![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/images\/printcover\/200906_toc.jpg\" "\\"June")
In this lengthy piece, Shenk writes of a 72 year study of Harvard men and their well-being.<\/p>\n In this lengthy piece, Shenk writes of a 72 year study of Harvard men and their well-being.<\/p>\n
It is an interesting read.\u00a0 Specialization in fields (sociology vs. biology vs. psychiatry vs…) is a good thing, but a side effect is that it has turned academia into a place that is not very welcoming to scholars who try to put the whole picture.\u00a0 I am pleased to see Shenk report that happiness scholars are reappearing in academia. Figuring out what makes humans happy is the most important subject of all, no?<\/p>\n
One bit in this piece especially caught my eye. Speaking of Professor George Vaillant, Shenk wrote:<\/p>\n
His central question is not how much or how little trouble these men met, but rather precisely how\u2014and to what effect\u2014they responded to that trouble. His main interpretive lens has been the psychoanalytic metaphor of \u201cadaptations,\u201d or unconscious responses to pain, conflict, or uncertainty. Formalized by Anna Freud on the basis of her father\u2019s work, adaptations (also called \u201cdefense mechanisms\u201d) are unconscious thoughts and behaviors that you could say either shape or distort\u2014depending on whether you approve or disapprove\u2014a person\u2019s reality.<\/p>\n
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Vaillant explains defenses as the mental equivalent of a basic biological process. When we cut ourselves, for example, our blood clots\u2014a swift and involuntary response that maintains homeostasis. Similarly, when we encounter a challenge large or small\u2014a mother\u2019s death or a broken shoelace\u2014our defenses float us through the emotional swamp. And just as clotting can save us from bleeding to death\u2014or plug a coronary artery and lead to a heart attack\u2014defenses can spell our redemption or ruin. Vaillant\u2019s taxonomy ranks defenses from worst to best, in four categories.<\/p>\n
At the bottom of the pile are the unhealthiest, or \u201cpsychotic,\u201d adaptations<\/span>\u2014like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania\u2014which, while they can serve to make reality tolerable for the person employing them, seem crazy to anyone else. One level up are the \u201cimmature\u201d adaptations<\/span>, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy. These aren\u2019t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy. \u201cNeurotic\u201d defenses<\/span> are common in \u201cnormal\u201d people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one\u2019s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve \u201cseemingly inexplicable na\u00efvet\u00e9, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.\u201d The healthiest, or \u201cmature,\u201d adaptations<\/span> include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship).<\/p>\n
In contrast to Anna Freud, who located the origins of defenses in the sexual conflicts of a child, Vaillant sees adaptations as arising organically from the pain of experience and playing out through the whole lifespan. [Underlining added.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Of course, these are simple frames, but they are useful, and they can help us think about others and ourselves. E.g., Tom mostly employs\u00a0 mature adaptations, Tim sadly is prone to both psychotic and neurotic adaptions, while Jeff is a happy guy and an intellectualizer. And me, well I … (snip)<\/p>\n
Clearly, nobody uses just one type of adaptation always. Some folks are mostly happy clams, unruffled by all the world throws at them.\u00a0 And then they snap over some antagonism that others view as a common irritant. As they say, everyone has certain things that really push one’s buttons.<\/p>\n
Does anyone doubt that external stimuli can stress animals and make them miserable?\u00a0 Nobody that I know.\u00a0 Yet, we humans often find it difficult to recognize that these shocks are working on us and that we can, with practice, learn to recognize them and respond healthily.<\/p>\n
Perhaps this is an argument for more character education, though not quite the sort that often is peddled by the moralizers in society, who equate good character with a cluster of desirable beliefs: patriotism, honesty, earnestness, etc.<\/p>\n