Category Archives: Contribution

Our Defenses Affect Our Flourishing – Part I

Life presents us with conflict, stress, and change, so we develop (often unconscious) defensive habits to deal with this pain.

There is compelling evidence* suggesting that the maturity of our defenses can determine the extent to which we develop psychosocial health. 

Here are some mature defenses (articulated in the DSM-IV).

(1) Altruism – Taking action to decrease the world’s suffering

(2) Anticipation – Holding future pain in awareness (i.e. memento mori)

(3) Humor – Being able to laugh at oneself and the vicissitudes of life

(4) Sublimation – Engaging healthy, gratifying alternatives to an opportunity denied

(5) Suppression – Stoicism (i.e. “If you are going through hell, keep going.”) 

Development of these habits is not a matter of will power.  They are cultivated in the context of significant relationships, drawn out of us in empathy and safety.  

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*For more, check out Chapter 8 (entitled “Resilience and Unconscious Coping”) of this fascinating book reflecting on the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

Our Defenses Affect Our Flourishing – Part II

Here I wrote that the maturity of our unconscious defenses in the face of life’s pain contributes to our overall psychosocial wellness.

And the opposite seems true as well.  Immature defenses tend to undermine our wellness. 

Here are some common immature defenses.

Some (dissociation, fantasy, passive aggression, projection) avoid or externalize responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in.

Other defenses keep the threatening thought or feeling out of our awareness.  These include displacement (directing anger at something other than the source of the anger), intellectualization, and repression.

Awareness of these immature defenses can help us leave them behind.  To truly grow, though, we need to witness exemplars of the mature defenses as well as experience the relational support to integrate them.  

Power-tropism

Plants are phototropic.  Over time, they orient themselves according to the light source in their environment, bending either toward the light or away from it.

Many people are power-tropic.  They bend toward (or away from) those that they perceive are in power, and reflexively take on (or react against) their characteristics.

Seeing this phenomenon can help us understand our own motivation, the motivation of others, and, then, how to shape culture in a just way.

Making a Point, Making a Connection, Making a Difference

Making a point is, in the short term, quite fun.  With a rhetorical flourish, we spin a narrative about how we see the world.  Sometimes, this involves putting someone in their place in a way that activates the defensiveness of their ego (and ours).  Little positive change can come from this.

Making a point is different from making a connection.

Making a connection is harder than making a point.  It begins with listening.  Truly, humbly listening.  And then, with prudence and patience, willing the good of another.

Put another way, in order to make a difference in the world, first we must make a connection with a person.  This path is far better (and more courageous) than simply making a point. 

Control or Mastery

When our youngest son was about 9 months old (and would wake up very early in the morning), our family spent a few days of vacation just north of San Diego.  When our son would wake up, my wife and I took turns putting him in the carrier, leaving the condo, and walking on the pier built a quarter mile out into the Pacific Ocean.  

From the pier, even at 6:00am in mid-November, one could easily see a hundred surfers, tiny to our sight, bobbing up and down in the waves.  Each time a solid wave would approach them, a few surfers would stand up and take the wave, riding it masterfully to shore. 

I often wonder about the difference, in my own life, between mastery and control. 

From the pier, the surfers showed us that control of one’s circumstances is not possible, but mastery of those circumstances is beautiful.

The Cultivation of Solitude

In our senior year of college, a group of friends began hosting “professor dinners” in which we crowded around a mediocre meal and asked a beloved teacher an impossibly difficult question.

In the final weeks before graduation, three professors were asked, “what is the greatest challenge of our generation?”

The first answered, “the ability and conviction to speak truthfully.”

The second answered, “solidarity with the poor.”

Then, the third answered that “the cultivation of solitude” was to be our greatest challenge.

Wait… the WHAT?

Largely an overzealous, justice-minded bunch, reactions ranged from sceptical acceptance to muffled horror. Didn’t this guy know about the urgency of the struggle for justice?

Of course he knew. But, he also knew that without solitude, we would not be centered within ourselves, be capable of sharing this center with others, or authentically build communities worthy of trust strong enough to bear the challenges of our age.

Neither Faith nor Works

In Scripture and Tradition, the conversation of “faith or works” is a well trod path.

Sometimes, though, it strikes me that a more present danger of our age is that we have neither faith nor works.

Certain ideological narratives can masquerade as faith, but have nothing to do with trust in a loving God.  And often this narrative only serves to whip up self-righteousness instead of actual work on behalf of real people. 

Let’s work and pray with each other instead.