Compensation
Neurosis and other pathological states reveal the safe-guarding or defensive strategems (largely unconscious or out of awareness) of the individual who believes him- or herself to be unequal to the demands of life, in a struggle to compensate for a felt weakness, physical or psychological.
In "normal" development the child has experienced encouragement and accepts that his or her problems can be overcome in time by an investment of patient persistence and cooperation with others. The "normal" person feels a full member of life, and has "the courage to be imperfect" (Sofie Lazarsfeld).
In less fortunate circumstances, the child, trapped within a sense of inferiority, compensates - or overcompensates, perhaps in grandiose fashion - by striving, consciously and unconsciously, to overcome and solve the problems of life, moving "from a felt minus to a felt plus". A high level of compensation produces subsequent psychological difficulties.
Read more about this topic: Adlerian
Famous quotes containing the word compensation:
“I do not want to be covetous, but I think I speak the minds of many a wife and mother when I say I would willingly work as hard as possible all day and all night, if I might be sure of a small profit, but have worked hard for twenty-five years and have never known what it was to receive a financial compensation and to have what was really my own.”
—Emma Watrous, U.S. inventor. As quoted in Feminine Ingenuity, ch. 8, by Anne L. MacDonald (1992)
“... the compensation for a death sentence is knowledge of the exact hour when one is to die. A great luxury, but one that is well earned.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)