NON PSICOLOGICA

Sito di contenuti sul funzionamento

della mente umana

Primary Emotional Subordination, Cognitive Egocentrism, and the Structural Illusion of Environmental Control

(By Alberto Bonizzato – Behavioral Coach)

Since the dawn of time, the human animal has frantically hunted for answers to the foundational variables of existence: Who are we? From where do we originate? What is our structural utility? In this pursuit, the species has manufactured a vast catalog of belief systems, religions, and superstitions—systematically projecting its survival hopes and ancestral fears onto a supreme entity, a deity, or invisible forces that appear to govern our trajectory.

But why does the organism experience such a visceral necessity to believe? Why, despite the percussive advancements of logical cognition and science, do so many individuals still crave an external guide to navigate the fluid complexity of life?

The answer does not reside within a theological or philosophical inquiry, but within a strict biomechanical analysis that sinks its roots into our primary ontogenetica programming: the activation of magical thinking and the primary emotional subordination to the drives of the early entourage.

                       [RAW ENVIRONMENT PHENOMENON]

                (High-Arousal Complexity / Chaos / Incoherence)

                                      │

                                      ▼

                       [THE INFANT REGRESSIVE RADAR]

                 (Cognitive Egocentrism / Pre-Operatory State)

                                      │

         ┌────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┐

         ▼                            ▼                            ▼

   [ANIMISM VECTOR]          [ARTIFICIALISM PROXY]        [FINALISM CALCULATION]

(Inanimate Vitalization)   (Dogmatic Outer Creation)    (Anthropocentric Utility)

         │                            │                            │

         └────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┘

                                      ▼

                        [THE SIMBOLIZZAZIONE SHORTCUT]

                 (Magical Ritual / Defensive Character Mask)

                                      │

                                      ▼

                        [HOMEOSTATIC ANXIETY REDUCTION]

                (Placebo Stability / Avoidance of Learning Friction)

1. Defining the Magical Engine: Piaget’s Pre-Operatory Stage

Magical thinking is that specific modality of subcortical reasoning characteristic of early infancy—yet routinely carried into adulthood as an un-updated software—wherein the mind attributes to its own internal thoughts, spoken tokens, or symbolic rituals the direct kinetic power to alter objective reality.

For an infant between the ages of 2 and 6, no sharp boundary exists between the "internal world" (the somatic play of attractions and repulsions) and the "external world" (physical facts). According to the developmental parameters mapped by Jean Piaget, magical thinking emerges explicitly during the pre-operatory stage.

In this phase, the child’s cognitive apparatus is entirely commanded by cognitive egocentrism: the system is chemically convinced that the external environment rotates around its own axis and that its singular perspective is the only one in existence. This occurs as a direct function of its specific learning loop, which at this stage is in full reproductive-experimental activity, copy-pasting the primary emotional and behavioral models emitted by the adult caregivers.

While for the child magical thinking constitutes a functional tool to gradually map the world—where fantasized magic temporarily plugs the informational void of an evolving canvas—for the un-updated adult, it mutates into a defensive strategy to tolerate the weight of reality.

2. The Triad of Primitive Projection

The evolutionary roots of this cognitive shortcut are indexed within three foundational categories:

1. Animism: The subcortical tendency to attribute life, intent, and conscious awareness to inanimate matter (e.g., "The table struck my leg on purpose").

2. Artificialism: The structural conviction that natural phenomena (clouds, mountain ranges) are the direct handiwork of human actors or an entity executing actions exactly like a human being.

3. Finalism: The ideological assumption that every single event occurring in nature possesses a precise, pre-designed purpose engineered to satisfy the biological needs of human actors.

Why does this cognitive setup persist across all cultural architectures? It is because it executes highly specific psychological tasks integrated directly into our projective defenses:

・ The Illusion of Control and Safety: For the infant, the phenomenal world is a vast, high-arousal theater of chaos. Believing that donning a "cape of strength" can physically shield the body from the monsters projected beneath the bed, or that shutting the eyelids renders the vehicle invisible, provides an immediate tool to down-regulate anxiety. It transforms a menacing environment into a controllable space via micro-rituals.

・ The Regulation of Guilt and Volition: Due to egocentrism, the child assumes that a hostile inner thought (e.g., "I wish my mother would disappear" during a behavioral tantrum) possesses the kinetic power to cause a catastrophic real-world event. Here, magical thinking intervenes via reparation: small gestures or linguistic formulas are executed to erase the imaginary damage, helping to regulate overwhelming emotional spikes.

・ The Fertile Ground of Symbolization: This phase is the mandatory gymnasium for symbolic play ("make-believe"). Without the capacity to overlay the magical matrix onto raw matter, the human machine could never develop narrative, art, or the abstract categorization required in adult life.

3. The Neocortical Transition to Logic and Adult Regression

Around 7 to 8 years of age, with the transition into the stage of concrete operations, the human vehicle begins to accurately map the physical laws of cause and effect. If the primary family model and culture actively support this evolutionary update, the magical matrix gradually stands down, leaving room for a rational orientation.

