Immature Defenses

A Throwback Article

This article was originally published at the Mad Genius Club on March 22, 2014. More than a decade of passing time has not significantly changed my thoughts on the entitlement mindset.

en·ti·tle·ment

noun \-ˈtī-təl-mənt\,

: the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something

: the feeling or belief that you deserve to be given something (such as special privileges)

: a type of financial help provided by the government for members of a particular group

I was asked last week when I posted the paper on PTSD to explore the psychology of “Special Snowflakes.” I don’t have time (or frankly my dears, the interest in them) to do an in-depth paper like I posted last week. That was a project that won’t likely happen again soon, as I am not taking any more psych classes unless something weird happens.

Anyway, I open with the definition of entitlement, because it seems to be the word most used to describe the sort of person I was asked to look at. One who believes that they are, somehow, more special than those around them. David Burkhead describes on his blog yesterday a conversation with a woman who firmly believed that it would be perfectly all right for her to own slaves, because, of course, she was entitled to be taken care of. Seems to me this one classifies as pure Fantasy.

This incident, on the other hand, seems to be a direct result of entitlement. Nevermind the student’s rights, the teacher felt hers trumped theirs. “In the crime report, which describes a conversation held between Miller-Young and a UCPD officer whose name has been redacted, Miller-Young took responsibility for taking and destroying the poster and refused to give the names of students who were “following” her. Although she said she did not know “what an acceptable and legal response to hate speech would be,” Miller-Young said her actions were justified. “Miller-Young went on to say that because the poster was upsetting to her and her students, she felt that the activists did not have a right to be there,” the crime report states.”

So the snowflakes do believe they are better than, and entitled to destroy those, who disagree with them. Acting Out, one of Vaillant’s immature defenses, has become a familiar screed to those of us who linger too long on the internet, and Sarah Hoyt’s blog on triggers addresses much of the lunacy we are seeing related to this teacher’s behaviour as it becomes more and more common.

How about Idealization? I made an offhanded comment about Margaret Sanger during a conversation about the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments, and one of my classmates huffed that Planned Parenthood, no matter what it was started for, had done much good. She also stopped talking to me... But here is what the bastion of feminism had to say in the Pivot of Civilization. “Such parents swell the pathetic ranks of the unemployed. Feeble-mindedness perpetuates itself from the ranks of those who are blandly indifferent to their racial responsibilities. And it is largely this type of humanity we are now drawing upon to populate our world for the generations to come. In this orgy of multiplying and replenishing the earth, this type is pari passu multiplying and perpetuating those direst evils in which we must, if civilization is to survive, extirpate by the very roots.”

Passive Aggression is easy to find. Indeed, it is difficult to avoid the passively aggressive online, only we usually call them “trolls” and those among us who delight in conflicts as being conducive to mental exercise bait them into emerging into the light, even if only briefly before they retreat to a comfortable lair. I’m less likely to engage, not finding them worthy of my time and energy, as they have no mind to change with cogent and reasoned arguments.

Vaillant’s classification of immature defenses:

• Acting out: Direct expression of an unconscious wish or impulse in action, without conscious awareness of the emotion that drives that expressive behavior.

• Fantasy: Tendency to retreat into fantasy in order to resolve inner and outer conflicts.

• Idealization: Unconsciously choosing to perceive another individual as having more positive qualities than he or she may actually have.

• Passive aggression: Aggression towards others expressed indirectly or passively such as using procrastination.

• Projection: Projection is a primitive form of paranoia. Projection also reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming consciously aware of them; attributing one's own unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and emotions to another; includes severe prejudice, severe jealousy, hypervigilance to external danger, and "injustice collecting". It is shifting one's unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses within oneself onto someone else, such that those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations are perceived as being possessed by the other.

• Projective identification: The object of projection invokes in that person precisely the thoughts, feelings or behaviors projected.

• Somatization: The transformation of negative feelings towards others into negative feelings toward self, pain, illness, and anxiety.

What then? I have no desire to leave you despairing of our society, that has surrounded us with such defenses and lifted up the bullies over the bullied because it suits them to break down that which is good and beautiful. We are taught from childhood that there is no objective standard of truth, and beauty, and the neuroses of the special snowflakes are in a way, a response to that teaching. They have no hope, and they need - not just want, but viscerally need - to destroy all within their reach, in order for them to feel better about their own station and work in life. Having chosen to write works that do not sell, they proclaim that those who do sell fiction are hacks. Having chosen to write that which does not measure up to the works of the giants in their fields, they do not seek to become better, but to tear down the giants so they no longer need to look up. Vaillant points out in his paper entitled (partly) "The Beginning of Wisdom" that those who employ immature defenses prefer the company of those who agree with them. "The interpersonal relationships of such individuals remain perpetually unstable and entangled." and he goes on, "Put differently, immature defenses are contagious."

I found a quote which captured my imagination earlier this week, and have included it. "In The Saturday Review of Literature, a Mr. Louis J. Halle, author of a book on Civilization and Foreign Policy, answers as follows a lady who – “lowering,” he says, “her pince-nez” -has inquired what he finds in Tolkien: “What, dear lady, does this invented world have to do with our own? You ask for its meaning – as you ask for the meaning of the Odyssey, of Genesis, of Faust – in a word? In a word, then, its meaning is ‘heroism.’ It makes our own world, once more, heroic. What higher meaning than this is to be found in any literature?”

Indeed! Heroes! That is what we want, not special snowflakes withering in the heat of the sun, feeling that they are better than we are, simply because they say so. We aren’t better than they are simply through our determination. No, we are better because we strive to become better, to write better, to live better... we have embraced hope, and joy, and humor, knowing that we will live happier, healthier lives because of it. We are creative, as defined in Vaillant’s study of gifted women as “Putting something in the world that was not there before.” I highly recommend a look at this study of 60 extraordinary women, keeping in mind the study was done almost one hundred years ago. When did feminism become not about equality, but supremacy?