The characteristic feature of a person, which manifests itself in excessive sensitivity to the phenomena of the surrounding world, is called sensitivity in psychology. People susceptible to this phenomenon usually have an increased sense of anxiety, protect themselves with barriers to social communication, and are afraid of new situations, unfamiliar sensations, and even minor trials. This feature may manifest itself differently in different people, depending on its type and nature.
Definition of sensitivity in psychology
Sensitivity literally means “feeling” in Latin.
In psychology, this term is used to describe a person’s character and his accentuation. In this understanding, the word sometimes takes on a negative connotation, implying painful sensitivity that interferes with living normally in society.
In another context, sensitivity is a way of active action, perception of reality with particular accuracy, increased sensitivity to the surrounding world and people. This is a quality that can be controlled; it is necessary for a good psychologist, writer, artist, musician. Normal sensitivity is important for an ordinary person who wants to live in harmony with himself and the surrounding reality.
What are sensitive periods
The concept of sensitivity is used to describe periods of child development. This phenomenon is considered universal, that is, it manifests itself in the lives of all children, and at the same time individual. The moment of its beginning and end for each individual subject can only be predicted theoretically.
The sensitive period is the most favorable time for improving certain psychological skills and acquiring new knowledge.
A detailed description of this phenomenon can be found in the works of Maria Montessori. Her pedagogical methodology of free education is based on helping the child master certain skills and knowledge.
Particularly rapid development occurs from birth to 6 years, when the child overcomes several sensitive periods at once, he learns:
- speak;
- walk;
- move and act;
- communicate in society;
- perceive order and surrounding reality.
Character and personality traits
The sensitive character type describes a person’s excessive, painful sensitivity to everything that happens. Any external factors have a very strong effect on such a person - loud sound, bright light, harsh speech. For a sensitive person, any harsh word is a psychological trauma. Strong sound and light become a shock, he cannot bear excessive stress at work and during school, he suffers and suffers.
Psychological work for such people is always excessive, they cannot stand high demands, it is very difficult for them to live. If in a family such a relative coexists next to an emotionally hot-tempered type, he suffers greatly. Sensitive people prefer halftones in their external life, and this applies to emotions, stress, and relationships. Such features need to be understood and known to relatives and friends.
A common accompaniment of increased sensitivity is anxiety. Fear of everything new, isolation from strangers, fears about upcoming trials - all this is characteristic of a sensitive person with a melancholic temperament.
Other character traits:
- shyness;
- tendency to long-term experiences;
- low self-esteem;
- low level of aspirations;
- timidity;
- impressionability;
- increased moral demands on oneself.
With the help of conscious efforts and psychological training in sensitivity, an overly vulnerable and vulnerable character is smoothed out. This happens by developing the ability to cope with situations that cause anxiety.
Different types of people according to character traits
Temperamental sensitivity in choleric people is characterized by imbalance and excessive excitability. Such people often exhibit cyclical behavior. Their intense activity may sharply decline. This occurs due to decreased mental strength or loss of interest. Such people are distinguished from others by sharp and fast movements, as well as vivid expressions of feelings in facial expressions. Slight sensitivity is observed in sanguine people. These people easily adapt to changing environments. That is why external factors do not always have a negative impact on their behavior.
Phlegmatic people are characterized by sensitive rigidity. Such people experience a slow progression of psychological processes. The phenomenon of excitation in phlegmatic people is balanced by strong inhibition. That is why such people are able to restrain their impulses.
Melancholic people are characterized by increased vulnerability and emotional sensitivity. They react very painfully to a sudden complication of the situation. In dangerous situations they develop a feeling of intense fear. When communicating with strangers, melancholic people feel very insecure.
Age sensitivity
Signs of age-related sensitivity have been better studied in children. This phenomenon, which occurs at a certain stage of life, expresses different levels of susceptibility to the influence of external factors.
Age-related sensitivity is characterized by a limited duration. A certain period when this property manifests itself most clearly is called the sensitive period. The beginning and end of this period of time does not depend on the desire of the individual and the success of acquiring knowledge. Even if the necessary skill has been developed, abilities decline with age.
Parents are unable to accelerate the onset of a period of increased sensitivity in a child or delay its end. But by creating favorable conditions for learning at the right time, they will help realize the natural potential.
Some researchers (Koltsov, Elkonin, Ananyev) believe that favorable periods of increased sensitivity accompany a person throughout his life, and have a wave-like character - a time of active development is replaced by a decline.
