 So, last time we were talking about defense mechanisms with respect to anxiety and primarily trying to see how reality, neurotic and moral anxiety they play important role in terms of posing different type of demand on us to adjust. Today, we would know continue with again the whole process of adjustment, but today what we would do is we would look at certain minor abrasions that might be visible in people who are trying to adjust in a given situation given the fact that we already know now that how self plays an important role, how certain assumptions play important role and how different types of anxieties gets provoked within the individual. After discussing this then we would come to the fact that how are certain types of defense is used and then we would be coming finally, to task coordinated reaction pattern and defense mechanisms. Two important constructs we need to understand now one is called neurotic nucleus, the other is called neurotic paradox. Now, you all must have heard this word neurotic or neuroticism, we are primarily trying to make a distinction between two types of behavior that might be visible in certain set of individuals, one where one by default has certain degree of inadequacy the feeling of inadequacy as well as anxiety and this makes the individual decide that he or she should avoid the situation rather than coping with it. The standard template for the normal human being would be that even though you are in given troublesome situation finally, you should try your best to cope with it. You use certain types of resources for coping that will come little later in our discussion, but then if you start realizing the fact that I am inadequate, my skills are inadequate I am incompetent to handle a given situation which actually might happen to many of us in certain type of situation. Say for example, I have never been into say rock climbing and suddenly you tell me that no you have to do this, it is impossible. Now, what happens to me when I have situations like that, where I realize that my resources does not provide me the support to cope with it and my whole sense of inadequacy and anxiety finally, makes me decide that I should avoid such situations. If you take examples like this, the example that I quoted here that you are not trained into it and then you are told that there is a possibility of rock climbing and I want you to do this. Realizing your limitations, you simply accept that fine I cannot do that and hence you cease to participate in that activity fairly normal behavior. But imagine a different situation where repeatedly you come across situations where you decide not to cope with it and in turn you decide to avoid it. Rock climbing was one situation say in your hall of residence your gymkhana unit decides to start say illocution competition, debate competition and say you stammer. This in turn could be a great source of discomfort for you and anxiety for you and you decide that no what will people think of me, what would my batch mates think of me and hence I would not participate. There could be a possibility that you are not good at sports and then you are told that we are falling short of one player. So just join the team. Several such situations you must have experience and many more such situations will come. Usually human beings are capable enough as we discussed earlier that could be a source of one or the other form of anxiety for you. But given the fact that you also have certain assumptions, you would try to explore the possibility that how far could I stretch my behavior in this type of a situation and hence you try your best to acclimatize according to the demand of the situation. At times some of us decide that I need not participate in such events and hence I will withdraw. Situation specific withdrawal, tendency to avoid confronting the situation rather than coping with it and this whole exercise being propelled by the sense of deeper sense of inadequacy and anxiety. If it gets overextended to a good number of situational demand that you encounter then this is defined as neurotic nucleus that your pattern of adjustment in the given situation now starts showing that you are predominantly using a particular style of reacting to the situation and this is an indicator of neurotic nucleus, am I clear. Now we come to another very interesting dynamics in this what is called as neurotic paradox. Now in neurotic paradox first look at the characteristics. There is an element of rigidity, there is an element of egocentric but self-defeating behavior. Self-defeating behavior would be where there was a possibility for you to explore the situation to exploit it for coming forward with a given behavior that you work up above but you did not do that. But most interestingly look at the third characteristics that you pragmatically do your work yet you have some neurotic cling in terms of your adjusted behavior means that pragmatically doing things would be that the action that you demonstrate in a given situation is all rational based. So you have a justification for coming forward with an action. So the world by and large will look at your behavior as if this is a very justified act that one can think of this individual. But then what happens is that you show great degree of rigidity in your behavior. This rigidity gets combined with that egocentric tendency and rigidity and egocentric tendency they combine together making you go for behavior which does not allow you the opportunity of personal growth and hence you are basically falling in the trap of self-defeating behavior. All you gain out of showing that extreme degree of rigidity is that you get some immediate relief from the anxiety provoking situation because you have basically avoided it by being very very rigid by being very very egocentric all you do is that you reflected to the world let us see my act of not participating in a given situation is very very justified it is pragmatic. But actually you got relief out of your own anxiety because you successfully tried to avoid that very situation. Now avoidance if you see it is basically seen in both the sets no neurotic nucleus also has