Sometimes we do not perceive the information at all — we literally do not hear what is being said to us. This is how perceptual psychological defense works: it blocks signals that threaten our picture of the world and our perception of ourselves. But how is the information «filtered» in this case — after all, it never gets into consciousness?
Research in the exact sciences is based, as a rule, on numerous experiments with the reproduction of the same conditions and subsequent statistical analysis of the results. Psychology is a humanitarian science, but it is also characterized by the desire to comply with scientific principles. Meanwhile, the greatest discoveries in psychology were most often made on the basis of specific individual observations.
I will talk about one accidental observation, which does not claim to be a great discovery, but allowed me to give a hypothetical explanation for the phenomenon of the so-called perceptual psychological defense. Psychological defense is a mechanism that allows a person not to be aware of information that threatens his holistic self-image. It is also a defense against behavior-destroying fears. At the same time, psychological protection does not save from internal conflicts unfolding in the subconscious.
- How do we protect ourselves from words that hurt us?
One of the most well-known mechanisms of such protection is the repression of unacceptable motives from consciousness. These motives and the information that provokes them are not included in the «I-Concept» — a person’s conscious idea of himself, associated with the function of the left frontal lobe of the brain. But this does not mean that all this information is not perceived by the brain at all. On the contrary, like any other information, it enters the right hemisphere of the brain and is perceived and evaluated. «I-Image»formed in the right frontal lobe.
«I-Image», in contrast to the «I-Concept», is not fully comprehensible, but not because it is forced out of consciousness (it also includes the “I-Concept” as a private component), but because it is polysemantic and includes too many connections of a person with the world and with other people. Some of these connections and relationships can be mutually exclusive from the point of view of logic and encourage opposite actions, and their simultaneous awareness, inclusion in the «I-Concept» would lead to the disintegration of ordered behavior, amenable to logical analysis, and to inconsistent actions that negate each other. . Therefore, what does not correspond to the «I-Concept» as a conscious idea of a person about himself, about his values and motives, is forced out of consciousness. These motives can be integrated in the «I-Image» with the conscious intentions of behavior. This integration occurs with the use of imaginative thinking, polysemantic in nature. Such integration characterizes people with a high level of imaginative thinking and provides a holistic «I-Image» and harmonious behavior.
But figurative multi-valued thinking is not well developed for everyone. And then the motives unacceptable to consciousness and the information that causes them simply remain forced out into the subconscious. At the same time, they strive to be realized in behavior, literally rush into consciousness and are constantly unconsciously suppressed, which creates discomfort, felt as emotional stress, indefinite anxiety. This anxiety can be alleviated through secondary defense mechanisms, such as rationalization, which provide an artificial explanation for the anxiety and allow attempts to reduce it. For example, anxiety can be perceived as caused by some imaginary dangers — and a person comes to grips with them. Or it causes a feeling of physical illness — and the person begins to complain about his somatic condition, makes hypochondriacal complaints and seeks medical help. The basis is the repression of unacceptable motives.
But the repression of already perceived information is not the only form of protection. Another psychological defense is perceptual negationwhen something that can lead to an internal conflict is simply not perceived — it does not enter the brain at all and is blocked at the level of the sensory system.
This mechanism looks strange and paradoxical. How is this even possible? How to prevent the perception of exactly unacceptable information, that is, to select it before it is perceived? Not surprisingly, some writers do not distinguish between perceptual defense and repression. But one incident from my personal experience clarified a lot to me.
A good friend of mine complained to me that a boil had popped up on his cheek, showed it to me and asked anxiously if it was dangerous. I knew that he was very worried about his health and easily panicked at the slightest threat of feeling unwell. The first thing was to calm him down. I said that such boils often pop up on the skin, it does not threaten anything, you just need to smear it with iodine. He knew that I always knew how to calm him down, so he turned to me.
But a witness to our dialogue happened to be nearby, he intervened in the conversation and said: “You should not take this so lightly. Sometimes these cases end tragically. In one of my acquaintances, such a pimple caused an inflammatory process, blood poisoning began, and everything ended with inflammation of the brain, and he died. I inwardly gasped, imagining how frightened my friend would be. But I didn’t know what to say, and blurted out of confusion: “He died right away …”
To my surprise and joy, my friend looked at me in bewilderment and asked in surprise, but without signs of alarm: “What did you suddenly mention about death? Has anyone talked about death? It was amazing: he simply did not hear everything that our casual, careless interlocutor said, although he spoke loudly and confidently. Nothing but perceptual defense could explain this targeted lack of perception — if it were repression, one would expect an increase in emotional tension. And then I understood how this protection works in this and in any other case.
The very first words uttered by the person who intervened in our conversation did not yet contain any specific threat, but should have alerted a person with high sensitivity. Since the offer to ignore the boil is frivolous, it means that the boil is dangerous, and terrible messages may follow. And so everything that was said further by this uninvited commentator was simply not perceived: the sensory channel was closed in response to a warning signal. And it did not open again until the narrator was silent. And I spoke right after him. From me, my friend did not expect to hear anything bad, it was not in vain that he turned to me with his concerns. He was ready to hear me. And suddenly I said something about death. It was impossible to predict, the perceptual defense did not work, and my words caused only bewilderment. The defense didn’t work precisely because it wasn’t a repression.: the mention of death was not included in the context of everything previously perceived, and the threatening information was not in the subconscious. Perceptual defense reacts to not yet traumatic, but only warning information, which, based on common past experience, can provide probabilistic prediction.
But all the limitations of this protection follow from this. It will not work if there are no such warning signals. Conversely, a signal that is not related to danger can be taken as a warning signal, and then a person may lose information that is important for further behavior, but not traumatic and unacceptable.