Psychoanalysis says that there are unconscious strategies that we all use to keep us in balance, these strategies are called defense mechanisms, one of which is denial or desire not to know or not to admit, although this can generate momentary tranquility, in the long run. executing it poses many problems.
As the name suggests, denial is to invalidate certain unpleasant or undesirable information, which occurs unconsciously. This desire not to know is inappropriate because it prevents people from developing ways of dealing with reality.
- “The content of a repressed image or thought can be opened to consciousness.
- Provided it is denied.
- Denial is a way of perceiving the repressed? Sigmund Freud?.
Through denial, the person cancels out, so to speak, an aspect that bothers him, which implies dissatisfaction or conflict with himself or with others, this is very common in addictions or when there are great personality problems, one could say that this desire not to know is the same mechanism as the ostrich.
Denial manifests itself in thought, facts, and language, for example, a person enters a place where there is someone he does not want to see, often does not see him, no matter how much he looks at the faces of those present. , she doesn’t realize this person is there.
Another very common situation in which this desire to not know operates is when an extremely painful event occurs, when a loved one dies, sometimes imagines that he will be resurrected or that he will communicate in a certain way (that is, he is not dead in an absolute sense).
The same is true when a catastrophic disease occurs, the diagnosis is thought to be incorrect, that there has been a failure of testing, or that there is a cure for what the drug declares incurable.
The negation in language manifests itself in the grammatical form of the double negation. When something is denied twice, it is actually affirmed. For example, someone asks someone else if they took money that did not belong to them. She responds, “No, not really. Didn’t I take that money? The first sentence cancels the second.
No one’s trying to ignore reality? The mechanism of denial is triggered because the recognition of a particular reality implies a kind of change of existence, the foundations of who we are, the image we have of who we are or our place in society are tested.
The desire not to know protects us from the profound instability that would come after admitting a concrete truth, particularly visible in taboo issues, such as child abuse, often the family refuses to believe that the child speaks of situations of sexual abuse by an uncle or cousin, etc. Admitting this means generating major family failures and eventually taking legal action.
This desire not to know is also the desire to make reality more tolerable and not to be exposed to the collapse of personal, family and even accepted values and customs; However, rejection is unsuccessful: cover up, but it doesn’t eliminate.
The main consequence of denial is the impossibility of driving actions of change in the face of problematic realities, the difficulties are there, although we do not want to see them, often the resistance to them only makes them worse and makes them increasingly inaccessible.
Denial does not achieve its objective because, sooner or later, reality is imposed on desires; sometimes this reality is serious enough to wreak havoc on the lives of one or more people; in extreme cases, it even burns the seed of a serious mental disorder. Disorder.
Accepting a bitter or painful reality is never easy, it is normal that we take time and that we overcome some resistance to achieve it, we also need to have our own resources to overcome it, if we do, we will see how difficult. situations are a way to grow.