The word competence derived from the Latin “competere” means “to search together and has several meanings according to the context in which it is used. You can compete with yourself by surpassing your own records, or those of other athletes, you can compete individually or in groups aggressively or naturally, suddenly or progressively. Whether in one case or another, there is an innate drive to improve in competition.
Recognition in the competition may well be individual, as in the case of self-recognition, or group recognition and will depend, among other factors, on the nature of the specific sport. As long as the competition is driven by high moral values, it benefits not only the individual or group but the institution to which it belongs and the Sport itself. In this Psychology-Online article, we will talk about competition in sports.
Early
The impulse to improve is closely linked to survival and to the dominance tendencies that man possesses. This impulse appears very early in our lives and can be clearly observed in children’s games. In these, the child actively repeats what he has previously experienced passively. Play also serves as behavior that models, limits, and recreates the child’s fantasy.
Deep will be the relationship that can be established between play and sport since both have similar aspects with the common denominator of pleasure as a primary affect.
In these games it will be possible to find factors that make competition, a clear example being the exercise of roles linked to authority, where the child learns to deal with codes where the leader exists, the one who depends on the one who improves, the that competes. In these games we find implicit the imaginary satisfaction of vital needs, giving meaning to the entire personal structure, both physical and psychosocial. These vital needs will last a lifetime and can be satisfied “afterwards” by professions, sports and other channeling activities.
In all of these it is also possible the sublimation of constitutional and natural human aggressivenesswith the consequent secondary benefit.
Adequate childhood competence favors the evolution to different, later and more structured stages that increase and facilitate the physical-emotional maturity of the child.
Hence the importance of “game-sport” at an early age. The child (and the adult) gradually surpasses himself in his goals and marks, already acquiring a deep notion of perfecting his own personal resources.
The pleasure of success
Although when you beat an opponent in a sport, there is a corresponding amount of pleasure, everything indicates that it is self-improvement that operates with greater intensity in the psychic principle that regulates human pleasure. Let’s imagine the indescribable pleasure of reaching the top of a mountain that had to be conquered.
This level of self-competence allows man to progressively discover the enormous wealth of skills he possesses, which due to lack of learning are dormant inside him, but ready to offer himself in favor of personal evolution.
The “best” is a substantial cultural value that acts as a discrete stimulus in every man who longs for a dignified and pleasant life. This is why the athlete tries to swim “further” and “faster”, jump “higher”, score “more” goals.
This “more” is a constant linked to “more” pleasure. It is this “more” that produces greater vital fulfillment.
Any physical activity without pleasure is not recreational, which is why the possibilities of obtaining consistent success become increasingly distant.
As in human life certain resistances must be continually overcome, a sporting triumph with its corresponding share of pleasure gives meaning to the “sacrifices” of training. Sacrifices that in themselves have a therapeutic value linked to the very structure of the sport.
Although the other side of triumph would be defeat, if it is not repeated or constant, it is an important source of knowledge and therefore highly useful for regulating self-esteem and neutralizing omnipotent fantasies of “I can do everything” linked to narcissistic disorders of the personality.
Deep down, every human triumph will always support the idea that life can overcome death. Although the same destiny awaits each of us, life is prolonged in a continuous movement forward.
The perfection
Perfection does not exist except as human idea. What’s more, it is a fundamental part of the imaginary structure toward which we tend through the path of self-improvement and that forms an idealization of “the best.” Hence, perfection holds within it a “plus ultra”, a more that calls us to obtain it.
The path that we take positively will be the progress of that project that in sport is marked by the goals to be obtained and the corresponding performance.
Perfection thus understood It is an engine that drives us to compete with us or with others. But well, when we have achieved our own level of performance there may temporarily be a need for rest. Which, if it is too long, can cause us to lose the stimulus for improvement. Traditionally this situation is manifested in the popular saying “sitting on your laurels.” This will be a form of defeat with multiple and negative consequences. “Sitting on one’s laurels” will be the “perfect form of defeat.”
