1st PART
"STRUCTURING OF THE PERSONALITY"
CHAPTER II
"MECHANISM OF THE CONDITIONINGS"
"To be that which we are and to come to be one day that which we are capable of being, here is the true objective of the life." Robert Louis Stevenson.
Our adjustment to the environment is made through the nervous system that has their mechanisms of action and reaction. For that reason, in order to understand the structuring of our personality, it becomes necessary to have a notion of his role inside of our organism.
I - as for his function, the nervous system becomes separated in:
1. Nervous system of the relationship life that, as it is implicit in the name, it is the one that has contact with the world. The endings of that system are in the periphery of our body and linked to our senses, which work as true radars capturing the sensations and driving the nervous pulses until the brain. This system is specialized in registering external incentives and it is controllable by the will.
2. Nervous system of the vegetative life, or autonomous. He controls the operation of the internal organs, regulating digestion, circulation, breathing, liberation of the hormones etc. He becomes separated in: sympathetic and parasympathetic that has specific function inhibitory or stimulating, according to the area in which they are acting and according to the hormone that is being liberated.
II - As for the operation, in a summary way, it is the following:
When there is any excitement, the nerves of the periphery of the body capture that sensation through the sensitive fibers and they take them until the marrow, in the spine, where they penetrate and they continue in search of the brain until they arrive to the cortex, constituted by the gray mass. Only when the excitement arrives here in the cortex is that the person has the capacity to translate the nervous pulse. Only then the person is aware of what happened and registers the occurrence. Only on that moment the individual feels the pain, the perfume, the palate, he hears the sound, he sees the image. The brain translates the messages and it returns an answer of character motor or glandular, expelling the several secretions.
But everyone knows the phenomenon of instantaneous reactions before certain aggressions. If we lean the hand in a hot object, a lot before we have conscience of what is happening, we will already have given a pull in the arm to put the hand safe. It means that, a lot before any painful sensation, the person have already defended. What happened was that cells of the area subcortical, or of the own marrow, they already registered the excitement and they already transferred the answer for the motor bunches that commanded the defensive reaction. It is interesting to notice the high-speed of that reaction. It is that the messages walk in the nerves with the speed of 250 km per hour, or 4 km per minute. There was already a time when the referential to measure speed was the speed of the thought. Afterwards, Einstein beat it with the speed of the light.
Well then, to this departure of the message to the central nervous system, without the passage by the cerebral cortex and the turn of the motor or secretory answer, we give the name of arch reflex.
Those reflexes, those reactions, in which the brain doesn't intervene, that they are automatic, they can be divided in:
1. Unconditioned;
2. Conditioned.
1. The unconditioned are those arches reflexes whose purpose is the one of adapting the organism to the environment, seeking the protection of the species or of the individual. These reflexes unconditioned are innate, they don't demand training. The being is born knowing how to do - to suck, to cough, to cry etc. They are the result of millenarian experiences and they became unconscious. The reflexes unconditioned are, usually, known as instincts, and six of them are more considered by the psychology:
a) Sexuality, that seeks the perpetuation of the species;
b) Defense, from where the aggressiveness comes and that also governs that saving pull of the hand:
c) Feeding - from sucking, to swallow, to undergo digestion etc.;
d) Investigation - curiosity spirit;
e) Orientation - capacity to keep references;
f) Liberation.
2. Now, let us see the following: if the environment were stable, these reflexes unconditioned with which the man is born would be perfectly enough to maintain him in balance, but it happens that the environment changes every moment. To each instant we are attacked physically and psychologically. For that reason, the organism needs to go completing their defenses through the reflexes conditioned that demand the activity of the cerebral cortex, in other words, a mental elaboration.
The conditioned reflexes demand training, a repetition and they are always linked to a demand of the life, professional, social etc., or to an emotional pulse. The man always looks for the repetition of the actions that produce pleasure and trys to avoid the ones that produce unpleasant sensation. According to a theory, the need of repetition for the installation of a conditioned reflex is because, when a nervous cell is accustomed to drive pulses in a given direction, they are formed in that direction special fibers and furrows in the nervous system. Any training, as the one of driving, the one of learning an instrument, is not something theoretical, but an anatomical process, because of the formation of rows of fibers that come from the cells. The speed with what is learned a new technique depends on the capacity of such fibers sprout and of the furrows to install, as well as of the connections that settle down among them. This explains the fact of learning better before the cells become adult.
The one who first studied this phenomenon of the conditioned reflex was the Russian scientist, Pavlov (1.849-1.936), through experiences done with dogs. He put the dog in an isolated compartment to avoid that it dispersed the attention and, at the same time when he presented a piece of meat, he made to sound a bell. The dog, at the view of the meat, salivated. After some time of experimentation, it was enough that he rang the bell, without presenting the meat, and the dog already salivated. To this phenomenon, Pavlov gave the name of conditioning.
The man is subject to the same process. When reacting before incentives and aggressions of the environment, counting with their instincts, with his fundamental nature, he goes on forming their conditionings, in other words, their new habits and also their addictions. The final result of that exchange among internal structure and excitement of the middle depends on each human being's characteristics, for that, the conditioned reflexes, or habits, are different for each one, in spite of the influences of the environment be apparently equal or similar.
The habits, therefore, are the result of a learning. The nervous system goes on specializing through the training. It is that what the technology explores with the service specialization.
The conditioned reflexes, practiced by a long time, they go on incorporating to the unconscious structure, giving all that complex constitution that is the fundamental being of each one - qualities that help the man to grow and qualities that impede the man of developing.
