Carol Stonecipher wrote 22 February: <<Regarding introjection, from Ronald Comer's Abnormal Psychology 4e: According to Freud and Abraham, a series of unconscious processes is set in motion when a loved one dies. Unable to acept the loss, mourners at first regress to the oral stage of development, the period of total dependency, when infants cannot distinguish themselves from their parents. By regressing to this stage, the mourners, merge their own identity with that of the person they have lost, and so symbolically regain the lost person. In this process, called introjection, they direct all their feelings for the loved one, including sadness and anger, toward themselves.>>
I think Ocham's razor needs to be wielded here. Rather than seeking a convoluted explanation on psychoanalytic lines, evolutionary psychologists would argue that mourning is a natural process arising from natural selection. In the words of Juan Carlos Garelli: "We are deeply biased to seek and keep both physical and emotional proximity to a distinct, preferred figure: the attachment figure, in Bowlby's terms. Temporary or permanent separation or loss of the attachment figure brings about a normal process: mourning." The propensity towards attachment behaviour arises "because our species has not changed its genome since its emergence during the Pleistocene, before the Agricultural Revolution. So, whenever a baby is born, he is preprogrammed to deal with a hostile environment, filled with predators which strongly prefer helpless victims. A baby, born more than 10,000 years ago, that at 6-7 months of age strayed and cared nothing about his bond with mother, was doomed to die, that is, was doomed not to reach reproductive age. So. if babies were 'independent' from the outset, the species would become extinct in a few generations. Therefore, evolutionary selection pressures would favour babies who adamantly tried to attain and keep proximity with a figure who protected them from predators, that figure we will call the 'Attachment Figure', generally the baby's mother." Garellis also notes that "Bowlby started by challenging this fundamental concept of Freudian psychoanalysis by advancing that a child becomes attached to his mother independently of feeding, cleaning or otherwise com comforting the baby. This proved to be a ground-breaking idea that dented the core of all psychoanalysis. Bowlby asserted that Attachment had to be taken into account in its own right, independently of libido considerations, whereby the infant is born with an inbred propensity to seek and maintain proximity to a distinct, preferred, strong figure he feels as a haven of security." Allen Esterson London www.human-nature.com/esterson/index.html References: Carlos J. C. "Evolutionary Considerations Regarding the Adaptive Status of Depression" www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3041/depress.html Attachment Research Center: www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3041/ARChome.html --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
