Notes on Mental Abnormalities!
Mental abnormalities:
Mental abnormality is either structural or functional. The former has an organic basis, e.g., a deterioration of the brain or syphilis of the nervous system. The latter has no known organic basis. The brain, the sense-organs, the muscles, and the other organs are intact; only there is disorder in the function of an organ.
In hysteria there is functional blindness, or deafness, or cutaneous anaesthesia, or insensibility, or some other functional disorder.
(i) Psychoneuroses:
They are mild mental disorders. They include neurasthenia, hysteria, and anxiety neuroses. Fleeing of fatigue is the prominent symptom of neurasthenia. It is not relieved by sleep. The mental fatigue is expressed in inability to attend, emotional instability, extreme sensitivity to little pains and minor troubles, and worry about business, family, and physical health.
Constant worry about health is called hypochondria. Feeling of fatigue may be the result of overwork or physical illness.
It may be due to inadequacy of certain endocrine glands, adrenal, thyroidal, or gonadal. Neurasthenia may be due to mental causes. Excessive anxiety and worry may be due to persisting mental conflicts which may remit in repression and dissociation.
Anxiety neuroses may be due to a conflict between the individual’s organic needs or biological urges represented by the Id, the demands of the reality or the social codes of conduct represented by the Ego, and the moral ideal or the injunctions and prohibitions of the parents represented by the Super-Ego. Freud lays stress on this mental conflict as the cause of anxiety neuroses. Fear arises from a definite dangerous situation.
(ii) Psychasthenia:
“Obsessional neuroses” and “anxiety neuroses” of Freud are called psychasthenia by Janet. Anxiety arises from an anticipated danger, which is imaginary. It is expressed in disturbances of the digestive and circulatory systems and motor symptoms such as trembling.
When fear response is attached to a specific kind of situation, e.g., open space, closed space, height, crowds, animals, or thunderstorms, it is called a phobia. Many phobias are due to conditioned fears in early childhood. Phobias are expressed in compulsions and obsessions.
A person who has a phobia for an attack at night, inspects the room several times, and examines the locks and bolts repeatedly before going to bed. These acts constitute a compulsion, which gives him a sense of security. Very often compulsion is expressed in nervous mannerisms. An obsession is a recurring thought which is distressing to the person, though it is silly and irrational.
A person suffers from an obsessing idea that he will cut the throat of his wife, although his relations with her are excellent. Psychiatric interviews reveal that his mother’s treatment with him was harsh and cruel. He transferred his anger and hatred towards his mother to his wife.
He was cured of the obsessive idea, when he assumed normal attitudes towards his mother and Wife. Not only are obsessing ideas or fixed ideas are also obsessive feelings and emotions. The most common are obsessing fears or phobias.
There are also obsessing impulses called ‘manias’, e.g., biting the nails, the twitching of a muscle, grimacing, and antisocial acts like stealing and setting fires. The feeling of unreality is another characteristic of psychasthenia.
A patient who lost her only baby in middle age felt that all the members of her family were spirits or dream persons who were not real and alive. Doubt and indecision are the other characteristics, of psychasthenia which are expressions of mental conflict. Janet regards the feeling of unreality and personal inadequacy as fundamental, and traces them to low mental tension of inadequate power of synthesis.
Freud regards the obsessions as fundamental, and traces them to over compensation for a repressed sexual impulse (libido) in which the feeling is transferred to an associated idea. Prince regards obsession as due to subconscious dissociation.
(iii) Psychoses:
Manic-depressive psychosis, dementia preacox, and paranoia are the main kinds of psychoses. Of these, the first two have already been explained. The manic phase of insanity is characterized by a cheerful mood, over activity, quick shifts of attention, Might of ideas, self-assertion, self-display, and delusions of grandeur.
The depressed phase is characterized by depression, retardation of thought, self-abasement, submission, feeling of inferiority, fear, feeling of guilt, self-accusation, and delusions of persecution.
Changes in the cell bodies of the neurons in the cortex have been discovered in patients suffering from manic-depressive mental disorders. They are probably due to autointoxication because of glandular disorders, vasomotor disorders, or digestive disturbances.
