Displacement

What is Reaction Formation?

Published on 01/21/2022 by Andrew Marshall1 Comment

Introduction

In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation (German: Reaktionsbildung) is a defence mechanism in which emotions and impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable are mastered by exaggeration of the directly opposing tendency.

The reaction formations belong to Level 3 of neurotic defence mechanisms, which also include dissociation, displacement, intellectualisation, and repression.

Theory

Reaction formation depends on the hypothesis that:

“[t]he instincts and their derivatives may be arranged as pairs of opposites: life versus death, construction versus destruction, action versus passivity, dominance versus submission, and so forth. When one of the instincts produces anxiety by exerting pressure on the ego either directly or by way of the superego, the ego may try to sidetrack the offending impulse by concentrating upon its opposite. For example, if feelings of hate towards another person make one anxious, the ego can facilitate the flow of love to conceal the hostility.”

Where reaction-formation takes place, it is usually assumed that the original, rejected impulse does not vanish, but persists, unconscious, in its original infantile form. Thus, where love is experienced as a reaction formation against hate, we cannot say that love is substituted for hate, because the original aggressive feelings still exist underneath the affectionate exterior that merely masks the hate to hide it from awareness.

In a diagnostic setting, the existence of a reaction-formation rather than a ‘simple’ emotion would be suspected where exaggeration, compulsiveness and inflexibility were observed. For example:

“[r]eactive love protests too much; it is overdone, extravagant, showy, and affected. It is counterfeit, and […] is usually easily detected. Another feature of a reaction formation is its compulsiveness. A person who is defending himself against anxiety cannot deviate from expressing the opposite of what he really feels. His love, for instance, is not flexible. It cannot adapt itself to changing circumstances as genuine emotions do; rather it must be constantly on display as if any failure to exhibit it would cause the contrary feeling to come to the surface.

Reaction formation is sometimes described as one of the most difficult defences for lay people to understand; this testifies not merely to its effectiveness as a disguise, but also to its ubiquity and flexibility as a defence that can be utilised in many forms. For example:

“solicitude may be a reaction-formation against cruelty, cleanliness against coprophilia”,

and it is not unknown for an analyst to explain a client’s unconditional pacifism as a reaction formation against their sadism. In addition:

“[h]igh ideals of virtue and goodness may be reaction formations against primitive object cathexes rather than realistic values that are capable of being lived up to. Romantic notions of chastity and purity may mask crude sexual desires, altruism may hide selfishness, and piety may conceal sinfulness.”

Even more counter-intuitively, according to this model:

“[a] phobia is an example of a reaction formation. The person wants what he fears. He is not afraid of the object; he is afraid of the wish for the object. The reactive fear prevents the dreaded wish from being fulfilled.

The concept of reaction formation has been used to explain responses to external threats as well as internal anxieties. In the phenomenon described as Stockholm syndrome, a hostage or kidnap victim ‘falls in love’ with the feared and hated person who has complete power over them. Similarly, paradoxical reports exist of powerless and vulnerable inmates of Nazi camps creating ‘favourites’ among the guards and even collecting objects discarded by them. The mechanism of reaction formation is often characteristic of obsessional neuroses. When this mechanism is overused, especially during the formation of the ego, it can become a permanent character trait. This is often seen in those with obsessional character and obsessive personality disorders. This does not imply that its periodic usage is always obsessional, but that it can lead to obsessional behaviour.

What is the Term: ‘Kick the Cat’?

Published on 01/14/2022 by Andrew MarshallLeave a comment

Introduction

Kick the cat (or kick the dog) is a metaphor used to describe how a relatively high-ranking person in an organisation or family displaces (see below) their frustrations by abusing a lower-ranking person, who may in turn take it out on their own subordinate.

In psychology, displacement is an unconscious defence mechanism whereby the mind substitutes either a new aim or a new object for goals felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable.

Origin of the Idiom

The term has been used at least since the 19th century. According to author John Bradshaw, humans were far more cruel to cats at that time, to the extent that kicking one was not perceived to be unusual and hence entered the language as a popular idiom.

The concept was reinforced in British culture by a scene in the Blackadder episode Nob and Nobility in which Edmund Blackadder kicks the cat when annoyed, and the cat bites the mouse, and the mouse bites Baldrick.

In current usage, the name envisions a scenario where an angry or frustrated employee comes home from work looking for some way to take out his anger, but the only thing present is the cat. He physically abuses it as a means of relieving his frustration, despite the cat playing no part in causing it.

Workplace or Family Dynamics

Kicking the cat is commonly used to describe the behaviour of staff abusing co-workers or subordinates as a mechanism to relieve stress. This behaviour can result in a chain reaction, where a higher-ranking member of the company abuses their subordinate, who takes it out on their own subordinate, and so on down the line. This domino effect can also be seen in family dynamics, where the father yells at the mother who yells at the older child who yells at the younger child who yells at the pet.

Blaming others can lead to kicking the dog where individuals in a hierarchy blame their immediate subordinate, and this propagates down a hierarchy until the lowest rung (the “dog”). A 2009 experimental study has shown that blaming can be contagious even for uninvolved onlookers.

