How do the defense and projection mechanisms of our mind work? How do our reactions form?

Why do our children or spouse fervently defend themselves immediately after we try to correct their mistakes?

I’m neither a psychologist nor a psychiatrist, but I have an opinion…

The brain is a whole, but in terms of its intellectual activity we can divide it into two:

Intellectual activity that we’re aware of, and activity that we’re not aware of.

Thoughts and ideas arising from our higher consciousness involve our awareness, logic and intellect.

Thoughts and ideas that we’re not aware of are produced by the database in our subconscious.

The thoughts and emotions produced in our subconscious are derived from a few sources, including the genetic code we inherit, incoming waves from our environment as of birth, the conditioning that we are prone to throughout our lives, and the information we receive from what we read, watch and who we make contact with. All of this forms the database comprising our subconscious mind.

Our higher consciousness, on the other hand, has the ability to evaluate things within a systematic framework based on the criteria of universal truths.

Reasoning is the ability to probe and examine the things that we’re aware of through conscious evaluation. Used in a systematic framework, it’s called ‘logic.’ If there is no systematic thought, then we say it’s illogical.

Most of our lives are governed by our subconscious minds. The difference between the instinctual behavior of other animals and us is their lack of intellectual potential.

No matter which country or which society they’re from, all people have a subconscious and almost everyone is governed by it. Hence, the subconscious has also been called the person’s devil. The mind is the source of intellectual activity produced by the subconscious.

The mechanism that controls this is the higher consciousness: wisdom and intellect.

One can spend his entire life relying on his mind. Logic can be used both by the mind and the intellect. If one is a person of wisdom and intellect, he’ll have the capacity to contemplate on life after death and become receptive to universal truths. He’ll live his life based on the truths of the hereafter and act accordingly.

A clever person relying on his mind, on the other hand, will use his logic and think about all the ways he can best live his worldly life, and if it befits his scenario, he may reach great success.

The question I was asked was:

“Why is it that when I say something in an attempt to correct my child or my spouse they immediately begin to defend themselves and not only am I not heard but I’m also attacked?”

First of all, the person doesn’t begin to defend himself consciously. That is, he doesn’t show this response after listening to you, hearing you out, and then using his reason and logic to evaluate what you’re saying. This response is the direct reflection of his clever defense mechanism in his subconscious mind!

One begins to form solid ideas about certain things as of childhood. These ideas become fixed with age, and when you say something that goes against these ideas, he automatically defends himself, without any conscious thought. This is his way of asserting his identity. Most times, he doesn’t even have time to use his logic and wit! Thus, he begins to say illogical things and even begin to insult in order to defend his identity.

As for why the subconscious mind is the person’s devil:

The fixed and conditioned data in the brain’s database forms either through genetic inheritance or from one’s environment. They are generally adopted and taken as fact without verification or authentication.