We will mark now a key point of the internal operation. In this case of the dog conditioning to the bell in the presence of the meat, the conditioning is positive; positive not in relation to the ethics, not in relation to the concept of right and wrong, but in relation to the emotion. The bell represented something that gave pleasure, because it reminded the meat. It happens that the conditioning can be negative in relation to the emotion. For instance, if, instead of ringing the bell when presenting the meat, the dog had been spit with a probe that provoked pain, more and more he would go on fearing the meat, to the point of refusing it and arriving to the extreme of dying of starvation.
It means that a frustration can be so big that it gets to supplant, even, the instinctive pulse for the repetition of a certain action.
Well then, in the process of these two conditioning types, the positive in relation to the emotional and the negative in relation to the emotional; is the mechanism that produces the human suffering. The positive conditioning in relation to the emotional is the one that is in the base of the elaboration of the addictions. The negative conditioning in relation to the emotion, consequent to incentives that provoke displeasure, that provoke frustrations, is in the base of the elaboration of the so called complex, that so much disturbs our psychic life. The word frustration comes from Latin and it means fragmentation of the personality.
A lot of times we have inexplicable psychological reactions - fear, insecurity, anguish, phobias for certain things. It is that, in certain time of our life, we suffered a negative conditioning in circumstances related with those that disturb us in the present moment.
It happens that the man is deeply conditioned, because, either we want, or we don't want, the mechanism of structuring of the personality is this of the conditioning.
They confirm this affirmative:
Paul Fraisse - "The man is built so that, in the origin he is endowed with simple reactions and of reflexes, but, practically, his behavior is fruit of the learning."
Piaget -"The child doesn't inherit ready mental capacities. She inherits the capacity to react and to adapt; therefore, she needs the experience."
Naturally and happily, there is also favorable conditioning, such as driving, as play piano, as write on a typewriter etc.
However, a high percentage of conditioned reflexes is harmful. They were formed unconsciously, before the pressures of the environment, particularly the ones suffered in the childhood, when the being in formation didn't have capacity to arm for a defense. For instance, if we have possessed very careful parents, very concerned with our welfare, and that were to each step saying - doesn't do that is dangerous and we suffered severe exhortations to each small disaster, we could develop the idea that every initiative results in a failure, in a danger. This could end for conditioning us for the personal insecurity. We bring high percentage of frustrations from the childhood.
For the turn to the balance, it is necessary the called deconditioning. To lose an addiction, to lose any complex, it demands a dose of effort, determination and, even to certain point, suffering, while the stabilization is not gotten.
There are moments when the "willpower" is necessary to break certain routines. Besides, according to Roberto Assagioli, creator of Psycho-synthesis, the Will is the focal point for the internal government. However, today, for the transformation of the emotions, for the neutralization of certain conflicts, we have the resource of Neuro-linguistic. The process, according to Neuro-linguistic, demands, yes, a "Will of wanting", a disposition to make the decision, but, after taken the decision, the transformation work is highly facilitated, once Neuro-linguistic presents us very effective forms of obtaining what is looked for in terms of internal modification.
The science shows that the deconditioning is possible. In the experience of the dog, after a time when the dog starts to hear the bell without the presentation of the meat, the salivation goes on decreasing until extinguishing. Any one of our conditionings can be diluted and extinct through the deconditioning; even the ingrained addictions. There exists in the United States, in Florida, a unit of treatment that calls Coral Gables, whose purpose is deconditioning the addiction of the drink. When the customer enters, he receives a room as if it were a hotel of five stars. In a corner of the room there is a bar where he can drink the favorite drink. Satisfied, he presses the button and the glass becomes full and he delights. For a second drag, however, he needs to press twice and, like this, successively, until that it turns necessary a hundred, two hundred, five hundred pressures to obtain a chalice of the drink. In the course of time, the irritation of pressing the button so many times is larger than the desire of drinking and he goes on deconditioning.
It is necessary to notice, however, that many of the negative conditionings occurred because of the evolutionary process, seeing that we started from reactions predominantly emotional. The normal reaction is the search of the pleasure because this brings us the illusory sensation of welfare. It happens, however, that when our choices are in disagreement with the evolutionary process, they result in suffering. The suffering is an universal language that tries to show us the road to be proceeded. Making an effort to come out of the suffering state, automatically, unconsciously, the man begins analyzing the situations until finding the road of the balance, the road of the middle, because only he provokes welfare more permanent. Evolution implicates exactly in putting the mental above, becoming more and more impartial to judge on the events that surround us, using the Reason, the discernment. For consequence, all the techniques of auto- reformulation they demand the power of the thought and the power of the will, so that we can act in agreement with what we concluded as righteous for the moment that we are living.
There exist today, inside of the psychology, certain techniques for the deconditioning.
As the conditionings settled for experiences in the past, for psychological traumas, there are techniques that try to take the individual to have conscience of the fact that disturbed him in the past, taking him, by the regression, to turn to the frustrating events. In very serious and very specific cases, this technique can be even necessary, but the most advisable is to leave the past quiet there far away and to use techniques that take us from the present to the future, in spite of the past that we bring.
I prefer the techniques that seek the inversion conscious of our disturbing reactions, in other words, of our unbalancing conditionings.
Before presenting those self-organization techniques, let us see how much we attack ourselves with our unbalanced internal structure.
In the addendums, you will find the chapter "Structuring of the Personality according to the Analyze Transactional." This is a psychological technique, which content is very important for the self- knowledge.