The Unconscious Mind Anxiety

The seeds of anger, like love, are sown in infancy. Frustrations evoking and nourishing anger begin at birth, when the human being is "continually encountenng the painful ex­perience that the world is no longer shaped so exactly to his subjective demands as was the maternal womb."

Infants are born with certain instinctual reactions which are sometimes called "fears."

However, the face and substance of fear changes as experience enlarges. For example, people get progressively more afraid of snakes as they grow older. One of the most pervasive human fears is that of loss of parental love, or, more abstractly, fear of rejection or social disapproval.

Fear is the emotion associated with flight from danger which threatens survival. Fear and cowardice are not the same thing; one can feel afraid and still act bravely, which is what most "heroes" do.

Personality   patterns,   it   should   now   be plain, reflect the constant interplay of posi­tive and negative emotions. In wholesome personality development the "loving" emo­tions are encouraged to blossom and modify the effects of the negative emotions. Techni­cally speaking, we seek to "eroticize our aggressions." We turn now to consider the un­conscious   mind,  where  these things occur.

The Unconscious Mind

The unconscious mind is a paradox. We become aware of it only when and to the ex­tent that it releases memories, thoughts, and feelings to consciousness. It holds and with­holds many secrets.

We assume the existence of an unconscious mind because it offers the most rational and scientific way of explaining human behavior. This hypothesis has super­seded the animistic explanation that a child is "bad" or his father an alcoholic because the Devil is in him.

There are those who cling to "free will" and reason as the fundamental determinants of human conduct. On this score it can be said that we must act as if our wills were free and as reasonably as our unconscious minds will allow us. But there can be little doubt today that individual reason and will are persistently limited by unconscious forces. We are fundamentally driven by our emo­tional reactions. We can do only what the structure of our personality permits.

For these and other reasons we must now examine the structure (or construct) of the unconscious mind in some detail. It is the major area of psychic processes and hence the central subject matter of mental health and mental hygiene. To use several figures of speech, the conscious mind is only the facade of the unconscious; it is the part of the iceberg that floats above the water; it is just the skin of the apple. The picture of the unconscious mind that we shall now try to paint in a few strokes is of necessity generalized and over­simplified. But it is not merely hypothetical; it corresponds with and explains how human beings actually behave.

The structuring of the unconscious mind here set forth is based on psychoanalytic theory, initiated and expounded principally by the Viennese physician, Sigmund Freud. It has acknowledged limitations, but it is far from being outmoded.

The Unconscious Mind Anxiety

There comes a time, usually between the ages of four and seven, when the imitative child wants jealously and intensely to "pos­sess" the parent of the opposite sex. Little boys naively say, "When Daddy is at the of­fice, I'll be Daddy"; and the little girls ear­nestly assert, "When I grow up, I'm going to marry father." This stage of development, which certainly occurs in Western culture with its ideal of romantic monogamous mar­riage, is called oedipal love, after the Greek legend of King Oedipus, who was fated to kill his father and marry his mother.

In later childhood, as the boy and girl be­come aware that their oedipal longings are impossible of fulfillment, emotional attach­ments shift outside the home and become centered in "loyalty" to a gang or a "crush" on a friend. The new libidinal attachment is usually to a person of the same sex- This is sometimes designated as homosexual love. In late childhood, a period of sexual latency, this is a perfectly natural and normal emotional attachment and is not to be confused with adult homosexuality.

When the tides of puberty begin to rise, love attachments return to the opposite sex. But this usually begins as a kind of idealistic love for some distant, unattainable personal­ity—as unattainable in reality as was father or mother, but secretly and subtly cast in the parent images. The idealistic yearnings of hosts of teenagers for the same popular and symbolic figure of the sport or entertainment world is a repeatedly observed phenomenon.

The next and final stage in the develop­ment of the capacity to love is heterosexual love flesh and blood love for a person of the opposite sex. This is the high point and ful­fillment of the normal course of love development. But it does not wipe out all previous love attachments, some self-love, for example, always remains. Nor does it exclude the si­multaneous presence in the psyche of power­ful "negative emotions." It is possible to be exceedingly angry at those we love.

Anger and Fear "Negative Emotions"

The negative emotions such as anger, fear, hate, jealousy, and revenge are in a sense protective reaction patterns, slumbering re­flexes evoked by threats of suspicions of dan­ger. They were evolved in the long history of the human race to help assure survival of the individual and the race. They mobilize psy­chic energy and physical resources for that end. But when too frequently or constantly evoked, particularly by imagined danger, and when unchecked in their operation, they can have a destructive effect on personality.

