Believe or not in evolution, natural selection or genesis. A belief is capable enough to create a whole universe, a universe where there is Justice, where it is practiced love, where the happiness and where they train values. This is how jealousy is formed according to psychology, "through the beliefs, meanings and concepts that we attribute to everything that we presumably know." A belief allows us to confer random and automatic meanings to almost everything that surrounds our existence and to almost all events that are accessible to our senses. In this Psychology-Online article, we are going to help you understand in a much more orderly, beneficial and deeply what is jealousy in psychology.
Index
- What is jealousy according to psychology
- What is jealousy
- Pathological jealousy
What is jealousy according to psychology.
José Ingenieros (2017) said that the ideal is a gesture of the spirit towards some perfection and that human evolution is a
The role of jealousy
In most mammals including humans, this occurs adaptive instinct, this one that allows us to save energy and vital forces necessary to preserve the species: falling in love.
Charles Darwin, in his book Expression of Emotions in Animals and Man, 1872 I was already making the observation that animals are attracted to each other, "They fall in love with each other." The infatuation, proposed from a phylogenetic slang as a force capable of channeling our beliefs to some type of romantic perfection that, as proposed by José Ingenieros (1913), ideals (beliefs) are natural formations in which we are increasingly compelled to be able to survive.
Lovers yearn, yearn for, aspire, are directed or channeled to this romantic perfection just like animals, where there is a certain exclusivity with the sexual partner, operating under the expectation that Justice to this desire: “I hope you love only me, I hope you dedicate the time I deserve, I need you to only see me, I want you to love only me, I want you to give yourself completely to me, if you love me you must agree with everything I decide because I am your partner, you should be alone with me and support me in everything I want because I am you partner."
If all these expectations are not met, not only is the sexual partner seen as unjust, but this omission of justice begins to be extrapolated to everything that some way I can provide that security: people are unfair, men are unfair, women are unfair, the universe is unfair. Faced with this insecurity, by annulling the existence of the other - who also has their own expectations or beliefs of the universe - the hunt begins, we begin to guard our partner as if it were a piece of meat, an inanimate object that is capable of giving me the assurance that the world is as I want it to be. This stubborn vigilance is jealousy, a mechanism developed in evolution, an effect of a cause.
The manifestation of jealousy
Jealousy manifests itself when the person distrust your partner and interrogates her about her activities (university, work, friends, etc.). Expressing discomfort and anger when he finds her spouse talking to someone or when he is going out for coffee with a friend without him or her being present. Distrust is greater when he cannot make a confession of who he was talking to or what they were talking to, who he saw the other day and what they did all that afternoon. The person who suffers from jealousy seems to want a report or daily report about her spouse and for that she is constantly harassed.
Jealousy can also be manifested by something we will call "euphemisms" where something is expressed which is considered "bad, strange, abnormal, sick or pathological", but in an almost hidden or disguised. The person who suffers from jealousy does not claim or demand a report or report nor does he present himself as a distrustful person but they have rude and degrading attitudes towards the couple, projecting all that insecurity and fear to the other, they also try to minimize the partner on a professional, social and / or personal level, criticize the activities carried out by the spouse (such as any sport they practice, the type of listening to music, the gym, parties, etc.) and also ends up directly criticizing the person and their social environment (their physique, their personality, their values, their family or friendships) in order not to feel inferior in any moment.
You can check if you are a jealous person using the following jealousy test.
What is the jealousy?
After seeing what jealousy is, we will proceed to analyze the origin of jealousy. What they owe? Why do they occur? Helen Fisher (2004) believes that this characteristic of falling in love evolved for two reasons: to prevent our male ancestors from being unfaithful and raise other children, as well as prevent our ancestors from losing their potential husband and father of their children to a rival. This craving for sexual exclusivity allowed our ancestors protect your precious DNA, by reserving almost all his time and energy for the courtship of the loved one.
