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Magical thinking - meaning and application
contents
- Mentally ill and traditional cultures
- Magical thinking in children
- Two thought systems
- evolution
- Esotericism from exhaustion
- Magical thinking versus mental disorders
- What does anthropology say??
- Magical thinking in therapy
This thinking is shown in the first variant both in the West in the belief in the supernatural, astrology, diviners, esoteric or coffee essays, in traditional cultures, however, as a wholeness that magically interweaves all beings, things and phenomena, and this connection of fragments of the sensual Perception and the historical experience of making a system.
Magic thinking. Image: dad - fotolia Ever since the work of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, this "wild thinking" in anthropology is no longer regarded as pathological, but as a meaningful structure for organizing human societies. The "wild thinking" goes into the philosophy, the myth and the "big story" that people needed to handle the chaos of experiencing the environment as a culture.
Thinking in contexts that concludes from subjective perceptions of causal relations of the outside world, belongs to the system of "quick thinking" in associations and is normal for all people to cope with everyday life: If our new boss by Christian name is called, and we with This has played into our perception even though there is no objective connection.
The associative thinking goes back to the evolutionary adaptation and thus to patterns of behavior that lay before the slow thinking that abstracts.
Mentally ill and traditional cultures
This thinking is considered pathological when people can no longer distinguish between their subjective feelings and the outside world. We call this collapse between inner experience and external experience psychosis. Traumatized, bipolar, borderline patients and schizophrenia sufferers are among the mentally disturbed, in which the separation between subjective perception and external reality dissolves.
Mentally ill and mentally healthy "primitive peoples" are only a contrast if we exclude mental disorders as something abnormal from the "healthy brain". But this is not how the brain works: The constructions of reality of mentally disturbed people are rather the organism's attempt to function - for example, Korsakov's patients, who suffer from memory loss because alcohol has destroyed parts of the brain, fill in the missing memories through imagination constructions. The brain can not bear emptiness.
Magical thinking in children
Children live in the magical phase from the second to the fifth year of life. At this time, giants, witches or Santa are as real to them as cars or people.
The children already recognize real things and can name them; they know what a house is, a dog or a closet. However, everything that the child imagines is just as real, and it develops explanations for events in the environment: for example, it concludes that it rains because in heaven a man sits with a watering can.
Adult stories become a reality for the children. If Uncle Bernd says that a green spider like a green tomato is not yet ripe, then that's true. Metaphors become immediate reality. "The dog is buried here", or "In the sky is a fair", toddlers introduce themselves exactly as the words say. At this age, it does not help to explain to the child why certain things are not possible.
Not only beautiful ideas become reality, even more serious are the magical fears. There is a monster lurking under the bed or a robber hiding in the closet. This is joined by the "invisible friend," who stands by the child in such situations filled with fear.
These fears and anxieties should be taken seriously. First of all, children do not understand the idea that these ideas are irrational and, strictly speaking, they are wrong. It is not about irrationality in the sense of spinning, but an evolutionary behavior - and this behavior makes sense.
A hyena in the dark corner (under the bed) or a leopard in the closet, a hostile kid abducting defenseless children (robbers) were real threats to the early humans, and children whose genetic make-up was such threats would not have recognized, would not have grown old.
Metaphors and narratives become reality for children. Image: yiorgosgr - fotolia So, if the child puts food in front of the door for the invisible friend, talks to his teddy bear or the parents have to look in the dresser, if there is a troll there, there is no reason for concern. Some parents fear that their child develops a mental disorder. This fear is usually unfounded.
It is not the fantasies that are a reason to worry, but the extent of fear. Does the child no longer dare to go to kindergarten? Are the evil spirits always and everywhere? Missing them a positive opponent?
In general, there is no problem in supporting the child in his fantasies, no matter how grandiose they are. Pupils discuss by themselves at the age of six or seven whether Santa Claus exists; By itself, the all-encompassing fantasies shift through realistic explanations. For example, children who still believe in Santa at age six develop theories of how Santa man manages to delight all children; the gifts are not just there, but elves make them in a huge factory, etc.
The imagination of children is a great wealth, and some successful fantasy writers got a significant boost by developing their plots with children. Parents are well advised to accompany the child, even if they can not imagine that small males with wings are frolicking in the bird feeder.
You should always take the fears of the child seriously. The child does not accept that the robber in the closet does not exist. Rather, these associations are a biologically meaningful appeal to parents to ensure safety. So instead of explaining that the monsters are fantasies, prudent parents look in the closet and show that the monster is not there.
Parents can also work with the child to find solutions to the fear: "I'll watch if a monster comes," or "we'll leave your door open, and if there's a monster, you come to us." It is good if the parents tell the child about situations in which they themselves were afraid, and what they did then.
