Adaptation
Shifting your attitudes and actions to fit a new set of circumstances.
Being able to fit our thinking and behaviour to reality is an essential survival tool. For the most part, it happens automatically, but for many people automatic adaptation becomes more difficult with age. Hence the classic image of the crusty old codger moaning about “kids these days.”
The fact that it isn’t so automatic doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. Some of the most enthusiastic champions of social reform are exactly those older folks you would expect to be stuck in their ways.
The psychodynamic view is that adaptation isn’t about age, it’s about maturity and ego-strength. In other words, it’s a function of the individual person’s life experiences and the psychology they have built to help themselves cope with life’s difficulties. In this context, you will commonly hear people talking about “maladaptive traits,” which is the same as saying “attitudes that are stuck in the past.”
In therapy terms, however, it’s not the person’s rusted-in political views that matter, but how they cope with stress and anxiety. A temper tantrum is a highly effective tool for a six-year-old who is angry at her father for not giving her pop-tarts for dinner. Not so much for a 70 year old CEO whose flailing emotions can cost her company multiple millions of dollars.
In other words, our psychological problems stem from the fact we haven’t been able to adapt, and our basic emotional responses haven’t changed, even after 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. We are using a child’s emotional tools to manage an adult’s problems. We haven’t adapted to the reality that we have grown up and the world has changed.
Quotes
Jung
…man can meet the demands of outer necessity in an ideal way only if he is adapted to his own inner world, that is, if he is in harmony with himself. Conversely, he can only adapt to his inner world and achieve harmony with himself when he is adapted to the environmental conditions.1
Chaplin
Structural or functional change which enhances the organism’s survival value. 2