Chapter 9 Auxiliary to False Harmony

It is not uncommon for one falsehood to lead to another, which needs a third to support it, and so on, until one is entangled in a web of falsehoods from which one cannot escape.If a person or a group of people lacks the spirit of seeking the root of the problem, this kind of finally entangled situation may occur in his or their life at any time.It is true that superficial repairs are not useless, but will only create new problems, so in turn, an expedient measure is needed to deal with them temporarily.The neurotic is also in this situation when he tries to resolve the basic conflict.In the case of the neurotic, as in the previous case, nothing really useful appears, and the original problem resurfaces in spite of the radical change in the apparent state.The neurotic cannot help superimposing one false solution upon another; as we have seen, he may emphasize one aspect of the conflict, but he is still divided.He may simply avoid everyone and stay alone. Although the conflict does not work for a while, his whole life loses a solid foundation.He creates a triumphant, unified idealized self, but at the same time creates a new rift.He tried to heal that rift by excluding the ego from the inner battlefield, only to find himself in an even worse situation.

A balance so precarious requires further steps to be maintained.The patient then seeks help from unconscious means, including blind spots, compartmentalization, rationalization, strict self-control, self-righteousness, uncertainty, cynicism, and so on.We shall not attempt to detail these phenomena in detail, a difficult task which cannot be accomplished here, but only to show how these means are employed by the patient in order to cope with the conflict. The difference between the actual behavior of the neurotic and his ego-ideal is so great that we wonder that the patient himself cannot see this.Not only did he not see it at all, but he was also completely ignorant of the contradictions that appeared right in front of him.This blind spot phenomenon is the most obvious contradiction, and it first brought my attention to the existence of conflict and related problems.For example, a patient with various characteristics of the submissive type, although he thought he was a good person like Jesus, once told me in a casual tone that he wished he could shoot all his colleagues with a gun in an office meeting. Killed.Granted, the destructive cravings that evoked these homicidal thoughts were unconscious at the time, but the problem is that the homicidal thoughts, which he jokingly called "fun," did not in any way affect his saintly idealized image of himself.

Another patient was a scientist.He believed himself devoted to science and considered himself an inventor.In deciding which works he should publish, he proceeded purely from a motive of chance, picking those which he thought would find the greatest response.He didn't try to pretend or cover up, but he did it as easily as the above example; because these few patients not only had culture, but also had psychological knowledge.Simply thinking that we can all turn our backs on what we don't want to see is clearly not enough to explain these phenomena.We should add: the degree to which we are blind to things depends on how much we desire to do so.In a word, this artificial blind spot is simply a sign of our extreme reluctance to acknowledge conflict.But the real question here is, how can we be so blind to such obvious contradictions as above?In fact, this would not have been possible without certain special conditions.One of the conditions is total numbness to our own emotional experience.Another condition is what Streck pointed out earlier, that is, the so-called isolated way of life that only cares about the part and ignores the whole.In addition to explaining the phenomenon of blind spots, the scholar also talked about this logical separation method.What is for friends and what is for enemies; what is for family and what is for outsiders; what is for public and what is for private; what is for high-ranking people and what is for inferiors -Patients are clearly divided.Therefore, in his view, things within this range do not contradict things within that range.The patient can actually live in this way only if he loses his sense of unity through conflict.So the division of the whole thing into unrelated subunits is as much a result of the patient being divided by the conflict as is the objection to the recognition of the conflict.This method is quite similar to the situation in an idealized image: contradictions persist and conflicts disappear.It is difficult to say whether this idealized imagery leads to this fragmentation, or whether the partitioning effect leads to the idealized imagery.It would seem, however, that the fact of living in unrelated units without regard to the whole is fundamental and enables the creation of idealized images.