Behavior in society
All types of sensitivity are realized in contact with the outside world or other people.
Sensitivity that arises during the period of such contact is a personality trait that helps to be attentive to others, to be able to predict their actions, behavior and reactions.
There are 4 main types of such sensitivity:
- Observational village - this is the ability to see, hear, contemplate another person. The ability to remember external form and statements, gestures, appearance, draw certain conclusions and predictions based on the information received.
- Theoretical p. – relates to the work of specialists who help people. Skills relate to the selection and use of specific theories that are most suitable for the analysis of specific cases.
- Nomothetic p. – the ability to perceive other people as representatives of the social groups to which they belong. This allows you to determine the social circle, needs and interests of the observed individuals.
- Ideographic p. – the ability to notice distinctive character traits and behavior of other individuals. The ability to predict further actions and emotions of a particular person.
Increased sensitivity to the outside world and to oneself, as a consciously controlled skill, is useful and worthy of development. In psychological practice, trainings to improve this quality are popular.
Sensitive types of reactions are the opposite of expansive ones. The main direction of the life attitude is asthenic, however, in the presence of a contrast, the opposite pole is strictly asthenic. People prone to such reactions reveal, on the one hand, extraordinary spiritual softness, weakness and tender vulnerability, on the other, an admixture of ambition and stubbornness combined with an awareness of their value. They are characterized by a deep mental life, which involves prolonged intense affects, refined introspection and self-criticism, scrupulous ethics and the ability to truly altruistic perception. These are serious people, timid and modest. Their basic constitutional tone is thus subtly schizothymic, hyperaesthetic, often with an admixture of cyclothymic-heavy-blooded (schwerblutig) gentleness and altruistic good nature. They are prone, like all schizothymic hyperaesthetics, to a disorder of the transmitting nerve pathways, while their overly impressionable susceptibility to life's irritations is in conflict with an insufficient and disproportionate ability of expression. Therefore, for them it often comes to inhibition of affects, which in most cases takes the form of delay, i.e., conscious complex formations, so that the painful experience is not forgotten for a long time and cannot be expressed, but returns with painful clarity again and again to the center of consciousness. The specific subjective form of experiencing these complexes is determined by acute sthenic-asthenic countertension. An admixture of sthenic perception, pride and diligence does not allow such people to completely fall into depressive resignation, but, despite the feeling of insufficiency, it always pushes them to fight the painful experience. But the edge of the affect of experience in such gentle asthenic people is always directed against themselves. Self-torment, self-blame, ethical doubts - all this is a typical response of a sensitive nature to irritation from experience. Expansive natures always reproach others; their experience is directed outward.
The key experience for the sensitive type of reaction is a feeling of shameful insufficiency, ethical defeat. If the irritation from the experience is very strong and the constitution is tender and labile, then the matter is not limited to simple internal self-torment, the affective energy of the delayed complex manifests itself in secondary formations, which are often outlined already in normal psychology, in psychopathology they are observed in both forms of sensitive delusions of relation to oneself and neurosis of an obsessive nature.
As soon as the internal mental pressure of a delayed experience reaches a certain height, it naturally leads to the projection of affect. The surrounding world seems to a sensitive person to be colored by traces of the same affect, which in reality only he is tormented by. He gets the impression that his shame must necessarily become public, that everyone knows about his painful experience, that they look at him somehow strangely, turn around on the street, mock him, make signs to each other when he passes by. In innocent everyday conversations and even in the newspaper, he finds disguised hints about himself everywhere. This sense of the relationship of everything to oneself, based on internal complexes of insufficiency (to a weaker extent also in too heightened self-awareness), as a general mental attitude, is partly physiological. As soon as this feeling intensifies, it, in the form of paranoid development,3 turns into a stable delusion of the relationship of everything to itself, sometimes taking the form of a widely branched, cleverly combined system of delusional ideas. Between both extremes there are mild, transient relational neuroses, which the practitioner often encounters.
