The problem with the separation of psychological defenses also arises due to the fact that defense mechanisms often do not exist in an isolated form, but follow in the form of a specific chain or conglomerate, then it is very difficult to attribute this formation to any one specific type of psychological defense. In addition, there are a large number of transitional forms. The question arises: is it so important to accurately determine the type of psychological protection? If you do not adhere to the classification of success and failure, if you look at psychological protection in a different way, more integratively, then a clear division of psychological defenses becomes less necessary, since today there is no targeted system for dealing with each specific type of psychological protection. The classification given below is most likely of academic importance. And for a young doctor, it is not important to have a detailed knowledge of all the mechanisms of psychological protection and how they function in his patients and in himself, but it is important to know the most frequently functioning mechanisms, for example, such as repression, when something that is unbearable for a person is removed into the unconscious sphere. Denial Denial works when a person does not want to admit something, for example, having a serious illness. This psychological defense begins to form at a very young age, when the child sincerely tells the mother that he did not break the cup, and looks her honestly in the eyes. There are two possible options here: either this child is a liar and a good actor, or the psychological defense of denial has come into play, and the child is firmly convinced at this moment that he did not break the cup because his psyche has not reconciled to this fact. Most often, doctors have to deal with psychological defenses such as denial in cases of severe, life-threatening or social status-threatening diseases (oncological, venereological, cardiological, and mental). There is a known case when parents refused to recognize their adopted son’s schizophrenia. They loved him very much, brought him up in a type of hyperprotection, the boy was not allowed to enter the real world, protected from any of its manifestations, which may have provoked schizophrenia. Both parents are educated people, have higher education, and both have come to the conclusion that their son is pretending, fooling around. And the stronger this belief is in them, the clearer the severity of their problem. The intensity of psychological defense is an indicator of the intensity and severity of a problem. It is necessary to work with these people gently, carefully, understanding the most difficult condition they are in. In case of a myocardial infarction, a person lies in a ward with a signboard on the entire wall – “Department of Acute myocardial infarction.” Before that, he had been in intensive care for several days, where, when he came to, he saw patients around whom doctors were fussing. The patient is constantly being given ivs, he is lying entangled in wires of monitoring equipment, and people are dying of a heart attack nearby. On the twentieth day of treatment, this person asks his doctor in surprise: “So, am I having a heart attack?” The doctor answers: “You had a severe heart attack, and you’re already walking down the street!” And this revelation turns out to be so hard for him that, coming to the ward, he gives a severe attack of angina pectoris, which ends with a repeat microinfarction. This happened because his psychological defenses were lifted, and they were lifted roughly, abruptly. There is another consequence of the abuse of psychological protection. One wrong push – and the psychological defense increases. The classic situation is when an adult child brings his chosen one (chosen one) to the house and the parents find a lot of flaws in him. And the more flaws are found in the above, the more the one who chose him appreciates the chosen one. In the case of severe pressure, this can end in an unhappy marriage, because psychological protection grows, and although the shortcomings of the chosen one are known, but feelings and emotions turn out to be stronger. Often, parents, wanting to protect a child from a failed marriage, leave him no choice, putting pressure on him, and he acts contrary to them, because psychological protection has already grown to incredible proportions. Displacement Repression is a psychological defense mechanism that displaces a problem from the field of consciousness to the field of the unconscious, but does not remove it from the human psyche, thus, the emotional tension and the traumatic effect of the problem on the body persists. The essence of psychoanalysis as a psychotherapeutic technique is to “extract” a problem from the unconscious into consciousness. The repressed is manifested in reservations, in typos, in jokes. Any doctor encounters this phenomenon when working with a medical history and, especially, when describing experiences, situations, and events unbearable to the patient’s personality are correlated with the possible cause of his