In order to understand this phenomenon, cultural factors must be taken into account.In the complex social system, people have largely become a small screw, the alienation of self is almost everywhere, and the value of people has plummeted.Because of the innumerable serious contradictions in our civilization, there has arisen a general dullness and insensitivity to morals.Moral principles are so disdainful that no one wonders why a man who is a pious Christian or a loving father one day can be a gangster the next.There are few integrated, unified minds around us to dwarf our own fragmented state.In psychoanalytic work, because Freud regarded psychology as a natural science and abandoned its moral value, he made the analyst as blind as the patient, and neither could see this contradiction.It is an "unscientific" attitude for the analyst to think that he has a personal morality or that he has any interest in the patient's morality.But in fact, the recognition of contradictions is not necessarily limited to the moral field, but also appears in many theoretical systems.

Rationalization can be defined as self-deception achieved through the process of reasoning.The general view that rationalization is primarily used for self-justification or to describe one's own motives or actions as conforming to accepted beliefs is only partially correct.For example, it implies that people living in the same civilization rationalize along the same principles, but in fact the content of rationalization varies from person to person, and the methods of rationalization are also very different.This is only natural, since rationalization is in fact an attempt to create artificial harmony.This rationalization can be seen at work in every corner of the patient's fortifications around basic conflicts.The main tendency of the patient is strengthened by reasoning, and he reduces or distorts the various factors which may express conflicts, so that they can conceal conflicts.How does this self-deceiving reasoning process contribute to the whitewashing of personality?We can see the clues by comparing the submissive and aggressive types.The submissive type attributes his desire to help to his sympathy, despite his strong dominance tendencies.If these dominant tendencies are too obvious, he rationalizes them as a concern for people.Aggressive helping also vehemently denies any empathy, just doing it in passing.The idealized image always needs a great deal of rationalization for its support, and the disparity between the actual self and the ideal self must ultimately be reduced to non-existence.Through externalization, the patient uses rationalizations to prove that something is wrong, or that his troubles are a "natural" response to the behavior of others.

The self-control tendency of the patient can be so strong that I have thought it to be the first neurotic tendency.Its function is like a dam built to prevent the overflow of conflicting emotions.Although in the beginning it is often a conscious act of will, it gradually becomes automatic later on.In exercising self-control in this way, the patient does not allow himself to be swayed by anything, be it passion, sexuality, self-pity, or anger.In the process of analysis, it is difficult for him to make free association.In a word, he tried to suppress all spontaneity.This characteristic is most evident in those patients whose conflicts are more visible.Usually, two things help to drown out conflict: one is to clearly demonstrate a dominant attitude, and other attitudes that conflict with it are secondary; the other is to maintain sufficient self-isolation so that the conflict cannot be effective .The above-mentioned suppressed spontaneity patients did not use even these two methods.He also maintains the illusion of undividedness, based entirely on an idealized self-image.Obviously, it is not enough to simply create an idealized image of the blind spot if he does not have some basic effort to help him establish inner unity.This image is especially powerless when it is a hodgepodge of conflicting elements.That's when a conscious or unconscious use of willpower is required to put the brakes on the tendency to conflict.Since the most destructive tendency is anger-induced violence, it takes a great deal of effort to control anger.This creates a vicious cycle: Repressed anger builds up enough force to explode, requiring greater self-control to suffocate it.If the doctor calls the patient's attention to this excessive self-control, the patient will justify it as an essential virtue of any civilized man.What he ignores is that his control is compulsive.He can't help but exercise this control strictly, and if it doesn't work, he will panic.His fear, manifested as a fear of insanity, clearly shows that the function of control is to ward off the danger of being divided.

Arbitrary self-righteousness works in two ways.It can not only eliminate inner doubts, but also eliminate external influences.Suspicion and indecision are by-products of conflict, and they can be severe enough to paralyze all action.In this state the patient is naturally at the mercy of external influences.When we truly believe in ourselves, we are not easy to be at the mercy of external factors; but if we stand at a crossroads at any time and do not know which way to go, then external factors can easily become the decisions that determine our choice. power, even if temporarily.Also, indecision does not only refer to a course of action, but also includes self-doubt, doubts about one's own rights and values.

