Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance: a new
perspective in psychotherapy
Brigitte Minel
Abstract
Clinical psychology has developed into many theories enhancing different
parts or dynamics of the psyche. The common link is that these theories are all
dealing with intrapsychic conflict (IPC). Yet in psychotherapy, patients may
have multiple levels of conflicts which do not all refer to the same structure.
Analyzing patients in the limits of one theory may be a hindrance to the
patient’s development. Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance appears as a
means to concentrate on the conflict itself, when it is actual, rather
than only on the personality, or personalities, within an individual. It allows
the exploration, not only of multiple levels within the personality, but
of the multiple levels included in a conflict, such as relational,
psycho-sociological, cultural, intellectual, philosophical, spiritual, relative
to survival, emotions, interactions, drives, and thus addresses conflicts that
arise from daily life.
Keywords:
cognitive dissonance, intrapsychic conflict, psychotherapy, neurosis.
Decades
have passed since practitioners and theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Alfred
Adler, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Anna Freud, Karen Horney, and William
Fairbairn were fighting over the correct theory of neurosis and the
structure of the mind, and yet we practitioners of psychology are still split
into different schools of thought. Patients have to go to one therapist for
Oedipus complex, then to another one for a childhood trauma of separation, then
again another one for an inferiority complex, as they feel that the therapist
can only hear the part that seems relevant.
We may
understand that the pioneers were trying to—and thought they did—find the
unique, central and universal explanation to human mental suffering, but they
could not investigate enough to find out if their theory was universal.
Is that acceptable today?
In 1943,
Jung was already questioning the judiciousness of the disagreement between
Freud and Adler. They opposed and declared their theories contradictory and
yet, as Jung stresses “if we examine the two theories without prejudice, we
cannot deny that both contain significant truths and, contradictory as these
are, they should not be regarded as mutually exclusive” (Para. 56).
Jung (1943), deeply taken by this conflict, understood that Freud and Adler
were attached to their theories, which were both simple and elegant, and that
it was comprehensible that the adherents of both schools were “unwilling to
give up a beautiful, rounded theory in exchange for a paradox, or, worse still,
lose themselves in the confusion of contradictory points of view” (Para. 56).
Anna Freud and Melanie Klein diverged on whether the super-ego was elaborated
before or after the Oedipus phase and could not relate anymore and share their
respective discoveries, and yet, Anna Freud (Kohut, 1968) writes to a
youngster:
Dear John
..., you asked me what I consider essential personal qualities in a future
psychoanalyst. The answer is comparatively simple. If you want to be a real
psychoanalyst you have to have a great love of the truth, scientific truth as
well as personal truth, and you have to place this appreciation of truth higher
than any discomfort at meeting unpleasant facts, whether they belong to the
world outside or to your own inner person (p. 553).
Jung (1943) questioned the reason why each investigator only saw one side and
seemed biased. He suggested that, “owing to his psychological peculiarity, each
investigator most readily sees that factor in the neurosis which corresponds to
his peculiarity” (para. 57).
Pearl King (1991), in The Freud-Klein controversies, underlines that
psychoanalysts should “incorporate new findings and theories into their
understanding of the main body of knowledge, (…) if that branch of knowledge is
to develop” (p.1). Pearl King adds that the difficulty comes from the strong
personal involvement from psychoanalysts as they have “to draw from their whole
psyche at a deep level to do their work” (p.2). Yet this difficulty discredits
tremendously the field of psychotherapy.
It is almost ironic to realize that it is in the field of psychology—where is
expected the most introspection and surpassing of oneself and one’s own bias,
and therefore intellectual clarity and honesty—that it happens the least. Is it
defensive narcissism, intellectual laziness, gregarious compulsion, cultural
narrowness or the fact that the object of study is so hard to capture and so
large, or that it is us? Today, experiments and systematic observations
can be led to verify these theories, yet it seems that psychotherapists,
psychoanalysts, “psys” of all sorts, are not willing to do so and work together
to unite the field. It is so admitted that when one notifies people that one
works as a “psy-something”, the next question is always, “Which school do you
belong to?” The commonly acceptable answer is either in reference to the major
and classical schools of theory or to the modern schools of psychotherapy that
indicates the technique you are using.
