psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

, compensation is a strategy whereby one covers up, consciously 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 Alfred Adler ( , ; 7 February 1870 – 28 May 1937) was an Austrian medical doctor, psychotherapist, and founder of the school of individual psychology. His emphasis on the importance of feelings of belonging, family constellation and birth orde ...

, founder of the school of

individual psychology Individual psychology (german: Individualpsychologie) is a psychological method or science founded by the Viennese psychiatrist Alfred Adler. The English edition of Adler's work on the subject (1925) is a collection of papers and lectures given mai ...

, 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 Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive interest in one's physical appearance or image and an excessive preoccupation with one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism exists on a co ...

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 Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested t ...

) try to compensate for their jealousy and anger by fantasizing about power, beauty and richness.

Cultural implications

Christopher Lasch Robert Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiven ...

, an American historian and social critic wrote in his book ''

The Culture of Narcissism ''The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations'' is a 1979 book by the cultural historian Christopher Lasch, in which the author explores the roots and ramifications of what he perceives as the normalizing of pat ...

'' (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.

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

Origin

Examples

Cultural implications

See also

References

Sources