Psychic equivalence

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Psychic equivalence describes a mind-state where no distinction is drawn between the contents of the mind and the external world - where what is thought in the mind is assumed to be automatically true.

Contents

Origins

Psychic equivalence is a primitive mind-state which precedes in infancy the capacity for mentalization, that is, for reflection upon both inner and outer worlds. In psychic equivalence mode, if the child thinks there is a monster in the closet it believes there really is a monster in the closet; [1] if the inner world feels harmonious, the world outside is also harmonious. [2] Psychic equivalence is thus a form of concrete understanding of the world, self-convinced, that blocks all curiosity about alternative mind-views. [3]

In psychology, mentalization is the ability to understand the mental state, of oneself or others, that underlies overt behaviour. Mentalization can be seen as a form of imaginative mental activity that lets us perceive and interpret human behaviour in terms of intentional mental states. It is sometimes described as "understanding misunderstanding." Another term that David Wallin has used for mentalization is "Thinking about thinking". Mentalization can occur either automatically or consciously. Mentalization ability, or mentalizing, is weakened by intense emotion.

In later life

Psychic equivalence reappears in later life in the course of dreams, delusions, and traumatic flashbacks. [4] It involves a temporary loss of awareness of the difference between external reality and the contents of the mind: [5] thus in post traumatic stress disorder the individual is convinced (perhaps years later) they are actually back in the situation of the original trauma, a complete loss of perspective. [6]

Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one's ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience. Trauma may result from a single distressing experience or recurring events of being overwhelmed that can be precipitated in weeks, years, or even decades as the person struggles to cope with the immediate circumstances, eventually leading to serious, long-term negative consequences.

Where a defensive false self has been built up since infancy to defend against the anxieties of psychic equivalence, subsequent collapse of the narcissistic structure can lead to the re-emergence of the terrifying impingement by reality of psychic equivalence. [7]

True self and false self are psychological concepts often used in connection with narcissism.

Narcissism is the pursuit of gratification from vanity or egotistic admiration of one's idealised self image and attributes. The term originated from Greek mythology, where the young Narcissus fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Narcissism is a concept in psychoanalytic theory, which was popularly introduced in Sigmund Freud's essay On Narcissism (1914). The American Psychiatric Association has listed the classification narcissistic personality disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since 1968, drawing on the historical concept of megalomania.

See also

Delirium Severe confusion that develops quickly, and often fluctuates in intensity

Delirium, also known as acute confusional state, is an organically caused decline from a previous baseline level of mental function that develops over a short period of time, typically hours to days. Delirium is a syndrome encompassing disturbances in attention, consciousness, and cognition. It may also involve other neurological deficits, such as psychomotor disturbances, impaired sleep-wake cycle, emotional disturbances, and perceptual disturbances, although these features are not required for diagnosis. Delirium is caused by an acute organic process, which is a physically identifiable structural, functional, or chemical problem in the brain that may arise from a disease process outside the brain that nonetheless affects the brain. It may result from an underlying disease process, side effect of a medication, withdrawal from drugs, over-consumption of alcohol, or from any number of factors affecting one's overall health. In contrast, fluctuations in mental status/function due to changes in primarily psychiatric processes or diseases do not, by definition, meet the criteria for 'delirium.' Delirium may be difficult to diagnose without the proper establishment of a person's usual mental function. Without careful assessment and history, delirium can easily be confused with a number of psychiatric disorders or chronic organic brain syndromes because of many overlapping signs and symptoms in common with dementia, depression, psychosis, etc. Delirium may manifest from a baseline of existing mental illness, baseline intellectual disability, or dementia, without being due to any of these problems. Treatment of delirium requires treating the underlying cause and multi-faceted interventions are thought to be most effective. In some cases, temporary and/or symptomatic treatments are used to comfort the person or to facilitate other care. Antipsychotics are not supported for the treatment or prevention of delirium among those who are in hospital. When delirium is caused by alcohol or sedative hypnotic withdrawal, benzodiazepines are typically used. Delirium affects 14–24% of all hospitalized individuals. The overall prevalence for the general population is 1–2% but this increases with age, reaching 14% of adults over age 85. Among older adults, delirium occurs in 15–53% of those post-surgery, 70–87% of those in the ICU, up to 60% of those in nursing homes or post-acute care settings. Among those requiring critical care, delirium is a risk for death within the next year.

