Vaillant's Argument Essay

Decent Essays
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 health in the entire study. The man replied that he was constantly “probably fooling himself”. Vaillant explains that we are unconsciously distorting reality (fooling ourselves), which is the way we deal with reality. • What I learned in class: In class we discussed how since early childhood, we make up stories or fabricate unconscious thoughts and behaviors that either shape or distort a person’s reality. Distorting reality is the best way to protect ourselves from pain and helps us deal with difficult situations. For example, we spoke about how our brain is constantly creating gibberish to protect us from pain, conflict, or uncertainty. We constantly think that we are important, valuable, essential etc. Whereas, if we would not distort reality, we would really start thinking about the fact that we a not really that important, that if we wouldn’t exist, the world would still be the same. If we wouldn’t be fooling ourselves we would simply get severely depressed. We also discussed in class, that older people tend to remember positive and pleasant memories and they usually try to forget distressing experiences in their life; distortions can definitely serve as protective shields. What are the central adaptations/defenses/coping strategies that we use to cope with the complexities of relating to others? Which are adaptive and which can hurt us and why? • My own life experience: Personally, I believe that I have employed the splitting defense, denial and indifference as defense mechanisms since early childhood and throughout the course of my life to protect myself from pain. My two oldest brothers got jealous whenever I was born and they used to tease me all the time, so I decided to avoid them and pretend that they didn’t exist. The splitting defense against my brother helped me deal with their behavior, so divided them into good and bad; --well, mostly bad--. After a few years my relationship with them changed and I stopped dividing them into “good and bad”. However, I believe that I still use this defense, not with my brothers because we get along, but whenever I’m facing circumstances in which I feel like I need to protect myself from being hurt. Throughout the course of my life I have also employed “sublimation” because …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

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