Anger, or aggression, in its many guises is the normal but primitive response to frustra­tion. It is basically the desire to remove by attacking, killing, or destroying anything that threatens the survival of the individual in body or spirit. All too often anger is de­structively turned against oneself.

When you are thwarted or frustrated by yourself, others, or circumstances, you cannot help feeling angry. But there is a vast differ­ence between feeling angry, appearing angry, and acting angry. You can learn to do some­thing constructive with your mobilized en­ergy. You should neither swallow it (repress it) nor turn it against yourself. For anger re­pressed will return in some other emotional disguise.

The Unconscious Mind Anxiety

With the poetic insight and in a poet's lan­guage William Wordsworth captured in the passage quoted on this page one essential secret of normal personality development — step-by-step constriction of the innate im­pulses of the newborn infant.

Personality has been aptly described as "the sum total of our ways of behaving, espe­cially toward other people.'' Our behavior is controlled not only by apparently conscious thought and decision in the here and now but also by our emotions, which have roots in the past. To put it in another way, we are al­ways influenced more or less by our uncon­scious mind, which is the dwelling place of our emotions and the matrix of our personality structure.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

"As the twig is bent, so the tree inclines." "The child is father to the man." In these old proverbs also is summed up a great deal of the best present-day knowledge of normal personality development. This development begins at birth. The behavior patterns of later life are established in the cradle, the nursery, and the elementary school room.

Despite individual differences, personality development follows a fairly consistent and universal pattern. It normally proceeds step by step, stage by stage toward the elusive, relative, and rarely attained goal of "emotional maturity." Physical growth and biolog­ical readiness precede the emotional develop­ment. Each intermediate stage in personality development must be worked through before a person can go on to the next stage. No one can leap from infancy to adulthood. Arrested and distorted development, however, is all too common. The relationship of the individual with his own family, from earliest infancy onward, is a crucial factor in personality de­velopment

The Stages of Love

The newborn infant is small and helpless, utterly dependent on his mother or her sub­stitutes for very survival, yet he is born with the divine spark of life in him the will to live and love. The innate will to survive, to grow up and enjoy life is the basic font of vital human energy, it has been given the name of libido. As personality development progresses, a large part of the libido evolves into more directed and controlled feelings, which we call love. Fully developed, the libido repre­sents all those inner strivings which tend to preserve and extend life to "heal, cultivate, protect, and inspire" the human personality. But in the infant this love force appears in a crude, undifferentiated, untutored form.

The infant begins by loving himself. This is called narcissistic love, after the Greek legend of Narcissus, the handsome lad who fell in love with his own image in a pool. The infant "loves" and finds pleasurable gratification in different parts of his own body in a regularly observed succession. His first libidinal at­tachment is to his mouth (he puts everything into it), then to his anus, then to his genital organs.

As he becomes increasingly aware of the difference between himself and other people, the infant gradually shifts his love to objects outside himself. The first libidinal shift is to his mother, then to other members of the household. The young child identifies himself closely with his parents, idealizes them, and seeks to imitate them. This is imitative love.

The Unconscious Mind

The most serious criticism of the psychoan­alytic formulation of human conduct is prob­ably that it does not give full enough weight to the physiological factors involved; it more or less takes them for granted. Freud himself, who began as a neurologist, anticipated this criticism and worked out his theory precisely because there was not enough information at

 that time on the physiology or pathology (disorder) of the human nervous system to explain the huge backlog of unhappy people and mental illness that confronted him.

The success of recent drug therapy (e.g. tranquilizers and cerebral stimulants) in treating mild and severe mental illness sug­gests that physiological modifications of the nervous system can favorably modify the events presumed to occur in the unconscious mind. But the new ability to alter and im­prove the physiological factors in mental ill­ness does not entirely wipe out the psychic factors.

Those who doubt the existence and impor­tance of the unconscious mind must find a better explanation for such questions as: How can a fact be remembered one minute and forgotten the next? Where do dreams come from? Why do so many people feel uncomfor­tably anxious and guilty about trivial and unimportant events of their past and present experience? Why do patterns of reaction es­tablished in childhood persist throughout adult life?

Although other terminology for the struc­ture of the unconscious mind can be and has been used, the well-accepted (Freudian) con­struct divides it into three interacting parts: the id, the ego, and the superego.

