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Reaction formation - the "baseline" psychological defense. How to recognize it and how to transcend it
Hi Guys.
Reaction formation is one of the least known, but probably one of the most used baseline psychological defenses.
What it is
It is the tendency to adopt and proclaim opposite "apparent behaviors" to the unconscious impulses one has.
If I am really envious of other people, I will go to great lenghts to specify that I "respect them", or "wish them well", or "don't want to interfere with their success".
If I am always lying, I will go to great lenghts to qualify my words as "sincere", or my talk as "truthful", or me as "unable to say lies".
And so on.
Rationale
The underlying reason - in most cases, with the notable exception of psychopaths, who know full well what they're doing and are not "unconscious" in their behaviors - is not the will to gaslight others, but rather the need to gaslight oneself.
Human beings share the common trait of finding intolerable to hold the conscious knowledge that oneself is "bad".
They can feel the emotional impulse to "do bad", but they most often unconsciously suppress it, by adopting the reaction formation defense to first convince oneself that they're not.
However, all that this defense does is delay the inevitable, and cause one to hurt others (and oneself) more in the long term.
Because the unconscious emotional impulse always has precedence over conscious thought and seeks a way to come out, and moreover colors all one sees in one's life, a person using the reaction formation defense will, in time, find enough excuses to "act out" their original motive.
For example, if a person is very envious of others, said person will soon rationalize that others are boasting, bragging, showing, demeaning, and don't deserve it: and thus the envious person will justify in his or her mind his or her impulse of damaging the other person to "knock them down their pedestal".
Note that narcissists (I use the word in a technical sense here, ie people suffering from narcissistic personality disorder), in contrast to psychopaths, are mostly self-unaware of their real destructive emotions, and employ reaction formation a great deal.
This is, in fact, what differentiates narcissists from psychopaths and thus explains why narcissists, in contrast to psychopaths, intersperse "real kind acts" to "abhorrent betrayals".
This also explains why the "cycle of abuse" is interspersed with "love-bombing", which makes it more difficult to get distance from dangerous narcissistic people.
Not in all cases the "love-bombing" is conscious. In most cases it may probably be an unconscious reaction formation defense.
Significance
The significance is twofold.
First: when we see another person making great shows of "being good" or "being [insert good quality here]", and repeating it over and over again, or even structuring his or her life in a way that apparently is meant to adopt "rules to ensure this is the case", we must take into account the possibility that this is a reaction formation defense, and thus take into account the possibility that this person, unbeknownst to him or herself, is really the opposite.
And protect ourselves, first by taking and keeping sufficient distance until a clearer picture is gained.
The second important point is that the way to evolve ourselves is never to suppress our unwanted, "dark feelings", "meditate and transcend", or just "act as if they didn't exist".
Suppressing our feelings and "killing them" amounts to adopting a "conscious reaction formation defense", and will have the only consequence of having those feelings come out more strongly in time, and destroy others' lives and - even more importantly - our own lives in the long term.
The only real solution, long term, is to consciously explore them and let them come out in the open, where they can be addressed.
This requires a great deal of courage, and the willingness to feel worse before we feel better.
Acknowledge we have them. Feel the pain of possibly having been great hypocrites, and sensing the consequences this caused us and continues to cause us.
And only then we can slowly come out of them, because when brought to consciousness, they will naturally resolve.
We will understand they served a defensive purpose, and now are no longer needed. And we will really transcend them.
Hello Bel,
I think this is a very important post. For several reasons. For instance it lays down the theoretical framework of why it’s important to do « shadow work ». The Jungian school is very holistic/intuitive so sometimes it lacks the analytical part of why something is and the solution. Caveat: have not gone deep in the school, my understanding. So here it’s to be able to surface these feelings in order to process them. As Jung said: « until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate ».
I agree it is a not-spoken enough mechanism. Even in my field where we deal with psychology and psychiatry: in our daily vocabulary we talk about projection, etc but not this one. So thank you very much. Studied it for a test but never wrapped my head around it until now.
