Psychological Regression

It is extremely common to encounter psychological regression in therapy. It's so common that it is often readily apparent in observing friends and co workers over time.
What is meant by psychological regression is that a person reverts to an earlier developmental behaviour in face of new challenge or under stress.
Psychological regression is commonly noted where trauma has been significant.
Probably the most common today though not always so is the psychological regression seen in men and women who have been sexually abused.
Watching the behaviour and interaction of a 40 yo you might say, they are behaving more like people who are in their 20's. Alternatively a 25 yo might be said to be sounding and acting like an 13 year old.
Indeed diagnostically there's often a behavioral 'tell' which is a fixation that occurred around the time of trauma. I usually pick this up in 'tonal' shifts or use of language and in the inappropriate laughter which would be alright if the person were the stated age but really 'fits' better with a much 'younger' person. It's downright eerie at times and often comes across as 'fake' because of the inherent falseness.
Trauma is commonly associated with dissociation. While most people think of war and violent rape when they think of trauma, it's well recognized that to the growing immature individual a lot of experiences, clearly not in the league of front line war or physically violent rape by strangers, but nonetheless traumatizing to the undeveloped individual do occur. These are what constitute the inclusion criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, near death experiences, experiences of crippling or threatened crippling, significant sexual abuse, but also death of a parent, divorce of parents, multiple moves in childhood, serious childhood illness. Much of the psychological impact of the trauma is a product of the age of exposure. A 5 year old sexually penetrated will have far more likelihood of psychological regressive phenomena than a 17 year old sexually penetrated in an 'unwanted' sexual experience. Similar divorce is perceived by a 7 year old very differently from a 20 year old. Age and experience tend to protect so that the 19 year soldier shooting a child by mistake is more likely to develop ptsd than a battle hardened 40 year old sergeant who has been through many campaigns.
Multiple personality disorder is a direct consequence of trauma and most commonly associated with early childhood sexual abuse. This level of regression, often a childlike character in the midst of many other separate characters, is the most extreme.
Regression is seen in lesser degrees but is a part of the dissociative process.
Trauma leads to a person having a 'split' reaction to reality, feeling like they're struggling with two or more people inside. Having internal dialogues where they feel others wouldn't be so divided.
Alcohol and drugs are so commonly associated with trauma that regression is the norm the worse the disease. Indeed dissociation is considered psychologically to be the fundamental process in just addiction without trauma, the drug and alcohol abuse being it's own trauma as it subjects the brain to what biologically is a full blown chemical assault.
What I notice in therapy is a 'baby like' quality or 'innocent' quality in a person mature enough to be less naive. They also commonly are insensitive and indifferent to the really caring people about them. Their choice of friends is often poor and while this is associated with with the shame that is associated with alot of trauma, the fact remains that they commonly seek advice from those who have a limited experience. They commonly look for agreement and react sometimes violently in that adolescent and pre adolescent way to any wise or mature advice.
When men return from war the dissociation and regression is seen in their return to adolescent male activities, excessive drinking, drug abuse, playing games, lacking interest in commitment or work and generally childlike behaviour. This is a feature commonly understood when the inner workings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder are recognized.
A very big problem is an individuals lack of commitment to the present and future, living in past failures and believing that the past will recur in the future. Rather than try they perpetuate the false belief by self destructive tendencies and trying to prove their negative world view while blaming everything on the outside world because they're experiencing themselves and others from a regressed childlike position.
The work of analytic psychiatry developed an understanding of the unconscious process that a person was being controlled by and explained much of the background noise that to those close to a traumatized person was just plain 'irritating'.
One can imagine reading Freud and Jung's histories of some of their early patients, especially one famously sexually traumatized woman, those around her, would just say "grow up". Yet as those famous analysts showed she was afraid of life itself and ran from the present and the future by regressing to the pre trauma levels so that she acted silly and like a baby at times. Indeed to the external observer the patient was ridiculous, phony and immature but seen through the analytic lens the doctors recognised that she was dealing with the unresolved effects of trauma.
