Heinz Hartmann Ego Psychology and the Mechanisms of Adaptation

 

Heinz Hartmann devoted considerable time to the study of the Ego's Defenses and their functions from the perspective of the Adaptation. However, he seems not to have expanded on the defenses explained by Freud. The ego mobilizes defenses to protect itself from four types of dangers including conflicts among:

·         The id, ego, and super ego conflict.

·         Conflict in interpersonal relations.

·         Conflict in social norms.

·         Conflict in response to trauma.

Mechanism of Adaptation:

Heinz Hartmann described the "Mechanisms of Adaptation" that are more or less firmly established in the ego of an adult and always run to the same course unconsciously, just as Anna Freud describes the "Defense Mechanisms". These mechanisms are established in the ego to defend against un-described or disturbing drives, wishes and effects. The adaptation mechanisms that are meant to cope with active influences of the social environment. Heinz Hartmann used two technical terms to describe a person's whole ego is modified in the service of adaptation.

ð  Alloplastic Adaptation

ð  Autoplastic Adaptation

Autoplastic vs Alloplastic Interventions:

The individual enters the psychotherapeutic process because of a feeling of distress. The source of the distress may be the result of factors such as in-effective coping styles or problems in emotional expression. The psychotherapeutic process may involve changing one's self to adapt to the environment (i.e, Autoplastic change or Self change) or effecting change in the environment (i.e. Alloplastic change or External change).

Autoplastic Adaptation:

Autoplastic Adaptation is that when the person tries to change himself/herself internal environment when confronted by a problem or stressful situation. It is also called to adapting yourself to a situation.

 Example:

ð  Stockholm syndrome is a Psychological response. It occurs when hostages or abuse victims feel sympathy and bond with their captors or abusers.

ð  The victims change their behaviors and reactions to cope with the situation.

Alloplastic Adaptation:

Alloplastic Adaptation is a form of adaptation where the person/ subject attempts to change the environment or situation. It occurs when the person alters the environment to cope with challenges/ difficult situation that he or she may encounter in the opposite direction. The subject tries to  change the external environment.

 Examples:

ð  Like, Criminality and Mental illness can be classified as the categories of the Alloplastic Adaptation.

ð  Crime reduces stress that the individual faces by producing changes in the environment.

Frustration & Aggression are natural consequences of living and a root to cause of crime.

Therapeutic Action: Four Levels of Abstraction

Theory of Pathogenesis 

The corpus of Brenner’s work affords a central place to conflict and compromise formation in normal mental functioning as well as in symptom formation.  Among these conflicts, the most critical are those over the “sexual and aggressive wishes that characterize mental life during the period from 3 to 6 years of age.” These wishes are of primary lasting impact because they elicit the most intense fears of the un- pleasures that are associated with their gratification, either in fact or in fantasy. The feared consequences are the situations of danger enumerated by Freud. They include loss of the object, loss of the object’s love, castration or bodily damage, “and the various aspects of superego punishment subsumed under the headings of punishment, guilt, remorse, self-injury and penance”

Theory of Mind

The theory of how the mind works, second level of abstraction, can also be subsumed under the term compromise formations.  The wishes of childhood origins and the un pleasure associated with them give rise to thoughts, actions, symptoms, fantasies, etc., that are multiply determined and seek to satisfy the different components of conflict.  Through compromise formations, a person attempts to obtain as much gratification of these wishes  without eliciting too much unpleasure, typically in the form anxiety or depressive affects, excessive feelings of guilt, or incurring external consequences (such as punishment).  Symptoms and mental illness are compromise formations that are less adaptive, while so-called normal behaviors are compromise formations that are more adaptive; where the issue of adaptiveness is relative to the extent to which a compromise formation gratifies a wish with minimum incurrence of un pleasure.  

Ideas about What the Analyst Does

This leads to the third level of abstraction namely, what the analyst does.  In light of Brenner’s theory of pathogenesis and his ideas about how the mind works, it follows that the main aim of the analyst is to make the nature of the patient’s compromise formations known to the patient. 

“The more insight the patient has into the wishes and conflicts that have given rise to pathological symptoms, the more likely it is that those symptoms will recede or disappear and that normal compromise formations will appear in their place”

The Analyst as a Person

Finally there is the issue of the analyst as a person effecting change.  In reference to the personal qualities of the analyst as an agent of change, the issue of counter transference inevitably becomes germane.