Dementia praecox or “youthful insanity” occurs in youth. It is characterized by delusions and hallucinations. General dissociation of the personality is its fundamental characteristic. Bleuler calls it “schizophrenia”. It is characterized by extreme introversion and flight from reality.
It is a case of ‘fragmentation’ of the personality. Incoherence of thought, apathy, emotional instability, incongruity of emotions, delusions; and hallucinations, extreme suggestibility, negativism, mannerisms, stereotyped responses, etc. show general mental deterioration. Emotional deterioration and apathy characterize simple dementia. No delusions and hallucinations occur in it.
Hallucinations, mannerisms, emotional incoherence, and silly behaviour occur in hebephrenic dementia. Negativism and suggestibility occur in catatonic dementia. Delusions, especially delusions of persecution and hallucinations occur in paranoid dementia. Dementia praecox may be due to autointoxication because of glandular disorders, unhealthy habits of thought, or repressed complexes.
(iv) Paranoia:
It is a functional disorder characterized by a stable system of delusions without mental determination, loss of memory, emotional disturbance, or behavioural disorder. No disorder in the nervous system has been found in paranoia. So it is regarded as a functional disorder. Intellectual cranks, religious fanatics, and the like develop paranoia and live in a world of their own creative imagination.
(v) Hysteria:
A patient suffering from hysteria so completely represses her conflicting motives that they are converted into a functional disorder or physical symptom. Formerly hysteria was treated by hypnosis and posthypnotic suggestion. At present it is treated by psychoanalysis.
In hysteria there are anesthesias or losses of sensation, either partial or complete. Cutaneous anesthesia is the most common symptom. Paralysis of any part of the body, arm, leg, face, or vocal organs, is another common symptom. These are functional disorders due to dissociation. This is the view of Janet and Morton prince.
But psychoanalysts attribute hysterical symptoms to expressed complexes. Dissociation is due to repression. Repression is due to mental conflict. In hysteria motivational conflict is converted into physical symptoms. This phenomenon is called conversion hysteria. Hysterical symptoms have no physiological basis.
Multiple Personality:
In the successive form of alternating personalities a person may suddenly lose his memory of his past life, his name, his home, his friends and relatives and think him-self to be another person with a new name, a new occupation, etc. He may change in temperament and character.
A few months later he suddenly reverts to his former personality and recovers all his memories of his earlier life, but he completely forgets everything which happened during the period of his altered selfhood. The alternating personalities may be very different; one vivacious, cheerful, competent and kindly, the other stupid, gloomy careless and mischievous.
The individual seems to be dissociated into two personalities which have been torn apart so that each functions independently. The more lasting state is the primary state; the less lasting state is the secondary state. In the secondary state he generally remembers the primary state, but speaks of it as belonging to another person.
But he is unable to remember in the primary state what he has done in his secondary state. Doris, a girl of three years, was thrown to the floor by her drunken father. After this event she developed double personality. She became an extremely quiet, industrious and conscientious child.
Only at intervals she became reckless and mischievous. The sober Doris could not remember the pranks of the mischievous Doris. But the latter knew all about the former, and spoke of her as another person with scorn.
In the case of simultaneous personalities we have a more complicated condition. Here in addition to the normal consciousness there is a ‘split off’ consciousness independent of it. The two personalities may differ in temperament and character. They seem to have distinct memories.
Sometimes, as in the successive type of alternating personalities, the secondary personality generally remembers experiences of the primary personality but speaks of them as belonging to another person, but the primary personality appears to have no memory of the secondary personality.
The two personality are separate selves occupying the same body. They are not integrated into one personality. They do not work together. They do not influence each other. The parts are isolated from one another. They are not integrated into a whole. The individual functions not as an integrated whole but in isolated parts.
Beauchamp, a young woman, had a double personality. She had troubles in early life. These compelled her to adopt an extremely religious, conscientious and self-effacing, attitude. But she lapsed occasionally into mischievous conduct. Later on, in the course of psychiatric treatment, she developed a third personality with aggressive, self-seeking tendencies.