The Id

A newborn baby, helpless though he is, nevertheless has a lust for life, instincts, and aptitudes (like the sucking reflex) for sur­vival. This passion for existence, this inher­ent vital emotional energy we have pointed out. can he described as his libido In a more impersonal term it can also be characterized as the id. All that we can guess or posit con­cerning the existence of the id we gain from observations of the conduct of the libido. (We have already traced the normal course of libido attachments to "love objects" from early inlancy through adulthood.) In the structure of the unconscious mind, therefore, the id can be construed as the uncontrolled source of the inborn tendencies, the instincts, the uncon­scious striving of the human organism to live and enjoy life

The id, however, has characteristics which are not in accord with the best in human con­duct Like a child who "wants what he wants when he wants it." the id constantly seeks its own pleasure and gratification. It acts as if pleasure were the only thing in the world that counts. It operates on the pleasure prin­ciple exclusively. This is the way infants and children behave, and it takes education, ma­turation, and social pressure before they give up the pleasure principle as the chief guide to conduct. Even in adults, of course, the pleasure-seeking drive persists but it is under greater control.

The pleasure-seeking id does not distin­guish between good and evil It is illogical; it holds contradictory wishes and impulses at the same time. In a word, the id it unrealistic The human organism which responded solely to its whims, its sexual and aggressive tend­encies, would probably not long survive.

The Superego

Crudely speaking, the superego is the con­science, the still, small voice within us that warns us against temptation and wrongdoing. But the voice we hear is only the conscious part of the superego. A larger part of it is buried in the unconscious, where it frequently bullies the ego and makes itself felt in vague but distressing feelings of guilt and shame. The superego embraces not only our conscious moral standards but also our "ego ideal" the picture of ourselves as we would secretly like to be and appear to the world.

While the reality principle restricts the ego to what is possible, the superego tells it what is permissible, or, to put it another way, what is socially acceptable. The superego is an es­sential check on asocial or antisocial conduct.

A peculiarity of the superego is that it is often behind the times. Its sternest admoni­tions frequently are those that were formed in early childhood. The nature of the superego is the heart of the doctrine: "Give me the child until he is seven and you can have him for the rest of his life."

This brings us to the ori­gin of the superego.

The superego is formed in childhood, principally between the ages of three and six. At this time, as already noted, the child is strongly identified with his parents (or their substitutes). Their least prohibitions and com­mands, their values, and their attitudes are etched deeply on the young and weak ego of the child, and these feelings become the es­sence of his superego.

The unfortunate catch in this is that the parents, impelled by their own superegos, too often urge the child to be better than he can be ("a perfect little lady or gentleman") and better than they (the parents) are or were themselves.

UNCONSCIOUS MIND

Now that we have described the unconscious mind, we are in a position to understand the conflicts that occur in it. The conflicts can be understood as battles between the ego and the id, the superego and the id, the ego and the superego, and struggles within the id. The focus of these conflicts is on the ego. It must mediate between the id and superego; it must obey the dictates of the su­perego; it must control the whimsical de­mands of the id; it must satisfy the needs of external reality; it must guide the entire per­sonality through the shoals and competitions of the real world. Some egos are stronger than others, but no ego can always meet all the demands upon it. It must sometimes adopt compromises, subtle means of self-protection variously called "ego defenses," mental mech­anisms, and mental dynamisms.

When the ego is under stress from the id or being "punished" by the superego, the indi­vidual whose ego is being hurt suffers from anxiety-a vague but often powerful feeling for which he has no obvious or immediate explanation. He cannot put his finger on the source of the anxiety because it is concealed and disguised in the unconscious mind. The anxiety may express itself in feelings of ten­sion, guilt, inferiority, or even physical symp­toms (e.g. a headache). There are always some physical reactions to the stress of anx­iety. In one sense anxiety may be considered an admission on the part of the ego that it is temporarily unable to cope with its taxing job.

Later in this chapter we shall deal with constructive ways of handling anxiety. At this point we shall set forth some of the men­tal mechanisms by which the ego seeks to defend itself against otherwise intolerable anxieties generated by conflicts in the uncon­scious mind.

THE MENTAL MECHANISMS

Mental mechanisms (mental dynamisms, ego defensesl operate solely in the unconscious mind. At the time we are using them, or over­using them, we are not aware of the fact. In retrospect we can sometimes recognize how our egos were defending themselves, and we are usually acutely aware of the mental mechanisms grossly employed by other people.

It is possible to identify some types of behavior originating in the use of mental mechanisms; childish behavior in an adult, for example, indicates the use of a mental mechanism called regression. Different people habitually use different mechanism; most people use several- When one com­promise fails, the uneasy ego grasps des­perately for another.

We must not blame ourselves or other peo­ple for using mental mechanisms; they are sometimes necessary to a particular individ­ual to enable him to deal with his real-life situations. We may, however, fairly question the persistent overworking of one or another mental mechanism. This betrays serious un­resolved conflicts in the unconscious mind, or, in other terms, an unsettled personality or a troubled person.

