Withdrawal
In cases of discouragement the individual, feeling unable to unfold a real and socially valid development, erects a fantasy of superiority - what Adler termed "an attempt at a planned final compensation and a (secret) life plan" - in some backwater of life, which offers seclusion and shelter from the threat of failure and annihilation of personal prestige. This fictional world, sustained by the need to safeguard an anxious ego, by private logic at variance with reason or common sense, by a schema of apperception which interprets and filters and suppresses the real-world data, is a fragile bubble waiting to be burst by mounting tension within and by assaults from the real world. The will to be or become has been replaced by the will to seem.
Read more about this topic: Adlerian
Famous quotes containing the word withdrawal:
“A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning’s greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications.... Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“A separation situation is different for adults than it is for children. When we were very young children, a physical separation was interpreted as a violation of our inalienable rights....As we grew older, the withdrawal of love, whether that meant being misunderstood, mislabeled or slighted, became the separation situation we responded to.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)