Vaillant's Argument Essay

In the article, Vaillant illustrates how one of the men they followed during the study always managed to deal with bad experiences and was one of the best examples of good mental health in the entire study. When this individual was young his mother left with his father’s best friend and his reaction was that this had just happened the same way things happen in movies. This young man also went to war because his father wanted him to be a doctor, so he decided to go against his father’s wish and he joined the army. After he came back from war, he graduated, got married and had a strong relationship with his wife and kids. Vaillant wrote to him to ask him what his secret was because he had always ranked among the best examples of good mental …show more content…
Adaptations are unconscious responses to pain, bad circumstances and conflictive situations. Vaillant points out that the study was not about how much trouble the man followed in the study faced throughout their lives, the main focus of the study was about how these men reacted and dealt with trouble. During the study, Vaillant divided these adaptations into four categories: The unhealthiest of these defense mechanisms are the “psychotic adaptations”, which include paranoioa and hallucinacions. People and young children might use psychotic defenses to tolerate reality but they might look crazy to others. In the article I also found intriguing how another type of adaptations is the “immature adaptation” in which a person might act out and be a little bit aggressive. In addition, the most common adaptations among people are the “neurotic” defenses, which include dissociation, repression and intellectualization. Vaillant describes that the healthiest of these adaptations are the “mature adaptations” people with these adaptations use humor, anticipation, suppression (shifting attention towards something else or addressing the issue at a better time) and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings or focusing in