The Process of Constructing the Self and Its Relation to Psychotherapy

It also delays responding. Thus, when danger is eminent, full integration carries risk to survival. In safety, however, full integration permits more finely adapted responses. Because the perception of imminent danger implies the need for prompt selfprotective action, integration is most difficult to accomplish under conditions of perceived threat or danger. Determination of which representation will guide immediate behavior depends upon the interaction of maturation, experience, and context. When the parent is a source of danger, children’s learned mental and behavioral strategies may not prepare them well for the (safe) world outside the family. On the other hand, when the context is dangerous, interaction with the parent may assist the child to acquire culturally adaptive, self-protective strategies. In either case, change in context may yield a mismatch of self to context. For example, under dangerous conditions, formerly safe individuals may generate defensive responses too slowly whereas, under safe conditions, formerly threatened individuals may respond too rapidly on the basis of partial processing that elicits unnecessary or maladaptive self-protective behavior. There may also be a need for psychotherapy when the natural process of self-adaptation has come to a halt. This can occur when (1) there is no external impetus to change, for example, when a family system settles into a dysfunctional pattern that everyone is afraid to change, or (2) the individual’s current strategies function to prevent attending to or resolving the problem, for example, when there is dependence upon any addiction from alcoholism to “workaholic” selfdistraction. Both of these situations can lead to a stable state of discomfort and, ultimately, to depression. In both cases, a combination of introducing a mild and unexpected threat (Guidano, 1991) and providing a safe opportunity to explore it may break the impasse. Under such circumstances, a comforting guide can be a great advantage. Thus, one function of psychotherapy is to unsettle existing patterns while providing a safe and comforting relationship within which to explore new strategies, new self-other representations and integration of multiple representations in a process of on-going adaptation of an emergent self to a changing and variable context.