avoidance behavior and here also you find that no avoidance is used for immediate relief the distinction between the two would be that here for immediate relief you use avoidance as a mechanism where there what you do is that you start extending this avoidance tendency towards different types of no situations that you encounter. But neurotic paradox can be seen in multiple types of degrees and then no multiple combinations can be visible. Now once you have a variable degree this means that at times you would have very strong justification for avoiding something and at times you would have no just some type of a logic that somewhere satisfies you that this is the reason why I did not participate in this. Different types of situations you would find you know where normal people you would find at this show different type of either tendencies no and that neurotic cling that you find minus this cling if you look at the behavior of the individual the individual is perfectly normal. Except when such type of situations comes when the person concerned starts showing that fine I while I am trying to adjust I show some peculiar type of things no at this peculiarity if you watch the individual very carefully you realize that this is the peculiarity that is embedded in this behavior of the given individual fine otherwise people with this type of cling are does not have much of a grave problem minus the small cling that they are repeatedly show in their behavior. Now one possibility we saw was that you show the tendency the characteristics of neurotic nucleus to you demonstrate the characteristics of neurotic paradox. The third could be what is classified as transient situational reactions no transient situational reactions basically refer to extreme form of behavior that you see in people when they have extremely catastrophic experience. For example if you have say you were in a house and suddenly there was a massive earthquake and good amount of buildings in your locality collapsed there were several casualty hundreds and hundreds of people are missing and the type of behavior that you see in people who are stuck in that type of situation is usually extremely different from what such type of people usually were doing in their regular life. And that is that type of situation is considered to be transient in nature because they are not stable because there is extreme situation therefore the reactions that the individual is giving is also extreme in nature fine. Hence they are classified as transient situational reaction unlike neurotic nucleus and paradox which you start reflecting in your behavior as a module of adjustment and in one case you try to get immediate relief in the case of neurotic paradox. You try to make your behavior very pragmatic you show neurotic cling you show certain degree of rigidity you show certain degree of egocentric behavior finally you do not allow yourself to grow. In the case of neurotic nucleus your anxiety does not allow you to participate in an act and by default you start using avoidance as a mechanism of handling the situation rather than confronting it rather than copying with it. Here also you show extreme behavior but such extreme behaviors are looked as transient behaviors so they are not stable in nature and hence are not a cause of concern. I would just digress a bit here and then come back to the remaining set of defenses. If you look at the psychology literature especially literature that has to do with mental health or trauma psychology you find great deal of no discussion on something called acute stress disorder and the other is called post traumatic stress disorder. We are not referring to no PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder here we are simply saying that given a catastrophic experience very high intense type of a situation and because intensity is extremely high in the situation itself and therefore certain degree of extremities is also visible in the behavior that the individual shows in that situation in order to cope with it in order to adjust according to that situation. Here we are not referring to PTSD or acute stress little later in another module we will be talking about stress and there we would also be talking about acute stress disorder and the end part of that very module would be where we would be talking about post traumatic stress disorder. And again there also we will take two contrasting views one the dominant view that this is this no PTSD involves a set of symptoms and therefore qualifies to be classified as a disorder and the contradictory view point which is not the dominant view point but gradually becoming stronger saying that because this is an extreme behavior in extreme situation therefore it cannot be classified as a disorder and that is where what refers to transient situational reaction that this is the situation in this situation because of the volatile nature of it the behavior is also extreme but this is not the stable form of behavior hence individuals behavior should not be analyzed only looking at this frame. So, if you run the full frame then you say that fine no this was the normal set of behavior this is what had happened during the situation and this is after the situation. Then three important types of defenses the biological the psychological and the socio cultural defenses that are available to us. Biological defenses basically refers to the whole immunological balance we try to strive and finally trying to make the our entire physiological system come to its baseline level that is the achieving basically the state of homeostasis. Great deal of research you would find that pertains to immunological defenses and in fact we would just touch that issue as the last module somewhere in the second last or last week of the semester where we would be talking about psychological disorders and we will just we would not go into the details we would just touch upon one set of psychological disorders what are called as psychosomatic disorders. And whole psychosomatic disorder has to do with immunological system because what happens in the case of psychosomatic disorder is the origin of the