People get confused about the schools where therapists train, and therefore the
techniques used, with the theory of the mind referred to, not to mention any
philosophical approach, as if we humans could be understood in reference to a
momentary fashion and a split part. Many patients have captured this
clearly enough to hunt for the right psychotherapist, the one who can
understand their specific problem, usually after several unsuccessful attempts.
On a positive note, when they have found the one, it instills in some of
them this impossible solving of transference, as they feel that they belong to
the same world as their therapist. It leaves others in despair, as they
have not found anyone yet able to relieve their suffering, to understand,
and believing that psychology cannot help them. There is a feeling of
humiliation, of confusion and, in the best outcome, to have been “treated” and
“healed,” which may even then be felt as self-depreciating. Patients may not
easily admit to having received such “treatment,” even when the outcome is
positive. This feeling comes as the patient feels his psyche reduced to a
“case,” applied a theory.
After
centuries of research on the human mind, many people in the general population
still feel that psychology is unreliable and untrustworthy because of this lack
of unity. The more intellectual ones are able to formulate the problem clearly:
“I will trust psychology when it will be unified, when “psys” of all kind will
agree.”
But the question remains: From what do patients suffer?
Conflict
The different schools are dealing with: 1) where the conflict happens in the
psyche, 2)between which parts of the psyche, 3) at what age and stage of
development it arises, and 4) whether it is within one’s own self or with the
introjected or “real” others. Where the conflict stands reveals how the child
has been taken care of, under which familial pressure one had to develop, in
which social context the child has grown, in which society and culture, under
which laws.
For example, if you happen to know your sister slept with your brother, it
might raise strong inner conflict, between the love for them and what they did
that is not acceptable, that deeply shocks you, and whether or not you wish to
continue seeing them. But all this does not exist if you are born under the
Pharaohs and your brother and sister are therefore married to each other.
A brief history of intrapsychic conflict:
Before introducing how Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance can
enlighten clinical psychology about actual intrapsychic conflict (AIPC), let us
go back to the main findings of the pioneers on IPC.
Freud and IPC:
Roger
Perron (2005) states:
In
psychoanalysis, the notion of conflict generally refers to intrapsychic
conflict in which antagonistic forces are pitted against each other. (…)
Further, it can be said that Sigmund Freud devoted his entire life to
elaborating a theory of conflict. Freud takes a cautious approach in his early
work. He remains close to a psychology of consciousness at the beginning of his
theory of repression, when he evokes, in the patient under the influence of a
wish, the surging forth of "contrasting representations" and
"irreconcilable ideas" that are so painful that, by an effort of
"counter-will" the patient decides "to forget the thing."
(1941b [1892], Notice III)
Freud
writes: “(…) Neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id
(…)” (1923, p. 143). This led him to the conclusion that the Ego, at the
centre, was trying to balance the pressure of the Id and the Superego.
For Freud, sexual desire was the primary motivational energy, with the main
structuring stage of the Oedipus complex. He remained adamant.
As Jung
evokes peculiarities in the individual that influences one’s theory, it
is well known that Sigmund Freud was brought up by parents with a great
difference in age, which emphasized the Oedipus dimension, lived in a society
with sexual inhibition values and did not free himself of this pregnancy as he
analyzed his own daughter, a symbolically incestuous act in this logic. We may
add that Freud’s position was coherent with his Jewish culture in which there
is an emphasis on family links.
Freud’s theory evolved over the years but it continued referring to couples of
opposites such as sexual instinct/self-preservation (1940 [1938] p. 186),
pleasure principle/Death instinct (Freud 1920), pleasure principle and reality
principle (Freud 1911). Freud also assessed interpersonal conflicts between the
individual and society in Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego
(1921c) and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930a).
Adler and IPC:
In his presentation of January 4, 1911, on The Role of Sexuality in Neurosis,
“Adler claimed that his dynamic conception of the ego instincts was tantamount
to a striving for significance (Gelten-wollen), a striving for power (Streben
nach Macht), for dominance (Herrschaft) and for being “above (oben)”
(Stepansky, 1983).