Sensitive reactions can give rise to feelings of shameful insufficiency, primarily sexual complexes. First of all, it is secretly practiced masturbation, which is fought in vain with strong ethical tension and again and again experiencing a shameful moral defeat. This gives rise to a peculiar combination of hypochondria, sensitive ideas of relating everything to oneself, general depression and nervousness. At the same time, hypochondria, as we saw above, is often only a hidden form of remorse. In such cases, young people come to us who begin to complain of general nervous and organic diseases, but with a facial expression that betrays fear and severe internal depression. Upon further investigation, we achieve recognition of masturbation along with the fear of spinal cord disease, black circles under the eyes, which are visible to everyone on the street. Starting from these mild, widespread and not particularly specific hypochondriacal feelings of the relationship of everything to oneself of onanists, there are all transitional stages, right up to severe paranoid illnesses with pronounced delusions of relationship to oneself.
A single driver who indulged in masturbation declared his love to his brother's wife and was sharply rejected. From then on, it constantly seemed to him that his comrades were peeking at him through the windows at night. He found imaginary footprints near the lock of his suitcase, which they must have rummaged through in search of traces of sperm on underwear and immoral books. He imagined his brother's constant hints about declarations of love and his colleagues' cynical jabs about his masturbation. As a result, he quarreled with all the people close to him, felt betrayed and rejected by everyone, and after many years of progressive development of his delirium, he attempted suicide, which finally led to a discharge of affect and a frank explanation with the doctor.
Another typical starting point is the belated love of old maids (Johannistrieb), which often fills unmarried women even in menopause with unwanted excessive erotic excitability, forming a heavy crush on much younger or married men. In this case, such excitations arise that cannot be suppressed or eliminated. They wage an internal struggle with all possible moral strength, but they come to new defeats. As a result, completely similar sensitive character developments, neuroses and paranoid forms of delusions of relating everything to oneself occur.
Less often, conflicts of conscience and feelings of insufficiency of a non-sexual type lead to the formation of sensitive experiences: being passed over for a job, grievances at work, etc.
More complex and difficult to study than the delusion of relating everything to oneself are the psychological developments of obsessive neurosis. This is explained by the fact that in the latter case, along with personality developments that occur under the influence of feelings, deep mental mechanisms also operate. Often these are exactly the same sensitive personality types, predisposed to obsessive neurosis, and exactly the same delays, complexes of shameful ethical insufficiency, resolved with the help of special mechanisms.
Just as with neurotics in relation to everything to oneself and even more clearly, we can sometimes observe how such a complex construction of character develops genetically from known elementary biological predispositions. A certain inclination towards altruism and refined ethical perception can already be given in itself in the schizothymic-hyperaesthetic and cyclothymic-heavy-blooded (schwerblutig) components of the constitution and, especially, in their combination, since a certain share of one’s own capacity for suffering is a prerequisite for any profound altruistic feelings of compassion, as well as for finer control of one’s own mental movements.
In many sensitive neurotics, this is mixed with a pronounced complex predisposition that destroys the tendency of ethical development of a holistic nature, sharply contrasting with it a quantitative or qualitative anomaly of sexual impulse. It is surprising how often people suffering from neuroses relating everything to oneself and neuroses of an obsessive nature experience a very strong and very early awakened sexual desire, which already at an early school age forces them to strong masturbation, childish love affairs, frequent thoughts of sexual indecency and their curious peeking. Or we find in them obvious perverse side components, especially of the sadistic, masochistic and homosexual type. Such immoral, drive-like side components of hereditary predisposition often act like a sting, hypertrophying the growth of ethical regulators of drives. Enormous ethical overcompensations are formed in the entire personality in contrast to overly irritated or perverse sexual impulses, which in sensitive neurotics manifests itself in a kind of excessive conscientiousness, scrupulousness and false modesty. In favorable cases, this leads to real ethical hypertrophy, so that such people often develop into particularly valuable, socially decent and altruistic individuals.
With many neuroses of an obsessive nature, the following development can be traced. Some strong impulse, arising from an abnormal sexual predisposition, for example, to masturbation, obscene thoughts and words, voluptuous fantasies, rooted deep in the constitution, returns again and again and is energetically rejected by the whole personality. The normal ambivalence of sexual ideas with such acute countertension reaches enormous proportions. From such extreme ambivalence arise, as in the thinking of primitive man, taboo-like formations - an intense fear of bodily and mental touch, an ever more ramifying network of commandments, prohibitions, ceremonies, instructions for purification and atonement. An obscene word or image is imposed on the fantasies of a person suffering from obsessive neurosis. To repel the sinful impulse, substitute words, counteractions, symbolically reflecting movements, self-flagellation are used, and from all this, more and more new ceremonies develop, ultimately having a connection with the original ones, in the form as we observe them during forced ablutions, the ceremony of going to bed and the dressing up of neurotics, until the desired, but at the same time persecuted thought is finally surrounded and closed by an impenetrable religious ritual, just as the revered and feared leader of the savages does. The constant antagonism of forbidden impulses and religious moral precepts creates very strong associations between obscene and sacred ideas, so that, at the sight of the most sacred ecclesiastical actions, the most vile blasphemies come to the mind of a desperate neurotic. In the obsessive ideas of a neurotic, something like a compromise formation arises, in which the forbidden impulse is reflected, and at the same time overcome in a softened form. We do not know whether all neuroses of an obsessive nature have this origin, but in some cases the patients themselves describe the entirety of these phenomena in exactly this way.