The primary self-effacing state had no memory of the experiences of the secondary or the tertiary personality. Thus, Beauchamp developed triple personality out of double personality. The doctor tried to integrate these three fragments into a complete person through hypnosis, suggestion and integration of her memories and her goals.
Hypnotic Suggestion and Post-Hypnotic Suggestion:
Hypnosis is a state of trance induced in a person by suggestion. He is called the ‘subject’ or the ‘medium’. The person who induces trance is called the ‘operator’. The subject lies with outstretched limbs and relaxed muscles.
Gradually under the force of suggestion he falls into a trance. He loses the consciousness of all external objects except the operator’s suggestions. He loses all control over his body. His mind becomes extremely suggestible.
He responds to the suggestion of the operator. He accepts uncritically whatever ideas are suggested to him by the operator He carried out his commands automatically. He raises his hands or legs at the command of the operator. He eats a stone and perceives it to be a sweetmeat at his suggestion.
He assumes the role of different persons under the forces of suggestion. It is a clear case of dissociation of consciousness. When the medium wakes up from his trance, he forgets all that he did during hypnosis. Hence, during trance the medium loses his normal personality.
Sometimes the medium carries out the suggestion of the operator given during trance, when he wakes up from it, at the appointed time automatically under subconscious compulsion. This is called post-hypnotic suggestion.
Method of Treatment-Psychoanalysis:
Charcot believed that hysteria was a pathological state of the organism. He treated hysteria by the method of hypnosis. His pupil, Morton Prince, used hypnosis in the treatment of multiple or dissociated personality. Janet treated mental automatisms by hypnosis. He found that long forgotten emotional shocks could easily be recalled and described during hypnosis, which were in accessible in the waking condition.
These emotional shocks were cured by suggestions. Janet held that neuroses were due to lowered mental tension or lack of synthetic power and will to overcome the difficulties of life.
Sigmund Freud collaborated with Charcot in Paris in the use of hypnosis in the treatment of hysteria. He was struck by hearing Charcot’s remark: “In such cases sex is always the most important thing—always, always, always.” This was a fruitful suggestion. Freud took it up and worked it out.
He returned to Vienna and continued the method of hypnosis to treat hysteria. He found some difficulties with, the method. Many neurotic patients could not be hypnotized. Hypnosis did not effect a cure. Charity patients could be cured by curative suggestions during hypnosis. But private patients were too intelligent to get full value from the curative suggestions.
Then Freud worked with Breuer, a Viennese physician, and continued the same method of hypnosis. Breuer found that a young female patient felt much better, when she was allowed to ‘talk out’ her emotional difficulties while hypnotized. Breuer and Freud continued this talking out treatment under hypnosis with some success.
But Breuer gave up this method of treatment when a female patient declared that she could not part from him, since she fell violently in love with him. But Freud was not discouraged by it. He soon ran into the same difficulty.
He held that the psychoanalyst was simply taken as a substitute for the original object of the patient’s love. This is called transference. He maintained an impersonal attitude and get-rid of the difficulty.
Then Freud dropped hypnosis and continued the talking out method without it. He had his subject assume a reclining position and relax and dwell on his or her troubles and their cause. Relaxation with free association was Freud’s substitute for hypnosis in the treatment of neurosis. But the credit of discovering this method goes partly to Breuer.
Theory of Psychoanalysis:
Freud gradually elaborated his theory. He found that neurotic symptoms, dreams, lapses of tongue, lapses of pen, etc., were direct or indirect expressions of repressed desires and complexes predominantly of a sexual nature. So Freud tried to unearth the unconscious sex wishes by the talking out method or free association and interpretation of dreams.
With his new method of free association and dream analysis. Freud could cure many neurotic individuals. He was able to revive experiences that has been repressed, and cure hysterical paralysis, anesthesias, and neurotic fears and inhibitions.
But he found that sometimes his patients, though dismissed as cured, came back after a time with different complaints. He concluded that he could lay bare only some recent repressed complexes. He wanted now to uncover the original complex which was due to some particular emotional shock. Many hysteria women were brought by dream analysis to recall emotional shocks from childhood.