Adler (1930) stressed this ego instinct with its striving, rather than sexual
drive, as the motivating force in human life. He
originated conflict as anterior to the Freudian sexual conflict:
The
fundamental fact in human development is the dynamic and purposive striving of
the psyche. (p.5)
The
striving or goal-forming activity, which is responsible for the construction of
individual personalities, presupposes another important psychological fact.
This is the sense or feeling of inferiority. (p. 8)
For Adler (1930) the main conflict is between the natural feeling of
inferiority of the child and the desire to equal or beat siblings or adults:
“There is always the fear of being undervalued and the anger and irritation at
finding others favored or preferred” (p. 7).
Adler’s vision of IPC finds its source in what Leon Festinger (1954) will later
call “social comparison”. The conflict here is between the image of oneself,
the image of others [“ For Adler, it is incontestable that all children
at all times and in all places perceive themselves as essentially inferior to
all adults” (Stepansky 1983, p. 152).], and the images sent back to the child
about himself. The child, in every stage of development, is also torn between
the demands of society and what he can organically cope with (Stepansky, 1983,
pp. 44-45).
Jung
(1943) will say:
With Adler the emphasis is placed on a subject who, no matter what the object,
seeks his own security and supremacy; with Freud the emphasis is placed wholly
upon objects, which, according to their specific character, either promote or
hinder the subject’s desire for pleasure. (Para. 59)
If we examine Adler’s life, it is understandable that for him the emphasis was
put on the striving to exist as a subject.
Alfred
was not a healthy child. He suffered from illness and physical problems. As if
this were not enough, he was run over twice on Vienna streets. He was a poor
student, and his teacher urged his father to apprentice him to a shoemaker.
Adler became motivated to compensate for his learning weakness. He rose to the
top of his class. (Carlson, J., Watts, R. E., Maniacci, M., 2006, p. 16)
Adlerians view all problems as social and interactive by nature. (Carlson, J.,
Watts, R. E., Maniacci, M., 2006, p. 205)
We may remember that Freudian and Adlerian theories, be them centered on the
object, or the subject and its comparisons with the outer world, are dealing
with introjected objects, which, being incompatible, create IPC. But the
conflict takes place at different levels or in different clusters of thoughts.
Jung (1943) comments:
This
difference can hardly be anything else but a difference of temperament, a contrast
between two types of human mentality, one of which finds the determining agency
pre-eminently in the subject, the other in the object. A middle view, it may be
that of common sense, would suppose that human behavior is conditioned as much
by the subject as by the object. The two investigators would probably assert,
on the other hand, that their theory does not envisage a psychological
explanation of the normal man, but is a theory of neurosis. But in that case
Freud would have to explain and treat some of his patients along Adlerian
lines, and Adler condescend to give an earnest consideration in certain
instances to his former teacher’s point of view –which has occurred neither on
one side nor on the other (Para. 60).
Jung and IPC:
Jung (1943) rose up against Freud’s and Adler’s theories, and was convinced
that it did not describe faithfully and thoroughly the human psyche:
The two
theories of neurosis are not universal theories: they are caustic remedies to
be applied, as it were, locally. They are destructive and reductive. They say
to everything ‘you are nothing but…’ They explain to the sufferer that his
symptoms come from here and from there and are nothing but this or that. It
would be unjust to assert that this reduction is wrong in a given case; but
exalted to the status of a general explanation of the healthy psyche as well as
the sick, a reductive theory by itself is impossible. For the human psyche, be
it sick or healthy cannot be explained solely by reduction. Eros is
certainly always and everywhere present, the urge to power certainly pervades
the heights and depths of the psyche, but the psyche is not just the one or the
other, nor for that matter both together. (Para. 67)
Jung (1914) developed a broader point of view where not only was there a
necessity to unravel childhood conflicts but a need to comprehend the purposive
function. “To understand the psyche causally is to understand only one
half of it” (Para. 398).
