'The Habits We Are' The Second Nature of the Mind and Its Defences against Crisis

Along with the disruption of the physiology of individual and social habits, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic brings to the world population a variety of symptoms of psychological suffering and distress: important international agencies warn about the increased anxiety, anger, fear, and loss of self-efficacy. The global reach and the cross-cultural transversality of this phenomenon make urgent to discuss the relationship between habits, psychological well-being and the experience of crisis from a psychological perspective. In this contribution we address this issue through the thesis of the defensiveness of the self. By means of a combination of this idea with the classical philosophical figure of 'second nature' and with other categories drawn from cognitive sciences, from the psychodynamic tradition and from ethnological inquiry, it is possible to determine a stronger relation between habitual practices, the construction of the self and the experience of psychological security and insecurity.