The two faces of denial
During the course of our lives, a few emotionally charged events seem to remain as fresh as if they had occurred only yesterday.
For me, such an event took place on April 11, 1962. I was a nerdy eleven year-old growing up in New Orleans. My best friend Teddy had invited me to join the Boy Scouts. After school I phoned home from Teddy’s house to ask my mother’s permission to join the troop. She deferred answering, urgently instructing me to come directly home. I did.
When I arrived at home my mother was seated on her bed. Her eyes were red and puffy. In her hand she clutched a wad of crumpled tissues. My father, she told me, had passed away that morning. I don’t remember much more of what she told me, but when we were done, I retired alone to my bedroom. From there I could hear my mother sobbing uncontrollably in the next room. I would hear her crying for many years after that. I eventually cried too, but not for some time.
At first, I didn’t really believe my father had died, or if he had died, I thought it was just a matter of time before he would be back with us. At his funeral I can remember the thought occurring to me that I must be in some terrible nightmare. I kept telling myself it would soon be over and things would return to normal.
When I was a young boy, my father was a significant part of my world. To the local community he was a celebrity, a widely known and well loved radio personality. To me he was a warm, and loving father, a family man, larger than life. I could not imagine what my life would be like without him. I can even remember developing elaborate plans for things that I might do or say that would magically put an end to the horrible nightmare and bring my father back to me. I missed him terribly. I still do.
As time moved on, that kind of thinking occurred to me less and less. The void that was created by my father’s death became filled, to some degree by other people and events of the 1960’s. My father’s unexpected death at the age of 39 was a tremendous blow for me, my mother and my four siblings, but we survived. In time, I learned to accept that my father would not return.
This capacity we humans have to deny that an unpleasant reality exists was formally recognized by the psychoanalytic theorist Sigmund Freud. “Denial,” he believed, is one of a number of “defense mechanisms” we use to prevent or reduce our experience of anxiety. Denial can be quite useful in helping us function and cope when faced with events that might otherwise be disabling. In this way, denial is viewed as a valuable adaptive resource we can use, at least for a time, to help deal with adversity.
There is, however, another face of denial. It can become a serious liability if it persists long after the appearance of the adversity, or interferes with vital functions. This was brought home to me when I worked in a rehabilitation facility that treated individuals who had suffered spinal cord injury, which results in muscle paralysis and loss of body sensations. My colleagues and I learned to have a healthy respect for the role of denial in helping those with new injuries cope with the medical verdict that they would never walk again. There was, however, certain knowledge and skills these patients needed to develop during their stay in the facility. These skills would enable them to avoid debilitating and life-threatening medical complications, such as bladder infections and pressure sores. When denial resulted in a patient’s refusal to develop these skills, we had to intervene. We learned to do so in such a way as to encourage learning while leaving the patient’s hope for a miraculous recovery intact, a sensitive balancing act.
On the surface, the denial of an unpleasant reality may seem a bit crazy. It can keep an alcoholic, for example, from admitting the severity of his addiction, a domestic abuser from seeking the necessary help to change his abusive behavior, the family of a patient in a persistent vegetative state opposing her right to die.
To be sure, modern psychology offers more elegant methods of handling adversity and loss, however, such methods might not be readily available when people need them most. In certain circumstances, such as that of an eleven year old grieving the sudden loss of his father, denial could be considered a benign, even healthy form of craziness.
For me, such an event took place on April 11, 1962. I was a nerdy eleven year-old growing up in New Orleans. My best friend Teddy had invited me to join the Boy Scouts. After school I phoned home from Teddy’s house to ask my mother’s permission to join the troop. She deferred answering, urgently instructing me to come directly home. I did.
When I arrived at home my mother was seated on her bed. Her eyes were red and puffy. In her hand she clutched a wad of crumpled tissues. My father, she told me, had passed away that morning. I don’t remember much more of what she told me, but when we were done, I retired alone to my bedroom. From there I could hear my mother sobbing uncontrollably in the next room. I would hear her crying for many years after that. I eventually cried too, but not for some time.
At first, I didn’t really believe my father had died, or if he had died, I thought it was just a matter of time before he would be back with us. At his funeral I can remember the thought occurring to me that I must be in some terrible nightmare. I kept telling myself it would soon be over and things would return to normal.
When I was a young boy, my father was a significant part of my world. To the local community he was a celebrity, a widely known and well loved radio personality. To me he was a warm, and loving father, a family man, larger than life. I could not imagine what my life would be like without him. I can even remember developing elaborate plans for things that I might do or say that would magically put an end to the horrible nightmare and bring my father back to me. I missed him terribly. I still do.
As time moved on, that kind of thinking occurred to me less and less. The void that was created by my father’s death became filled, to some degree by other people and events of the 1960’s. My father’s unexpected death at the age of 39 was a tremendous blow for me, my mother and my four siblings, but we survived. In time, I learned to accept that my father would not return.
This capacity we humans have to deny that an unpleasant reality exists was formally recognized by the psychoanalytic theorist Sigmund Freud. “Denial,” he believed, is one of a number of “defense mechanisms” we use to prevent or reduce our experience of anxiety. Denial can be quite useful in helping us function and cope when faced with events that might otherwise be disabling. In this way, denial is viewed as a valuable adaptive resource we can use, at least for a time, to help deal with adversity.
There is, however, another face of denial. It can become a serious liability if it persists long after the appearance of the adversity, or interferes with vital functions. This was brought home to me when I worked in a rehabilitation facility that treated individuals who had suffered spinal cord injury, which results in muscle paralysis and loss of body sensations. My colleagues and I learned to have a healthy respect for the role of denial in helping those with new injuries cope with the medical verdict that they would never walk again. There was, however, certain knowledge and skills these patients needed to develop during their stay in the facility. These skills would enable them to avoid debilitating and life-threatening medical complications, such as bladder infections and pressure sores. When denial resulted in a patient’s refusal to develop these skills, we had to intervene. We learned to do so in such a way as to encourage learning while leaving the patient’s hope for a miraculous recovery intact, a sensitive balancing act.
On the surface, the denial of an unpleasant reality may seem a bit crazy. It can keep an alcoholic, for example, from admitting the severity of his addiction, a domestic abuser from seeking the necessary help to change his abusive behavior, the family of a patient in a persistent vegetative state opposing her right to die.
To be sure, modern psychology offers more elegant methods of handling adversity and loss, however, such methods might not be readily available when people need them most. In certain circumstances, such as that of an eleven year old grieving the sudden loss of his father, denial could be considered a benign, even healthy form of craziness.
posted by Michael | Saturday, April 02, 2005
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