Monday, January 25, 2016
Jill's Intervention
Over the last three days, we have watched an episode of "Intervention" that documents the struggle that was Jill's life and her path to becoming sober. Shortly before watching this episode, we had filled out a chart with many common psychological terms. While watching this episode, we were given the task of becoming "amateur psychologists" and analyze Jill's behavior and the behavior of her family based on these terms. I thought it was a very enlightening experience to take a reality TV show and be able to learn from it. Throughout the program, people brought up valid points concerning the terms. The most common included cognitive dissonance, diffusion of responsibility, and psychological projection. We discussed how both Jill, her mom, and other family members exhibited cognitive dissonance: Jill by understanding that her extreme alcoholism was harming her health but continuing her lifestyle of an alcoholic; and Jill's mom by acting as an enabler to Jill's alcohol issues, and understanding the severity of these actions but still doing them anyways. Additionally, Jill pushes the responsibility of her problem on external factors like her parents divorce and her mom's emotional disconnect. Finally, her mother projects her problems with expressing her love for her children on Jill and her siblings by refusing to say the words "I love you." Does anyone have any other valid points to bring up? Do you think that behavioral psychologists use a similar approach to what we did in analyzing Jill and her family? Any other thoughts?
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You bring up an interesting point. I think all of your points are very valid and I would have to agree with them and I think a psychologists would see similarly to your view in this case.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with that cognitive dissonance, diffusion of responsibility, and psychological projection were all very noticeable in the behavior of both Jill and her family members. I also think that repetition compulsion showed itself a lot throughout the show. It applied the most to Jill because she knew she was an alcoholic and it caused her and those around her a lot of trauma, but she continued to repeat it anyway because it was like a habit to her and it was what she had always done, so it felt normal and "safe." She knew that it wasn't actually safe as she admitted during the intervention, but she kept doing it because she was used to the repetition and didn't want any change. You could also argue that Jill's mother not saying "I love you" is repetition compulsion because she did not hear it as a child, so it is what she was used to and she did not think much of it with her own kids even though deep down she knew it was traumatic.
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