Repression

The most important mental mechanism is called repression; it is an emotional block that keeps us from remembering something even if we want to. In brief, the ego buries unpleasant memories and associations and frightening feelings. It also inhibits pleasant feelings, which arouse the threat of the id going out of control and prompting socially unacceptable behavior of a sexual or aggres­sive nature. Repressed material represents emotional reactions that we want to hide even from ourselves. But this repressed, buried, warded-off, hidden material does not disappear. It seeks expression one way or an­other. Since it is barred from directly entering the consciousness, it usually appears in a disguised and distorted form.

Among the ways in which repressed memo­ries and experiences may assert themselves are dreams, amnesia, purposeful forgetting, slips of the tongue, and the formation of neu­rotic anxiety symptoms. Dreams are "the royal road to the unconscious mind"; in them appear disguised images of the circumstances that have been repressed into the uncon­scious. Dreams usually represent wish ful­fillments—but of wishes we would not dare harbor in the conscious mind. Very often they are wishes to harm those we love —parents, spouse, children, brothers, and sisters.

Amnesia means loss of memory forgetting or repressing whole spans of time. Unpleas­ant war experiences, for instance, are some­times thus blanked out. Again, we do not like to look forward to events that threaten pain,   difficulty,   or   embarrassment.   So we purposefully forget a dental appointment; we stand up a date we didn't want in the first place. Of great significance is the universal experience called infantile amnesia. Almost everyone "forgets" the feelings of frustration, fear, and other experiences that occurred dur­ing infancy and early childhood.

Identification

Identification is the process by which the ego gains strength through attachment to another person, group (notably the family), or institution. The infant, as noted, identifies himself first with his mother, then with other members of his immediate family. The young child feels and behaves as though he were the parents themselves. He uncritically imi­tates their ways; he unconsciously adopts their traits, habits, ideas, prejudices, and values. When he is angry at them, he may hit himself!

Identification in later life represents the need for belonging to some group or "herd" and being accepted by that group. Even out­casts and outlaws huddle together for mutual reassurance. Identification is on the whole one of the most satisfactory adjustment mechanisms. However, overidentification with one's family, school, or other group may sharply limit one's personal development, inhibit outgoing feelings toward other people, and indicate unresolved inner feelings of a childlike dependency on others.

Some Other Mental Mechanisms in Operation

From the descriptions and examples of mental mechanisms already given it should be obvious that hidden struggles and conflicts within the unconscious mind create not only psychosomatic illness but also the wide di­versity of characters and personalities we meet in real life and in fiction. Without going into the complete details of the psychic processes involved in each, we shall give brief descriptions of generally recognizable "stock characters" whose peculiar behavior patterns are controlled by overworking ego defenses and mental mechanisms.

The extrovert. He turns to the outside world, to fierce rounds of activity, to careless and unreflective action in order to smother his inner conflicts. "The life of the party" is usu­ally running away from himself.

The introvert. He substitutes thought for action. He shrinks from his social environ­ment. He finds decision painfully difficult. He looks too long before he leaps.

 The perfectionist. He sets his goals so high that neither he himself nor others can reasonably criticize him for failing to achieve them.

The specialist. He chooses so odd or unique a line of endeavor that there is little compe­tition in it; thus he escapes the normal com­petitive struggle.

The know it all." He covers up his inner sense of inadequacy by an attitude of supe­riority. He appears too cocksure, dogmatic, and positive about his knowledge and opin­ions- He knows all the answers, he thinks; but he holds only minor jobs.

Mrs. Grundy. She viciously gossips about and criticizes others to compensate for her own feelings of inferiority. She secretly fears that, given the chance, she would behave worse than those she criticizes.

The alibi artist. He cannot face overt criti­cism. He fears that others will discover and confirm the low opinion he has about himself.

The isolationist. His unconscious mind has fashioned logic-tight compartments so that some parts of his inconsistent, paradoxical, multiple personality are completely isolated from others. This is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde character. A more recent portrayal of the multiple personality is to be found in the well-known psychiatric study entitled Three Faces of Eve.

The symbolist. He performs symbolic acts as a bribe to his superego in order to blot out or undo even more painful thoughts lurking in his unconscious mind. A classic example is Lady Macbeth repeatedly washing her hands in the vain hope of washing away her deeper feelings of guilt about having instigated murder.

The fetishist. He displaces his stong feelings for a person onto a thing. Afraid to express openly a love for a particular woman, he holds some physical symbol of her a hand­kerchief, a lock of her hair in even higher esteem.