Psychological Theories

According to Psychology Today, “Anger and frustration in one part of life can lead us to lash out at innocent people (or pets) in another.” The technical term for this kind of behaviour is “displaced aggression”.

Kicking the cat is looked upon unfavourably and viewed as a sign of poor anger management. According to author Steve Sonderman, “Men funnel 90 percent of their emotions through anger” and may “kick the cat” as a substitute for grief, anxiety or other emotions. Psychology author Raj Persaud suggests that people “kick the cat” as a means of catharsis because they fear expressing their full emotions to the peers and colleagues.

What is Displacement (Psychology)?

Published on 01/10/2022 by Andrew Marshall3 Comments

Introduction

In psychology, displacement (German: Verschiebung, “shift, move”) is an unconscious defence mechanism whereby the mind substitutes either a new aim or a new object for goals felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable.

Refer to Emotional Conflict.

Sigmund Freud

The concept of displacement originated with Sigmund Freud. Initially he saw it as a means of dream-distortion, involving a shift of emphasis from important to unimportant elements, or the replacement of something by a mere illusion. Freud called this “displacement of accent.”

Type	Outline
Displacement of Object	Feelings that are connected with one person are displaced onto another person. A man who has had a bad day at the office, comes home and yells at his wife and children, is displacing his anger from the workplace onto his family. Freud thought that when children have animal phobias, they may be displacing fears of their parents onto an animal.
Displacement of Attribution	A characteristic that one perceives in oneself but seems unacceptable is instead attributed to another person. This is essentially the mechanism of psychological projection; an aspect of the self is projected (displaced) onto someone else. Freud wrote that people commonly displace their own desires onto God’s will.
Bodily Displacements	A genital sensation may be experienced in the mouth (displacement upward) or an oral sensation may be experienced in the genitals (displacement downward). Novelist John Cleland in ‘’Fanny Hill’’ referred to the vagina as “the nethermouth.” Sexual attraction toward a human body can be displaced in sexual fetishism, sometimes onto a particular body part like the foot, or at other times onto an inanimate fetish object.
Jokes and Neuroses	Freud also saw displacement as occurring in jokes, as well as in neuroses – the obsessional neurotic being especially prone to the technique of displacement onto the minute. When two or more displacements occurs towards the same idea, the phenomenon is called condensation (from the German Verdichtung).
Phobia Displacement or Repression	Humans were able to express specific unconscious needs through phobias. These needs that were suppressed deep within themselves created anxiety and tension. The stress, fear, and anxiety that characterise a phobic disorder were the discharge.
Reaction Formation	Cognizant practices are embraced to overcompensate for the nervousness an individual feels in regards to their socially inadmissible oblivious considerations or feelings. Typically, a response arrangement is set apart by misrepresented conduct, like garishness and urgency. An illustration of reaction formation incorporates the loyal little girl who adores her mom is responding to her Oedipus scorn of her mom.

The Psychoanalytic Mainstream

Among Freud’s mainstream followers, Otto Fenichel highlighted the displacement of affect, either through postponement or by redirection, or both. More broadly, he considered that “in part the paths of displacement depend on the nature of the drives that are warded off”.

Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud, also played an important role in the upbringing of these defence mechanisms by the twentieth century. She introduced and analysed ten of her own defence mechanisms and her work has been used and increased through the years by newer psychoanalysts.

Eric Berne in his first, psychoanalytic work, maintained that “some of the most interesting and socially useful displacements of libido occur when both the aim and the object are partial substitutions for the biological aim and object…sublimation”.

Lacan

In 1957, Jacques Lacan, inspired by an article by linguist Roman Jakobson on metaphor and metonymy, argued that the unconscious has the structure of a language, linking displacement to the poetic function of metonymy, and condensation to that of metaphor.

As he himself put it, “in the case of Verschiebung, ‘displacement’, the German term is closer to the idea of that veering off of signification that we see in metonymy, and which from its first appearance in Freud is represented as the most appropriate means used by the unconscious to foil censorship”.

Aggression

The aggressive drive – known as mortido – may be displaced quite as much as the libidinal – the sex drive. Business or athletic competition, or hunting, for instance, offer plentiful opportunities for the expression of displaced mortido.

In such scapegoating behaviour, aggression may be displaced onto people with little or no connection with what is causing anger or frustration. Some people punch cushions when they are angry at friends; a college student may snap at his or her roommate when upset about an exam grade.

Displacement can also act in what looks like a ‘chain-reaction,’ with people unwittingly becoming both victims and perpetrators of displacement. For example, a man is angry with his boss, but he cannot express this properly, so he hits his wife. The wife, in turn, hits one of the children, possibly disguising this as a “punishment.” (rationalization).

Ego psychology sought to use displacement in child rearing, a dummy being used as a displaced target for toddler sibling rivalry. With a purpose to apprehend how the ego uses defence mechanisms, it is important to apprehend the defence mechanisms themselves and the way they function. A few defence mechanisms are visible as protecting us from the internal impulses (e.g. repression); other defence mechanism guard us from external threats (e.g. denial).

