Psychological Health and Individuality

Self as a Mental Representation

Today, all directions of psychological study recognizes the importance of an individual's understanding of him- or herself in order to achieve and maintain mental health. Indeed, it is often when such a self-concept malfunctions that mental health begins to suffer. Feenstra's concept of self-schema is a good starting point for understanding the self. The concept of self-schema refers to an individual's conscious and unconscious beliefs and assumptions about him- or herself. This can be used not only by each individual to understand the self better and to promote mental health and functioning, but also by professional psychologists and researchers in their aim to understand and assist those whose self-schema have malfunctioned in some way.

Self-schema, by definition, refers to a set of memories about the self created over the long-term. Generally, these memories have achieved stability and refers to a person's beliefs, experiences, and generalizations about him- or herself and how he or she would behave in specific situations. These beliefs, generalizations and experiences can refer to any aspect of the individual's self, including physical appearance, personality traits, and interests. To function as a self-schema, the individual must consider these beliefs an important to their own self-definition.

It is a well-accepted paradigm that each individual experiences the self differently. This is because of the differences in self-schema that each person builds over a lifetime of experience (Horowitz, 2012). Since these are generally unconscious, the individual usually has little control over the generalizations that become dominant at different times. An individual with an introverted self-schema, for example, would experience some discomfort in social situations. This is an unconscious reaction based upon the individual's past experiences and cultivated beliefs about him- or herself.

According to Horowitz (2012), the self-schemas are unconscious, but can themselves be fed by both conscious and unconscious inputs. Experience may reinforce or dispel an existing self-schema, for example, which will affect the strength and longevity of the schema involved. The inputs that feed the self-schema can be of either personal or social origin and they are not necessarily consistent with each other. A lack of consistency in self-schema organization, however, can lead to a rather fragmented sense of self. This, in turn, can result in mental malfunction when driven to the extreme. Horowitz (2012) refers to the organization of self-schemas as self-organization. When the organization is relatively consistent, one achieves a self-organization that is harmonious. This is why researchers in psychodynamics can find the study of self-schema very useful in terms of determining the origin and treatment of mental disorders, and also simply to achieve a better understanding of an individual's mental functioning.

According to Horowitz (2012), the idea of identity is a sense of sameness in the self-schema over time. The more consistent the organization of self-schema, the more consistent and solid the idea of identity, whether in conscious or intuitive form. These self-schemas can occur in the form of scripts, future intentions and expectations, and core values. Scripts are created by repeated experience, which forges the self-schema into a consistent belief or concept. This affects the individual's intentions and expectations about self-realization. Core values form the basis of scripts and future intentions.

Because of the complex and integrated nature of self-schemas, a faulty functioning in any aspect of these can result in significant mental disorders. However, an understanding of schema formation and functioning can also help therapists to create effective modes of treatment, as suggested by Renner, Van Goor, Huibers, Arntz, Butz, and Bernstein (2013).

The authors conducted a study on the effects of schema therapy on young adults with personality disorders. This therapy was offered in a group setting and showed promise in terms of both long-term and short-term intervention. Renner et al. (2013) also attempted to investigate maladaptive schemas, along with their stability and effect on coping responses while the focus groups were undergoing intervention.

The importance of studying and understanding the functioning of self-schemas in this way becomes clear when it is considered that personality disorders usually have their onset in adolescence or early adulthood. The effect of these disorders could be devastating in terms of the future functioning of such individuals. In the light of the various current crises in terms of the economy and health care, it is highly desirable that effective alternatives be found to often expensive psychiatric and drug interventions. This would both alleviate the pressure on the health care system and offer individuals the opportunity to contribute to the economy in the long-term.

The authors emphasize that schema therapy is a relatively new intervention approach when it comes to chronic axis-I and axis-II disorders. In these disorders, stable early maladaptive schemas are identified and modified in order to help the individual function better as a person and develop a more harmonious sense of identity. Hence, the psychotherapist seeks to use schema therapy to reduce the effect of early maladaptive schemas in order to replace them with more positive coping responses and schemas.

The results of the work conducted by Renner et al. (2013) show that schema therapy can offer both a valuable and effective intervention for the personality disorders considered. Indeed, the intervention was even shown to be effective in the short-term in terms of reducing symptomatic distress in the groups investigated, as well as underlying vulnerability. This short-term effectiveness is especially valuable in the light of cost-effective treatment as an alternative for more intensive and more expensive drug-based interventions. It is also far less invasive and traumatic than drug interventions for personality disorders and more cost-effective than individual long-term therapy.

A further important aspect of the findings is that those therapists who find themselves reluctant to diagnose personality disorders in young adults can safely use schema therapy as intervention method to reduce the identified maladaptive schemas. This reduces both the dangers posed by these schemas to the individuals, their families, and their environment and provides a cost-effective way to control the disorder. Hence, even younger adults displaying some difficult personality features or precursors to disorders can be treated both safely and effectively.