The concept of “spontaneity” is used in the modern world in a negative way and is personified with unpredictability, lack of control, and impetuosity. But quite recently it meant harmless suddenness and unexpectedness of actions. A spontaneous person arouses suspicion, distrust and a condescending attitude among others, caused by the fear that at any moment he might do something out of the ordinary. According to the unanimous opinion of society, it is impossible to rely on such a person due to his reckless unpredictability. Is spontaneity so dangerous, and how to identify this “dangerous” quality in yourself?
Is spontaneity good or bad?
In psychology, spontaneity has historically been explained in different ways. In some sources, a spontaneous person is a person who finds the strength and courage to act according to his inner impulses, ignoring external influences. In others, it is the inability to regulate one’s behavior, a complete lack of awareness of the actions being performed. Thus, spontaneity was first placed on a pedestal, and then rather rudely asked to vacate the wrongly occupied place. The concept of free personal expression fought against lack of control, and vice versa. Both concepts are quite interesting, because the spontaneous personality has long been a source of either admiration or contempt.
Will we be like children?
Spontaneity is activated every time a new child is born and raised, but then gradually fades away. Most people live according to this scheme. And only some people do not lose their spontaneity of reactions and thinking. These people know how to easily adapt to a changing world and do not die, do not lose positions, but change with it, each time adapting in the best possible way to its unexpected novelty. This is taught to them either by life (as scout Baden-Powell saw it) or by psychological techniques based on the ideas of psychodrama, training in spontaneity and creativity.
Moreno said that most of us demonstrate how poorly the average person is “adapted” for... surprise!
The psychological tests carried out each time showed how tired and irritated people, people who worked with technology, demonstrated inadequacy when encountering “sudden”, unusual, emergency situations. They could not give a single answer to simple questions, no organized intellectual reaction.
Civilization has deprived man of the most important survival mechanism - spontaneity. But she also made sure that a person had the opportunity to realize this and try to regain what he had lost. Therefore, long live the techniques of psychodrama! You and I will learn spontaneity—together.
Elena Nazarenko
www.live-and-learn.ru - psychological portal
The center's original development is a method of working with the unconscious using psychological maps. Read more…
A brief moment of triumph of spontaneity
The scales in psychology continued to tug spontaneity in one direction or the other. Some argued that a spontaneous person is a dangerous and unreliable person, because he does not know how and does not want to control himself, while others praised individualism and the ability to be oneself. The end of this protracted discussion was put by the teachings of Moreno, Jung and Fromm, who boldly declared that the phenomenon we are considering is one of the driving energies of human existence, and the ability to show spontaneity is a sign of a real personality. According to their concept, this personality quality is considered a huge force that pushes a person towards self-realization and freedom of expression.
The spontaneity in their mouths became a challenge to established foundations and stereotypical behavior. It has become fashionable to “be yourself”, “decide to take your own path” instead of the usual “everyone does this, so I should too”, “be like the rest”. Spontaneity was finally established on the pedestal and was proclaimed “the road to self-development.”
The birth of a child is a test of spontaneity
You can talk a lot about spontaneity, but still not really understand for yourself - so what is its importance? Why is it a necessary condition for survival? And why is spontaneity finally more important than intelligence and memory?
The end to doubts is put by turning to the first minutes, days, months of the child’s life.
Newborns of some animals are born ready to take care of themselves. For some it takes several weeks. Man is a completely different creature...
He enters a complex and dangerous world long before his body is ready to face emergency situations.
Let's see how a child enters this life.
- his brain centers are not developed,
- his cerebral circulation is not fully established,
- the capillary system as a whole is undeveloped,
- speech centers are not developed,
- lack of muscle coordination for walking,
- sucking, swallowing, breathing and excretion immediately after birth are not yet sufficiently established.
When a child is born, he abruptly changes one world to another.
- it changes the state of constant sleep to a state of awakening and awareness of the world around,
- it changes its parasitic existence in the maternal placenta to an existence where its own activity is required in taking food and excreting,
- he moves from darkness, warmth and peace into a world of sharp sounds and blinding light,
- he trades security and balance for a world that must be conquered in order to survive,
At the same time, the child moves from one world to another with such rapid speed that the successful adaptation of thousands and millions of people is still a scientific mystery...
According to experts, the birth of a child alive and further survival in such a situation is almost tantamount to a miracle.
Our days. Being spontaneous is not in fashion?!
Years passed, the masters of psychological sciences, who managed to restore spontaneity’s good name, have sunk into oblivion. And again she fell out of favor with the people; she was assigned such negative qualities as lack of control, impulsiveness and unpredictability. In the modern world, a spontaneous person is an infantile, irresponsible and immature person, unable to keep his irrepressible self in check. To be spontaneous - alas! - only children can.
The dynamically developing world has crushed us and taught us to follow responsibilities, schedules and stereotypes. Moral duty, education, social restrictions tied our hands, but we did not resist, confident that this was the way it should be. Even spontaneous speech is not held in high esteem these days - everything must be thought out, verified from all sides and presented through a sieve of stereotypes. And only a few of us find the strength to follow our inner convictions, without hearing the indignant cries of society, to move towards the freedom of our “I”. But we still can’t decide for ourselves who they are – outcasts of society or real individuals?
Psychologists' opinion
Psychologists are convinced that the most banal spontaneity plays an important role in the lives of lovers. This is the very zest that can revive relationships, including sexual ones, diversify life and bring novelty and freshness into it.