However, magical thinking is never entirely eradicated from the hardware: it remains indexed within our superstitions, lucky charms, or the specific way we pray or hope that an environmental variable will alter "just because we desire it with high intensity."

Magical thinking is the human animal's primary attempt to inject force into an instantaneous, superficial volition, trusting that a higher order will answer its demands. In the adult, it transcends and bypasses rationality precisely because logical cause-and-effect offers zero guarantee to the instantaneous desires of the ego.

Adult regression to magical thinking irrupts primarily during phases of chronic uncertainty, high stress, or a severe collapse of internal self-control. When rational logic fails to guarantee a desired outcome and the active projection is oriented toward failure, the mind retreats to its primitive database, deploying ancestral coping mechanisms: faiths and superstitions.

Adult actors systematically seek out deities to win capital, to pass professional examinations, or to secure biological health. It is highly instructive to decode the implicit contract underlying these requests: I execute the prayer; therefore, you must fulfill my expressed desire.

Even preventive superstitious behaviors ("I pray generally, because you never know") reveal this identical mechanical trade-off. While morally neutral, this behavior proves empirically that superstition is a residual echo of an un-updated infantile model.

4. Superstition and Performance: The Preventive Mitigation of Guilt

Within the cinematic observation of mind mechanics, we witness a direct association connecting superstition to the generation of performance rituals. From the athlete who compulsively dons the same "lucky socks" before a competition, to the student weaponizing a specific pen during a testing matrix, modern rituals are engaged with the imaginative function of mitigating performance anxiety.

Why does the machine execute this? Biomechanically, completing a superstitious ritual yields the illusion of having expended all available resources. It operates as a preventive shield against the pervasive wave of guilt should the final performance fail.

Even though the neocortex is entirely aware that a sock cannot alter kinetic speed, the subsequent drop in limbic arousal effectively sharpens focus and concentration.

Modern buzzwords such as "resilience" or "determination"—while holding a valid psychological kernel when focused on target-seeking behaviors—frequently degrade into pure magical thinking: the conviction that the universe "conspires" to deliver what we want simply because we thought about it with high emotional intensity.

Symmetrically, the assumption that the cosmos is conspiring against our success belongs to the exact same magical distortion. This widespread mental software executes a precise function: it attempts to combat the raw perception of helplessness when confronted with an unpredictable economic or professional future.

This is the birthplace of scaramanzia and collective rituals. Gestures like "touching wood," "touching iron," or avoiding a ladder operate as a social contract signed with destiny: the rule is executed not out of intellectual conviction, but under the safety formula of "you never know."

5. The Cognitive Durability of the Magical Device

Longitudinal data isolate the exact reasons why the human cognitive apparatus has not deleted this curious evolutionary function from its hardware:

・ Stereotyped Safe Havens: Magical phenomena are highly shared social stereotypes. When the mind accesses concepts of "luck" or protocols to activate it, it is drawing from a collective consensus database that manufactures a fittizia certainty regarding future events. While cognitively aware that magic is non-existent, the system perennially hopes for a magical rescue to deliver immediate happiness.

・ The Auto-Produced Placebo Effect: The deep conviction that a specific amulet or kinetic ritual is functional can alter the subject’s psychophysical state, triggering an endogenous placebo effect that improves real performance.

・ The Validation of Threat Projections: It satisfies and justifies the most common projections of threat (fear of the unknown, control of the immediate future, emotional distortions).

・ The Availability Heuristic: The system selectively remembers the rare coordinates where a "bad omen" matched a catastrophic event, completely deleting the thousands of instances where the omen fired and absolutely nothing occurred.

In modernity, magical thinking has assumed a new psychological guise: it operates as a natural tranquilizer. In an environment perceived as entirely chaotic, it lowers arousal, making the organism feel less at the mercy of unpredictable waves.

6. Primary Emotional Subordination and the Social Hunt for a Guide

The structural architecture of magical thinking exposes the core of our identity engineering. An individual who grows up in a state of primary emotional subordination—meaning they are bound to a constant, desperate need for external acceptance and validation—develops a psychological dependency that projects far beyond the early family unit.

The total absence of emotional autonomy drives the adult vehicle to hunt for external figures to operate as surrogates for the original primary caregivers: a father figure, a mother figure, a judge, or a leader tasked with extending and objectifying the ongoing necessity for social confirmation. This is not a moral critique of faith, but the mapping of its psychological utility within the trajectory of individual evolution.

When the machine is denied the opportunity to construct a stable, autonomous identity anchored upon an internal Locus of Control, it unconsciously searches for an external anchor. The mind, trying to stabilize its balance, projects this structural void onto deities or higher forces.

These entities mutate into a surrogate for the internalized parent that the individual failed to autonomously develop. They provide safety, a sense of tribal belonging, and, crucially, an external seat of judgment.

If an organism is incapable of executing autonomous self-judgment—of discerning functional efficiency from structural failure on its own terms—it demands an entity to execute that calculation in its stead. This emotional immaturità translates directly into a cognitive immaturità.