Where does jealousy come from
In order not to have to constantly go back millions of years in evolution, we could just try to remember the origin of our beliefs: our childhood. - How did my parents love me? - Forming a psychoanalytic interpretation, we could speculate not from a victimization plane where “everything I do now is because of my parents ”, but from one that allows us to be creatively superior, understanding our mental structure to be able to restructure it later, by integrating each of the significant events that constitute or configure my beliefs.
An eclectic touch it seems, since we also approach in conjunction with a cognitive behavioral approach, that is, «Understand the origin of beliefs and thus be able to reevaluate whether they are advantageous or not for our romantic evolution human ”. Returning to what José Ingenieros explained, where beliefs are a continuous effort by man to adapt to nature, we could infer that as humans we are sometimes unintentionally exposed to a family and a society (nature), to which we are forced to adapt so we intelligently create ideas to be able to do so.
For psychoanalysis, during our childhood we handle ourselves in a symbiotic relationship with our mother and in the same relationship we go through our primary narcissism, from which later our self-esteem rises (which is the assessment of oneself). Both are inversely related (when narcissism is high, self-esteem is low and vice versa).
In our early years we do not identify that there is an external world, all that is pleasant "is me" and all that is unpleasant is "not me" my mother is "me", and so they are formed and establishing narcissistic cells in our psyche: if my mother pleases me when I cry because I feel that there is an increase in quantity (frustration / displeasure), coming from From the desire to want to be indulged (could be a toy or food), I get pleasure and a drop in quantity (frustration / displeasure), my mother gave me pleasure (by As with babies when they breastfeed, there is an increase in the amount of energy), I no longer feel frustration and I have created an idea, I have created a mechanism of evolution. I adapted, I conditioned, I learned that when I criedThey give me their breast, that when I kick they give me the pleasure, that when I stand with my arms crossed with a frown and without speaking to anyone, someone will come to comfort me and pamper me.
Why Jealousy Occurs
In the previous example, where the desire for justice in a relationship is mentioned, a being is presented unconscious of the origin of his ideas, of the origin of the expectation of justice in a romantic relationship, it is completely ignored that, as when we are children, we have the belief that my partner (my mother) must show me that the world is safe and that I can trust others knowing that this couple will tear all belief of threat from me, we have a longing for exclusivity.
Like when we cry for the mother's breast, we maintain this relationship of passive and narcissistic love, where I do not tolerate frustration, where I do not tolerate "no" and where there can be no injustice (My partner cannot be unfair: he cannot say no to me, he cannot cancel an appointment, he cannot share with someone else because that time is for me, you can not reject a call, you can not leave me in seen the messages) and this is when the hunt that was mentioned begins previously, jealousy. This evolutionary mechanism will make us respond to the threat.
Jealousy is not love
In jealousy we are afraid of losing that exclusivity, we are afraid that an injustice will be committed, we have fear that love will end, fear of never finding happiness or losing it, fear that all the immaculate values will not be practiced for my life. We're afraid of losing so we start looking for clues control our new love object so that he does not abandon us or betray us, we begin to believe in this, that we are in control, that we are gods of our own universe, where the existence of the other is annulled and per se their beliefs of justice, love, happiness and values, without considering that when we experience fear we try to exercise control although this I made things worse and that's why we lie to each other, that's why we prefer to keep our most primitive beliefs, because it hurts, it hurts to know each other imperfect.
Ambrose Bierce (1999) defined jealousy as the fear of losing something that if it were lost for what is feared would not be worth keeping it.
- Why try and force someone to stay to love us? - Even discovering that our partner did not meet our expectations of exclusivity (justice, love, happiness, values, etc.) and chose to direct his life accompanied by another being, he seeks to maintain this relationship.
We fear losing this couple because we are worried that someone will take him away from us for being more handsome, more successful, more talented according to our beliefs. That is, although we are capable of loving him and competent to renounce our narcissism and that passive love, I understand and respect the freedom and existence of the other, this can decide to leave and resign to this.
It may interest you how to decrease jealousy or what to do if your partner is jealous.
Pathological jealousy.
