Defense Mechanisms
Defense Mechanisms are psychological, emotional, biological, and behavioral patterns that are selected and reinforced because of their contribution to the defense/survival of the Physical Unit.
Related Terms
Defense Mechanisms > Ego Threat
Notes
DMs may be internally directed or externally directed.
There are three basic "modes of operation" (RRIP)
- Awareness Reduction Mechanisms - reduce awareness to avoid perceiving disjunctive realities, or feeling disjunctive emotions.
- Awareness Redirection Mechanisms - redirect awareness to avoid perceiving disjunctive realities, or feeling disjunctive emotions
- Informational Positioning - repositioning reality. For example, converting the feelings to anger and resentment, and then blaming the victim. "Sure I beat you as a child, but so what. You're just too weak to handle it."
The acronym could be, very appropriately, RRIP. Reduction, Redirection, Informational Positioning
Defence mechanisms may be best understood by considering them like software programs coded into the genetic substrate of the Physical Unit. The programs are coded as a result of experience and accessed via associative pathways.
Genetic software generally consists of two elements, 1) eliciting conditions and 2) "winning" responses. Eliciting conditions are any conditions or experiences that the brain of the physical unit perceives of as salient, and which consequently elicit the mechanism, and winning responses are those responses that have lead, in the past, to both short term and long term survivability. The "winning" response is the response that allows the transmission of genetic materials to the next generations.
Defence mechanisms are supported by, among other things, the endocrine systems of the body. Activation of survival programming often involves releases of specific chemicals (adrenaline, testosterone, etc.) designed to both prepare for, and encourage, a certain Survival Response (e.g., fight, flight, or submission).
Survival mechanisms are supported by, among other things, the endocrine systems of the body. Activation of survival programming often involves releases of specific chemicals (adrenaline, testosterone, etc.) designed to both prepare for, and encourage, a certain Survival Response (e.g., fight, flight, or submission).
Stress and anxiety are toxic and long term exposure weakens the physical unit. Defense mechanisms work to ensure survival directly, but also to lower stress and anxiety.
It should be noted that since the evolution of the physical unit proceeds slowly (i.e. over millennial and not centuries or decades), current defense mechanisms originate in the hunting and gathering past of this planet. Some defence mechanisms may be rooted in an ancient environment and may no longer be appropriate (or necessary) for modern conditions.
Defence mechanisms are exploited by System Agents in the construction and reinforcement of The System. The survival mechanism of repression is exploited, for example, in order to subvert awareness of the bitter realities of this world. Similarly, Action or Avoidance mechanisms are exploited in order to control behaviour.