Along with primitive taboo ceremonies, obsessive neurosis very often also triggers hyponoic mechanisms of repression and the formation of symbols, just as it happens in schizophrenics. One patient, for example, complains of a compulsory impulse to lick the edge of a book, an impulse associated with a painful feeling that he might thereby cut his tongue; In the evening, another painful impulse appears: to run your tongue over the rough canvas. From the analysis it is clear that before the appearance of compulsory impulses, a friend visited him and he felt a desire to perform Cunnilingus on her, a desire which, however, he immediately suppressed. In this way, here, although in the form of repression, the impulse to lick, energetically transferred from the sexual area to another open mental mechanism of motivation, makes its way. Likewise, the very common compulsive urge to wash one's face can mean transferring sexual feelings of impurity (for example, during masturbation) to other innocent touches. In any such case, internal mental pressure breaks through in the place of least resistance.
The pious girl quietly but passionately loves the young hunter. He knows nothing about this and is transferred to another place; there was no explanation between them. Her sexual arousal becomes so strong that it spreads to her father and brother, and she eventually feels as if she could give herself to the first person she meets. She unsuccessfully tries to suppress bad thoughts with the help of her piety; she wants to give up worldly joys and go into a pious spiritual life. When her spiritual struggle reached its climax, she talked with one of her pious friends, who would willingly become a sister of mercy, but was afraid that she would not be able to do without sexual love. At the same time, she spoke about the Fall and the temptation of the serpent in paradise and added that the knowledge of good and evil in the biblical story is only a disguised expression of the fact that Adam and Eve entered into sexual intercourse earlier than they were allowed to do so by God. Soon after this, in the morning, after a sleepless night, the patient began to have a convulsive cough and vomiting, and from then on she had a painful, obsessive idea that she had a snake in her body; With painful hallucinatory clarity, she felt it in the back of her neck and constantly tried to get rid of it.
This is a vivid example of obsessive-neurotic symbol formation. A conversation with a friend becomes a decisive, albeit accidental, occasion, thanks to which the internally exciting sexual temptation turned into an ancient symbolic image. The strong affect with which she tries in vain to vomit out the snake arises as a result of her unsuccessful struggle with her own sexuality, and the snake is nothing other than this latter. Thus, a purely personal development of experience can, with increasing pressure of affect, unexpectedly, as in a sudden action (Kurzschluss), move into the hyponoic layer and set in motion independent mechanisms that cannot be processed by the integral personality.
It is clear that the complexes and influences of experiences do not explain everything in obsessive-compulsive neurosis. We cannot assume here the presence of an innate abnormal associative apparatus, which directs the action of experiences precisely into these special forms of thinking.
Causes of increased and decreased sensitivity
The frequent use of templates in assessing the surrounding reality is a consequence of reduced sensitivity. If you perceive every new situation or person in your life through the prism of existing attitudes, mistakes and the development of neuroses are inevitable. Only understanding the true state of affairs, understanding the essence of another individual, allows one to overcome the crisis.
Another manifestation of reduced individual sensitivity is the lack of self-perception. The ability to notice, read, perceive your internal signals and respond to them in a certain way is necessary for a normal life. Sometimes a person is distanced from himself at the level of emotions, body, etc. This condition leads to nervous diseases, depression, and behavioral problems. A person is able to develop sensitivity and self-awareness only after setting priorities and identifying personal values. By nature, he can pay attention only to what is most significant in his own eyes.
So, normal social sensitivity, which allows us to understand the true essence of things and stimulates development in childhood, is useful and even necessary. As a personality trait, hypersensitivity beyond the norm tends to distort understanding of oneself and the world. It is formed as a result of incorrect, authoritarian upbringing of the individual in childhood or is an age-related feature. Thus, adolescents have an increased sensitivity of character. They acutely perceive injustice, exaggerate the significance of what is happening, and cannot adequately assess themselves and their emotions.