Jung (1917) has not only added a notion of personality, culture and stage of
life to IPC - do Freudian or Adlerian consideration still apply to older people
with lesser sexual concerns or need of social recognition?- but also a
philosophical dimension of self-realization - what is all that we feel or think
supposed to lead us to ?- :
It cannot
be disputed that, psychologically speaking, we are living and working day by
day according to the principle of directed aim or purpose as well as that of
causality. (…)We must always bear in mind that causality is a point of view.
(…)Finality is also a point of view, and it is empirically justified by
the existence of series of events in which the causal connection is indeed
evident but the meaning of which only becomes intelligible in terms of
end-products (final effects). (Para. 687)
Jung
developed the idea of a personal unconscious versus a collective unconscious:
The personal unconscious consists
firstly of all those contents that became unconscious either because they lost
their intensity and were forgotten or because consciousness was withdrawn from
them (repression), and secondly of contents, some of them sense-impressions,
which never had sufficient intensity to reach consciousness but have somehow
entered the psyche. (Jung, C. G., 1927, Para. 321)
(…)There
exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal
nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious
does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent
forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which
give definite form to certain psychic contents. (Jung, C.G., 1936, Para. 90)
Jung understood the ego as having to fight not only with the encountered
objects of his own unconscious, introjected in the course of one’s own life,
but also with the collective unconscious, in the means of the archetypes, and
their manifestations through personal context.
Jung (1936) says: “Since neuroses are in most cases not just private concerns,
but social phenomena, we must assume that archetypes are constellated in
these cases too” (Para. 98) and:
There are in a neurosis two tendencies standing in
strict opposition to one another, one of which is unconscious. This
proposition is formulated in very general terms on purpose, because I want to
stress that although the pathogenic conflict is a personal matter it is also a
broadly human conflict manifesting itself in the individual, for disunity with
oneself is the hall-mark of civilized man. The neurotic is only a special
instance of the disunited man who ought to harmonize nature and culture within
himself. (Jung (1943). Para. 16).
To better
enlighten Jung’s view of neurosis, we may refer to what he explained as the
“healing process” he called individuation: “Individuation means becoming
an ‘in-dividual,’ and, in so far as “individuality” embraces our innermost,
last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies becoming one’s own self. We
could therefore translate individuation as ‘coming to selfhood’ or
‘self-realization’”(Jung, 1928, Para. 266).
The IPC in Jung’s thought is the Self fighting self-alienation, sacrifice in
favor of the collective, false self (persona) elaborated on the demands of
society as a social ideal:
Everyone
knows what is meant by ‘putting on official airs’ or ‘playing a social role’.
Through the persona a man tries to appear as this or that, or he hides
behind a mask, or he may even build up a definite persona as a barricade.
(Jung, C.G., 1928, Para. 269)
And,
not only the Self has to fight the persona, an adaptative device, but also its
fear of depth of the psyche, the collective unconscious with its archetypes.
This fear is largely evoked by Jung in his memories (1961).
It is no
wonder that Jung’s attention went into the spiritual realm, as his father was a
pastor and his mother was born in a family which practiced spiritualism. Young
Jung had done his doctoral dissertation on the investigation of a medium who
happened to be a cousin.
Melanie Klein and IPC:
For Melanie Klein (1946), IPC intervenes at the very first age of the infant,
rooted on the ground of the anxiety the child experiences at birth as developed
by Rank (1924).
Important
sources of primary anxiety are the trauma of birth (separation anxiety) and
frustration of bodily needs; and these experiences too are from the beginning
felt as being caused by objects. Even if these objects are felt to be external,
they become through introjections internal persecutors and thus reinforce the
fear of the destructive impulse within.” (pp. 4-5)
It is in
phantasy that the infant splits the object and the self, but the effect of this
phantasy is a very real one, because it leads to feelings and relations (and
later on, thought-processes) being in fact cut off from one another. (p.
6)
The IPC, for Melanie Klein, is between the introjected good and bad objects,
the aggressive feelings this tearing generates, its persecutory fears as a
result, as the ego splits itself in this process. This happens therefore
as a fluctuating process as “the early ego largely lacks cohesion, and a
tendency towards integration alternates with a tendency towards disintegration,
a falling into bits” (Klein, M., 1946, p. 4).
