Thoughtcraft 1.8: Mental Addictions
Nearly all animals have skills which must be exercised for the survival of the individual and the species. The purposive exercise of a skill is its use to achieve a direct, concrete end, the end achieved by the action carried to its fullest extent, such as a cat catching a mouse. But most skills or basic activities will also be carried out non-purposively, as when a cat pounces at a shadow or at nothing at all. It is probably safe to say that the activity is being done “just for practice.” Humans seem to engage in forms of thought unique to their species, and there is a strong tendency to think “just for practice.”
Yet mental maintenance is not “just for practice,” and the thought activities whose aim is mental maintenance may be done obsessively, as if the thinker is addicted. One reason for this kind of thinking is a recurring or constant need to self-image. When there is continual assault on the self-image, work must be done to reestablish it. The habitual daydreamer is one who is in one way or another not at home in the world. Perhaps there is a need or desire which can simply not be met (such as the never-fulfilled need for a mother’s love).
An adjustment will be made, such that the person will compromise, perhaps by compensating for the unmet need through other pleasures, or by creating a persona which does not have the need, or in other ways. Whether the adjustment is compensatory or denying, it must be integrated into the personality, that is, the sense of self must be constructed so that there is none or minimal dissonance between the adjustment and all other facets of personality. Where this is achieved, there may still be dissonance between the resulting self-sense and the requirements of high functioning in the social world. The result will be a continual need to maintain the self-sense, to repair it after instances of insult to it. (Insult may be entirely mental, as when a desire to fit into the social world creates a dissonance within the self, or may rise to the level of the practical, such as when someone whose self-sense is very attached to truth-telling, but whose job requires deception.)
There is a dual motivation for maintenance thought in this scheme. Walter Mitty daydreams first because he has a continually unmet need. Daydreamer becomes part of his self-sense, but since daydreaming is not regarded as useful in the social world, there is continual dissonance. To resolve it, Mitty must somehow, even if unconsciously, determine that the daydreams are important, not just to him but to the world. Each time a daydream involves heroism on Mitty’s part, it works on both levels: it gives Mitty a sense of mastery that he cannot achieve in the real, social world, but it also repairs his self-image, in that, unconsciously, Mitty believes (correctly?) that the mental exercise of heroism is required to keep alive within him the capacity for practical heroism, and that therefore even his daydreams may benefit the world some day, in some way. Thus he can resolve the dissonance between his sense of self, which includes daydreaming, and the requirements of social interaction.
Here is the difference between casual “practice” and addiction. When thought occurs “just for practice,” it is easily abandoned. The cat chasing a shadow and the dog chasing his tail can be drawn away from these activities far more easily than either of them in pursuit of actual prey. But Walter Mitty does not abandon his dreams easily. Fetched to earth from one of them, he will be haunted by it and will want to return to it as soon as he can.
Then there is that element of addiction that is simple escape. There may be an element within the mind which one chooses not to integrate into the self-sense (perhaps because sensing that it will never fit into the world—think of homosexuals before 1970.) Mental activity may take place precisely to escape from the necessity of admitting the unwelcome element.
We are accustomed to thinking of addiction only in terms of overt actions taken—drugs ingested, co-dependencies acted out, compulsive behaviors such as overeating, gambling, or overspending. For this reason, when we face the challenge of thinking clearly, flexibly, and effectively, alone or in groups, it is important to be aware that addiction which may not result in any such overt action may still direct, and mar, our thought processes.