problem is psychological in nature the manifestation of the symptom is biological in nature somatic in nature. So, say for example, development of rashes for example, in a very very localized area in the body could be usually perceived it is it would be by and large perceived as if it is some type of eruption on the skin reflecting a certain type of infection. Usually we will never interpret it that fine because this part of the body was to be used in this situation therefore, deliberately the way you have thought of the things your psyche has led you to develop rashes exactly on that very area of the body. Very common psychosomatic disorders are say ulcer for example, although ulcer has been attached to different type of work style and eating habit basically there is a jokingly told proverb that if you want to avoid ulcer avoid three things in life no hurry worry and curry. So, if you run a life which is full of hurried activities. So, basically you make your entire physiological system go highly above its baseline level of functioning and therefore, you have several types of biochemical changes that takes place during that period which in turn makes you pay the price for it because there was an excessive secretion of it. Similarly, if you are extremely tensed extremely worried again your neurotransmitters are generously secreted and therefore, you have predominance of once type of neurotransmitter in your brain compared to the usual balance that is seen in the normal people and third if you are prone of that highly spicy food that also can make certain changes. Curry we are not touching as part of this course, but yes hurried way of leading life and worried way of sustaining life hurry and worry combines together and you can find great degree of immunological research on that. So, basically all you do is that your immune system initially will try to safeguard you against the adversity that you experience from the local environment in your surrounding and given the fact that the situation demands certain things from you your biological and the psychological system should ideally work in coordination and that is attending the state of homeostasis. If it fails to certain extent then you have know those psychosomatic disorders coming up then we come to the psychological defenses. Psychological defenses here basically refers to the whole ability of the individual to revert back to the original state where one is able to cope with the adversities that one has been experiencing. So, you have a situation at hand you realize that know this is too demanding too taxing for you you use certain resources it could be your individual resource individual resource would be something like your ability to think your ability to contemplate your ability to plan to execute your ability to terminate the action your ability to think of the assumptions what could be the possibilities. It could also be group resources which would be the part of the socio cultural defense and because individuals cannot be thought of leading life in isolation. Hence, these two resources will always be available to you and you can use them, but then finally at the end of the whole exercise you are capable of coping with the adversity that you are experiencing. So, that is the psychological defense what happens if you are not capable of doing that that could also be a scenario know where you try and you fail you try again for the second time in the second situation again you fail. And that is where know if this defense fails this is where you develop some or the other psychological problem those problems we will discuss know at the end of the semester when we would be talking about the psychological disorders. And the last defense is the socio cultural defense where you have certain group resources available to you and usually you will find difference between individualistic versus collectivist culture where the group resources usually is available in abundance and at no price usually price means the financial part component of it some other type of price we do pay for everything and that constitutes the group resource. For example, in a culture like ours say if you know look very sad you look in a very say your facial expression your entire behavior is reflects as if you are in a very pensive state of mind many people will ask you is everything I think you are disturbed I think you are in trouble and many a times you would realize that even strangers might ask you this usually strangers not of your generation two generations above I will share with you a very interesting experience just in this December as a part of some projects some work was going on somewhere and an accident took place. The person concerned was brought to a hospital here in Kanpur was admitted after minor operation was admitted in a room and that room was twin sharing type of room. So, already an elderly patient was there on one of the beds now this young boy goes to the other bed and lot of people were along with us know because from the given site because that was there was a big team there. So, a good number of people were there in the hospital. So, this patient was very elderly was a retired person from the armed forces he just woke up to go to the toilet and the person sitting just in front of him he was the patient know the elderly man and he asks the younger man sitting on the opposite side or sub tiktok ideally it should have been the other way around means I as a normal individual who is you know not admitted in a hospital should have asked the patient everything is ok, but the reverse took place and this is an interesting example that it is not only those who are related to you they provide the resources to you in terms of know if you need how many shoulders do you need in a given type of a scenario, but even strangers can come to this school a great deal of literature you will find on other types of know cultural resources. For example, religion and spiritual engagements both have been studied extensively in psychology in terms of their role in facilitating in maintaining in helping the individual regain the proper framework of mind mental