illness. For example, a teenage girl was sexually assaulted by a relative. It was so traumatic, so unbearable, that it was pushed into the unconscious. After many years, doctors may deal with a patient with a set of symptoms, painful manifestations of this sexual trauma, and not hear revelations about this trauma, since this is not in the woman’s mind. It is important to understand that this information is not intentionally hidden from the doctor. Situations that are hidden from the doctor for ethical reasons are often not as traumatic for the patient’s personality and body as those in which information is displaced. The doctor must remember that repression often carries a greater charge of pathology than what is consciously controlled by the patient. Repressed experiences are often the cause of many so-called unmotivated actions, and attempts by both the doctor and the patient to understand the motivation of these actions are unsuccessful for both sides. The same phenomenon can be attributed to some forms of behavior of doctors in interacting with patients, when some experiences of his own life leave an imprint on his professional activities. And this can dramatically deform the professional activity of a doctor. Introjection This mechanism is of dominant importance in some psychological theories. Introjection is the attachment of someone else’s “I” or someone else’s environment to oneself, “swallowing”, including someone else’s world. By this mechanism, you can see what is important to a person, what he considers valuable to himself, what warms his soul. The head of the clinic does not need to ask if his staff likes him, it is easier to see who is trying to imitate him in clothes, manner of speaking, smoking, swearing, and he will get an answer for whom his world is important. The laws of fashion are built on the mechanism of introjection. The mighty clothing industry moves on simple techniques: creating an idol, a model (an introjection mechanism), and when this idol is born, people begin to imitate him – in the use of cosmetics, gait, and manner of behavior – adopt a lifestyle as far as their means allow. And only then the demand for the clothes worn by this idol is created. The optimal medical team is one in which most of the staff introject themselves with this hospital. It would be good if every hospital had the opportunity to have some kind of emblem, sign, and distinctive clothing features. In the West, graduates of some privileged educational institutions are required to wear the emblem of this institution. The principle of creating clannishness is also based on the mechanism of introjection. Each clan must have some distinctive feature: mostly external. The introjection mechanism is often used in advertising. When a viewer sees on the TV screen a handsome, courageous man pushing through some kind of thicket, sailing on a yacht, jumping into a waterfall and then, after all the adventures, smoking Camel cigarettes, then later, if the viewer smokes the same cigarettes, he begins to feel complicit in these romantic adventures. Therefore, high–quality advertising is always an appeal to the mechanism of introjection. The mechanism of introjection can work in doctor-patient interaction, when the doctor, working with the patient, sees a problem similar to his personal problem. And he will offer his own experience (often unsuccessful) in solving this problem to his patient without taking into account his personality. Projection In the practice of the author of the book, he had experience working with a patient who had previously been treated by two psychotherapists. She came to the third doctor not with the intention of long-term work, but for a one-time discussion of her problem. The doctor told her how he sees her, what he considers most important in her personality (he had to communicate with her before, but not as a doctor). His recommendation caused the patient to have an ambivalent feeling: on the one hand, surprise, on the other hand, a kind of joy. I was surprised, because she came to the appointment with a certain idea about the work and advice of a psychotherapist, which she had compiled from her experience with two previous doctors. Her problem was of a personal nature (unrequited love). Two previous doctors advised the following: to put the object of love out of your mind and start a normal healthy family, as there are offers from decent, reliable people. But it didn’t matter to her. Since she is a person of a creative profession, she sought to experience stormy feelings, and she needed them. And the author of the book told her: “If I were you, I would worry like that, only even more, and you don’t have to fight this feeling.” And when she was surprised that the doctor was giving such advice (“he can’t talk like that”), it simultaneously became clear why the first therapist had given her a different recommendation – she was adapting the solution to the patient’s problem to her own solution, which, in her opinion, would benefit her. The doctor herself easily divorced her husband, joining a new, more financially secure union. And this did not suit the client