First of all, it will be necessary to see if jealousy is a symptom of a psychological disorder or not. For the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders DSM 5 (2013) jealousy is a delusional disorder subtype, where the central theme of the individual's delusion is that his spouse or lover is unfaithful to him. Definition that can clearly elucidate the concept of jealousy as the cause of our beliefs, since it also defines delusions as fixed beliefs that are not susceptible to change in light of the evidence against them, this means that they are not easily contradicted by the simple contradiction justified.
When our beliefs become rigid or inflexible is when danger to our health is predicted, because the sole reason that our beliefs cause us anxiety, fear or pain in a way, perhaps, almost chronically, it can open a wide and varied picture of comorbidity pathological (any mood disorder, eating disorders, sleep disorders, drug use disorders substances).
But the inflexibility of our beliefs alone is not enough to determine a celotype diagnosis; Let's add two key points to be able to discern and differentiate delusional disorder with subtype of celotypic from non-pathological jealousy.
1. The beliefs
My beliefs can be inflexible and rigid therefore they can create an unrewarding and unrewarding environment. Pleasant for me, causing fear or anxiety due to the insecurity of my partner abandoning me or cheating on me. "I have the belief that my partner will be unfaithful" But what do I do with this fear or anxiety? This is where we are oriented to action, since the mere rigid belief that creates a discomfort is not enough to create a diagnosis.
As explained above, jealousy is an evolutionary mechanism, a survival mechanism by which most mammals protect and protect ourselves. Being this way, we could allude that most of us (human beings) use it and thus protect our DNA: we all suffer from jealousy at some point. For example, when we were children we were jealous of the love that mother gave to one of our brothers, as explained by psychoanalysis where the latency stage of psychosexual development (which occurs around 7 years of life) is when we begin to have to win the love of others, mainly that of mom (giving drawings, giving letters, drawing good grades).
We have also been jealous at work because I see that my boss likes the new employee a lot about which I have the belief that it is more attractive and successful, although in reality this is not So. We all suffer from jealousy, only you have to know how to identify them and for this we can use the following premise: "jealousy is the fear of losing something" and that something is unconsciously stored in people (fear of losing security, respect, love, prestige, etc.). Since most of the time we are aware that we lose "someone" (Juanito / a María) but we are not aware that we lose "something" with this being.
To the accept that at some point we feel threatened or lower leads to a process of improvement in the level of functioning (quality of life). By accepting it, we stop pretending that it is false and we stop disguising them by projecting them onto the partner or making them feel inferior. Accepting that it is a survival mechanism allows us to put it in dialogue, therefore, the opportunity to heal it and reduce the anguish and / or anxiety that this may generate.
It is not wrong to feel jealous, what is wrong is what we do with them. As explained, our beliefs are also shaped by that symbiotic relationship that I had with my mother in childhood where she had the opportunity to break out of my primary narcissism. We are jealous because we are afraid, and by being creatively superior, we give ourselves the opportunity to take responsibility for our beliefs learned and stop victimizing ourselves because of what my parents did or if we suffer a premature loss that causes us fear now in our adolescence or as adults, let us provide the opportunity to heal this experience.
2. The action
Action is everything that we behaviorally do in reaction to our beliefs. If I am afraid that he will be unfaithful to me, I will destroy my partner's phone, I am going to ban me from dating these friendsI'm going to forbid him to go to work, I'm going to hurt myself so that he can stay with me, I'm going to chase him to find out what he's doing. These actions can lead to impaired functioning of the person. The action, the denial and the security and inflexibility of what is believed despite the evidence that contradicts it, can be symptoms of a delusional disorder: celotype.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
If you want to read more articles similar to What is jealousy in psychology, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.
Advice
- The assistance or intervention of a professional is the first of the first recommendation that I make, discovering the whole background of our discomforts should be directed by a professional in psychology.
Bibliography
- Bierce, A. (2017). Devil's Dictionary. Editorial Verbum.
- Darwin, C. (1946). The expression of emotions in man and animals (Doctoral Thesis).
- Fisher, H. (2004). Why we love. Editorial Taurus, Alfagura
- Engineers, J. (2010). The mediocre man (Vol. 54). Linkgua.