health literature you will find know if you just go to any of these research search engines know not the google search engine research base search engines scoppers Thomas writer there you would know if you type this keywords know mental health and spirituality or religion you will find you know great know degree of study that has been devoted with multiple types of psychological variables and that makes you interestingly realize that certain type of group resources in the collectivist form of our society works like anything usually in day to day scenario if you find people who do not have proper houses to live in can go and know sleep on the varanda of a temple or any religious place for that sake you have the langars anyone can go and have meal you are not asked whether you are a sick or a non sick simply you have come to pay your ardas and therefore you can go and sit in the langar and have food both the times there are no n number of temples distributed throughout the country where again meals are provided to poor people both the times two meals a day every day every day you will find that and there are people who take pride in getting engaged in such activities now this type of a group resource walks both ways know those who are deprived those who does not have the resource can come and have food their basic necessities fulfilled those who are those who have the resources and pump a part of their money for creating this type of a system also take pride in doing that and they say that fine it makes them feel humble it know makes them fine tune themselves much better as a human being and therefore in the whole process of their engagement in such activities they evolve as a much better human being not many a times but couple of times there has been judgments passed by the courts of different lower courts in India where somebody who has been found culprit of a small type of a crime has been asked to do certain type of services in a religious place I remember one court in Delhi sentenced young boy to serve in a temple for certain period of time I do not remember the time period it was one month or something like this a small period but instead of sending to the special houses where they are considered to be on probation and it is supposed that they will get reform in turn the magistrate declared that fine you should go and serve in a given temple and all he did was simply know in front of the temple you have thousands and thousands of visitors you have to know take care of their sleepers in a temple that is also very interesting dynamics know where you find good sleepers missing once you come out after paying your good to the god and here was a case know where somebody who starts know who is involved in a small act of stealing is made to know safeguard sleepers in a temple and because it is an auspicious place because of your certain values that you have cultivated you know adhere strictly to the guidelines that find none of this sleeper should be misplaced one month you dedicate for such type of service and you find that some change takes place within you many gurudwaras if you visit you will find people cleaning the floor of course they are famous the famous golden temple you will find many people there know and that is the time where know you realize that why and you will find you know people who are otherwise well off in professional terms in terms of their financial know earnings they are very well off there was no need for them to wipe the floor in the golden temple but then you take pride in doing that know and you say that this is a humbling experience now here group resource what I am what I was trying to show was that group resource can help both ways know somebody who is deprived somebody who is affluent both of them are engaged in with some type of group resources and it helps both of them the very system of what you call as confession box in the churches something that you cannot share with anybody you can go stand in the confession box and then talk about it know and it is there an anonymous priest basically listens to you this is again a great degree of service that is provided by the society that is something that is still extremely troublesome for you create certain extreme degree of moral anxiety within you and you know that it cannot be shared by anybody else go to the church and share it in the confession box and you are relieved great deal of research has also gone into what type of engagements people show when they have catastrophic experience know and as a part of their group activity what do you see in them the negative side of it if you see the darker in a sense that it has certain pathology involved with it but not so well researched especially in the eastern part of the world is know the concept of mass hysteria there was an earthquake even say the Ahmadabad earthquake in Gujarat and you know after every earthquake you have recurrent seismic events for long people used to and it was chilled winter morn nights know early January and people used to sleep on the roads on the highway leaving their houses deserted because they thought that there could be another set of seismic events and they could also lose their life now this is an example of mass hysteria where you see that the whole society starts behaving in a particular way something which is not justified the other side of it the brighter side of it in a sense that once know you have people who have suffered out of it have lost many members of their family or the full family in this thing and then you realize that you know a large number of them they come to the temples and they get engaged in Kirtan Kirtan you know what is Kirtan so basically you worship God you sing louder you play some instrument or you know use both your power for that and basically it is a very very intense engagement with a religious prayer and this has been found to be very very generously used in our culture large number of sufferers and you start people doing this so group resources constitutes all of them and these resources are basically know the biological the psychological and the socio cultural defenses all of them they are