#370 Everyone's Doing the Best They Can With What They Have

     How do we understand statements like: "Be kind, for everyone is carrying a heavy load" or "Walk a mile in his shoes"? Can we give ourselves & others a break? This is how mental health professionals understand how we're able to muddle through our challenging life:

     “The synthetic function of the ego refers to the self's capacity to integrate various aspects of its functioning. This function of the ego involves the capacity to unite, organize, and bind together various drives, motives, tendencies, and functions within the personality, enabling the individual to think, feel, and act in an organized and directed manner. Briefly, the synthetic function is concerned with the overall organization and functioning of the ego in the self-system and consequently must enlist the cooperation of other ego and nonego functions in its operation. Although the synthetic function subserves adaptive functioning in the self, it may also bring together various forces in a way that, although not completely adaptive, is an optimal solution for the individual in a particular state at a given moment or period of time. Thus, the formation of a symptom that represents a compromise of opposing tendencies, although unpleasant in some degree, is nonetheless preferable to yielding to a dangerous instinctual impulse or, conversely, trying to stifle the impulse completely. Hysterical conversion, for example, combines a forbidden wish and the punishment for it into a physical symptom. On examination, the symptom often turns out to be the only possible compromise under the circumstances.”

       Meissner WW. Classical Psychoanalysis. in Sadock BJ, Sadock VA, Ruiz P eds. Kaplan & Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry. 9th ed, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2009. 

 

Jack Simpson   www.dpreview.com