“Have you ever been in a situation where someone who was earlier on cruel or mean to you becomes nice and generous?”
The individual might be undoing.
Definition of Undoing.
Derived from the German word ‘Ungeschehenmachen’ which means “making un-happened”, Undoing defense mechanism is where an individual makes effort to cancel out or remove a thought, feeling or behaviours that might be unacceptable by engaging in contrary behaviour.
It’s like an attempt to alter what has already happened.
For Instance; An individual who had thoughts of aggression becoming overly nice.Â
Undoing is not only done to cancel out a negative behaviour but also a positive one for instance; A spouse who goes to posses all his belongings from the other partner after a bitter breakup.
In Sigmund Freud’s “Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis”, we find a patient (the “Rat Man”) who removes a stone from the road to prevent his lady’s carriage from overturning upon it before going back to replace the stone in its original position in the middle of the road’, a situation which Freud argued that was undoing his deed of love by replacing the stone where…her carriage might come to grief against it.
The motive in the second instance was motivated by hate unlike in the first instance which was motivated by love and this gives us another point that , the intention of the original action might be different from the action or thought that undoes it.
For instance;Â
1. A parent hurls abuses to his kids only to later start showering praises or abuses to the kid.
2. We also find it in criminal profiling where an offender decorates or covers up a corpse with flowers.
3. An individual apologizes to another after being assertive.
4. A parents who punishes a kid and provides him with Presents the next day.
5. A woman cheats on her partner and later out of guilt, unconsciously starts being good to the partner.
Some researchers claim that undoing might be a way of explaining away habits or behaviours that are not in line with an individual’s personality. For instance; When a well organized employee forgets to pay bills at home in time.
Undoing can also help to reduce the cognitive Dissonance that may have arouse for instance; A bad action might imply one is bad, which is contrary to how people believe themselves to be- as good. Hence we undo the past.
It also helps to cope with guilty that may have arised from the Wrong done.