Pollyanna. She persistently looks at the world through rose-colored glasses. She child­ishly denies that life includes struggle and difficulty. Eventually she is tripped up and overwhelmed by it.

Sublimation

Sublimation means directing, channelizing, and converting basic emotional drives, crude instinctual impulses, into socially acceptable and useful activities It is the true taming of the id by the ego under direction of the su­perego. Sublimations are the most construc­tive compromises and the happiest solutions to the inevitable frustrations that life sets before us. Though difficult to achieve, they bring social reward and approval which rein­forces and strengthens the ego.

Sublimations take many forms. Some serve for a time; others for a lifetime. The lives of dedicated men and women scientists, art­ists, missionaries, and others devoted to great causes illuminate how satisfying and crea­tive sublimations can be Pierre and Marie Curie, discoverers of radium, offer a lofty ex­ample of beautifully sublimated lives. So does the life of Abraham Lincoln. The creative arts have served man any as a  means of sublimating their inner drives and conflicts. Most com­monly the making of a home and the rearing of a family give the opportunity for the subli­mation of feelings to a most socially useful end.

Sublimation is not entirely an unconscious process. Conscious will, thought, and effort enter into it. One deliberately chooses realis­tic goals and activities which he can step by step, in spite of frustrations and difficulties, hope to reach This is the uphill road to sus­tained personal happiness the only road there is.

The Ego

The ego represents the conscious self. Through it the id is kept in touch with real­ity with the external world about it. Through the perceptual apparatus of the hu­man organism, the ego sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels what is going on about it. The ego acts in terms of the reality principle, which is an important characteristic of adult behavior. The ego gradually develops and gains strength in the course of the individ­ual's growing up and becoming educated in the ways of the world.

But the ego is frequently under pressure to satisfy the id This it cannot always do. any more than a parent can completely satisfy all the demands of a child. The relationship of the id to the ego has been aptly described as that of the horse to the rider. The rider di­rects the  horse with   more or less success. Sometimes, however, the horse is balky. He runs away; he may even throw the rider. In other words, the pleasure principle often de­fies and sometimes dethrones the reality principle.

The ego is almost the whole of the conscious mind and it is the seat of the higher faculties of the mind. However, a large part of the ego is submerged in the unconscious mind. A traffic of sensations, thought, and memories back and forth between the conscious and the un­conscious passes over the highways and nerve pathways of the ego- Not all thoughts and feelings pass with equal freedom. The ego pi aces barriers  defenses  against unwel­come impulses entering consciousness. We shall have much more to say about these ego defenses, or mental mechanisms, later on in this chapter.

The important characteristics of the ego learned in the process of growing up are that it is in constant touch with external reality; that it can learn by experience; that it can interpose thought between wish and act; that and feelings; and that it can be reasonable.

RKI.IEF of ANXIETY

The legitimate question remains: How oth­erwise than by sublimation can we reduce or minimize the burdens of anxiety inevitably generated by conflicts in the unconscious mind?

The first step is to understand that anxiety wears many disguises We have tried to strip a number of these disguises away by de­scribing the behavior patterns that result from overworking of the mental mechanisms. The perfectionist, the hypochondriac, the man who continually projects his own failings on others, the woman who always rationalizes her mistakes, and all the rest are motivated by an inner anxiety. This emotion may pa­rade as fatigue, over activity, homesickness, physical illness, a sense of inferiority, depression, and in scores of other guises. By recognizing that anxiety is the basic motiva­tion for personal conduct which displeases himself and attracts unfavorable reactions from others the individual is in a better posi­tion to seek and get help with his problem.

How else do you get rid of anxiety? Essen­tially by talking it out' University of Califor­nia Medical School psychiatrists J. Ruesch and A. R. Prestwood* made a special study of the problem of relieving anxiety and came to this well-accepted conclusion

The successful management of anxiety generated in daily life seems possible only through a process of sharing and communication.

The process of communication is essential for healthy functioning. Thus are people able to combine their efforts, to complement and increase their ability to cope with their sur­roundings The ability to communicate and hence to share anxiety seems to constitute the process responsible for feelings of personal security on the part of the individual. Allevi­ation of anxiety comes through personal con­tacts. This process is basic to all interpersonal relationships from babyhood to old age.

In addition to this crucial means of reliev­ing anxiety, we now have drugs to aid in the task   This  is the class of drugs, known as tranquilizers, introduced into medical prac­tice in the 1950's. Tranquilizers are chemical compounds specifically useful for the relief of anxiety. However, you cannot depend on tranquilizers alone, or any other drug, to dis­pel all the hosts of anxieties.