They recalled being sexually attacked or seduced by their fathers, uncles, or elder sexually attacked or seduced by their fathers, uncles or elder brothers. Freud concluded that what the patient had remembered was some day-dreams or phantasy of childhood, which embodied a childish wish of the subject.
The day-dream of later childhood was expression of the unfulfilled wish of earlier childhood. Freud pushed the analysis back to early childhood to revive the emotional attitude of that age. Free association was utilized for the emotional revival. Thus, Freud discovered the psychoanalytic technique as a method of treatment of neuroses.
Repressed infantile sexuality is the cause of neuroses according to Freud. He lays stress on repression, sex desire (libido), and infantile period. These are the three main pillars of his doctrine of psycho- analysis. He traces a neurosis to repressed infantile sexuality.
This is his main thesis. Repressed libido (sex) is the cause of neuroses, especially daring, early childhood. Freud takes the word sex in a- very wide sense. He regards thumb-sucking biting things and putting them into the mouth, rubbing and being rubbed, being stroked or patted, rhythmical movements of the arms and legs, defecation and urination, as forms^ of sex-gratification.
He includes under sex gratification all affectionate behaviour and friendship and love for art and music. He includes love for father and mother, brothers and sisters, animate and inanimate objects under sex. In other words, he identifies with love in the broadest sense.
Yet he objects to any attempt to desexualize his libido. He regards all kinds of bodily pleasure and all kinds of love as libido, and yet he refuses to desexualize it.
Adler does not deny the important of sex impulse, but he holds that it has not such a comprehensive importance in the child’s life as Freud thinks. The mastery motive or self-assertive impulse is the dominant motive of life. It is more thwarted by the social environment than the sex impulse is. Inferiority complex or feeling of inferiority is the cause of neuroses.
The phantasies of the individual are not disguised gratifications of the libido (sex), but imaginary ways of escape from the sense of inferiority. Dreams also are not direct or symbolical fulfilments of old sex wishes. They relate to the future rather than to the past. They are a sort of rehearsal of some important action to be performed in reality. They reveal the individual’s style of life as to the approaching crisis.
Neuroses also are caused by inferiority complex. They are cured by removing the feeling, of inferiority. The maladjusted neurotic is to be treated by leading him gentle to see his inferiority complex and his ingrained way of attaining superiority and thus making him aware of his lack of cooperative power. He should be convinced of his error and made to change his plan of life and gain contact with society.
Jung adheres to Freud’s technique of free association and dream analysis in the treatment of neuroses. He holds that dreams indicate the patient’s unconscious attitude towards his present problem.
The analysis gives him an understanding of his present state as well as of his infantile past, and integrates his past experience with his present experience. Jung includes in libido sex Impulse (Freud), will for power (Adler), and will-to-live (Schopenhauer). It is the total vital energy which seeks the goal of growth, power and reproduction.
The child’s pleasure in taking food arises from the libido but cannot be called sexual pleasure, since the sex urge has not yet been differentiated from the primal urge to live. Jung holds that Freud was one-sided in his emphasis on psycho-sexuality, not coarse sexuality His theory of neurosis is different.
A neurosis is a present inadequate adjustment to the social environment; it is poor attempt at a new synthesis. Merely unearthing past causes is a preliminary state in the treatment. It cannot cure the neurosis.
The neurosis can be cured by the psychoanalyst helping the patient along this new synthesis. Freud regarded dreams or neuroses as motivated by repressed sex desires. Alder regarded them as motivated by the will for power.
Jung solved the enigma by his doctrine of psychological types. A person who is motivated by the will for power (Adler) is an introvert, and must focus his interest on the self. But a person who is motivated by sex desire is an extravert, and must focus his interest on the object of love.
Unconscious Wishes or Motives:
Freud holds that the sex wishes banned by the society and ungratified in the waking condition are repressed and become unconscious wishes. They seek direct or indirect fulfilment in dreams, phantasies, neuroses, etc. Freud holds that the preconscious lies midway between the conscious and unconscious.
The preconscious is close to the conscious. Though it is not actually conscious at a given moment, it can be readily made conscious. The unconscious is the level of repressed desires; the preconscious is not what has been repressed.