On the personal side that’s why I don’t label myself as « good ». I actually found this identity quite self limiting. Not in the sense that it prevents us from harming people but in the sense it limits our freedom to what we think good means or is. Again, to be good we have to learn how to be bad.
It also goes with Marcus Aurelius’ quote: « waste no more time arguing about what a good man is. Be one ». I think it’s the essence of philosophy: to actually live as a good man. So just as the good parent is the one who’s doubting of him/her of being a good parent and therefore works hard to be one (and therefore is one). It’s the same here.
So it’s about letting go of being a good person in our own eyes (image/ego) and being one. That’s why now I feel comfortable being aggressive at work when it’s needed. « Show a little teeth » as Jocko Willink says. I don’t care if people think I’m mean if the cause I’m serving is served. Of course power dynamics, social skills and strategy apply here as always.
So by confronting our own what I call « animal desires »: will to power, desire for possession, jealousy, envy, aggression, desire for status, etc. we can actually accept them and integrate them. That means giving them the right space they deserve, not more not less. This is about balance again. Of course as you guys know the more we repress them the more they bubble up and these part of ourself take control of our behaviour when it’s not the right time/appropriate. Trying to control them actually make us lose control over these impulses. Just like hunger, we will be hungry at some point and will binge eat if starved for too long. We can try to suppress it but it will take over eventually.
So here the balance is between our own self-image (the illusion) and who we really are (the reality). I think it’s important to embrace our « dark side » as it is a very important tool I believe. By staying in the positive only (and denying our disagreeable feelings/unwanted emotions) we rob ourselves of a very much helpful power: the power to be our whole self.
Also I think it’s very important what you said about reading people: if the person is advertising so much their virtue who are they really? This reminds me of the hypocrisy of my « leftist » friends (cause they’re not really leftist rather selfish virtue signaling people). They posture as good people but they’re not really better than other people who might pollute more but are not judging left and right. So who’s better? No one (because there is no universal objective value accounting system: I believe in good and evil and they are very hard to measure in these subtleties. We do it in a court of law and looking at who’s worse or better off in law of social exchange (taking vs giving) but very difficult to measure precisely on those "fuzzy" behaviors) so let others be and focus on your own behaviour.
Am I a better person because I take care of children and them not or a worse one because I’m using the plane 1-5 times a year? It’s not up to me to decide and I could not care less. It’s not relevant outside of a status game of virtue, which it is with those people. They are not leftist, they are powerless. Very different. As a side note to be clear (spoken with Kavalier): I respect leftist. But I respect the true leftists: those who embody a cause and the values of solidarity and egalitarianism. Not the hypocritical powerless individualists who virtue signals: I don't respect those. Those chose to associate with the left because they cannot be or won’t be strong not because they serve the weaker among us (socio-economically speaking). That’s why I feel so strongly about it. I don’t identify with the left but solidarity and equality are important values to me. And I feel those people are tarnishing these values. I don’t pretend I embody them more than them but virtue signaling these values seems like reaction formation to me. I might not share all the priorities, values and beliefs of the left but I do share some.
So thanks to you I could understand my reaction to those people. Feminists talking about equality but hating men, people saying we’re all equals but hating the rich and powerful, etc. All this out of powerlessness and self-deception. What is making me angry is that to me they spit on the shoes of the people who are living these values but not advertising them. I have a deep respect and deference for these people. They don’t posture they don’t talk they act in silence. They humble me every time and make me feel ver little. As it should be.
Now that I could get these emotions and thoughts out I want to say thank you again as it now allow me to have compassion and empathy for the people I criticized above. I now better understand the underlying defense mechanism. So you helped me to fly higher and for that I’m grateful. I’m convinced that I’ll deal differently with them from now on. Maybe not right away 100% but slowly and better each time.
Now onto identifying my own reaction formation behaviours: exciting!
I think your post is one of the PU-link worthy thread. Talking about it, maybe there could be a part in PU or in ultimate power about defense mechanisms. Very important topic in my eyes.
PS: sorry for the double post was editing and timed out (trickier to write on the phone). Could an admin delete the post above please?
