![]() ![]() When the patient was seven the mother refused furthersexual relations with the father and left the marital bed, but the patient continued to sleep with the father until she was thirteen. ![]() At about this age she first developed various neurotic traits: nail biting, temper tantrums, enuresis, and numerous phobias. The history revealed that after the patient was about four years old her parents had begun to quarrel violently, making her early environment extremely contentious and unstable. This process may even go so far that they curl up into a fetal position and remain in that position for months.Illustrative Case:A seventeen-year-old girl was brought to a psychiatric clinic by her mother with the complaint that for the preceding five months her behavior had become increasingly irrational and destructive. In chronic schizophrenia some patients return to a completely infantile level where they have to be washed, diapered, dressed, and fed. The term “hysterical puerilism” is sometimes applied to cases of temporary infantile behavior resulting from prolonged combat or other extreme stresses.The most striking and pathological examples of regression, however, are found in cases of severe personality disorganization. ![]() Like children they felt not at all set back or ashamed when it became known that they had lied about their prowess” (Bettelheim, 1943). They were boastful, telling tales of what they had accomplished in their former lives. They became unable to plan for the future or to give up immediate pleasure satisfactions to gain greater ones in the near future. Under the stress of the concentration camp, where all normal satisfactions were denied, some prisoners reverted to childish reactions:“The prisoners lived, like children, only in the immediate present. But generally speaking, regression is an attempt to evade rather than solve problems, and immature behavior almost inevitably leads to greater difficulties than ever.The mechanism of regression can reach extreme proportions. (tender loving care) when she has suffered a disappointment. The businessman who has been “thrown for a loss” may need to be babied by his wife for a while and the wife herself may benefit from an extra dose of t.l.c. According to this theory, an individual might regress, under stress, to thumb sucking if he did not have enough “sucking satisfaction” as an infant, perhaps as a result of hasty feeding or a large-holed bottle.We are all tempted to retreat to immaturity at times, and there are situations where it does no harm to yield to that temptation. Psychoanalysts believe that some people also tend to reactivate impulses which were denied sufficient expression early in life. They have been partially arrested, or “fixated,” at one or another stage of development, and return to that stage when they encounter difficulties they find hard to handle. Similarly, regressive behavior patterns are often found in people who have failed to grow up in all respects-usually because their parents have been overprotective. The parent who gives in every time the child cries or pouts may be setting a pattern which will be revived every time the child meets problems later on. Many older people revive childhood memories and live in the past, in an unconscious effort to regain the satisfactions of their youth.Frequently, the tendency to regress is found in individuals who have “gotten away with” infantile behavior as they were growing up. Adults may become so helpless and indecisive that others have to solve their problems for them, just as their father or mother used to do. Adolescents who cannot resolve their emotional problems sometimes regress to sulking, weeping, or temper tantrums as a means of getting what they want. When a new brother or sister arrives, the older boy or girl in the family sometimes reverts to bedwetting, thumb sucking, or baby talk in an unconscious effort to recapture the parental attention these activities elicited at an earlier age. This tendency can be observed at any age from childhood to old age. The unconscious defense mechanism of reverting to immature behavior.When threatened with external problems or internal conflicts which they cannot cope with, some individuals return to reaction patterns which gave them comfort or relief at an earlier period in their lives. ![]()
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