at all. And it wasn’t a psychotherapy session, it was a pure projection: “If I feel good like this, then everyone else will feel good too if they solve the problem the same way.” This is a common mistake in the therapeutic work of a doctor: if the doctor does not scream in pain when a tooth is pulled out, then the patient cannot have severe pain, and he has no right to scream when a tooth is pulled out. Therefore, the mechanism of projection in medical practice is quite dangerous. The mechanism of projection is quite simple and the epigraph to it can be a phrase uttered with a gap of an hour: “Oh, how disgusting my soul is today!”, and an hour later, “My God, why is everyone in such a nasty mood today?” Aphorisms are a dangerous thing, because they often carry a concentrated, but the experience of humanity is quite trivial, because they are trying to make the world very simplified. Although there are options when aphorisms are very accurate for a particular case. For working with projection, the aphorism is good: “Who has thin soup, and who has small pearls!” (The suffering of two people – in one case from hunger, and in the other, from the fact that he does not have the largest pearls, may be equal in strength.) And if a doctor wants to be an expert, an independent judge, then he must remember this and not compare other people’s sufferings with his own, although it is very difficult. It may be difficult for a doctor to understand a girl patient who, having climbed a beautiful mountain with a wonderful landscape, asked: “And why did I get in here? So what?” They began to explain to her that it was extremely beautiful around her: slopes, trees. And there was surprise and bewilderment in her eyes: why would I do that? In order not to get annoyed, the doctor had to make an effort on himself, using one very simple technique, he asked himself, and how many children, without experiencing aesthetic pleasure, in order to please their parents, say in such situations: “Ah! How beautiful!” At least, the girl is not lying and is higher in this parameter than those children who lie. And then the doctor realized that beauty is a diverse thing: for someone, the beauty of nature is very important, but this is not universal for everyone, for someone, the beauty of his clothes is more important. And you can’t evaluate one as genuine and the other as fake. English psychologists conducted an experiment in which the influence of the psychological characteristics of anti-smoking advertising was studied. Different people, smokers, were presented with versions of posters created to combat smoking. Each group watched one poster, for example, 50 people watched one poster, 50 another, 50 a third, etc. The number of cigarettes smoked before and after viewing the posters was calculated. It turned out that out of 25 posters, 23 practically did not work, they did not significantly change this attachment among people. But 2 of these posters worked, and in different ways: one was against smoking, the other increased the number of cigarettes smoked per day. The first poster showed figures illustrating what can be bought with the money spent on cigarettes, for example, a car in five years, a TV in six months, etc. The second poster depicted a ram behind a palisade of cigarettes, which was supposed to mean that a smoking person looked like this ram, unable to break out of the cigarette fence. Smokers protested against the attempt to project them onto a ram. The poster developers did not take into account that comparing oneself with a ram is an emotional trauma for a person, and he will have to take some actions that will protect him from this comparison. He starts smoking more than he proves to himself that he is “not a sheep” and smokes as much as he wants. “And whoever is a sheep, let him quit smoking.” This is how the mechanism of psychological protection, the mechanism of projection, worked. Projection is the basis of so many human feelings, for example, feelings of dislike. Most often, one person’s dislike of another is based on the mechanism of projection: a person does not accept any qualities in himself – real or mythical – and redirects these unpleasant qualities to another. Then he sees exactly these qualities in the other person and does not like him precisely for them, while not identifying these qualities in himself on a conscious level. On the contrary, he believes that it is precisely these features that he does not possess, but the other one does. The following example shows how profoundly the perception of the surrounding world can be distorted using the projection mechanism. Studies of patients with alcoholism who were treated in a medical and labor dispensary (LTP) were conducted. It was a court-ordered compulsory treatment of patients who refused to be treated for alcoholism voluntarily. Part of the experimental psychological examination consisted of testing using a series of pictures by the Danish artist Herluf Bidstrup. The first drawing showed several well–dressed business–looking men sitting at a table with papers in their hands; the second one showed them, but more