Rationalization

We can readily give what seem to us "good" reasons for being a Catholic or a Mason, a Republican or a Democrat, an adherent or opponent of the United Nations. But the "real" reasons are usually on quite a different plane. Of course the importance of this dis­tinction is popularly, if somewhat obscurely, recognized. The Baptist missionary is ready enough to see that the Buddhist is not such because his doctrines would bear careful in­spection, but because he happened to be born in a Buddhist family in Tokyo. But it would be treason to his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due the fact that his faith to acknowledge that his own partiality for certain doctrines is due to the fact that his mother was a member of the first Baptist church of oak ridge.

The "real" reasons for our beliefs are con­cealed from ourselves as well as from others. As we grow up we simply adopt the ideas presented to us in regard to such matters as religion, family relations, property, business, our country, and the state. We unconsciously absorb them from our environment. They are persistently whispered in our ear by the group in which we happen to live.

The little word my is the most important one in  all  human  affairs, and properly to reckon with it is the beginning of wisdom. It has the same force whether it is my dinner, my dog, and my house, or my faith, my coun­try, and my God. We not only resent the im­putation that our watch is wrong, or our car is shabby, but that our conception of the ca­nals of Mars, of the pronunciation of "Epicte-tus," of the medicinal value of salicine, or the date of Sargon I, are subject to revision.

Fantasy and Daydreaming

Unconscious fantasy, often translated into fancy daydreaming, is one of the most subtly dangerous mental mechanisms because al­though up to a certain point it is useful and constructive, beyond that difficult-to-determine point it can be destructive of the personality. Everyone engages in fantasy and daydreaming; the world properly respects the faculty of constructive imagination, as illu­minated by artists in every media. We escape from the pressures of reality through the pleasures of fantasy. We sustain ourselves through hopeful dreams of a "better future." We relax by entering into the world of illu­sion provided by fiction and drama in books and magazines, on stage and screen.

Fantasy becomes dangerous, however, when we no longer distinguish between what is fantasy and what is reality. In the uncon­scious mind fantasy is the property of the id, which indulges in wishful thinking just as much as it can without restraint from the ego.

Normal fantasizing has been carried too far when it has become a facile substitute for work and the effort needed to bring a vi­sion to reality when wishful thinking about success supersedes all struggle to attain it. People who live entirely in a dream world are mentally ill.

Rationalization

Rationalization is perhaps the most widely and frequently used of the unconscious ego defenses. It reflects a built-in bias, of which we are unaware, in favor of ourselves, our feelings, our own opinions, ideas, and prejudices

Rationalization   is the practice of finding and giving plausible and apparently "reason­able" explanations for thought and conduct that stems from quite different motivations than those we openly express. Rationalization is unconscious self-deception. It usually comes as a great shock to find that others do not see us or our points of view as we see them our­selves. We often rationalize our conduct to cover up our less worthy motives often our jealousies toward other people. Thus a teacher or mother chastises children "for their own good"unaware that she is enjoy­ing her own sense of power.

Rationalization is "emotional thinking" as opposed to valid reasoning. To a certain ex-tint, the unconscious mind being what it is rationalization is inevitable. There is no com­pletely rational man Since all our strongest personal beliefs and prejudices are rooted in emotions, it is not surprising that we de­fend them by rationalization rather than by critical, logical thought

Some of the most penetrating observations on rationalization were written more than a generation ago by the late Jame Harvey Rob inson in his brilliant book, The Mind in the Making, thus:

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is ob­viously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us. but our self-esteem, which is threatened.

We are by nature stubbornly pledged In defend our own from attack, whether it be our person, our family, our property, or our opin­ion. A United States Senator once remarked to a friend of mine that Clod Almighty could not make him change his mind on our Latin-America policy. We may surrender, but rarely confess ourselves vanquished. In the intellec­tual world at least peace is without victory.

Few of us take the pains to study he origin of our cherished convictions: indeed, we have a natural repugnance to so doing. We like to continue to believe what we have been accus­tomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

I remember years ago attending a public dinner to which the Governor of the state was bidden. The chairman explained that His Ex­cellency could not be present for certain "good" reasons; what the "real" reasons were the presiding officer said he would leave us to conjecture. This distinction between "good" and "real" reasons is one of the most clarify­ing and essential in the whole realm of thought.

Idealization

Identification of the young child with his parents gradually turns into idealization of them. The child's own ego ideals, the secret inner picture of himself as he feels he would like to be, are permanently established in his superego by this process of idealization.

Idealization, as a mental mechanism, is a device the ego adopts to escape the recrimi­nations of the superego. When it substitutes other ideals for the original parent ideals, it always includes at the core of the new ideals some fraction of the original pattern. "Ideal­istic love," as we have noted, is shaped in the inner image of one's parents.

