Granì (May 2014)
Sociogenesis of mental disorders and compensation mechanisms in society
Abstract
The statement that mental health disorders are the result of the process of complicated socialization of the individual is still the main idea of psychoanalysis. Effects of the compensation phenomenon are considered by the founder of psychoanalysis S. Freud in the unconscious mechanisms of the psyche, in dreams, in people’s jokes and others. In general, the entire space of culture is permeated with compensation mechanisms for adaptation and socialization of a person, which becomes possible under the conditions of detection of the potentials of person’s creativity. According to the theory of K.G. Jung, a grave mental state, the unconscious and compensation have the point of intersection; they seem to come to the same threshold over which creative abilities come into force, forming the source of the development of creativity. The mechanisms of compensation process fragmentarily coincide with the phenomenon of Self. At the same time, binary archetypes in the structure of the collective unconscious of the human psyche are also in compensatory interactions. The terms «compensation overcompensation» are also widely used by A. Adler in different aspects and represent a means of overcoming the inferiority, a means of obtaining the correct moral freedom. On the basis of an inferiority complex, a compensatory superiority complex is developing. Both complexes have something in common: being developed excessively or balancing each other, they contribute to the exclusion from useful life and neurotization. But being filled with social content and manifesting adequately, they act as basic cues. According to the concept of K. Horney, it is interpersonal communication that can be defined as a mechanism of compensation of neurosis. At the same time, Erich Fromm fills compensation phenomenon with social content. He described three important compensatory syndromes: a desire for power, a desire for submission, and escape into work. The achievements of psychoanalysis have not lost their significance nowadays, as all these compensatory mechanisms operate in today’s society.