The craving for a guide becomes absolute whenever the system faces unmapped phenomena. Instead of confronting uncertainty with curiosity and openness to learning, the subordinated mind demands an immediate, pre-packaged answer validated by the community. Superstitions, popular beliefs, and religious dogmas deliver precisely this: a rigid grid of rules that flattens a complex reality, providing an artificial sense of control over a unpredictable world.

7. Valuation vs. Comprehension: Two Polar Modalities of Perception

This behavioral split reflects a fundamental psychological division: the boundary separating Valuation from Comprehension.

A. The Valuation Matrix (Defensive)

Valuation is a mental shortcut aimed at instantly labeling reality with the intention of containing it. When we judge an environmental event as "right" or "wrong," "good" or "bad," we are executing a defensive maneuver designed to block our own internal doubts and fears.

Valuation is an act of armor—a strategy to enforce an artificial order to bypass the anxiety of the unknown generated by family programming and culture. It is a high-speed, impulsive neocortical process that reassures the system that it knows its coordinates.

However, this process completely blinds the organism to the totality of the phenomenon. It locks the subject into a superficial interpretation, paralyzing structural growth, blocking real-world experience, and halting awareness.

B. The Comprehension Matrix (Evolutionary)

Conversely, Comprehension organizes the learning sequence and the temporal integration of experiences through a completely different vector: deep-probing investigation.

Instead of applying a moralistic label, Comprehension asks: "Why is this phenomenon executing this specific trajectory?" It is an investigative process powered by Evolutionary Curiosity that drives the organism to look beyond the surface, connect the data points, and map the concrete reality of the fact.

Comprehension does not dread uncertainty; it embraces it as the mandatory canvas for learning. An organism operating within the realm of Comprehension requires zero dogmas to navigate life, because its internal compass is powered by constant investigation. This person requires no magical superstitions to manufacture answers, because they hunt for them with humility and open parameters, developing the capacity to accept those coordinates where no answers exist.

8. Exiting Subordination: The Pathway to Emotional Maturity

The trajectory required to dismantle primary emotional subordination demands a rigorous orchestration of introspection and systematic self-observation. It does not consist of a childish denial of magical thinking, but of decoding the exact psychological function it executes within our emotional dynamics. The organism must ask itself: "Why does my system require a belief in this specific variable? What homeostatic currency is this belief delivering to my machine?"

This self-reflection enables the system to separate a regressive emotional need from a conscious, adult selection. Emotional maturity is never a fixed terminal station, but a continuous process of proactive adaptation. It is the capacity to execute proactivity even when we lack the totality of the answers, accepting that life is a continuous learning friction.

When confronted with behavioral errors, maturity is not the idealist capacity to "forgive oneself" or to celebrate victories; it is the conscious capability and volition to refocus exclusively on what must be executed next, requiring the approval of absolutely no one.

When the machine reaches this operational state, the subcortical craving for a father, a mother, or an external judge permanently evaporates. The individual becomes their own guide, their own reference anchor. The system no longer requires superstitions or magical proxies to face life, because the authentic guide is inside the architecture, in continuous, unshielded contact with raw reality.

9. The Macro-Social Impact of Subordination

The kinematics of emotional subordination do not restrict their operations to individual spirituality; they extend outward to format the power structures of collective society. Religions and political ideologies, in the vast majority of historical coordinates, offer a macro-framework of power anchored upon this identical infantile psychology.

They provide an authority archetype (a spiritual leader, a political demagogue) and a tight cluster of rules (dogmas, party lines) that flatten the complexity of reality, trading unearned social validation and tribal belonging for individual submission.

Organisms that have failed to develop a stable internal identity are highly vulnerable to these broadcasts. They execute commands blindly, refrain from cross-examining authority, and compulsively chase the validation of the herd.

This mechanism explains why, across diverse societies, dogmatic religions and rigid political ideologies become the primary pillars of collective culture and national identity: they deliver an artificial unity and purpose that, in the absolute absence of strong individual identities, becomes mandatory for social cohesion.

Conclusion: Toward Authentic Phenomenal Awareness

In synthesis, the human propensity toward magical thinking—which drives individuals to believe in invisible forces and execute superstitions—is the direct reflection of our subcortical programming and the specific family matrix from which we emerge. Primary emotional subordination, manifesting as an unconscious, continuous craving for external validation, forces us to seek judgment and guidance outside our own machine.

This setup induces a defensive approach of Valuation, designed to shield doubts and fears behind moral labels, instead of activating an approach of Comprehension, which welcomes uncertainty and complexity as the raw matter required to engineer real-world experiences.

The path toward authentic emotional maturity mandates confronting these dynamics, undertaking a proactive conversion of our internal drives. True operational wisdom never consists of the consumption of a dogma, but of the capacity to navigate life through the development of structured experiences and refined, real-world skills. The individual achieves true well-being exclusively when they map their own limits and capabilities with surgical clarity—feeling absolutely no inhibition toward constantly developing new ones.