- Overview
- Information processing mechanisms are strategies are employed by people of different structures to sort through information, often before it reaches conscious awareness.
- Each Structure corresponds with a new information processing mechanism which is learned and ultimately mastered within that structure.
- The primary purpose of the mechanism is to defend against the Symptom or Crisis of the given structure. For example, Neurotics use Repression to defend against Anxiety.
- Earlier structures cannot use information processing strategies learned in later structures.
- Later structures may use information processing strategies from earlier structures.
- Why do we have mechanisms?
- Like defence mechanisms from psychoanalytic theory, but “defence” is diminishing and too narrow in scope. Mechanisms also have a creative, constructive purpose.
- They’re defence mechanisms, yes, but also control mechanisms, mastery mechanisms. They allow you to regulate your experience of the symptom.
- The person in the Crisis phase of their structure uses the primary mechanism more than any of the other phases. It’s just that they use it very skillfully and precisely, as a tool. Think of the difference between a random woman being chased by a lion who stumbles across a gun, and a professional lion hunter who uses a gun every day. In the latter case, you can clearly say that the hunter is more comfortable with the “symptom” (the lion) and less afraid of it or bewildered by it, but he’s also much more comfortable with the mechanism (the gun) and uses it more often. That is also why later structures don’t completely lose those symptoms or mechanisms - they still use them, probably every day. But as we progress, we gather more tools, more symptoms to pay attention to. It’s like we’re slowly assembling a Swiss army knife of tools to use.
- Splitting is the mechanism in Detached individuals which defends against Derealization (the symptom of being detached).
- If you split something off that doesn’t make sense to you, then you’re protected from that feeling of not understanding / not knowing what’s going on. If you split, then it’s like it never existed and you move on with your life.
- It’s a defence mechanism, but it also allows you to experience that symptom (derealization) more safely and comfortably. When you get better at Splitting, you can do it in a more nuanced way.
- An early Detached (autistic) person might split completely into their own world (cocooning, hiding under a blanket) because they can’t handle what’s out there.
- As you progress through detachment, you can be more nuanced, e.g. letting only your closest family in and listening to one person talking to me. Or coping with just yourself and a special interest, with nothing else.
- In late detachment, you can split with a lot of nuance. It becomes very specific, e.g. the candy wrapper is gone, a weird look from a stranger? They are gone.
- Splitting is essentially a skill that enables you to forget. It’s a defence mechanism, but also a useful skill to have in everyday life, and everyone uses it to a degree, e.g. throwing out trash.
- Mechanisms
- Dimensional thinking
- Detachment: 0-dimensional
- An object or experience “splits” or reduces to a single point. At that moment, it feels like that experience has only ever existed, and will only ever exist, in that state.
- Psychosis: 1-dimensional
- An object or experience exists on a line between two points. Not that an experience is mapped onto a particular point on the line, like a shade of grey, but the experience is the line itself. The seasons are the line between summer and winter.
- Neurosis: 2-dimensional
- An object or experience exists on a 2D plane. A line extended into another dimension. i.e. perception of another person is not just one-dimensional, but also depends on the context in which I experienced them. An ex-husband is not “an abuser”, but “an abuser in the context of our relationship”.
- Perversion: 3-dimensional
- An object or experience is not only context-dependent, but also time-dependent. A plane extended across time, forming a 3D shape. An ex-husband is not “an abuser in the context of our relationship”, but “an abuser in the context of our relationship, in that time period of each of our lives”.
- On controlling/regulating experience spencer-hypothesis
- Typically someone of that structure is constantly trying to “defend against” the symptom, as if pushing it away, pushing against it
- But people of that structure also LOVE to participate in it, when it’s enabled/allowed/sanctioned
- Psychotics don’t want to be depressed, but they love to watch sad, sappy, romantic, tragic movies
- Neurotics don’t want to be anxious, but love the climb on roller coasters, tense, scary movies
- Perverts don’t want to (be seen to) have sexual enjoyment, but they actually love it?
- Detached people don’t want to be disconnected from reality, but they love lovecraftian horror type media, metaphysical sci-fi
- The symptom causes stress, but being allowed to immerse yourself, participate in the symptom is invigorating
- On awareness spencer-hypothesis
- The information processing mechanisms available to each structure correspond with how awareness works.
- Detached people can only Split, so awareness is always collapsing around a single object of attention.
- When you direct your attention towards something or someone, everything else seems to stop existing for that moment.
- Mindfulness can help to cultivate an expanded awareness, but as soon as attention is directed on something, it collapses.
- You’re constantly re-splitting to update your attention. So your awareness and attention is constantly reconfiguring itself, collapsing over and over again onto new objects. It feels fragmented across time.
- This is part of why Detached identity feels so unstable. It’s constantly being Split from awareness and fragmented across time.
- The symptom of Derealization occurs because the world is constantly being Split. It’s not consistent.
- Psychotics can Foreclose, so they are developing the ability to keep their awareness expanded while directing attention towards something within that awareness.
- Foreclosure doesn’t cause awareness to expand, rather sustaining expanded awareness is what makes Foreclosure necessary.
- As awareness remains expanded, you need a way to say that “this object exists in my awareness but is not mine”.
- It’s an ability to “assign ownership” to objects in your awareness and reconcile it with the awareness of others present. The same objects can be part of multiple people’s awareness, which is the basis for the real-time empathic connection that’s created when two people interact. It’s like each person’s awareness contains the other.
- Everything in awareness remains present in the conscious mind, which can cause sensory overwhelm.
- It’s like, awareness is a bubble which can be expanded or contracted. But expanding it happens all at once; there is no fine-grained control over what’s included or not. Foreclosure is needed to “mark” objects as mine-or-not in order to interact with the (social) world.
- As awareness expands, it also includes objects in the unconscious mind: the Imaginary / dream world. Since Psychotics cannot yet Repress, there is no division between the conscious and unconscious worlds. This can cause hallucinations.
- Neurotics can Repress, so they can begin to filter objects in their awareness into the unconscious mind.
- Awareness remains expanded, and objects can be Repressed / hidden to the unconscious in order to free up processing capacity for the objects in conscious awareness, which can be optionally Foreclosed.
- It’s like awareness is a bubble which expands to include everything in the conscious and unconscious, but there is also a secondary bubble within that for objects in conscious awareness only.
- Objects can be moved from unconscious awareness to conscious awareness.
- The question of “which objects belong where” is cause for Anxiety. There are ideas, truths, contradictions about reality which are Repressed to the unconscious, but they are there.
- Perverts have mastered Repression and are developing Disavowal.
- You have mastered the ability to bring objects between conscious awareness and unconscious awareness.
- Contradicting thoughts and ideas are able to be held together at the same time, rather than one being anxiously Repressed over the other.
- Disavowal is used to mediate between the contradicting objects. Both are held together, but they are disavowed against each other, like “yes, there’s truth in this BUT ALSO truth in that”. An object doesn’t stand alone above others.