The unconscious is opposed to the conscious. Unconscious repressed sex wishes are directly or symbolically fulfilled in dreams, neuroses, etc. Repressed infantile sex wishes are the cause of neuroses.
Adler holds that the repressed self-assertive impulse constitutes the unconscious. The unconscious inferiority complex and conscious will for power constitute a dynamic unity. Adler does not oppose the conscious to the unconscious.
They are not two separate, antagonistic entities in the individual, but are bound together as having the same desires and trends.
Jung distinguishes between the personal unconscious and the collective or racial unconscious. The personal unconscious consists or repressed wishes of the individual (Freud) and other experiences that have been forgotten, being dissociated out of consciousness and other material unconsciously acquired.
The conscious and Unconscious life of the individual develops out of the collective or racial unconscious, which is inherited by way of the structure of the organism. It consists of instincts or innate and primitive ways of acting, and ‘primordial ideas’, archetypes’, or primitive ways of thinking. Primitive thinking was symbolical thinking.
We also think animistically. We have vague primitive notions of sympathetic magic and of spirits, fairies, witches, devils, etc. We have not outgrown this animistic way of thinking. It appears constantly as symbols in our thought.
Freud, Adler and Jung:
(1) Alfred Adler (1870-1937) substitutes the will-to-power for sex desire conceived by Freud as the primal motive of human behaviour. The will-to-power or impulse of self-assertion is more thwarted than sex-desire, and repressed self-assertion produces the inferiority complex.
(2) In order to overcome the inferiority complex, the individual develops of life-style which determines the course of his future life. The unconscious inferiority complex and the conscious striving for power and superiority are complementary to each other, and form a whole dynamic personality.
(3) Adler regards dreams as pointing to the future and rehearsing what the individual intends to do in future, while Freud regards them directly or indirectly fulfilling repressed and unconscious sex-desires which were experienced by the individual in the past.
(4) Adler regards neurosis also as an expression of the unconscious inferiority complex and a fruitless attempt to overcome it and achieve superiority, while Freud regards it as an expression of the repressed and unconscious infantile sex-desire.
(5) Freud wants by his technique of free talk to lay bare the repressed and unconscious infantile sex-desire which is regarded by him as the cause of neurosis, and nor to give any suggestion and advice to the patient for future guidance.
But Adler wants by his psychoanalytic technique to lay bare the patient’s unconscious inferiority complex and make him understand it and guide him to adopt an adequate style of life to achieve real superiority. His technique aims at the patient’s re-education through participation in the life of the community.
(6) Freud lays stress on the recovery of early memories which he believes to have cathartic value. But Adler lays emphasis on the interpretation of early memories to discover patient’s wrong life-style embedded in them. He makes little use of psychoanalysis or recovery of the early memories, but a more active use of interpretation with a view to re-education.
He interprets the patient’s dreams, early memories, symptoms, conscious thoughts and behaviour inside and outside the consulting room. He regards dreams as distorted expressions of unconscious wishes and rehearsals of the dreamer’s life-plan.
The patient’s early memories also provide clues to the way in which his life-plan was determined. His symptoms also are symbols of his unconscious feelings. For example, fear of falling may be a symbol moral lapse. Thus Adler lays emphasis on interpretation.
First, Jung differed from Freud in not stressing the sex-desire of the mental patients. He maintained with Adler that sexual motivation was simply one manifestation of the patient’s striving for power and domination. He regarded it as a manifestation of libido or psychic energy.
He extended the sense of libido and meant by it life-urge, like Bergson’s elan vital, sex desire, and will-to-power. His ‘libido’ includes Freud’s strict concept of sex and Adler’s concept of will-to-power, and in addition to them, will-to-live. At first it is manifested as life-urge, then as will-to-power, and at last as sex- desire.
Secondly, Jung widened the concept of the unconscious and included in it the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Freud did not admit the collective unconscious. Thirdly Jung recognized types of personality, introverts and extraverts, which Freud did not admit.
Fourthly, though Jung adopted the Freudian technique of “free talk’ and dream interpretation, he makes much use of word association tests and interpretation of the manifest contents or symbols of dreams.
