Awareness Reduction Mechanisms
Awareness Reduction Mechanisms (ARMs), are a subclass of Defense Mechanisms. They are strategies that the Bodily Ego can use to reduce awareness of itself, its physical and mental condition, the "room" that it's in, and the condition of its life. ARMS are typically deployed in order to reduce pain, suffering, guilt, shame, and the disjuncture that arises from internal misalignment or external violence and abuse. Several ARMS exist, the most common being:
Other Awareness Reduction Mechanisms
Awareness Reduction Mechanisms > Avoidance, Denial, Displacement, Dissociation, Distortion, Distraction, Diversion, Gaslighting, Intellectualization, Internalization, Projection, Rationalization, Reaction Formation, Regression, Repression, Sublimation
Related LP Terms
Awareness Reduction Mechanisms > Bodily Ego, Cognitive Wall, Defence Mechanisms, Disjuncture, Externally Directed ARMs, Internally Directed Arms
Non-LP Related Terms
Awareness Reduction Mechanisms > Ego Threat, Unwanted Self
Notes
ARMs are broken down into two categories, Externally Directed ARMs and Internally Directed Arms.
Notes
ARMs are broken down into two categories, Externally Directed ARMs and Internally Directed Arms.
There are four basic categories of ARMs.
- Primary ARM -> Repression
- Secondary ARMs -> Denial, Rationalization, Diversion/Distraction, Intellectualization, Compartmentalization
- Tertiary ARMs -> Reaction Formation, Gaslightning,
- Pathological ARMs -> Dissociation, Regression, Conversion
External Arms
- Compartmentalization – suppressing awareness by breaking your life and your cognitive/emotional processes into discrete spaces. When you come home at night, you block out exploitation and abuse you perpetrate at work. When you go to work in the morning, you block out violence in the home. When you go to Church, you do not think about the hypocrisies in your daily life.
- Denial– simple refusal to accept reality “as it is.” My mom beat me with a wooden spoon and leather belts, but she denies it to this day. The equivalent external ARM is repression.
- Distortion – reshaping reality to avoid awareness of disjunctive realities. “What doesn’t kill you leaves a scar” justifications distort our understanding of violence and abuse and provide a justification for them.
- Humor is a form of distortion. Using humor to change the “meaning” of reality. Making sexist, racist, homophobic jokes in an attempt to render the abusive behaviours acceptable, or gain social support.
- Intellectualization – Not a defense mechanisms by itself, but a particular form of compartmentalization, dissociation, diversion, using the powers of the intellect
- Dissociation – detachment from reality. Disconnection, especially intellectual. Daydreaming through dissociative disorders and fugue.
- Diversion/Distraction – engaging in other activities, behaviours that draw attention away from issues in reality. For example, getting into a running club and spending all your time away from family in order to avoid the toxicities/issues at home.
- Rationalization – “the justification of one's behaviour and motivations by substituting "good" acceptable reasons for the actual motivations.”
Internal Arms
- Dissociation – detachment from reality. Disconnection, especially emotional.1 Daydreaming. Dissociative disorders. Typically used in an attempt to avoid stress/pain/conflict in the environment.
- Diversion/Distraction – engaging in other activities, behaviours that allow one draw attention away from feelings. For example, getting into a running club and spending your entire time running. Includes obsessions, compulsions, hypochondriasis, etc.
- Repression – forced submersion of thoughts (I am doing something wrong) and feelings, like guilt, shame, etc. For the equivalent internal ARM, see Denial.
- Regression – fall back to childhood states, allowing only simpler, childlike emotions and awareness.
- Projection – projecting guilt, shame, other negative emotions and thoughts onto others.
- Reaction formation – choreographing the opposite emotions. Denial.
Maslow has some interesting things to say about defense mechanisms, especially in light of the LP concept of Alignment, also about the nature of therapy (it is about uncovering rather than molding, and that even neurosis are somehow aimed at the g\ratification of human needs (see Seven Essential Needs. Thus for example OCD may be an attempt to satisfy one's need for safety by routinizing activity and blocking out toxic impositions.
"A fifth axiom of self-actualization theory is my contention-as yet unproven that neurosis must be considered a psychological defense and not basic to human nature. Furthermore, neurosis must be viewed as a defense against the intrinsic self, our deeper layers, full humanness, growth, and self-actualization. From this assumption, I have argued vigorously that effective counseling and psychotherapy are Taoistic or uncovering, rather than involving mainly shaping,molding, or indoctrinating....It may be relevant to point out here that ordinary neurosis and even the valve pathologies like delinquency may consequently be viewed as efforts toward the gratification of basic and meta-needs, but under the conditions of anxiety, fear, lack of courage." [1]
For LP purposes, we break ARMs down into two general categories, External ARMs and Internal ARMs. External ARMs are defense mechanisms aimed at reducing awareness of things external to the individual, like the behaviour of others, conditions at work, bullying by students/teachers, etc. Internal ARMs are defense mechanisms aimed at reducing awareness of things internal to the individual, like disjunctive shame and guilt, or awareness of complicity, etc.
An individual may deploy several ARMs at the same time.
Quotes
Jung
Jung speaking about the utility of "awareness reduction"
"Beyond doubt, even in what we rail a high level of civilization, human consciousness has not yet achieved a reasonable degree of continuity. It is still vulnerable and liable to fragmentation. This capacity to isolate part or one's mind, indeed, is a valuable characteristic. It enables us to concentrate upon one thing at a time, excluding everything else that may claim our attention." [2]
Jung pointing out that "Consciousness 'naturally' resists anything unconscious and unknown" is an observation of the ego's efforts to reduce awareness of things.[3] He normalizes and naturalizes that by making some racist and erroneous statements about how indigenous folk think, but then notes it's a problem even for professionals and scientists.
I would say it is neither normal or natural but rather something we are trained to do by the Indoctrination that occurs during the process of Toxic Socialization we all endure.
Jung points to a hypnotist's ability to retrieve repressed memories as proof of the existence of awareness reduction mechanisms. Also to the associative nature of memory, like how a smell can trigger submerged memories of youth. He points to a passage in Nietzsche that seems to suggest even fine details can be submerged by remember for years [4] (though honestly, plagiarism is the more parsimonious explanation."
Jung notes that these sorts of cues can "trigger" neurosis, meaning that the sudden awareness of some bad stuff in memory can cause emotional and psychological challenge.
Footnotes
- ↑ ———. “Critique of Self-Actualization. I. Some Dangers of Being-Cognition.” Journal of Individual Psychology 15, no. 1 (May 1, 1959): 24. p. 105
- ↑ Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols. New York: Anchor Press Double Day, 1964. p. 25.
- ↑ Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols. New York: Anchor Press Double Day, 1964. p. 25. Scare quotes added.
- ↑ Jung, Carl G. Man and His Symbols. New York: Anchor Press Double Day, 1964. p. 37.
