makes you you.

While the baby has some temper that might later makes him more cheerful or neurotic; he grows up, watches his parents and siblings, plays in the nursery or the kids areas with similar kids, meets different people through his school and life paths, learns from teachers and from peers. He or she solves math problems together with life problems, meet good people and difficult people, favorable situations and hard luck, success and failure, until he eventually becomes the person we see in front of us now and he's still growing and still changing for better or worse.

While language could contain 1500 or more words that would describe human nature or inclinations, scientists tried to include all of these into the Five Big traits, remembered by the word OCEAN:

Openness to experience, which makes you curious and eager to explore the world around you.

Conscientiousness: when you keep your word and come in time. You have work ethics, self-discipline, and a desire for order.

Extraversion: when you're social, outgoing, talkative, and party person.

Agreeableness: when you're calm, peaceful and happy.

Neuroticism: when you're emotional, anxious, fearful, and self- conscious.

All of this big five traits are represented on a spectrum. For example, on the other end of extraversion we will find the introvert, who prefers to spend time reading a book instead of going to the party. On the other end of agreeableness spectrum there are the antagonistic people who are argumentative and defiant. And so on.

But there is a debate the the Big Five theory might not be enough. A group of narcissism researchers preferred to use what they call the Big Six, or HEXACO.

They further broke up the agreeableness trait to come up with a sixth factor which is honesty- humility, defining this way a six major personality dimensions: Honesty- Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness.

Later on,  researchers from Ontario, Canada, assessed  the HEXACO model to account for dark traits as narcissism; with low honesty-humility, low emotionality, low agreeableness, and low conscientiousness.

Other ways of defining personality were the subconscious theory and defense mechanisms of Freud and others who supported his theories, attachment theory by John Bowlby, cognitive theory, neuroscience models. 

A really fascinated science, the personality science, that will take you to new horizons of self, so, keep tuned, fasten your seatbelt.

WHO ARE YOU? A SIMPLE GUIDE TO YOUR INNER SELF

WHO ARE YOU, REALLY?!

YOU THINK YOU KNOW YOURSELF WELL?

                        WELL, LET'S SEE IF THAT'S TRUE

WHO ARE YOU, REALLY?

A simple guide to better know  ourselves, what we would like to embrace to live a better life, what we can change to be less hurtful, and how.

Day one.

Good morning there, or good evening!

Let's start today with personality types.

Do you really know who you are, what type of people you're dealing with, how to deal with your loved ones? I guess it worth it to try to find out why I'm doing what I'm doing and why others deal with me the way they do. What makes me go through life easily and why sometime things get a bit complicated.

Personality scientists defined the Big Five traits of personality to make it easier to understand our personalities and when things get awry.

They grouped calm, peaceful and happy people together under a bigger trait definition called: agreeableness.

They, on the other hand, grouped the anxious, unstable, gloomy people together under another big treat they call: neuroticism. 

They went on in the same manner, clustering similar treats together, giving us the Big Five traits which we can easily remember by the word OCEAN.

Openness to experience- versus low openness.

Conscientiousness- versus low conscientiousness.

Extraversion- versus introversion.

Agreeableness- versus disagreeableness or antagonism.

Neuroticism- versus emotional stability.

This is the pool where all personality traits come from.

If we collected all the five traits into one big trait, looking from afar, we might find that positive, well functioning person who is kind, hardworking, peaceful, willing to learn more and eager for new experiences. Getting more closer, you might see agreeableness, conscientiousness, and low neuroticism coming together to form one trait called stability, or alpha.

If extraversion and openness were found together in the same person, they call this plasticity, or beta.

Stability and plasticity, or alpha and beta, are called the big two. This big two breakdown is useful when we think about change.

Plasticity is related to the reward system in our brains. It is related to energy and creativity.

People high in plasticity build social networks, are artistic, come with great ideas, can build fantasy worlds, and can be very successful. They are change oriented, which can lead to destabilization and even destruction of older realities.

Stability, on the other hand, slows change. People with high stability maintain this trait by following rules, staying calm, and getting along with other people.

So, plasticity is about building and creating while stability is, well, as the name implies, leave everything as it is.

Getting closer, and more into the Big Five, personality scientists break the big five traits into smaller ten or even thirty smaller traits to better understand personality. For example, extraversion was further divided into assertiveness and enthusiasm.

 assertive people are pushing themselves to follow their agenda and achieve their goals, a trait which is sometimes respected but sometimes we might feel those people are pushy or domineering.

Enthusiasm offers high positive energy, and as by name, they are lively interested, ardent, and greatly excited to new ideas and actions.

I hope this trait collection will help you get closer to knowing who you are and why you do what you do, and knowing a little bit more about others too. This is just a start, a drop of the OCEAN, just putting a foot and testing the water before swimming in the vast oceans inside us, getting the pearl and cleaning the weeds.