From the author: Here is an interesting example from my book “Mind Games: Drug Man.” It must be said that our professional great-grandfather often asked strange questions, receiving interesting answers. Here is an example of one of them. Let's imagine a living organism capable of reacting and living in a fairly aggressive environment. Let it be a simple spherical shape. Naturally, the structure of this organism will be divided into two components. There will remain some of its internal part and external surface. The external part will constantly interact with the outside world. It is also worth recalling that, by convention, the outside world is somewhat aggressive. And our amoeba, in the words of Perls’s works: “will have to work with our elbows.” In fact, this will look like a strengthening and coarsening of this outer layer of our living organism. Indeed, let's look at the most obvious examples from nature: the shell of a turtle, the needles of a hedgehog, the thick skin of an elephant. From these examples we can come to the conclusion that with the course of evolution, our body will also acquire protective layers and formations. The same examples of a hedgehog and a turtle speak about the scale of these defenses; our body will rather develop the quantity and strength of its rigidity, leaving only small areas for the sense organs. While such an evolution of the outer layer was taking place, the inner part of our body remained unchanged and did not acquire an internal shell or sharp an elbow that could protect our amoeba as effectively inside as the shell that appeared on the outer layer. Dr. Freud, of course, did not fail to recall his medical knowledge and point out that this is exactly how the nervous system of a living organism, including humans, is formed. Let us continue our mental observations of the conditional amoeba further. Suddenly, let’s say due to illness, a harmful grain of sand forms in its inner layer, bringing inconvenience and suffering to our amoeba. The body, driven by instinct, tries to push this traumatic grain of sand, this element from the internal, less protected layer into the external one, since there are sufficiently prepared protective layers there. encountering external protective mechanisms with needles, shell, muscles, the internal grain of sand will of course be forced out and will stop tormenting our amoeba. Now let’s draw a parallel with our psyche, which, like Freud’s amoeba, has several layers, just like the amoeba, our psyche has layers deep personal ones, there are external ones - those with which we come into contact with the everyday blows of psychological reality. If you are able to read this book, then you have lived enough time in this world to form a perfectly functioning mechanism for protecting this external part of our psyche. Psychiatrist F. Perls says that life in modern society dehumanizes us and gives a description of a trip on the subway at rush hour, when we have to work with our elbows and behave not entirely humanely, denying ourselves. However, here I see precisely the emergence and formation of that same the outer layer of the psyche and its defenses. That layer that can adequately cope with our internal grains of sand. “Keep it simple,” the amoeba would say. Instinct did not fail Freud’s amoeba and it pushed its grain of sand into the outer layer. But modern man cannot always boast of such a skill. Our instincts are replaced by intellect and we cannot intuitively react correctly to internal conflict.