Jung recognized two kinds of the unconscious:
(1) The personal unconscious and
(2) The collective unconscious.
(1) The personal unconscious contains the individual’s desires, emotions and impulses repressed in childhood, faint impressions of his past experience, subliminal sense-impressions, and unrealived potentialities.
(2) The collective unconscious contains the individual’s primitive, symbolical, animistic, mythical ways of thinking, and the primitive ways of behaving inherited from earlier generations. Archetypes or primitive ways of producing mythical ideas (e.g., magical or demoniac effects emanating from one’s neighbour) are embedded in the collective unconscious.
The contents of the collective unconscious are not thoughts but tendencies to form certain thoughts. The contents of the personal unconscious can be made conscious by the removal of repression, but those of the collective unconscious cannot be made conscious.
Defence Mechanisms:
A defence mechanism is a reaction to frustration that defends an individual against anxiety due to mental conflict and serves to disguise his motives. It prevents him from knowing his real motives. According to Freud the demands of the unconscious Id and the conscious Ego, and of the Ego and the Super-Ego or conscience, may conflict with one another. T
he Id is composed of the unconscious sex wishes that seek the pleasure principle. The Ego is made of the conscious wishes that follow the rules of the social environment. The Super-Ego or conscience follows the moral ideal. Defence mechanisms defend the Ego from excessive internal conflicts. They operate by distorting reality and diverting the natural expression, of psychic energy.
They are the following:
(i) Repression:
Its nature has already been explained. It is putting out of mind thoughts and desires that provoke anxiety. Freud discovered this phenomenon and regarded it as the unconscious suppression of a socially banned sex desire (libido) and driving it to the unconscious, which persists as an unconscious wish or complex, but which does not lose its activity.
A girl caught in a conflict between her sex desire and moral sentiments denies her sexual impulse, but cannot eliminate it.
The repressed and unconscious sex complex persists to frustrate her. Repression is unconscious while suppression is conscious. Repression as a cause of forgetting has already been considered. The repressed wishes find expression in dreams, hysteria, and mental disorders.
The repressed and unconscious wishes can be unearthed by hypnosis, analysis of persistent dreams, and free talk or psychoanalysis. They influence and motivate our behaviour.
(ii) Regression:
It consists in relapsing to infantile experience or retreating to inadequate childish forms of behaviour due to maladjustment. Children four or five years of age revert to the behaviour of a baby when another child is born in the family. They indulge in crawling, talking like infants, crying aloud, etc. Even adults sometimes resort to regression and exhibit fits of anger when they cannot adequately cope with a situation.
They shout, cry, throw up arms and legs, and kick up a row in order to avoid taking a bitter medicine, and thus exhibit regression. Regression is the relapse of a person from a higher stage of emotional maturity to a lower stage of emotional instability. When an adult exhibits temper tantrums, he relapses from adult behaviour to child behaviour. Very often regression is found in the behaviour of mental patients.
(iii) Protection:
It consists in ascribing one’s failure to another person’s fault. It is the attributing of one’s own feelings or motives to some-one else, which one does not admit in oneself. A child sometimes feels guilty about his own greediness and projects it upon another person.
A person who entertains suspicion against his wife’s fidelity attributes to others. A student who has done badly in an examination complains of stiff questions. A lack of insight into one’s own shortcoming and a sense of guilt arising from a particular action may initiate projection.
(iv) Sublimation:
Freud regarded it originally as a deflection of the sexual impulse from the act itself to another kind of performance. A young woman thwarted in love for a young man transforms her erotic impulse into artistic creation. Sublimation is diversion of psychic energy from a socially unacceptable channel to a socially acceptable channel.
A woman frustrated in love for a man may treat him as a friend throughout her life. A boy whose ambition to beat his class fellows in academic achievements is frustrated and beats them on the play-ground. This defence mechanism is sublimation. It uses a substitute activity to gratify a motive.
(v) Reaction Formation:
It consists in expressing a motive in a disguised form that is directly opposed to it. When a daughter hates her mother, her hatred assumes the disguise of excessive solicitude for her mother, because she cannot admit to herself that she hates her mother. Solicitude for a political opponent in his death bed is a disguised expression of hatred for him.
