Disgust is what?

Disgust is a condition that sometimes puts a person in a delicate situation. You can be considered a forerunner for not being able to force yourself to eat somewhere, except at home, or spoiled, because the look of the hair in the washbasin sink makes you harsh. And friends can even seriously take offense at the fact that you do not give a bite off your apple or ice cream. But you understand what is really behind such habits. About what lies behind the notion of fastidiousness, we'll talk further in the article.

Where does fastidiousness come from?

Disgust is a feeling that, by the way, only man has. Hence it can be concluded that it arose only because of the development of our intellect.

You have more than once watched as a tiny toddler crawling around the apartment trying to try everything on the tooth that comes into his field of vision. The homemade flip-flops do not bother the crumbs, nor the ball played by the pet dog. Only after growing up and overcoming a 5-year-old age, he suddenly begins to show the same feeling, categorically refusing to drink milk with foam or paling and frowning at the sight, sorry, feline excrement in a plastic tray.

What happened? Psychologists believe that the "memory", or rather, the protective reflex that has come to us from distant ancestors (although, of course, the non-acceptance of certain things is also helped by the " Explanations of elders).

We are all from the Stone Age

Disgust and disgust for feces and all wastes of life are due to the threat to the health that lurks in them. We on a subconscious level feel that they are dangerous - and this is true, because it is in them that develop clostridia that can cause gas gangrene, cholera, dysentery, hepatitis. By the way, increased disgust is inherent in those people whose immunity is weakened.

In addition, centuries of experience suggests that we should be cautious about everything that says about death. This he makes us frown at the sight of hair in the sink or cut off nails. They, too, are associated with something dead, torn away. Cadaveric poison for humans is deadly, that's the program that does not let us face it.

Disgust helps protect space

Negative emotion - disgust - is also a way to protect personal space. It turns out that the possibility of a general eating of food is not acceptable for everyone.

Many hardly endure the habit of friends or close people to taste a dish from their plates. And most often this is not so much care before the bacteria that are so caught up in food, how much the desire to delineate the border, to have a personal space, closed from the invasion of anyone.

At all times, food was considered a source of life, and joint meals were sacral in character, denoting spiritual unity. And unwillingness to eat with someone from the same dish - it's a subliminal attempt to save personal space, sustain the distance.

Why is it embarrassing to be squeamish now?

In the Middle Ages the problem of disgust was not standing, as it was even fashionable to show it. Representatives of the nobility continually demonstrated the subtlety of their perception, wrinkling their noses or bringing fragrant handkerchiefs to them. To the supersensitive lady could put a foot on the road, the gentleman threw her under her feet at her cloak. This is crap! But, it turns out, not - just the concept of hygiene in those days was so primitive, and the idea of the danger to health, lurking in objects or products, is so low that people in this way simply tried to save their lives.

And in our time, caution and disgust are synonymous with mistrust of your partner's cleanliness, which, you will agree, can hurt and even seriously offend. We will not publicly inform anyone that it smells bad of him, or demonstratively refuse to eat at someone else's table. Most likely, we will try to somehow bypass this delicate topic. Why? Probably, because modern man is able to understand the true danger of some phenomena, which means that manifestation of disgust is no longer a vital necessity.

What does disgust look like if it is excessive

The complete absence of fastidiousness, as well as its excessive manifestation, are extremes approaching pathology and severely hampering human life.

In psychiatry, there is the concept of misofobia - a state of excessive disgust, or rather, even fear of mud. A person suffering from this pathology, constantly washing his hands, turns his house into a sterile pressure chamber and hardly tolerates staying on the street or in public places, disdaining to touch anything. Any dirt can cause such a patient to panic.

However, no less, and even more dangerous, and a complete lack of disgust - after all, get an infectious disease or poisoning with this can often.

As you can see, disgust is primarily a manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation, and any extremes in its manifestation are pathologies.

What is social disgust?

Disgust also has a social dimension. To it it is possible to carry intelligibility and finicky in contacts with associates. Outwardly this is manifested, as a rule, in the form of an unwillingness to communicate with someone who is perceived as unworthy.

The problem of disgust before the real mud and the danger emanating from it, in this case is replaced by the idea of moral impurity, and the reaction is the same - rejection. We do not say in vain: "I'll give him hands", thus denying physical contact with someone who causes moral disgust.

For a long time there have been groups of people unworthy of being near a "normal" person: lepers, excommunicated, untouchables. Representatives of some professions, such as executioners, prostitutes, scavengers, were also included in the same outcasts. Contacts with them seemed dangerous, impossible, but this time it was no longer fearful of catching an infection, but of fear of "contracting" failure and poverty. That is, social disgust is a defense against the possibility of becoming the same as one who is not worthy of our society.

Disgust is ambiguous and sometimes difficult to explain.