Two thought systems
The psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahnemann examined in a long-term study two systems of thought of humans. So we have a slow and fast thinking - an intuitive and a rational one.
Intuitive thinking, according to Kahnemann, is far more powerful for our daily decisions than the rational one. We could only control our thinking very limitedly.
Cognitive distortions, caused by feeling and intuition, tend to push rationality back - even among people who accept the opposite, such as scientists. So managers bought shares at Ford "because they know how to build a car".
Kahnemann writes, "We are often convinced of their correctness (intuitive beliefs and preferences) even when we are wrong, and an objective observer is more likely to recognize our mistakes than ourselves."
According to Kahnemann, the unconscious system works automatically, it relies on stored experience and develops coherent stories from it. The results from these "quick conclusions" receive the consciousness and thus the rational thinking with which we examine, order and analyze.
The abstract thinking that creates the complex calculations and the hypotheses that we believe to be right or wrong does not only take a long time - it also consumes resources. It overstresses the organism too much to be in constant use.
In everyday life, therefore, we usually think and act with system 1. We replace difficult questions with questions that we like subjectively. That's why many of our decisions are wrong, because our quick thinking sorts out what fits us in the junk and not what's objectively right. The more we are under stress, the more we choose the quick and the easy way.
Associative thinking can have fatal consequences. Picture: ra2 studio - fotolia Associative thinking can have fatal consequences. For example, judges sentenced a shoplifter to a higher penalty in an experiment after they had previously rolled a higher number. What's more, not in the experiment, but in reality, judges dismissed many more people on probation if they worked on the case in the early morning or after lunch break. On the other hand, they refused most parole applications if they had previously worked for several hours. It is, according to Kahnemann, not about sloppiness, but about a normal reaction of the organism. Slow thinking costs mental energy and eventually the brain automatically shuts down to a "low energy mode". Kahnemann explains this phenomenon with mental fatigue. He says that the work of judges primarily demands analytical thinking. But this leaches out the mental energy reserves.
According to Kahnemann, intuitive thinking can not be switched off because it is innate. Our impressions, acquired sympathies and aversions are very easily confused with slowly thought-out decisions. But this slow system has to be switched on at will, according to Kahnemann, and that is almost always uncomfortable.
Moreover, as long as everything goes well, the rational system takes the automatic intuitions unchecked and transforms them into convictions. "On its own", the rational system becomes active only in the case of cognitive dissonance, that is, in events that violate what the fast system considers plausible, for example, a talking cat.
evolution
Psychologists such as Seymour Epstein and Jonathan Evans see an evolutionary development in the thought systems described by Kahnemann: For example, intuitive thinking is an old system of evolution, as many other vertebrates have, but the analytic system is a new human adaptation.
This old system of experience can easily be equated with magical thinking. It places simultaneous perceptions in context and constructs a causal chain between incident and experience. That may be objective, but not necessarily.
Thus, the "old thinking" does not make any hypotheses that it tests and disproves if they are wrong, but sees patterns in the environment behind which there are intentions. For the indigenous people in Papua New Guinea, almost every illness is the result of a bad spell. It can not be "stupidity". Cleverness's selective pressure was probably greater among the Papuans, who constantly counted on the attack of an enemy clan and had to watch out for natural threats such as crocodiles, falling trees, or parasites, as in modern societies.
What appears to be pure superstition enabled us to survive in the natural wilderness and is reflected in children's angst fantasies: those who had spent a long time analyzing in the savannah of Africa whether a shadow in the bush was caused by a leopard, sunlight or a stone, would hardly have survived if it had been a leopard.
Evolutionary biologist Kevin Foster demonstrated with a mathematical model that this intuitive thinking and acting offered an advantage in evolution, regardless of whether the conclusion was objectively wrong.
Esotericism from exhaustion
Esoteric teachings are more common among academics than "less educated" deities, "alternative world explanations," the unutterable Tao, the god-king Dalai Lama, or a square between the planets of Pluto and Mars at birth as an explanation for self-destruction.
A successful psychiatrist who has been lying on the couch for years on account of depression and has painfully realized in practice that mental disorders can only be cured to a limited degree, suddenly spends his money on "seminars" in which gurus tell us that everything, what you wish, come true, if only you believe in it. "Enlightened," the doctor is now gambling away his reputation, because he thinks he can fix all diseases by knocking on body parts.
The function of the two systems of thought makes such behavior seem logical. An analytic work as a psychiatrist over many years costs a great deal of mental energy and consumes resources. Now the proposals of the innate quick thinking to make sense, instead of continuing the tedious work, the results of which bring little success.