Spontaneity, according to research data, can not only enrich relationships, but also add spice and sensuality to them. Thanks to various kinds of spontaneity, the couple gets the opportunity to once again feel and experience the joy of communication and life together.
Make way for spontaneity!
Constantly living in a world of standards is hard and sad. Every person has the right for a brief moment to fall back into childhood and feel free, let off steam and return to normal life again. For spontaneity, like all good things, must have a time and a place. How to achieve such a state?
- Turn off your phone for a day.
- Order dishes in a cafe that you have never tried.
- Walk around your neighborhood aimlessly.
- Go visit friends you haven't met for a long time.
- Get on the bus and drive around the streets.
- Wear something you've never worn before.
- Go to the cinema to watch any movie.
Such actions will give you a charge of positive emotions and energy. You will be able to feel like a free, spontaneous person.
No matter how much this topic develops, each person has the right to answer the questions about whether a spontaneous person is good or bad, whether spontaneity is a danger to society or a form of self-expression, based on their own vision of this concept. However, you should not cut off your oxygen if spontaneity is a source of joy, movement and life for you.
SURPRISE YOURSELF
Now there are several areas of psychological and near-psychological practice that directly work with spontaneity. And at the same time, regaining the ability to act spontaneously is a by-product of any psychotherapy.
Playback theater
In the previous issue of the magazine, we talked in detail about this new direction of art, which appeared at the intersection of theater and psychodrama. Let us remember that here the actors are acting out on stage a story that the audience has just told them. Any participant in the playback theater “transfers the rights” to his spontaneity to the actors, who reveal the story to him from different sides and show it from a new angle. The ending is unknown and unpredictable. There are no rehearsals or readings of plays, there is no director. Each improvisation is performed only once in the presence of the author-storyteller. The theater has its own ritual. First, the author sits on a chair and tells his story, then actors are selected from the group, together with the presenter and musicians they tell the author’s story. Then the author shares his impressions and discoveries from what he saw, and the actors play the ending. During one playback theater performance, several audience stories can be played. Well, actors are ordinary people (without special education or experience) who united in a permanent group under the leadership of a presenter and “played” before starting to work with the audience.
Contact improvisation
This is a search for your bodily spontaneity and liveliness, a dance in which every movement is born within and reflects content, not form. The dancers seem to “flow” from one movement to another, roll over each other, fly, slide, push and pull. This is an improvisational dance, at every current moment the dancer listens to his body and the body of his partner and moves in accordance with himself, with gravity, inertia, with the logic of his own and others’ actions. Performed solo or in a duet.
Dance relieves tension, allows you to discover and change your bodily patterns (habitual ways of responding to touch, for example), helps you realize your own motor needs, and provides space for self-expression. Surprisingly, much can be accomplished through the body even with a skeptical, fearful, or resistant mind. And one of the results of practicing contact improvisation is freedom from constantly looking at “what people will think.”
Intuitive drawing
Here you draw, leaving behind all fear and unnecessary doubts about your own artistic competence. You pour out your feelings on paper and express yourself. This is a way of understanding oneself and the world around us, immersing ourselves in the depths of one’s own unconscious, which speaks to us in vague images. The main criterion that everything is going right is the pleasure that the painter experiences from the process. There is no task here to draw something beautiful; no techniques or techniques are used. Often, a drawing is created without brushes or pencils, simply with fingers immersed in liquid paint. Intuitive drawing allows you to go beyond the boundaries - at least beyond the boundaries of the sheet (by sweepingly covering both the sheet and the substrate with paint), and realize all their conventionality. It is unlikely that his goal is to teach technique, composition and color combinations. The emphasis is on self-expression, spontaneity, naturalness, and attention to needs.
Spontaneity is about childhood, about freedom from other people's judgment and expressing yourself in all available ways. If your inner child is locked in a cage of “impossible”, “indecent”, “shameful”, “scary”, your life is certainly under your strict control. But it is insipid and immobilized, because it is the inner child that is the source of joy, strength, and movement. This is our battery, an energy charge. Cutting off your oxygen with your own hands? No, excuse me.
Healthy?
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General formulation of this definition
Spontaneous behavior means that a person does only what he wants at a particular moment in time, and nothing more. This is characteristic of animals and children, which is why we all admire both. With age, such “sharpness” and immediacy in behavior disappears, and it is replaced by advance planning, subordination to a schedule (one’s own or someone else’s), and this, as psychologists say, destroys us as individuals. They compare the extinction of spontaneity with the psychopathology of everyday life, and this term is used here not in a medical sense, but more in a social one. That is why it is important in your adult years to “remember” how good it was for you in childhood, when your feelings and actions were guided by spontaneity. That it was the most accurate and true reflection of yourself and your inner world, untainted by social principles.
How and why spontaneity is suppressed
At a very young age, our parents and kindergarten teachers teach us what is good and what is bad. We are forbidden to be late, not eat enough porridge, forced to make our beds and wear specific things that we most often do not like. At the same time, the slightest disobedience on the part of the child is punished in every possible way, and this, in turn, leads to the development of fear. It is this fear that stops the development of that very true personality in us, due to the fact that it blocks spontaneity. Doctors learned not too long ago that this is bad and that children cannot be raised this way. However, there are many nuances in this issue, since each of us is part of a society where there are rules and principles, and if everyone fulfills their momentary whims, the world will go crazy. However, this is already philosophical reasoning, and now we will try to become a little freer ourselves, based on what we have.