A limit-experience is a type of action or experience which approaches the edge of living in terms of its intensity and its seeming impossibility. This approach has led to the seeking of limit experiences as a sort of dark mysticism. A limit experience breaks the subject from itself. The idea is associated with writers Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Michel Foucault.

Magical thinking is a term used in anthropology, philosophy and psychology, denoting the causal relationships between actions and events. There are subtle differences in meaning between individual theorists as well as amongst fields of study.

Related Research Articles

In philosophy, idealism is the group of metaphysical philosophies that assert that reality, or reality as humans can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing. In contrast to materialism, idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of material phenomena. According to this view, consciousness exists before and is the pre-condition of material existence. Consciousness creates and determines the material and not vice versa. Idealism believes consciousness and mind to be the origin of the material world and aims to explain the existing world according to these principles.

Psychosomatic medicine is an interdisciplinary medical field exploring the relationships among social, psychological, and behavioral factors on bodily processes and quality of life in humans and animals.

Id, ego and super-ego three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freuds structural model of the psyche

The id, ego, and super-ego are three distinct, yet interacting agents in the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche.

Solipsism is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. This extreme position is claimed to be irrefutable, as the solipsist believes themselves to be the only true authority, all others being creations of their own mind.

Subjective idealism

Subjective idealism, or empirical idealism, is the monistic metaphysical doctrine that only minds and mental contents exist. It entails and is generally identified or associated with immaterialism, the doctrine that material things do not exist. Subjective idealism rejects dualism, neutral monism, and materialism; indeed, it is the contrary of eliminative materialism, the doctrine that all or some classes of mental phenomena do not exist, but are sheer illusions.

Vritti, literally "whirlpool", is a technical term in yoga meant to indicate that the contents of mental awareness are disturbances in the medium of consciousness. Vritti can be taken as a catch-all term for any content in consciousness, where consciousness is regarded as a medium or container for any possible mental content. The scope of the idea is very broad, referring not only to thoughts and perceptions experienced in a normal waking state, but also to all super-physical perceptions, such as dreams or in any altered state of consciousness. Vritti has also been translated as "waves" or "ripples" of disturbance upon the otherwise calm waters of the mind. The classical definition of yoga as stated in the Yoga Sutras is to calm the waves and return, or reunite mind to its calm state, or samadhi.

Dissociation is any of a wide array of experiences from mild detachment from immediate surroundings to more severe detachment from physical and emotional experiences. The major characteristic of all dissociative phenomena involves a detachment from reality, rather than a loss of reality as in psychosis.

Panpsychism philosophical concept

In philosophy, panpsychism is the view that mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It has taken on a wide variety of forms. Contemporary academic proponents hold that sentience or subjective experience is ubiquitous, while distancing these qualities from complex human mental attributes; they ascribe a primitive form of mentality to entities at the fundamental level of physics but do not ascribe it to most aggregates, such as rocks or buildings. On the other hand, some historical theorists ascribed attributes like life or spirits to all entities.

Object relations theory

Object relations theory in psychoanalytic psychology is the process of developing a psyche in relation to others in the environment during childhood. It designates theories or aspects of theories that are concerned with the exploration of relationships between real and external people as well as internal images and the relations found in them. It also maintains that it is the infant's relationship with the mother that primarily determines the formation of his personality in his adult life. Particularly, the need for attachment is the bedrock of the development of the self or the psychic organization that creates the sense of identity.

