Escape from Reality

My friend Rajini got her posting in Chennai ... Oh no not again .. she had already spent 2 years of her PG in Tamil Nadu ... Being from the North, she did'nt find the place very comfortable. The food, the language, the culture, the glaring stares her very-comfortable shorts brought her, eating without a katori, the people and their obsession with flowers, turmeric, powder and gold ...aaah ... it was just too much .. Not again ..

She tried all tricks in the book .. spoke to the HR, feigned illness, told about ailing parents, blah blah.. nothing worked. She finally went and in two weeks she fell critically ill and had to be sent back to her hometown for "complete bed rest for 3 weeks".

Another day i woke up at six ( quite early by our stds) to study for the end term..5 more ppts left... i knew this would be the last time in life i would need to study the subject ( hated it, didnt have an option though) and coaxed myself to study. Just four more hours and i consoled myself saying "you can gift the book away and watch a movie and have biryani once the exam is over". Thus i started off.. and suddenly i heard screeching sounds.. bikes flying off.. only then did i realize that it was quarter to ten and people were rushing off to the exam; i had DOZED off ... and those 5 ppts were staring at me!!

Ashok was fed up with his personal life. He was working in an MNC, a high paying job, a luxurious life.. all was fine but he hated to go home. He simply could not get along with his wife and was planning to file for a divorce. He knew every evening there would be a fight, a half hearted meal and a only silence. The problem was that he was simply too ambitious and did not feel spending time with his lonely wife was important. His take was that he was the bread winner and all that he did was only to ensure a comfortable life for them. Inorder to avoid the fights , he wanted to go home late, work on weekends too. Thus he became a workaholic over worked and things became worse..

All these and more are escape mechanisms, which aid us in getting away from reality. The ultimate objective is Freedom. We do not want to be bound by things we do not like; to escape it, our subconscious adopts the method that works (not necessarily the easiest or best). Sometimes we are not even aware that we would want to escape, it simply comes from the subconscious.

Psychologists give three escape mechanisms

1. Authoritarian:

When it comes to an action to be done out of us, (which we dont like) we would always be happy to pass it on, by either submitting ourselves at others feet or by making people fall at our feet.

For Ex: We pass the blame or decision making to others, so we can simply avoid being blamed later. Erich Fromm says

" There are two ways to approach this. One is to submit to the power of others, becoming passive and compliant. The other is to become an authority yourself, a person who applies structure to others. Either way, you escape your separate identity."

2. Automaton:

Fuse yourself with the society, follow the "norms" and remain hidden. This way no one expects you to take up the responsibility or has any expectations out of you.

"If I look like, talk like, think like, feel like... everyone else in my society, then I disappear into the crowd, and I don't need to acknowledge my freedom or take responsibility. It is the horizontal counterpart to authoritarianism."

3. Destructiveness:

It could be both self or others. Suicides, falling ill like in the first case, crime, etc are the result of such mechanisms.

" if a person's desire to destroy is blocked by circumstances, he or she may redirect it inward."

So in most cases when we find ourselves failing to do something we do not like but is expected of us, we can assume there is a fair probability of an "escape from reality" mechanism involved.