(vi) Displacement:
It consists in disguising the goal of a motive by substituting another in place of it. A clerk who is severely scolded by his officer comes home and scolds his wife for her slightest fault. An elder sister breaks the doll of her young brother to spite him. Her aggression against her brother takes the form of aggression against his doll.
(vii) Rationalization:
It consists in vindicating one’s wrong action by appealing to a general moral principle to avoid self-criticism and social reproach. The Chief Minister of a state may appoint his son as his Secretary on the plea that reliability is a better qualification for the office than academic attainments. Rationalization as a motive for reasoning has already been explained.
(viii) Compensation:
It consists in compensating for the loss of self-esteem in one activity by efforts in some other activity. Nietzsche who was refused in the army for his physical weakness became famous as a philosopher advocating the ethics of will-to-power, war and aggression. Demosthenes, who was a stammered, became a great orator.
(ix) Fantasy:
It consists in gratifying a frustrated motive by indulging in daydreaming. It is a common form of gratifying frustrated motives. The conquering hero daydreams gratify the mastery motive. The suffering hero daydreams also are disguised expressions of the mastery motive.
This has already been explained. Slight indulgence in daydreaming is normal, and is an escape from the humdrum of the drab environment. But excessive fantasy is harmful to a person and may result in his flight from reality and extreme introversion.
(x) Identification:
Frustrated psychic energy sometimes gets satisfaction in identification with another famous person. The nurses frustrated in love may identify themselves with Florence Nightingale. Identification is a kind of phantasy. One who cannot succeed in life often identifies oneself with a successful person.
A child identifies himself with his father who has achieved success in life. An adolescent or an adult identifies himself with a cinema star or a political leader. Identification is an effect of introversion, daydream and phantasy.
(xi) Sour Grapes Mechanism:
A person, who is defeated in election to a Legislative Assembly, does not stand for future elections, because he persuades himself that- Legislative Assemblies are meant for frauds and dishonest manoeuvrers. He adjusts himself to the new unpleasant situation with this mechanism.
(xii) Isolation:
It consists in refusing to relate one’s particular way of thinking or behaving, which is irrational and blameworthy, to the rest of one’s thoughts and actions. In Spain, the people, who are Christians, take delight in witnessing bull fights which end in bloodshed.
(xiii) Seclusiveness:
It consists in running away from one’s difficulties due to one’s inability to cope with them. Seclusiveness is one of the escape mechanisms. It is a fearful response to a complex social situation. It avoids competition with others but does not satisfy one’s social needs. It is an incomplete adjustment.
(xiv) Overcompensation:
It consists in overcoming one’s inferiority or loss of self-respect due to a personal defect by doing more than removing the defect. This is overdoing compensation. A weakling does not stop at developing a normal body, but strives to become a world champion in physical strength.
Napoleon became a military dictator. Many ugly women became great actresses. Many radicals in politics overcompensate for their feelings of inferiority.
These defence mechanisms disguise the frustrated motives and cannot adequately adjust a person to a situation. They are directed at anxiety, and relieve it to a certain extent. But they are not directed at the conflict of motives and cannot resolve it. They conceal or disguise the real problem.
Psychotherapy:
Psychotherapy is the application of psychology in the treatment of mental disorders.
(1) Rest cure, work cure and play cure may be effective in curing mental disorder. Weir Mitchel laid stress on rest in a secluded place, massage, and feeding. Change of activity is involved in it. In certain cases work cure may be equally effective.
The patient’s mind is engaged in work and withdrawn from the imaginary or real source of anxiety. Loss of interest in work may be remedied in this way. Play cure also is effective. Play evokes a patient’s interest and cures him of apathy and depression.
(2) The method of persuasion and reasoning has a therapeutic value. The psychiatrist explains to the patient the psychological nature of the disorder and persuades him to understand it, but does not give him any treatment. This method produces some effect. But mere appeal to reason does not always remove the painful symptoms.
(3) Suggestion is another method of psychotherapy. In physical illness, fatigue, old age, and mental disorders, a person becomes suggestible, and uncritically accepts the suggestions of others who enjoy prestige. Priests, mystics, doctors, and psychiatrists are persons of prestige.