Like identification, idealization is usually uncritical. This often leads to overestimation of the people toward whom it is directed. We see idealization blissfully at work in young lovers, who refuse to see the least blemish in their beloveds.

Idealization is also employed at the very highest cultural levels in religious worship and love of God, commonly idealized as Father, all-powerful and all-loving. We attribute  to God  all  that is best in  man.

Regression

Regression means reverting to immature and often childish behavior in the presence of current difficulties and frustrations. In terms of overt behavior it is one of the easiest of the mental mechanisms to observe and identify in other people. We all know the boy who won't play if he can't be captain of the team; the girl who sulks or goes into a temper tantrum if she misses a much-desired date; the tennis player who smashes his racket when he loses a match; the "perpetual undergraduate" col­lege alumnus, yelling himself hoarse at a football game; the child who throws himself on the floor and screams at the top of his lungs when he is denied candy. Not all re­gressive behavior is as obvious as the exam­ples given, but they should give the general idea.

Regression is a retreat from the complexi­ties of the present to the fancied security of the past. The ego feels more comfortable  for the moment in seeking an old solution for a present problem. Tears and tantrums, how­ever, rarely if ever get a person what he really wants.

Projection

Nobody likes to fail. We frequently seek to excuse our own failings by blaming them on someone or something else. The student who is failing a college course may sincerely but erroneously believe that the instructor is down on him the poor workman blames his tools Auto accidents are always "the other fellow's fault." When the ego rejects respon­sibility for failure and projects the blame elsewhere, it is employing the mental mecha­nism of projection.

But the process of projection may be much broader than merely excusing. We may, for example, project our own feelings on other people or the world at large. When we feel "blue," we may see the whole world as black. This is a false picture. We often attri­bute our own most undesirable traits to other people. If we are "bad." they are worse. We are most prone to project on others those feelings which trouble us most. Thus, if we feel secretly hostile toward somebody else, we may imagine that he is equally hostile toward us which may or may not be the case. Seeing others in a distorted image of our­selves may make us unduly critical, sarcasiic, cynical, and pessimistic.

Substitution

Substitution and displacement are mental mechanisms akin to projection. We sometimes substitute one love object for another as does the childless woman who lavishes ma­ternal affection upon a dog or cat. We may also displace our feelings, sometimes because we are afraid to express them toward the person who aroused them. Thus a man may be angry at his boss but displace his anger on his wife for some trivial reason. A girl who is angry at her parents may take it out in a quarrel  with  her boy friend, or vice versa.

Conversion

The conversion of conflicts in the uncon­scious mind into physical symptoms of illness is one of the most commonly employed of all mental mechanisms. Physicians estimate that at least half the patients they see are suffer­ing from complaints in which psychic or emotional factors are the prime if not the sole complaint.

The student who always gets a headache when faced with an examination is displaying a conversion symptom- So, too, is the soldier who suffers from hysterical blindness when he sees his buddy blown up a few feet away from him. Conversion reactions are in fact more common in wartime than peacetime, and they are the explanation of such condi­tions as hysterical paralysis, convulsions, loss of voice, deafness, ''shellshock," "soldier's heart," and "battle fatigue."

Illness becomes a way out of an intolerable situation. Physical pain is substituted for in­ner anxiety. The patient is unaware of the source of his pain. It is just as real to him as if it had a definite basis in a recognizable bodily defect. For example, a patient with a severe backache of purely psychogenic orign feels just as bad as if X-ray evidence actually showed a fracture in his spine.

Conversion symptoms are often difficult to relieve for the added reason that they offer some secondary gains or benefits to the pa­tient. He gets sympathy because he is "sick"; he may be relieved from the pressure of ordi­nary duties and responsibilities; he may even collect unearned money because of his "afflic­tion." For example, some people who have been involved in accidents do not recover from their symptoms until they receive a substantial cash settlement from an insur­ance company.

The "chronic invalid," the hypochondriac always worried about his health, and the neurotic who "enjoys" poor health offer fur­ther examples of conversion reactions. There is no accounting for their long lists of vague aches, pains, and other complaints except on a psychological basis. Fatigue is one of the commonest complaints.

Nevertheless actual impairment of bodily functions may result from prolonged un­conscious conflicts. Practically any organ or system of the body can be affected by "psycho­physiological disorders." Many emotional reactions, for example, are visibly ex­pressed in skin troubles. Other diseases which may be initiated or aggravated by uncon­scious anxiety include bronchial asthma, peptic ulcer, chronic colitis, and heart dis­ease (especially disease of the coronary arteries). Bodily illnesses wholly or partly of psychic origin are often described as "psychosomatic" —from pysche, for mind, and soma, for body.

