Blockage is a general term, used in many areas, to refer to the act of obstruction or impediment of an action/movement[1]. Emotional blockage is also used, in a generic way, to define a symptom whose etiology is unknown – considered, thus, a mental/emotional one. In this sense, emotional blocks have been understood as a protection from situations felt as a threat by the mind, so to speak. From this perspective, they could be understood as defense mechanisms. According to Freud, defense mechanisms refer to a more sophisticated process regarding both definition/etiology and clinical strategy. Defense, hence, is the “(…) set of operations whose goal is to reduce or suppress any modification that might put in danger bio-psychic individual integrity and balance[2]. In physiological terms: “(…) defense acts over internal excitement(…). It is triggered in situations that are incompatible with internal balance and, thus, unpleasant to Ego”. The defensive process is specified as defense mechanisms more or less integrated with Ego[3]”. The distinction is relevant because our essay also assumes a psychodynamic view- from Psychodramatic Analysis- to understand conflicts at the origin of symptoms. Eventual differences from psychoanalysis will be pointed throughout the essay. For PA, blocks are impediments and they maybe external (real) or internal (neurotic). Defense mechanisms may express themselves in conversion, obsessivity, compulsion, paranoid ideas and etc. One of the parameters to understand how they are manifested in patients’ real life is the way psychotherapists perceive them in sessions. This is why understanding psychotherapists’ reactions and sensations helps to make the right diagnosis and find the best efficient strategy. Cases will be, thus, divided into: “1) understanding patients’ defenses (symptoms, discourse, attitudes as well as the emotional atmosphere in the session and 2) understanding psychotherapists’ reactions and emotional responses towards patients’ defenses in the setting[4]”. In the second topic, therapists’ reactions and emotional responses might be associated with the fact that patients’ defense trigger their ‘blind side’ and, in this way, their understanding might be affected, which in psychoanalysis is called counter-transference[5]. On the other hand, therapists’ reactions may be triggered by clients’ defenses and, in these cases, these reactions become valuable content to be taken into account, both for diagnosis and for best clinical strategy, in order to demobilize conflicts at the source of symptoms. PA describes this phenomenon as counter-defense. Because of this, it is also important that psychotherapists have their individual psychotherapies and supervision to help them explore their sensibility and intuition to create a facilitator atmosphere. The advantage of this approach is that it is able to detect defense mechanisms before they manifest as a pathology or before psychotherapeutic process gets stuck.
To be continued on the next Post
[1] Aurelio. Online dictionary. 5Th Edition (2010)
[2] La Planche e Pontalis. Psychoanalysis Vocabulary.p.107
[3] Ibid.
[4] Silva, V.H. Psychopathology and Psychodynamics in Psychodramatic Analysis. Vol II. (2008). Agora. São Paulo.
[5] “Counter-transference occurs when the therapist projects their own unresolved conflicts onto the client”. In: https://www.verywellmind.com/counter-transference-2671577
Comments