motionless, more frozen; the last one turned them into stones: in the center there was one large stone, and around there were twelve smaller stones. This series of drawings was called “The Ones who Sat down” and its purpose was to expose bureaucratic meetings. These untitled drawings were shown to people with alcoholism, and asked to explain what they see on them. The vast majority of the subjects said that these people got drunk and, drunk, fell under the table. How distorted the world around you must be to see this – there are no glasses or bottles in the picture, and people look more like bank executives than a company that is going to have a drink. Patients projected their alcohol problem into the outside world and interpreted it according to the laws of the alcohol problem. The projection mechanism with the doctor can play a cruel joke. Often, young psychotherapists, choosing this profession, are driven mainly by the desire to solve some difficult problems of THEIR own and only then others. Imagine a situation where such a doctor, with his difficult, unresolved problems, works as a psychotherapist in the department of neuroses. There is a transfer of his own problem to the patient. And the problem that is important to the doctor himself is attributed to the patient. A case from practice. One of the young residents tried her hand at the neuroses department. A month after starting work, she came to the head and confessed that she did not want to work in this department because she did not trust the patients. “They are not sick. Just think, she can’t solve the problem with her husband! She has such a wonderful husband – attentive, affectionate, provides for the family, but she does not love him! So what, I have three children and an alcoholic husband, and it doesn’t matter to me whether I love him or not, as long as he doesn’t make a fuss and earns a salary. But she made it up. I would like to work in the department of psychosis. When a patient hears voices, when he has a seizure, when he is agitated, it is clear that he is ill. But this “I love you, I don’t love you” is not a disease. I hate them.” In fact, this woman hated herself with her serious problem and passed it on to other people through the mechanism of projections. Therefore, when a person meets with another person who, in his opinion, has a lot of flaws, he may ask himself the question: did he meet with himself, with someone he does not want to accept himself? Therefore, a person’s enemies are sometimes a mirror of his soul, a mirror of his problems, which he does not accept in himself. There is often a lot of aggression in the projection mechanism, because people get very angry when someone doesn’t allow them to project themselves into them. There are so many fights between parents and children for this very reason. “If you’re my daughter, then you’re me, and I like this, this, and this. And you should like the same thing.” The projection mechanism is one of the basic mechanisms in Gestalt psychology. Fritz Perle, the founder of this psychological field, considered this mechanism to be one of the most important in the development of neurotic disorders. This is another example of how projection sometimes interferes with the relationship between a doctor and a patient. Projection in medical practice often makes a doctor intolerant of other diagnostic approaches and other treatment methods. The rejection of someone else’s worldview is based on a hypertrophied rigid projection mechanism: if I have such a world, then everyone, of course, has the same world. But the projection mechanism does not always grossly distort the picture of the world and human interaction. The thing is that there are a sufficient number of people in the world with a similar picture of the world or with an amorphous picture of the world. Culture is largely the use of a projection mechanism. When a person offers his world as one possible example of the world of people, and the more talented a person is, the closer his understanding of the world of people and himself is, the more he finds people who can say that this is also their world. What is the work of a writer? It is a picture of one person’s world projected onto the picture of other people’s world. In addition, the projection mechanism is one of the ways to overcome loneliness, which is one of the universal human problems. There are different ways to deal with this problem, but the two main options are as follows. 