In a true history of the war, well represented in the movie Patton, the general is haranguing a shell shock soldier who is literally regressed to infancy, almost sucking his thumb as a result of war exposure. The general harangues him and abuses him such that subsequent official complaints almost lost Patton his generalship. Wiser minds than his understood the effects of trauma. Indeed it was in WWII building on the horrendous experience of WWI that it was recognized that 'everyone' had a breaking point in war and all (including General Patton) would collapse and regress and dissociate if they were exposed to (I believe 40 days and nights was the rough number) of days and nights of actual assault and threat. Ancients knew this and it was the basis of many defeats that followed long sieges. Trauma with it's tendency to nightmares damaged sleep and interfered with other reparative psychologic and physical processes.
Judith Herman, director of the Harvard University Trauma center, is a leading authority and her book Trauma and Recovery remains a classic decades after it's writing.
Regression has been seen as a 'generational' response and indeed some questionable elders wrote off the 60's hippy era as a collective psychological regression of young adults who had come through a cold war and now were threatened with conscription in the Vietnam war as the western world feared the expansion of that war to WWIII.
First Nation elders in Canada saw that their young were commonly psychologically regressed and unable to maintain commitments and marriages with more often than not the grandparents caring for the children because of the effects of residential school system sexual abuse on the community. Increasingly these young adults however as the community heals and returning to the normative and health producing, community building roles of child raising, work and longer stable relationships.
This is especially true in the AA and NA communities where drugs and alcohol and trauma were associated with the immaturity recognized by psychological studies as far back as the 30's. In recovery the flip side of the irresponsibility is the joy people take in the privilege of parenting and work. As one fellow said, "I'm thankful I can pay taxes today."
Indeed the move from narcissism to altruism is often seen as the key evidence of recovery from trauma. The person traumatized is often in survival mode and regressed to a self centered child but when she or he makes that critical decision the change occurs and the person begins really considering how their actions affect others, putting children first, or caring for old people, asking what benefit an action will have in the short term and long term rather than just thinking of the one night stand or the party.
What is so sad is that the 'regression' is so obvious to the adults in the community around the person. However only when the person is ready to give up the temporary and destructive false self soothing that comes with the almost masturbatory quality of the regression is there any hope of growth and recovery. This movement towards health is commonly seen when the adult turns to those more experienced, recovered alcoholics or addicts for instance, soldiers who have been to war had ptsd but got on with it, sexually abused therapists who have left the subsequent gender wars to go on and have successful marriages and raising children so they can talk seriously about recovery firsthand as well as from books, and seeing the elders of the community, the old people, those old elephants as it were who look like shit but have indeed been there, done, that and got the tshirt and ball cap to prove it. Sometimes the latter individuals are physicians, psychiatrists, priests and ministers. Sometimes they are not.
The key though is when the regressed individuals ask and follow advise from those more experienced rather than childishly wallowing in their own shit, making more muck and being what kids today call these men and women, "drama queens".
Indeed modern psychaitrisy, especially the work that has come from the pure laboratory of war zones, indicates that the longer the person is 'stuck' the more long term potential for growth is lost. Being 'stuck' in the past, living in the safety of the masturbatory " I'm alright, you're not" world, since alone and with those who agree with me " I'm right, you're not," is a nice safe suckling sort of zone. It's like people with elevator phobia. As long as they avoid elevators they're fine. But the longer they avoid , the sicker they become and the more difficult it is for them to get back on the elevator.
This was seen in the political gender wars of the 60's and 70's with the girls lining up on one side of the room in angry feminist camps while the boys lined up on the other side in indifferent playboy camps. One was in the classic tempertantrum regressive mode while the other was in the equally classic regressive pout mode. In the 80's and 90's the Sex in the City 'role reversal' occurred with the playgirls and the angry househusbands. This mirrored the political world of left and right before the real movement to the so called 'third corner' positions.
Without getting into the historic developments in modern and post modern psychiatry, group and marriage therapies or the developments in political science which is beyond the scope of a regression discussion, it's just worth considering the equivalent terms from other areas such as 'devolution' and "reactionary" and 'luddism."
Sometimes the regression is so obvious, the behaviour so plain that I find myself as a therapist listening to a 30 year old and asking "were you traumatized" at 5 or 6 and seeing them do that "how did you know' thing. Similiarly I ask the 50 yo 'playboy', were you in the Vietnam war and he tells me he was. It's not rocket science. It's just obvious when a person isn't acting their age but it's also true that no one who has ever really been there can 'snap out of it'. It's just that the sooner they do the sooner they get help and heal.




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