A comfort object, transitional object, or security blanket is an item used to provide psychological comfort, especially in unusual or unique situations, or at bedtime for children. Among toddlers, comfort objects may take the form of a blanket, a stuffed animal, or a favorite toy, and may be referred to by nicknames.

Integral yoga

Integral yoga, also called supramental yoga, is the yoga-based philosophy and practice of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. Integral yoga finds all life conscious or subconscious a yoga, defines the term yoga as a methodised effort towards self-perfection by the expression of the secret potentialities latent in the being and highest condition of victory in that effort - a union of the human individual with the universal and transcendent existence which is seen partially as expressions in humans and in the cosmos. As a yoga idea, that Spirit manifests itself in a process of involution. The reverse process of evolution is driven toward a complete manifestation of spirit.

Metaphysical solipsism is the variety of idealism which asserts that nothing exists externally to this one mind, and since this mind is the whole of reality then the "external world" was never anything more than an idea. It can also be expressed by the assertion "there is nothing external to these present experiences", in other words, no reality exists beyond whatever is presently being sensed. The aforementioned definition of solipsism entails the non-existence of anything presently unperceived including the external world, causation, other minds, the past or future, and a subject of experience. Despite their ontological non-existence, these entities may nonetheless be said to "exist" as useful descriptions of the various experiences and thoughts that constitute 'this' mind. The solipsistic self is described by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus: "The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it".

Peter Fonagy British psychoanalyst & psychologist

Peter Fonagy, is a Hungarian-born British psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist. He studied clinical psychology at University College London. He is Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science and Head of the Division of Psychology and Language Sciences at University College London, Chief Executive of the Anna Freud Centre, a training and supervising analyst in the British Psycho-Analytical Society in child and adult analysis, a Fellow of the British Academy, the Faculty of Medical Sciences, the Academy of Social Sciences and a registrant of the BPC. His clinical interests centre on issues of borderline psychopathology, violence and early attachment relationships. His work attempts to integrate empirical research with psychoanalytic theory. He has published over 500 papers, 270 chapters and has authored 19 and edited 17 books.

Narcissistic mortification is "the primitive terror of self dissolution, triggered by the sudden exposure of one's sense of a defective self ... it is death by embarrassment". Narcissistic mortification is a term first used by Sigmund Freud in his last book, Moses and Monotheism, with respect to early injuries to the ego/self. The concept has been widely employed in ego psychology and also contributed to the roots of self psychology.

This is a glossary of terms used in New Thought.

Pratyabhijna

Pratyabhijna is an idealistic monistic and theistic school of philosophy in Kashmir Shaivism, originating in the 9th century CE. The term Trika was used by Abhinavagupta to represent the entire Kashmir Shaivism or to designate the Pratyabhijna system.

Bizarre object in object relations theory is the name given to external objects which, by way of projective identification, are imbued with characteristics of the subject's own personality.

Trauma-sensitive yoga is modern yoga, based on the postures called asanas, adapted from 2002 onwards for work with individuals affected by psychological trauma. The goal of trauma-sensitive yoga is for trauma survivors to develop a greater sense of mind-body connection, ease their physiological experiences of trauma, gain a greater sense of ownership over their bodies, and augment their overall well-being.

Symbolic equation is the term used in Kleinian psychoanalysis for states of thinking which equate current objects with those of the past, rather than finding a resemblance between the two sets.

References

  1. ↑ J Allen, Mentalizing in Clinical Practice (2008) p. 90
  2. ↑ S Fraiberg, The Magic Years (New York 1987) p. 7
  3. ↑ P Robinson, Hunger (2018) p. 22 and p. 56
  4. ↑ J Allen, Mentalizing in Clinical Practice (2008) p. 91-2
  5. ↑ P Williams ed, The Psychoanalytic Therapy of Severe Disturbances (2010) p. 51-2
  6. ↑ D Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (London 1996) p. 203
  7. ↑ G Goodman Transforming the Internal World and Attachment 1 (2010) p. 182
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