1. Loneliness is the optimal form of human existence, you can not suffer, worry and suffer because of it, you need to strive for loneliness. This is the idea of the maximum benefit of seclusion: not to try to overcome loneliness, but to accept it and go into it. 2. Loneliness is surmountable, a person can always find a way to people, can always become unequal, and, finally, a person can find a loophole to the world not through people, but through animals, through books or art, through turning to religion. Isolation This is a mechanism by which a person seems to isolate from himself what is traumatic for him, separating one part of his personality, which he fully accepts, from another, which he does not accept. A classic example of isolation is the entire plot of Stevenson’s famous novel “The Story of Mr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde”, where during the day this man was a moral, humane doctor, and at night he turned into an evil bandit and murderer, and these two people do not meet. One is unaware of the other’s existence. The isolation mechanism is based on the case of the so–called “neurotic personality split” (not psychotic, which is observed in patients with schizophrenia), not at the level of deep disorders – psychoses, but at a milder level – at the level of neuroses. This phenomenon was vividly characterized in the work of 3. Freud, where he described his patient suffering from a disorder in the form of multiple personality. One day this woman felt like a moody, eccentric person with very frivolous behavior, and the next day she already had a different name and was a prim, restrained, modest Puritan in completely different clothes. Then a third person appeared who observed the behavior of each of them, and she also had her own name. A case from practice. A very religious woman, a wine salesman, a sectarian, more of a fanatic than a true believer, always with downcast eyes, speaking in a low, unctuous voice, turned into another person, into a creature named Pahom, whom she called a “demon” and seemed unaware of his existence. The transition from one personality to another took place quite quickly. Sitting in the waiting room and waiting for the doctor, saying something in her quiet voice, she would suddenly straighten up, her eyes would start to shine, and a wild roar would be heard, followed by unthinkable curses uttered in a rude, almost masculine voice and accompanied by cynical gestures. When questioned afterwards, she claimed that she did not know anything about her condition in the image of Pakhom and did not remember anything. It turned out that one person was a shallow, quiet, modest prudish woman, the other was a deep–seated, rude, dissolute man, the part that her psyche refused to accept. The isolation mechanism often manifests itself in children when they find themselves in a difficult situation for them. This mechanism underlies the fantastic children’s stories told to parents. A three-year-old girl, playing, breaks a cup that everyone in the house cherishes. She worries a lot. When the parents appear, the girl “turns” into a rabbit and says that she is a lost rabbit, she scratches at the door and asks in a quiet, rabbit–like voice: “Let me in, I am a little lost rabbit. I’m hungry, I’m poor, I’m going to live with you, I’m not (and then the girl lists everything she did during the day) breaking a cup like a bad girl does (and calls her name), I’m not going to draw on the closet with a felt-tip pen…” She isolated herself from the bad girl and now She calmly talks about what she has done herself. And this lost rabbit functions for one or two hours, and by the time the problem of the broken cup is over, it turns back into a naughty girl. The principle of isolation underlies the pedagogy promoted in Gestalt psychology. It consists in the following: to separate the child from the deed. Phrase: “You’re an ugly boy!” is absolutely wrong from the point of view of a Gestalt teacher. A rebuke thrown at a child: “You’re a pig, you’re dirty again!” means that the personality is gone, the child is gone, but there is a pig. Therefore, the word “lazy” is not used in Gestalt pedagogy. There is a phrase: “You didn’t work much today.” This is the use of an isolation mechanism for pedagogical and didactic purposes to separate the personality from the deed. Regression This transition to a simpler level of functioning is another mechanism of psychological protection. When this mechanism is in effect, one can see how different personalities choose to go into childhood during mental adaptation. This mechanism is characteristic of hysterical personalities, because one of the main features of these personalities is infantilism, because going into childhood is more natural for such a person. A distinctive feature of the regression mechanism is the desire for one very important motive: to simplify the world very much, to make it understandable. In a situation of prolonged distress (for example, social cataclysms), one of the manifestations of regression may be a simplification of the form of behavior, a desire to absolve oneself of responsibility. Some researchers believe that personality regression is the cause of schizophrenia. Depreciation This psychological defense mechanism is the most inhumane in relation to the outside world. This is a cruel mechanism, because the “I” of a person is preserved here due to the fact that the world around him suffers. A classic example: “And your legs are crooked!” is the remark of a drunk man on a bus in response to the reproaches of a woman. The devaluation mechanism is turned on, in this case, the woman is devalued: “I’ll oversleep tomorrow, and you’ll have crooked legs all your life.” It is not true. He won’t get enough sleep tomorrow, he’ll drink tomorrow too, but