Regression
Usually treated as an immature defence (not ranked by Vaillant); secondary in McWilliams' scheme. Under stress the person falls back to an earlier, more childlike way of functioning.
What drives it
Returns to a time when others met one's needs, lowering the demands of adult responsibility and inviting care.
How it shows
Work
A senior leader who turns whiny, helpless or sulky after a reorganisation. Tantrums at the offsite. Needing reassurance for routine tasks. Under deadline, someone stops deciding and keeps asking others what to do. People around them either start parenting them or feel irritated.
Relationships
Illness, holidays with the family of origin and breakups pull adults back into old roles: the 45-year-old who acts fourteen at Christmas. Partners suddenly find themselves cast as the parent.
Self
A childlike voice, a wish to be looked after, or an old sulk you thought you'd outgrown, often around family.
What tells it apart
Ego states: Parent, Adult, Child (Transactional Analysis): The Child ego state in Transactional Analysis describes normal moment-to-moment shifts; regression is a stress response that lasts and impairs functioning.
Dependent personality: Dependent personality is a stable lifelong pattern; regression is temporary and tied to a stressor, with adult functioning before and after.
Learned helplessness: Learned helplessness is passivity after repeated uncontrollable failure; regression includes childlike bids for care, not only giving up.
A test
Compare behaviour before the stressor with now; a clear drop to more childlike functioning that lifts when the stressor ends confirms regression.
Questions to carry
- Compared with before the stress began, which childlike ways of coping have come back?
- Under strain, what do I start wanting someone else to do for me?
How strong the research is
clinical. Widely observed clinically and in group behaviour; not measured as a distinct mechanism in controlled research.
Where it comes from
Sigmund Freud, 1900 and 1916–17; Anna Freud, 1936
On the family tree: Sigmund Freud