Transferential Displacement

The displacement of feelings and attitudes from past significant others onto the present-day analyst constitutes a central aspect of the transference, particularly in the case of the neurotic.

A subsidiary form of displacement within the transference occurs when the patient disguises transference references by applying them to an apparent third party or to themselves.

As of now encoded in subcortical neural pathways, material from our oblivious brain is pushed into our cognizant psyche as we attempt to manage mental wonders – typically agonising – that we are encountering. With the “help” of mind movement, we unknowingly re-surface and re-order struggle ridden encounters as though the past were the present and one setting were another. We move contemplations, sentiments, and perspectives, particularly about individuals who take after others. We allocate them jobs once played by others. We take on old jobs ourselves. All unwittingly.

Criticism

Later writers have objected that whereas Freud only described the displacement of sex into culture, for example, the converse – social conflict being displaced into sexuality – is also true.

Freud’s hypothesis is acceptable at clarifying however not at anticipating conduct. Therefore, Freud’s hypothesis is unfalsifiable – it cannot be demonstrated valid or invalidated. Freud may likewise have shown research predisposition in his understandings – he may have just focused on data which upheld his hypotheses, and overlooked data and different clarifications that didn’t fit them.

What is Emotional Conflict?

Published on 01/10/202201/10/2022 by Andrew Marshall3 Comments

Introduction

Emotional conflict is the presence of different and opposing emotions relating to a situation that has recently taken place or is in the process of being unfolded.

They may be accompanied at times by a physical discomfort, especially when a functional disturbance has become associated with an emotional conflict in childhood, and in particular by tension headaches “expressing a state of inner tension…[or] caused by an unconscious conflict”.

For C.G. Jung, “emotional conflicts and the intervention of the unconscious are the classical features of…medical psychology”. Equally, “Freud’s concept of emotional conflict as amplified by Anna Freud…Erikson and others is central in contemporary theories of mental disorder in children, particularly with respect to the development of psychoneurosis”.

In Childhood Development

“The early stages of emotional development are full of potential conflict and disruption”. Infancy and childhood are a time when “everything is polarised into extremes of love and hate” and when “totally opposite, extreme feelings about them must be getting put together too. Which must be pretty confusing and painful. It’s very difficult to discover you hate someone you love”. Development involves integrating such primitive emotional conflicts, so that “in the process of integration, impulses to attack and destroy, and impulses to give and share are related, the one lessening the effect of the other”, until the point is reached at which “the child may have made a satisfactory fusion of the idea of destroying the object with the fact of loving the same object”.

Once such primitive relations to the mother or motherer have been at least partially resolved, “in the age period two to five or seven, each normal infant is experiencing the most intense conflicts” relating to wider relationships: “ideas of love are followed by ideas of hate, by jealousy and painful emotional conflict and by personal suffering; and where conflict is too great there follows loss of full capacity, inhibitions…symptom formation”.

Defences

Defences against emotional conflict include “splitting and projection. They deal with intrapsychic conflict not by addressing it, but by sidestepping it”. Displacement too can help resolve such conflicts: “If an individual no longer feels threatened by his father but by a horse, he can avoid hating his father; here the distortion way a way out of the conflict of ambivalence. The father, who had been hated and loved simultaneously, is loved only, and the hatred is displaced onto the bad horse”.

Physical Symptoms

Inner emotional conflicts can result in physical discomfort or pain, often in the form of tension headaches, which can be episodic or chronic, and may last from a few minutes or hours, to days – associated pain being mild, moderate, or severe.

“The physiology of nervous headaches still presents many unsolved problems”, as in general do all such “physical alterations…rooted in unconscious instinctual conflicts”. However physical discomfort or pain without apparent cause may be the way our body is telling us of an underlying emotional turmoil and anxiety, triggered by some recent event. Thus for example a woman “may be busy in her office, apparently in good health and spirits. A moment later she develops a blinding headache and shows other signs of distress. Without consciously noticing it, she has heard the foghorn of a distant ship, and this has unconsciously reminded her of an unhappy parting”.

While it is not easy, by relaxing, calming down, and trying to become aware of what recent experience or event could have been the cause of the inner conflict, and then rationally looking at and dealing with the conflicting desires and needs, a gradual dissipation and relief of the pain may be possible.

In the Workplace

With respect to the post-industrial age, “LaBier writes of ‘modern madness’, the hidden link between work and emotional conflict…feelings of self-betrayal, stress and burnout”. His “idea, which gains momentum in the post-yuppie late eighties…concludes that real professional success without regret of emotional conflict requires insanity of one kind or another”.

Cultural Examples

Advice on fiction writing emphasises the “necessity of creating powerful, emotional conflicts” in one’s characters: “characters create the emotional conflict and the action emerges from the characters”.
Shakespeare’s sonnets have been described as “implying an awareness of the possible range of human feelings, of the existence of complex and even contradictory attitudes to a single emotion”.
For Picasso “the presence of death is always coincident with the taste for life…the superb violence of these emotional transports have led some people to call his work expressionist”.