Although there are perfect sports, although some may seem that way, since no sport alone has the possibility of containing all physical skills simultaneously, unless several are integrated as in the figure of the “tetrathlon”; Sport shows how perfectible is that human machine called the body that in each of its processes “repeats” the organization of the Universe as we have come to know it today.
Competence and self-esteem
Numerous theoretical studies and empirical observations have come to the conclusion that, the level of self-esteem increases favored by the improvement of one’s own performance.
Also, like other activities, man in sport can demonstrate that he is subject to rules and laws that are characteristics of the physical, psychological and social. Having a modeled, strong, active, attractive body is an ideal common to men and women. This aspect is increased by cultural values and fashion, the latter being a kind of tyranny that must be obeyed in order to act within certain and determined nuclei.
If one has this type of body imposed by society, one feels accepted and integrated into it. In the event that the person does not correspond to the prevailing patterns in that culture and if he or she is very aware of the recognition of others, it is possible that feelings of exclusion, marginalization or inferiority may occur. It is coincidentally this last feeling that gives rise to a deficient personal structure.
According to the help given to that person, positive modifications will be obtained. This type of help may well come from therapeutic treatments, such as from the same field of sports activity, or from an integrated combination of both.
This type of person tends both to criticize themselves and to censure others, they have a low threshold of resistance to frustrations or failures, they isolate themselves and react in an exaggerated way to any indication given to them, they are not very competitive, they generally reject group integration, and being next to them forces us to protect them.
Generally people who have feelings or complexes of being inferior, they compete but from a negative angle. They exclude themselves and by not actually integrating and even without consciously wanting to, they sabotage both the team to which they belong and the activity itself. They can become, depending on the structure of the group, a kind of burden that the team members bear for a time, but that they will ultimately expel from it.
Those types of people with inferiority conflicts who practice a sport can, however, manage to channel into it the aggressiveness that this complex always produces as self-aggression or aggression directed towards others. Sport thus serves, among its other benefits, as an escape valve for the physical-psychological pressure that we even naturally accumulate in daily life.
Aggression is not necessarily harmful since it, in a coordinated manner, serves for personal defense and is a positive substrate for activities that require a certain amount of aggression. But when aggression is not derived correctly, it produces profound deteriorations in the personal structure.
In those people with a marked decreased self-esteem, In addition to the necessary specifically therapeutic help, practicing some accessible sport will provide you with a certain self-recognition or recognition from others that would favor the acquisition of the well-being necessary for each human being. Sport itself can make a person achieve prestige, be valued, accepted and recognized.
With rare exceptions, a true athlete is known to have profound psychological deviations, but in certain situations that go beyond his structure, conflicts may arise that alter normal professional growth.
For some reasonable reason The therapeutic role of sports activity has always been praised.
In all those cases in which the coach has perceived some conflict of inferiority in the athlete that has decreased his self-esteem and negatively increased his competitive aspects, he will not only be able to help him by referring him to a specialized professional but it would be convenient to set possible, real and achievable goals. achieved in order not to introduce into the life of that athlete, other levels that increase his anguish by not being able to obtain the expected success in accordance with the proposed objectives.
In this aspect, the coach-athlete relationship must be subtle and delicate and as the athlete overcomes certain inhibitions, his level of aspirations can increase in order to achieve better performance. This gradual progression improves sports performance and ensures a better quality of personal life.
In personalities with an inferiority complex the following processes can be found:
In personalities with an inferiority complex, the following points can be found that make up a progressive development within a unconscious nature process:
- origin of the conflict
- structuring and permanence of the same
- emergence of the complex in the face of certain situations that can be assimilated to the one that originated it
- structural defenses against the complex
- frustration due to the inability to access what is desired
- aggression as an affect derived from frustration
- depositing the aggression on the same person
- projection of aggression onto others, always finding a “scapegoat”
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