Quick thinking now promises apparent solutions, much success with little effort, if the person concerned only takes leave of slow thinking. The lure of intuitive high-speed shoots is thus even greater for mental workers, doctors, psychiatrists, and scientists than for people who perform intellectually less demanding activities.
Magical thinking versus mental disorders
It becomes dangerous when non-medical practitioners, doctors and therapists who trust in quick thinking come to people with mental disorders, whose symptoms include magical constructions, and for whom these associations do not constitute a help for life, but cause suffering. It even becomes criminal when therapists cause unnecessary anxiety among those affected.
Forced actions show a magical pattern: actions without objective sense repeatedly execute those affected according to a strict ritual. Unknowingly, they try to undo the fantasies, impulses or actions that are blamed for them.
Simply put: Anyone who washes their hands constantly and suffered from authoritarian education washes themselves clean of the fear of being punished for "sins".
Those who treat obsessive-compulsive disorder should first separate the thoughts and reality of the patients. Forced dysfunctionals usually react with relief when they realize that their thinking alone has no consequences.
Magical thinking is typical for various forms of schizophrenia. Those affected believe that thoughts would be whispered or taken away from them by foreign powers. These thoughts can expand in schizophrenic perception, infecting other people, or infiltrating them without those affected controlling them.
Schizophrenics develop entire delusions in which witches, black magicians or evil spirits influence and persecute them. The action of these spirits then explains to the schizophrenics their own peculiar actions: newly constructed words, silence, dry strangulation or stagnation.
What does anthropology say??
Magical thinking differs from the scientific thinking of modernity in that it explains the world through an all-encompassing work of spirits, gods, and demons.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, however, saw essentially the same principle: science and traditional systems try to order the world according to a universal procedure.
Even in "wild thinking", opposites formed the pattern of categories: much-little, animal-human, evil spirit-good spirit. The archaic worldviews could easily be translated into any modern language.
The terms are different, but the structure is the same. Especially in computer technology, the structural logic of traditional cultures can be seen today.
The difference, on the other hand, lies in the fact that scientific thinking is based on empiricism and concludes from the individual to the whole. Magical thinking, on the other hand, has no direct relation to practice; it does not seek proof, but builds a harmony of the cosmos.
Magical thinking combines the things and beings of the environment according to associative patterns that were easy to think. In nature religions it is by no means unsystematic, but classified - such as taxonomy in modern biology. However, this order would arise in ever new combinations, and not just as a consequence of abstraction - comparable perhaps to the clusters that form writers when they design their story.
For example, a hole is created in a body when a human throws a spear into it. In Aboriginal Dreamtime, an imposing hole in a rock has its origins in an ancestor throwing a spear into a kangaroo. Or: The eagle lands on the earth and flies in the air, so it connects sky and earth. Or: The bear has a heavy bone structure and is difficult to wound. So the medicine of the bear spirit helps to heal broken bones.
The magical thinking, not only with nature religions, seeks the wholeness, the scientific thinking the truth. The science tries to explain a single event, the magical thinking seeks the place of the happening in the holistic context. Magical thinking sees the indivisible whole as reality, science the divisible things. Magical thinking sees reality behind things, scientific thinking the reality in things. In science, the universe is the sum of all things - in magical thinking, things are expressions of the cosmos.
Magical thinking trusts the tradition, the ancestors, the tradition. Scientific thinking examines theories and traditions for their validity. The magical thinking sees all experiences as equivalent, the scientific thinking analyzes these experiences. Magical thinking constructs a context that corresponds to one's own values; Science "constructs" real connections after experiments.
The "wild thinking" is, according to Levi-Strauss, even superior to scientific thinking in linking humans to their environment. It connects cultural relationships with animals, plants, planets, waters and stones. People in cultures who practice this "wild thinking" would know themselves as part of a cosmic order.
Magical thinking in therapy
In therapy, such thinking can sometimes use patients when it creates order in a chaos in and out of their psyche. However, it must never be a question of pretending to portray these psychosocial constructions as external reality.
Fairy tales and myths lend themselves to creating a narrative structure for people with fragmented memories, traumas and chaos in their own lives, from which they can regain confidence in themselves.
Thereto offer therapeutic writing and therapeutic painting. The connection to analytical thinking is made by the therapist. He associates the associations with the patient and discusses their meaning. Magical thinking with professional support can thus promote healing processes. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Internet
http://www.lateinamerika-studien.at/content/kultur/mythen/mythen-423.html
Book tips:
Daniel Kahneman: Fast thinking, slow thinking. Americ. Engl. V. Thorsten Schmidt. Publisher: Settlers. ISBN: 9783886808861