It is known that Melanie Klein was an unwanted child who grew up with parents
who did not show her much affection and it is no surprise that she explored
that realm.
Fairbairn and IPC:
Fairbairn (1952) will be even more radical. Once the infant has integrated the
threatening experience of birth, the caregiver becomes essential, as Fairbairn
describes in his internal object relation theory where the libido is not
pleasure oriented as in Freud’s but relationship oriented. For Fairbairn the
ego starts as a whole and pristine unit, splits because of intolerable emotions
and inability to cope with the unsatisfying aspects of experience, and this
splitting gives birth to endopsychic structures which are not necessary
condition for psychic growth. This is when IPC emerges that endopsychic
structures come to existence:
It
becomes necessary to adopt the view that repression is exercised not only
against internalized objects (which incidentally are only meaningful when
regarded in the light of endopsychic structures) but also against
ego-structures which seek relationships with these internal objects. This view
implies that there must be a splitting of the ego to account for repression. (p.
168)
For Fairbairn, the psychoanalytic cure will have to try and restore the
pristine unity of the psyche:
The chief
aim of psychoanalytical treatment is to promote a maximum "synthesis"
of the structures into which the original ego has been split. (Fairbairn, 1958,
p. 380)
On top of
this exposition on how the main theories have each dealt specifically with IPC,
we might consider that all known defense mechanisms, as listed in the DSM, of
all schools of thoughts taken together, are specifically described as dealing
with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors.
Festinger and IPC:
A key
element of Festinger’s theory is that it addresses the essence of an actual
conflict, without reducing the person herself. It is the structure of the
conflict that is in the center, not the structure of one’s whole psyche.
Patients often start therapy caught in anguish about their mental health when
torn in long lasting dissonances: “I feel I’m crazy,” “I must be getting crazy,”
“I feel there’s something really wrong, disturbed in me,” “I have felt crazy
for so many years, I think I’ll never be normal.” Once the therapist enables
them to see they are engulfed in IPC, there is an immediate relief that helps
them move on with the resolution of the conflict itself.
Festinger’s
theory of cognitive dissonance is interesting for psychotherapy as IPC may also
be actual, and not only developmental as in the traditional theories, and even
more nowadays as this motivates a lot of the demands for psychotherapy. We will
call Actual IPC that which is happening at this very moment in one’s life.
As Tavris
and Aronson (2007) have enlightened, cognitive dissonance does not just deal
with choosing over a toaster and a hair-dryer, or about paying a higher fee for
college, it deals with the most dramatic events of our lives.
Festinger’s cognitive dissonance and Actual IPC (AIPC)
In A theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Festinger (1957) calls cognitive
dissonance the fact that within an individual two cognitions (“any knowledge,
opinion, or belief about the environment, about oneself, or about one’s
behaviour” (p. 3)) may be contradictory:
Thus, for
example, if a person knew there were only friends in his vicinity and also felt
afraid, there would be a dissonant relation between these two cognitive
elements. Or, for another example, if a person were already in debt and also
purchased a new car, the corresponding cognitive elements would be dissonant
with one another. (p. 13)
Festinger
will observe different kinds of dissonances. He will first observe any
conflicting cognitions but will rapidly mainly deal with postdecision
dissonance. In therapy we may also distinguish what we may call “irrationality
dissonance” (as Festinger’s example of feeling afraid when surrounded by
friends), “breach of certitude dissonance” and “colliding clusters dissonance”.
Festinger
(1957) stresses that “the existence of dissonance gives rise to pressures to
reduce the dissonance” (P.31).
Postdecision dissonance:
Postdecision
dissonance has been largely exposed by Festinger in his Theory of Cognitive
Dissonance (1957) and by his followers.
According
to Festinger, postdecision dissonance exists given the importance of the
decision, the attractiveness of the unchosen alternative, and the degree of
overlap of cognitive elements concerning each alternative. We may add that, in
therapy, we also find postdecision dissonance when the alternatives are
drastically different, and for the very reason that choosing one excludes
completely choosing the other (for example choosing to become a priest and
therefore remain celibate or getting married).