how clearly the devaluation mechanism protects him. What an illusion it gives. In everyday life, depreciation very often functions in the form of irony. Why is irony so characteristic of youth? Because in reality, the price of one’s own “I” in youth is very low. Therefore, almost every ironic person is a person who has a low opinion of himself. By attributing a low price to himself, often very undeservedly, in order to preserve his self-respect, he belittles this world to the extent that the world is not inferior to him and thus his dignity will be preserved. The maximum manifestation of this defense is cynical irony, in which everything is devalued. Often the reason for cynical irony is that a person dreams of living in an idealized world among beautiful people. And when this world and these people do not justify his hopes, he devalues it and tries in every possible way to destroy it, because it hurts a person. That’s why it’s one step from romanticism to cynicism. An alternative to irony, which allows you to maintain self-respect, is self-irony. Firstly, it is honest with the world, and secondly, it perfectly protects against irony from the outside, because it is not interesting to laugh at a person who laughs at himself and makes it better. Therefore, self-irony combined with irony preserves human self-respect. Imagination Fantasizing is also a psychological defense mechanism that creates an imaginary reality in which something happens that does not happen in real life. Let’s imagine that one day a man had a crazy idea: he clearly imagined how one morning, going to work, he would find a suitcase full of banknotes in a vacant lot, and not obtained as a result of fraud or some kind of fraud, but magically, and he would live to his heart’s content. Some time later, a person begins to catch himself walking along the path, looking more and more attentively at his feet, imagining more and more clearly how he finds this suitcase. Colloquially, this is called “building castles in the air.” The question arises: is this a bad thing or a good thing? In some situations, fantasies help to relieve tension, then the mechanism works in a person’s favor, and if these fantasies begin to replace reality for him, as if, dreaming of a suitcase with money, a person would stop working, believing that he is about to find this suitcase, then these fantasies become pathological, maladaptive..   Suffered aggression This is a common mechanism. When a loved one comes home in a bad mood and begins to offend the household, finding many flaws in them, they immediately come up with the idea that he is in trouble at work. He failed to protect his dignity at work, and he takes out his unspent aggression on his family, who are more accessible than the boss. This is the aggression suffered. In Japan, the struggle against aggression was carried out using the following method: a rubber figure of the head of this plant was installed in the entrance of a large factory, and a cudgel was placed next to it so that a worker or employee could beat this doll without transferring aggression to other people and to a living boss. At the same time, the relationship between the subordinate and the boss seemed to become more harmonious. Aggression, according to many researchers, is the basis of many psychosomatic diseases. This is the transfer of aggression to your body. This mechanism is most typical for introverted, internalized, or timid (afraid of the world, prone to depressive reactions) personalities, usually taking responsibility for themselves. A person transfers aggression from the world to himself, to his internal organs, to his blood pressure, which rises, tension arises. A person “beats his body” instead of dealing with the world around him. The problem of psychosomatic pathology is, in a simplified version, the problem of autoaggression. Alcohol abuse is often based on aggression. Reactive education This is another psychological defense mechanism. Very often, people who do not know how to handle money economically behave as follows: when money gets into their hands, they immediately start spending it. One gets the feeling that a person is frantically trying to get rid of money that he has earned with great difficulty. And the harder they get to him, the faster he gets rid of them, contrary to the laws of constructive behavior. This is the result of reactive education. When patients with neurosis, whose problem is short-temper and irritability, are asked what worries them most, they often complain of various ailments, but most of all that they have become very nervous and irritable, that during a serious conversation they can yell at a person: “… I behave like this, how he had never behaved before, and how this man, in general, did not deserve. But then I feel ashamed. I noticed that some of the people I work with have now begun to provoke me into this outburst, and when it happens, they wait for two hours, and then they show up with some kind of request, and feeling guilty, I can’t refuse them, which I wouldn’t normally do.” This is a classic example of reactive education, when a person begins to