Sensitivity: concept, types, levels
The emotional sphere of a person is rich and varied. We are able not only to feel, but also to sympathize, not only to worry, but also to empathize with other people.
All this is available to every person, but there are individuals among us whose emotional sphere is unusually sensitive. Psychologists call them sensitives.
However, sensitivity to one degree or another can be present in many people, so let’s figure out what it is.
Sensitivity as a personality quality
This concept comes from the Latin word sensus - “feeling” and is translated as sensitivity. In psychology, the term “sensitivity” refers to several essentially related phenomena. They are united by a connection with increased susceptibility to external influences.
Sensitivity of the emotional sphere
When defining and assessing sensitivity, misunderstandings often arise due to the dual meaning of this term, or more precisely, due to the fact that the concept of “feelings” in psychology has two meanings.
Firstly, feelings are a type of emotional states, rather stable emotional reactions of a person to various life situations, objects, other people and himself.
In this regard, sensitivity is understood as increased sensuality or strong and often inadequate emotional experiences. They are associated with a whole complex of personal characteristics, such as:
- frequent mood changes;
- tendency to experience even minor troubles and failures for a long time;
- increased anxiety, often developing into phobias;
- low self-esteem;
- tendency to frequent reflection and soul-searching;
- amorousness;
- touchiness, etc.
These qualities together create the image of a classic melancholic Pierrot - an eternally suffering and worried person.
But a sensitive person not only gets upset all the time because of any nonsense, he is able to react sensitively to changes in the mood of the people around him and empathize with them. Such people often suffer more than themselves because of the problems of their loved ones.
Sensitive people, taking on the burden of the experiences of those around them, become an indispensable “vest” for friends, into which they can always cry.
Such emotional stress and the tendency to blame oneself for all troubles do not go unnoticed for sensitive people. They more often than others suffer from neuroses, frustrations, depression, and the effect of mental burnout is very pronounced in them.
Sensitivity of the touch sphere
Secondly, the concept of “feelings” in psychology is used to designate channels for perceiving sensory (sensory) information. There are five such channels: vision, taste, hearing, smell and touch or tactile sensations - those same five senses.
In this regard, sensitivity is considered as increased sensitivity of sensors - sense organs.
They include both the peripheral part, for example, the sensory nerve cells in the retina, and the central part, the corresponding part of the brain.
In psychology there is the concept of “sensitivity threshold”. It is the smallest stimulus that produces a sensation, such as a barely audible sound or an almost indistinguishable shade of color. All people have different sensitivity thresholds.
A low threshold is an indicator of sensitivity, sensitivity to a given stimulus. For example, a good musician can detect differences in pitch that are not noticeable to people with normal hearing. The average person can see up to 150 shades of color, and sensitive artists can see 15 thousand.
This sensitivity is also called subsensory or subthreshold sensitivity.
But both of these types of sensitivity (emotional and sensory) are very close, often caused by the same reasons and often appear together. That is why talented artists, musicians, and poets are often so emotionally sensitive and prone to deep and traumatic experiences.
Sensitivity as a property of temperament
Temperament is understood as a complex of stable individual personality qualities, which are determined by the characteristics of higher nervous activity and leave an imprint on all human behavior.
These features primarily include the strength and speed of nervous processes, as well as the ratio of excitation and inhibition.
Sensitivity is one of the manifestations of temperament, associated, on the one hand, with the sensitivity of the nervous system, and on the other, with instability and weakness of nervous processes. Therefore, a slight irritation is enough for a reaction to occur.
The four main types of temperament are well known, although they are rarely found in their pure form. So, sensitivity, especially at a high level, is inherent to a greater extent in melancholic people. This is the most sensitive and at the same time the most vulnerable type.
There is also a quality of temperament that is opposite to sensitivity, which is called resistance - this is resistance, increased resistance to influences, including emotional ones.
Resistant people are most often found among phlegmatic and sanguine people; they are not only calm and balanced, but also distinguished by their penetration abilities, stubborn character, and willingness to go towards their goal even over the heads of their friends. They simply do not notice their experiences.
Therefore, both are slightly outside the norm, both need correction, but life is undoubtedly more difficult for the sensitive.
