In
psychology
Psychology is the science, scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immens ...
, compensation is a strategy whereby one covers up,
consciously
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scient ...
or unconsciously, weaknesses,
frustration
In psychology, frustration is a common emotional response to opposition, related to anger, annoyance and disappointment. Frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual's will or goal and is likely to in ...
s, desires, or feelings of inadequacy or incompetence in one life area through the gratification or (drive towards) excellence in another area. Compensation can cover up either real or imagined deficiencies and personal or physical inferiority. Positive compensations may help one to overcome one's difficulties. On the other hand, negative compensations do not, which results in a reinforced feeling of inferiority.
There are two kinds of negative compensation:
:''Overcompensation'', characterized by a superiority goal, leads to striving for power, dominance, self-esteem, and self-devaluation.
:''Undercompensation'', which includes a demand for help, leads to a lack of courage and a fear for life.
A well-known example of failing overcompensation is observed in people going through a
midlife-crisis. Approaching midlife, many people lack the energy to maintain their psychological defenses, including their compensatory acts.
Origin
Alfred Adler, founder of the school of
individual psychology, introduced the term compensation in relation to
inferiority feelings.
[R Gregory ed., ''The Oxford Companion to the Mind'' (1987)] In his book ''Study of Organ Inferiority and Its Psychical Compensation'' (1907), he argued that perceived inferiority or weakness led to physical or psychological attempts to compensate for it.
Such compensation could be positive or negative in its effects: a classic case of a favorable over-compensation for stuttering was the development of
Demosthenes
Demosthenes (; el, Δημοσθένης, translit=Dēmosthénēs; ; 384 – 12 October 322 BC) was a Greek statesman and orator in ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual pr ...
as an outstanding orator.
Adler's motivation to investigate this was from personal experience. He was a very sickly child. He was unable to walk till he was four because of rickets. Then he was a victim of pneumonia as well as a series of accidents.
Adler also "transferred" this idea of compensation to psychic training.
Examples
*Compensation may follow the direction of a perceived deficiency, as when a childhood fear of water is over-compensated by an obsession with sailing, or an original fear of picture books by a focus on literature. Or it may be opposed to the original problem-area, as when childhood rage becomes an unstable adult pacifism; or tangential to it, as when sporting weakness is compensated for by academic strivings.
*
Narcissistic people, by compensation theory, mute the feelings of low self-esteem by self-aggrandizement, for example by talking "highly", or contacting "highly admired" persons. Narcissistic children (according to
Melanie Klein) try to compensate for their jealousy and anger by fantasizing about power, beauty and richness.
Cultural implications
*
Christopher Lasch, an American historian and social critic wrote in his book ''
The Culture of Narcissism'' (1979) that North American society in the 1970s was a narcissistic society which worshipped fame and consumption, feared dependency, aging, and death, and being self-absorbed was constantly on the look-out for compensatory inputs.
*Consumption has been put forward as a means of compensation.
Allison J. Pugh: 'From compensation to 'childhood wonder': Why parents buy.
/ref> A classic example is the use of goods (material & abstract, eg holidays) to compensate for failures in human relationships, as when parents attempt to compensate for "poor" physical conditions (poverty, abuse ...) they lived in, or to make up for "poor" psychological conditions (acrimony, neglect, divorce ...) they subjected children to, with inappropriately lavish gifts.
See also
* Displacement (psychology)
* Sublimation (psychology)
* Inferiority complex
In psychology, an inferiority complex is an intense personal feeling of inadequacy, often resulting in the belief that one is in some way deficient, or inferior, to others.
According to Alfred Adler, a feeling of inferiority may be brought a ...
* Superiority complex
Superiority complex is a term coined by Alfred Adler in the early 1900s, as part of his school of individual psychology.
A superiority complex is a defense mechanism that develops over time to help a person cope with feelings of inferiority. Indi ...
* Narcissistic abuse
References
{{Reflist, 2}
Sources
Claude S. Fisher: Comment On "Anxiety": Compensation In Social History
* Christopher Lasch (1979). The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. New York: Norton.
* https://archive.today/20061016142155/http://www.infinityinst.com/articles/alfred_adler.htm
* http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=535671
* Беляев И. А
Ограничение и компенсация способностей и потребностей целостного человеческого существа
// Вестник Оренбургского государственного университета. — 2009. — № 2 (96), февраль. — С. 24-30.
Adlerian psychology
Defence mechanisms