“Once
dissonance exists following a decision, the pressure to reduce it will manifest
itself in attempts to increase the relative attractiveness of the chosen
alternative, to decrease the relative attractiveness of the unchosen
alternative, to establish cognitive overlap, or possibly to revoke the decision
psychologically” (P.47).
Festinger
(1957) distinguished between conflict and dissonance. He considered that a
person was in conflict before making a decision and that dissonance
occurred after making the choice: “He is no longer being pushed in two
or more directions simultaneously. He is now committed to the chosen course of
action. It is only here that dissonance exists, and the pressure is not
pushing the person in two directions simultaneously” (p. 39). However, as
Gerard (1967) has observed, dissonance occurs even when the choice is not
completely secured.
In
psychotherapy, we detect that AIPC always implies anticipation. In this
anticipation, the person will fantasize the dissonance that will occur once the
choice has been made: “how will I feel if…?” or “how will they react if…and how
will I feel?” even though it often happens that the anticipated dissonance is
mere illusion, a product of one’s past projected in the future.
Therefore
we will consider dissonance an AIPC, be it pre-decisional or post-decisional,
and especially if the post-decisional dissonance is long lasting, as, for
example, when one was never sure of one’s choice. Long lasting
dissonances may also be found in situations where decisions have never been
firmly made, as in addictions. It is then the decision itself that is feared in
anticipation. Most addicted persons imagine they will someday have to stop.
AIPC and
the feeling of dissonance is also encountered about what appears, over time, as
bad decisions, for example, if one regrets his choices of person in marriage,
or choice of career. They reemerge as acute when the tension is reignited by
some new event or strengthening of pressure.
Irrationality dissonance:
As evoked
by Festinger in the example in which one feels afraid when surrounded by
friends, many people come to therapy with feelings of dissonance about what
appears to them as irrational or illogical feelings, desire or behavior.
Irrationality
dissonance occurs when one knows one should not feel something (be afraid in a
train, feel inferior when one has successfully achieved something, depressed
when one’s life seems objectively satisfying) or desire something that could
impair what they are building (getting married and desiring another person than
one’s future spouse) or act in a certain way (overeating when one wants to lose
weight, wanting a promotion and not talking about it to one’s manager, staying
with an abusive spouse).
Breach of certitude dissonance:
Breach of
certitude dissonance emerges when patients have gathered new information about
some important element relevant to the stability of their lives, be it
emotional, relational, economical, social, spiritual, work-wise, health-wise,
or a traumatic event.
Breach of
certitude dissonance was evoked by Festinger (1957), although not emphasized,
as in the case of a person adhering to a political party and observing that
party holding a shocking new position (P5).
These
breaches of certitude may be quite dramatic. They happen when one discovers for
example that his/her spouse has been unfaithful (even more if it has been going
on for a long time), or when one feels fine and happens to find out that he/she
is suffering from a major disease, or that one’s beloved father has been
convicted for sexual abuse, or when one is fired from one’s work after having
received recognition for the good work, when one’s mate breaks up the
relationship after having given them a Valentine’s day present or an engagement
ring, or the spouse leaving after the birth of their baby, suffering from a
natural disaster in one’s life when one feels he or she has always been a good
worshipper.
Clusters coming in collision:
Festinger
was referring to “clusters of cognitions”.
We may
consider that two cognitions may not come in conflict as they are held apart in
the psyche because of occurrences in different times or spaces or splitting of
thoughts.
In
psychotherapy, we observe that what was not an AIPC may become one, triggered
by an event in one’s life: “My relationship with my parents had been excellent
over the past years. But when I saw my parents humiliate my daughter, all the
bad memories came back to me. I remembered how I felt as a child, that my
parents preferred my brother, although he always gave them a hard time. Not
that I had really forgotten these memories, but I realize I just never thought
about them. And now I cannot stand the view of my parents any more but I feel I
can’t avoid them because this is my family and they would not understand”. Some
may only put together knowledge they have always had: “My parents told me when
I was 12 that I was conceived with IVF but that what was important and
meaningful was that my ‘real father’ was my Dad. They said it was a sperm
donation which explained why I was so different, physically, as a métis and
them being white. But this “detail” was always avoided later on. There was a
strong taboo about it. Today I have become a mother and that doesn’t feel right
any more. I want to know who my genetic father is - since the doctor who did it
knows the donor -, but I feel bad as it will hurt my parents’ feelings and
especially my father’s”.