basically geared towards helping you maintain your mental health so that you do not start sinking down and the phases of life where there are certain gulfs where you can just go deep down you have your own resources you have your own defenses whether it is biological psychological or socio cultural that just extends the helping and that come on you have fallen in the gulf now I am providing you this helping and you can come out of it and regain your baseline level of activities in case these defenses fail that is the time when one becomes a victim of one or the other type of psychological disorder we are deliberately going very close to the line where we could now start with the normal behavior but we are again we are just touching that line and again we come back to the better side of life psychological disorders we will touch only as a part of our last module not before that now we come to three different types of reactions first the task oriented reaction patterns there after we would talk about the damage repair mechanisms and then finally we will come to defense mechanisms what is the difference between the three first task oriented reaction pattern basically means that you have a task at hand you are supposed to adjust according to that situation you are supposed to come forward with a behavioral outcome you have to react to you have to respond to that situation there could be a set of behavior they are called task oriented reaction patterns while executing this task your ego has been hurt what do you do then and that is the whole process that we would be talking about with respect to damage repair mechanism the ego has been hurt now I am trying to repair the damage that has been caused to my ego what if the damage has not been caused but I am apprehensive that this might happen then we use the defense mechanisms the distinction between the three would be that defense mechanisms are unconsciously used mechanisms so you use it you have it in your behavior but you are ignorant about it because it is unconsciously utilized whereas the remaining ones you are aware of them the first task oriented reaction pattern is attack where individual tries to remove or to surmount the obstacle you are heading towards a direction there is a certain barrier and you have to basically overcome the barrier there could be multiple ways of doing that you take another route you try to slide the barrier to one side so that you can make your way or you just jump above the barrier the parallel example could be from the track and field events where you have the hurdle race in the athletic competition you must have seen the hurdle race where you are supposed to run fast and there are hurdles of a similar of a particular height that is put on the track now all you have to do is that you will keep running and once you have the hurdle you have to jump and cross it attack is a situation similar to that examples could be say you feel hungry you feel hungry what to do and all you know is that I have to know vigorously search for a location where I can find foods if you look certain programs of discovery or national geography where they showed that these are the set of people who are lost in certain situation what do they do and then you realize that again you take a different mode of attack where you know that the ready made stuff is not available and therefore you go searching for hunting for food that can help you survive so attack would be know or say for example you know that tomorrow is the quiz this is just hypothetical example that tomorrow is the quiz and therefore tonight you will definitely turn the pages of your notebook that is the attack process I know the target that has to be achieved and I know what has to be done and I directly do exactly what is needed that is what is attack this is the first form of task oriented reaction pattern. Second frustration and direct action now this is based on the tendency towards increased activity and variation in the mode of response when responses are encountered I am coming forward with a response in a given situation and then you encounter me the fact that you have encountered my response and I am supposed to gain the target it invokes certain degree of frustration because you are the source that is not allowing me to achieve my target that leads to sense of frustration and hence all I do is that I will get engaged in a much more vigorous activity so I increase my activity or I go for variation in the pattern that I have adopted to encounter it take the same example you have quiz tomorrow you are trying to turn the pages of your notebook to realize that the person just next to you in the adjoining room no place of music at the loudest volume something that distracts you now it is a great source of frustration for you because you know that I have only these many hours left now tomorrow morning 8 o clock quiz so what do I do now you know you are the one who would know usually very silently read the text suddenly starts reading it aloud this is an increase in the activity or you go for adopting a variation in the style so you know that this song will be played till say 12 midnight so I will study after 12 or I will wait till this music system is switched off then I will study even though if I have to compromise with sleeping tonight I will compromise with it I will not sleep tonight another variation could be that you go confront the individual make him switch off the audio system come back to your room and then study there could be no multiple types of variations now you can move to another location and read there so frustration and direct action reflects to this type of a task oriented reaction pattern third type of a situation where you have conflicts and you have to choose in conflicting situations one can attack problems by analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the options you make your objectives and then you take a informed decision there could be different types of conflicts now you could have approach conflict for example there are two things equally attractive but then only one can be approached at this time what do you do now I