Example of Apprehended Impotence Syndrome

Is named apprehended impotence syndrome, to the consequent disorder of the continuous abuse that a person suffers. This syndrome was discovered by Dr. Martín Seligman, who experimented with it with dogs. More than half of the world's population suffers from some degree of this disorder; This is the ability of the human mind to get used to failure and mediocrity. They are the people who consider that their life cannot improve any more than it already is by their own means.

The apprehended impotence syndrome se based on the volitional incapacity of the person exposed to violence or abuse in the medium or long term. When a person or population is continuously subjected to mistreatment, deprivation or any other condition that keeps their will subject, they can develop this syndrome, in which people become accustomed to abuse in such a way that they justify it and fear leaving the abuse even if they fantasize about a better life. To reach this condition it is necessary that the person has been subjected for a long time or that this predisposed to give in to abuse due to education received at an early age, or that their personality is especially vulnerable.

Martin Seligman, who discovered this syndrome experimented his theories with dogs. Several dogs were caged and electroshocked; These dogs learned to stop electroshocks by fulfilling certain tests such as: Sit, lie down, etc.

Another group was put into the same cage and given electroshocks, but with them the electroshocks were random and without any pattern; Furthermore, whatever they did, they did not get rid of electroshocks, so they were continually subjected.

In the third phase of the experiment, the first group of dogs was put in a cage where if they jumped a small fence they got rid of electroshocks. When the animals began to be electrocuted, they carried out the actions they had learned with the previous cage that saved them from being electrocuted, but these actions did not serve them. The dogs looked for another way to get rid of the electroshocks, which they found by jumping the fence.

The second group of dogs (those who had been subjected to abuse without being able to free themselves from it) were put into the cage and were given electroshocks, the dogs just lay down and suffer, not even trying to jump the fence. In humans, unpleasant past experiences tie people to their condition, which leads them to accept their situation despite the fact that they often have opportunities to get out of it.

The ability of animals and humans to overcome trauma is called resilience. Resilience is when animals or people get ahead despite having experienced an unfavorable or traumatic situation. There are levels of resistance, from non-resistant to Pro-resistant. Resilience depends largely on the intellectual capacity, the mental activity of the person and their resistance to stress. Although it is not exact, since there are many people with a high coefficient and with little resilience. Among the lowest is the syndrome of acquired impotence.

In this way, the person or population becomes accustomed to abuse, even justifying it with ridiculous pretexts, and they fear get out of this mistreatment by becoming negative people and preferring to continue living in that situation to striving to get out of her.

Example of apprehended impotence syndrome:

Flavio was a poor man who comes from a small and remote town hidden among the mountain ranges of the Sierra. Every so often he would come to town to sell the meager harvest from his garden and the few animals from his corral. Here in the City, few people buy from him because his products were of very low quality; the vegetables were small and the animals were skinny and sickly. More for charity than for quality is that people bought him, thus giving him the minimum sustenance with which he supported his famished family.

Before finishing the third year of school, Flavio took his children out of the rural school, because he considered that studying in nothing he benefited them and that they would best serve him by helping him raise the animals or grow the vegetables in his semi-arid homeland. He himself studied only until the second year of primary school, and he never learned to read well, he never made an effort to improve his reading, he never even bothered to try to read something else.

He told himself that that would be of no use to him, and that he would continue to be poor whatever he did.

Outside of working on his plot, as a bricklayer, and as a loader, he never tried to work on anything different, he always believed himself useless before any job that required greater knowledge or greater effort. From a very young age, his parents taught her, just as his grandparents taught his parents; that the one who is born poor stays poor, that only the lucky ones become rich. The best he could do was work his plot and sell his merchandise at the flea markets. Flavio was an intelligent man in his own way, good with crafts and drawing, but he never wanted to exploit his abilities and said with disdain, why!

He did not let his daughters apprehend to read or write, he thought that if his sons that did not serve them, they less so.

One day she received the news that his uncle was very ill. So he went to visit his relatives, whom he considered less fortunate than him because his town was more arid and almost abandoned. But when he arrived he found that the town had grown a lot, the houses were now made of brick and had a firm roof, no longer made of sheet. People looked better fed and more read, his relatives who were poorer than he now lived more comfortably. One of his cousins ​​worked managing the land of his uncle, helped by employees and the other in a municipal office. His nephews studied at school and although their grades were not excellent they were not that low either. Before he died, his uncle explained to Flavio, that he believed, like Flavio, that life would always be heavy and static, that there was no use doing something different, but one day he decided to ignore those ideas and invested his little life savings in buying quality machinery and grain for his field. He got financial help and soon his efforts paid off, he sold his harvest, paid his debt, and invested his resources in sending his children to study. Hearing that, Flavio decided that when he returned he would put his children back in school and seek support or help for his garden.