Their suggestions work on the patient’s feelings and impulses and sometimes effect a cure. ‘Faith cure’ is cure by suggestion. Grief-stricken persons go on pilgrimages to holy shrines, and are relieved of their grief’s. These are tangible evidences of the power of suggestion.
Bernheim, Charct, Prince, Janet, and others used hypnosis andsuggestion and cured many patients of hysteria. Freud also tried post-hypnotic suggestion in treating hysteria in the beginning. Suggestions may be given in the waking state also.
The more indirect the suggestions are, the more effective they prove. Autosuggestion also is effective. The patient gives suggestion to himself. Coue recommends to a patient to give this suggestion to himself. “Every-day in every way I am getting better and better.” He should give this suggestion to himself in the drowsy state before falling asleep.
He should imagine himself to be cured of his ailment, but should not make any conscious effort. Suggestion is of great therapeutic value in the treatment of psychoneuroses. It helps in effecting a synthesis of dissociated processes, reactivate the organism, and remove the symptoms. It is more effective than reasoning and persuasion.
(4) Psychoanalysis dream interpretation were adopted by Freud, Adler, and Jung as explained above.
(5) Re-education issued in mental hospitals for the cure of mental disorders. The patient is suffering from shell-shocks in the Great War I were cured of their functional blindness, deafness, lameness, agnosia, aphasia, and even paralysis by re-education which is habit training. It is an occupational therapy or readjustment.
(6) Nondirective counselling (Rogers) consists in explaining the nature of the disorder to the patient and acquainting him with the facts so that he may have the insight with which he may solve his own problem.
(7) Group therapy is another method of psychotherapy. Two or more persons of similar problems talk about them under the guidance of a psychiatrist, and are relieved of their mental troubles. Psychotherapy is of great value in the treatment of mental disorders.
Mental Hygiene:
In childhood, the following principles of mental hygiene should be followed. A child has needs for love and security from the parent. These needs should be duly met by them. He should not be allowed to feel that he is unwanted by either or both of them.
The father should make time to show his love for him, and satisfy his needs. The mother also who earns her living should have sufficient time to take care of him and look after his proper upkeep.
The parent should love each other and keep a peaceful home. There should be warmth of relationship between the parents and the child. He should tell them his difficulties and listen to their counsels to solve them. They should be consistent in their behaviour towards him.
They should not praise him at one time and punish him at another time for the same act. They should-allow him sufficient freedom as he grows up and should not protect him too much.
Over protection of a child does not bring out his latent energies to cope with his difficulties. Too much dependence on the parents and too much independence of them both are extremes and should be avoided. Moderation should be exercised by the parents in their relation to the child. They should teach him more by examples than by percepts.
They should guide him in the formation of their good habits by proper counsels. A confidential relationship with the parent helps a child in resolving conflicts and making proper adjustments. A child should be helped in his relationships with brothers and sisters in the family, and class-mates, school fellows, and playmates.
The adolescent should be helped by the parents, the teachers, and other counsellors in solving his difficulties. He should take proper care of his health, play games with his friends and companions, and take part in social functions. He should not only acquire sound education, but also build up a healthy and strong physique, and a strong character.
The adult should know himself, his abilities and defects, and set up an ideal which is realizable by him. He should not pursue an educational career which does not suit him, and endeavour to realize an unrealizable goal. He should choose a career that fits in with his abilities and take the help of vocational guidance.
He should take part in games, recreation, and cultivate some hobby. He should cultivate interpersonal relationships which will reduce his inner conflicts and direct his attention to the reality.
He should cultivate the habit of facing the reality and not resort to faulty adjustments. He should take the help of his intimate friends, reliable counsellors, and psychiatrists, if he suffers from excessive anxiety, unrest, and insufficient sleep.
He should not shirk his problem but seriously try to solve it. He should beware of mental mechanisms and not resort to faulty adjustments. Imaginary solutions to mental conflicts should be avoided by all means. All individuals should resort to real adjustments to the social environment. They should not rest satisfied with substitute adjustments.