All of these doubts impair our ability to live.But apparently not everyone is equally intolerable, and the more a man sees life as a relentless struggle, the more he sees doubt as a dangerous weakness.The more self-isolated and independent a person is, the more easily external influences become a trigger for his irritation.All my observations point to the fact that the combination of aggressive tendencies and solitary tendencies forms the most fertile soil for self-righteous tendencies.The more superficial the aggressive tendencies, the more rigid and assertive the self-righteousness becomes.The patient attempts to end the conflict once and for all by asserting dogmatically that he is always right.Under the control of rationalization, the patient naturally discovers that the feeling is a traitor within and must be strictly guarded against.It is true that there is peace in this way, but it is the peace of the grave.Therefore, it is not difficult to guess that this kind of patient hates analysis, because analysis may break the "harmony" he has painstakingly achieved.

Another expression that is almost the opposite of self-righteousness, but also a defense against acknowledging conflict, is ambiguity.A patient with this indeterminate performance is often like a character in a fairy tale. If you catch him, he will turn into a fish; if he feels unsafe, he will turn into a deer; He turned into a bird and flew away.You can't get them to stick to their word. They'll either deny saying it or assure you he didn't mean it. They have an amazing knack for obscuring questions.It is often impossible to get them to take a firm view of an event; even if they do try to be explicit, the listener ends up not knowing exactly what happened.

This disorder manifests itself in their lives as well.They are vicious by turns, sympathetic by sympathy, overly thoughtful and careless by extremes;They appear domineering at first, then become doormats to be trampled upon, and then return to dominance again.After doing something wrong to someone, they will regret it, try to make amends, and then relapse and treat others badly.For them, there is no real thing. The analyst can also be confused, even frustrated with what to do.He was wrong to think so.They are patients who have not yet succeeded in the usual way of unifying the personality; not only have they failed to suppress a part of the conflict, they have not yet established a definite idealized image.We can say, in a sense, that they represent those attempted values.The various patients we have been discussing, however troublesome their problems, are at least better organized in personality and less disorientated than the erratic people.On the other hand, the analyst is equally mistaken if he thinks that the work of therapy is an easy one, because the conflicts lie on the surface and there is no need to search for them.He will find the patient's resistance to making the problem explicit, which may even frustrate his therapeutic intentions; he should understand that it is simply a means by which the patient refuses to look inside.

A final defense against acknowledging conflict is cynicism, the denial and mockery of moral values.Doubts of moral worth are necessarily present in every neurosis, no matter how much the patient clings to a particular standard of acceptance.Although cynicism has many roots, its function is always to deny the existence of moral values, thereby relieving the patient of what he actually believes. Cynicism can be conscious, and thus becomes the norm consistently pursued and defended by conspiracy theorists.It's all a facade, and you can do whatever you want, as long as you don't get caught.Everyone who is not a fool is a hypocrite.Such people are very sensitive to the use of the word moral in the doctor's analysis, regardless of the situation in which the doctor uses it; just as people in Freud's time were very sensitive to the word "sex" and ignored the context in which it appeared.However, cynicism can also be unconscious, but this cynical tendency is masked by the patient's verbal conformity to the views of the crowd.Although the patient may not be aware of his cynicism, his words and deeds reveal that he is living by this principle.Or he may be foolishly caught up in contradictions, as someone who is confident of honesty and decency, envies the cunning of others, and hates himself for being "not good" at it.The physician must, at the appropriate moment, make the patient fully aware of his cynicism and help him understand it.Also, it may be necessary to explain to him why he should develop his own moral values. All of the above are defense mechanisms built around basic conflicts.For the sake of brevity, I have called this whole system of defenses the protective structure; in every neurosis there is a combination of several defenses, although they operate in different degrees.