am not advertising for any company but say you have two films coming at the same time on two different channels and of course you do not have to attack you can record one of the movies then what do you do imagine a situation when you have one attractive and one repulsive type of a situation you are not well prepared for the quiz and you know that you are probably going to get 0 if the instructor has not put a negative mark again it is hypothetical example now what happens in situations like this where you know that if I participate in the act then I might have a negative score or a 0 score but if I do not participate then it can again be very detrimental because I lose 10 percent or 20 percent weightage from this whole scoring system that will give me a grade you want to move to the next semester you do not want to have any backlogs you do not want to be retained for summer courses you do not want AP or warning categorization this is what is called as approach avoidance conflict you want to approach something but there is a price that you have to pay for it that price you want to avoid likewise there are couple of types of conflicts that one encounters in life but once you have no situations like this in your life where you have no certain conflicts all we do is that we would weigh the option so what is it that I lose out of doing it or what is it that I lose that I gain out of doing that and if I do not do it then what is it that I am going to lose for example the instructor tells you that fine by Sunday you should be submitting the second assignment as email after Sunday the lines would be closed even if you submit your submission will not be accepted there is a price now that is put if I say that all of them who respond to different assignments on due time the weightage will be computed and this will be taken as your class participation score will be generated out of it because you are participating in assignments which are given to the whole class the moment you realize oh it also is finally going to add to the grade you know that there is a disadvantage in not participating in it I do not know how many of you have sent mail after last afternoon the last time I checked mail was last afternoon when I saw four or five mails not more than that we have 59 registered students in this course four mails for the second assignment now you weigh the option the conflict would be should I do this or should I know think of the possible scenarios in you know as part of the dimensions of subjective adjustment and give examples what do I do so say playing for tachricate in the hall of residence is important than thinking and writing you evaluate every time we do that now for small of the activities of life as well as for the biggest things in life we will always be like that and then you have certain objectives in mind I want to attain this level very interesting example it is not related to this course but I heard it from some other instructor student was doing exceptionally good in a course suddenly told the instructor that I am sliding below in some other course and in this course because I will manage with B I need to pay more attention to that course because I have been compromising and if I do not perform well in that course then my overall CPI will go down hence the person concerned declared that now onwards I will devote less time to this and more time to that course and the instructor told me that that concern in the student would definitely have got A but later on because of certain things had got B in that course but then the student concerned was very happy because got B in course where she would have definitely got A but in the course where she was contemplating she will get C or D she could manage with a B now this is certain type of objective that you decide for your own self and then you try to attain it and all of this is based on certain informed decisions you make know that if I do this then this will happen if I do that then that will happen what if I do this what if I do not do this this is how we try to resolve conflicts in our life and the last one is when you are under tremendous pressure and you have to resist to it now usually people will resist to undue pressures especially when you consider that this is an arbitrary and this is not warranted then you try to resist but there are certain type of pressures where you are helpless I should not give this example but to help you relate it much better say end semester schedule is declared and you are told that you will have two exams on the same day somebody told me I do not know how far this was correct that three exams in one day for one student because of the courses that he had credited now there is a great degree of pressure on you because you have two exams or three exams in a day but you do not have a choice. So, there is a great degree of pressure on you and you simply have to know you have no choice but to accept it you cannot resist back there could be certain type of pressures on you which you can very easily resist and there are certain type of subtle pressures which you take time to understand that this was also a form of pressure such are the pressures say for example, you come to a hostel and say good friend of your mother tells her that you should certainly keep an eye on your son he is an adolescent boy going all alone he will be a free bird and then your mother proudly says I am proud of my son I am very sure he will never do anything wrong I have nurtured him this way now if your mother tells you this type of statement couple of times this is basically a pressure on you which usually in the fast go you will never realize that this was a pressure because she is all she is saying is that I have drawn certain unseen lines and you are supposed not to cross it and repeatedly saying these that I believe in my son I have faith in my son is basically a form of pressure which gradually you realize it this is a format that is being prescribed and I have to what you are recording to it. So, these were the 4 task oriented reaction patterns tomorrow when we will meet we will talk about the damage repair mechanisms.