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.