Is dissonance conscious?
As all IPC, AIPC are not usually conscious. Festinger does not address the fact
that the different elements in an AIPC may be unconscious, but most patients
come to therapy with a simple feeling of discomfort felt before the elements of
AIPC can be clearly identified. Festinger calls “dissonance” the incompatible
cognitions, as well as the discomfort felt, and the urge to reduce the
dissonance.
The term
‘dissonance’ should best be applied to the feeling of discomfort and the
‘drive’ to reach consistency: “In place of “dissonance” one can substitute
other notions similar in nature “hunger”, “frustration,” or “disequilibrium”
(…)” (p.3). As for the conflicting cognitions, AIPC would be preferable.
Sometimes
only physical psychosomatic symptoms indicate that there exist an AIPC.
As Rasmussen (2003), about Adlerian psychology therapy, states:
While
there are exceptions, the majority of clients present for treatment not because
they do not like their private logic – their thinking. Indeed, people are
generally motivated to maintain cognitive consistency and will deny and distort
dissonant thoughts in order to derive consistency. (…) Most clients pursue
therapy because of how they feel. (…)Essentially, a problem is not a problem
until it is felt as a problem.
Rasmussen stresses that what “compels the client to pursue treatment is most
often to gain emotional relief”. (P346)
Sigmund Freud (1905 [1901]), in his explanation of repression, also came to the
notion of incompatible cognitions:
“Contrary
thoughts are always closely connected to each other and are often paired off in
such a way that the one thought is excessively intensely conscious while its
counterpart is repressed and unconscious. This relation between the two
thoughts is an effect of the process of repression. For repression is often
achieved by means of an excessive reinforcement of the thought contrary to the
one which is to be repressed. (p. 55)
Conclusion:
In her Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein, Hanna Segal (1988)
stresses that, related to the introjection-identification that are constitutive
of the ego, “the structure of the personality is largely determined by the more
permanent of the phantasies which the ego has about itself and the objects it
contains” (p. 20). It is in that sense that all theorists draw their
observations from their very own focus.
Why would psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychotherapists feel so little
concern with this inclination of our structure, and thus the limiting
commitment to the theory adopted, when it is one of the main interferences a
psychotherapist should worry about in his practice? Should this concept of a
limiting structure only apply to patients? In anthropology there is great
concern about ethnocentrism and we find no such one about what we might call
“psychocentrism.” We should take into account that each theory brings its
unique light to the different parts, dynamic and economy of the psyche and that
they should all be considered as true. Each psychology theory should be neither
revered nor detested, but looked at in a kind of hypothetical sympathy. This acceptation
would include an effort to consider which patients it may address. How can we
possibly expect to unify patients’ psyche when the different schools split
patients’ psyche in bits and pieces?
When therapy seems to work in the short term but fails in the long run, it
might very well be because of the initial positive attention received, and
because, unfortunately, it only works as a new justification of the
symptoms.
As Joule and Martinie (2000) explain:
Faced
with a situation of misattribution, we no longer find the classical attitude
change observed in situations of forced submission. The absence of attitude
change (known as the misattribution effect) may signify that subjects are not
or are no longer in a state of dissonance, but it may also mean that the
possibility to change attitudes has been blocked. (Abstract)
Thus, when therapists apply their favorite theory, there is a danger of
preventing the patient of going into further exploration, either by misattribution
and because of a new artificial justification “now I know what is going on”
(which gave many occasions of jokes about psychoanalysis) without solving their
real and main IPC.
But we need to take it one more step, as Anna Freud stressed about the openness
that can be expected in our profession, about the discomfort at meeting
unpleasant facts, be them external, as Festinger evokes, in encountering new
information that could be disturbing our previous beliefs or knowledge of
psychology, or remembering some that could induce a new dissonance.
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