CHRONIC (PATHOLOGICAL) FATIGUE

Closely akin to anxiety, and perhaps an­other form of it, is the condition often de­scribed as chronic, or pathological, fatigue. Chronic fatigue may also be called "emotional fatigue"; it is something different from sheer muscular or physiological fatigue that follows after strenuous work or exercise, as we have seen in Chapter 2. Since the factors that help to produce chronic fatigue and those which tend to relieve it are somewhat different from those involved in the generation of anxiety, we shall discuss this subject in its own terms.

Chronic, or pathological, fatigue is a symp­tom that something is wrong with the person who suffers from it. Many people are chroni­cally fatigued without realizing it. This fa­tigue may be expressed in changed moods, attitudes, and behavior, for example, excep­tional irritability, loss of a sense of humor or even loss of weight, poor appetite, and rest­less sleep. A constant state of muscular ten­sion considerably beyond normal muscle tone commonly accompanies chronic fatigue. This abnormal tension, or hypertonus, arises because the muscles are being constantly stimulated by unconscious motivations to make first this move and then that. However, the stimulus to complete the move is inhib­ited and countermanded before the muscles can fully obey. These alternating commands keep the muscles constantly on stretch. Fa­tigue products are never completely enough dispelled, so the feeling of fatigue persists.

External pressures and environmental cir­cumstances are factors in bringing on chronic fatigue. This has been studied particularly in the field of industrial hygiene- Workers be­come fatigued and less productive when they must work under conditions of poor light and glare, poor ventilation, too much noise and heat, uncomfortable seating, and exposure to dusts and fumes.

Other factors that induce fatigue are ex­cessive hours of work, lack of properly spaced rest pauses, awkward working positions, "speed-up" of work beyond capacity to perform, and the monotony of simple, repeated opera­tions. Workers are less productive also when they are afraid of and hostile toward their jobs and bosses.

Some of the facts discovered in the study of industrial hygiene can be profitably applied by the wise student in eliminating fatigue factors from his own life. He can arrange to do his studying under the best possible con­ditions of physical comfort and efficiency; it will be rare, however, that perfect or ideal conditions exist. Equally important is a rhythm of work balanced with relaxation. A rest pause of five minutes during each study hour is advisable. There should be some regu­larity in the student's schedule of study, play, eating, and sleeping. Too much extracur­ricular pressure should be avoided. On the other hand some interests beyond study and some fruitful methods of relaxation should be encouraged. Procrastination, delay, and over-crowding of hours bring on fatigue and reduce efficiency. Careless students work the hardest.

Why to Stay away from Stimulants

CHRONIC (PATHOLOGICAL) FATIGUE

The wrong way to fight fatigue is by indul­gence in chemical stimulants. The reason? Too often, when taken in sufficient dosage to have any genuine effect, they create a "re­bound reaction" and, after a short while, you end up feeling more fatigued than before you took the drug.

Probably the best known and most widely used stimulant drug is caffeine, which is the active   ingredient   in   coffee,   tea,   chocolate drinks, some cola drinks, and many non-pre­scription "stay awake" drugs.

There are, of course, many other drugs known to stimulate the central nervous sys­tem, including amphetamines (such as Ben­zedrine) and whole new series of psychic stim­ulants that have been developed in the 1960's. When prescribed by a physician upon proper indications, these are valuable medications.

Many college students, however, have the mistaken idea that they can take these so-called pep pills indiscriminately and without harm. Pep pills are often used by students to cram for exams or to drive all night to get home or back to college after an exciting weekend. This is a dangerous practice, be­cause all potent stimulant drugs may have side effects (in addition to rebound reactions) and untoward reactions that were not antici­pated by the indiscriminate self-medicator. There are better ways than chemicals to deal with fatigue; notably by better organization of one's time, by recreation, relaxation, good sleeping habits, and the control of factors and problems which induce needless psychic stress and muscular tension.

In summary: This chapter has covered the sequence of normal personality development, from infancy onward. It has presented the concept and the construct of the unconscious mind, divided conventionally into id, ego, and superego. It has discussed the conflicts in the unconscious mind and described a number of the "ego-defenses," also called mental mecha­nisms and mental dynamisms, by which the ego protects itself for example, repression, regression, rationalization, etc. The impor­tant subject of anxiety and several ways to relieve it have been discussed; notably through sharing and communication and by means of tranquilizers. The topic of chronic or pathological fatigue, akin to anxiety, has also been presented. In conclusion, the uncon­scious mind is a powerful force in deter­mining human personality and behavior.