treat other people very emotionally, kindly, and strive to please them because he feels guilty about them. Guilt is what forms a reactive education. The plots of many works of fiction are based on this: in them, a situation of guilt is artificially created for the purpose of manipulating a person. Rationalization A classic example of a rationalization mechanism is the logical explanation of children why they were late for class. The children make up a detailed reasoned story of why, well, it was impossible to come. Students’ rationalizations are very interesting when they explain why they are not ready for the exam. Here is another example. A woman and her boyfriend are shopping, wanting to buy something for themselves. He sincerely wants her to make a successful purchase, because he sympathizes with her. But everything that she considers as a purchase option is sharply criticized by him.: there is a badly sewn button, there is an uneven stitch, in another place there is a stain, in the third place there is a button of the wrong color. As a result, the woman remains without a purchase. All this is happening because this man has never been able to afford to buy things of this quality, but on a conscious level he does not admit this to himself. He doesn’t envy this woman, it protects his psyche. The rationalization mechanism obligingly turns on and covers this weak spot. It also turns on if the man does not need to pay for this purchase. The man explains to himself that it is not necessary to wear such a thing for a number of reasons. Compensation mechanisms This is a phenomenon close to the mechanisms of psychological defense, but, unlike them, this phenomenon does not manifest itself on the unconscious level of the human psyche, but on the conscious one. Compensation mechanisms belong to a group of such mental phenomena that are committed by a person quite consciously to relieve some mental stress. These are the so-called psychological compensation mechanisms. For example, when a person wants to avoid meeting an unpleasant person, he goes to the other side of the street, pretending not to notice him. This is an adaptive behavior that protects a person from excessive stress. Another compensatory technique is “before responding to someone’s defiant behavior, count to ten, and then respond,” so as not to regret the hot words that come off your tongue. Compensation mechanisms are based on one of two principles: either the principle of approximation or the principle of distance. In the CID (interpersonal communication distance) psychodiagnostic technique, the subject was asked to mentally place himself in the center of a room with a large number of doors through which different people enter, and he stands in the center and always faces them. He was asked to stop the incoming person at a distance where it would be most convenient to communicate with him. The topic of communication was chosen by the subjects themselves. The “alien” stimulus was introduced among such communication stimuli. It was assumed that for people with high levels of anxiety, this stimulus would be especially significant as a symbol of anxiety. The hypothesis turned out to be correct. According to the results of the experiment, people could be divided into two groups: one of them brought the alien very close, even closer than such an incentive as a “mother”, and the second group distanced him very much and even left him outside the door. When the results of this technique were discussed, the subjects of the first group explained their choice as follows: “I specifically put him closer, because it is not known what he is, in order to control his every action – if he does something wrong, I will have time to stop it or run away. The psychological compensation of these people was based on the principle of approximation. The explanations of the subjects of the second group were as follows: “I alienated him because I don’t know what to expect from him, you can always manage to escape.” Here, psychological compensation was based on the principle of distance. Discharge mechanisms Let’s consider another phenomenon of human mental activity. This is, most often, some kind of impulsive action, a behavioral act associated with simple actions that relieve mental stress. For example, hitting the table with your fist in anger, greedily eating food during a period of mental stress, drinking liquids, chewing. The main ways of psychological relaxation are as follows: 1. Loud youthful laughter. Old people don’t laugh like that, not because they’ve forgotten how to be happy, but because they avoid this release mechanism. Anxious and internally tense people most often cackle, this does not mean that they do not know how to behave, they are just scared right now. 2. Another discharge that is very common among young people is spitting. 3. Constant movement of jaws and clicking of seeds, nuts, chewing gum. There was a pattern – the more intense the time was, the more crisis-prone, the more people were attracted to sunflower seeds. The maximum of this hobby was during the war years: people satisfied hunger and fear. Source