Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essays

Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essays Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essay Freud’s Theory of Defense Mechanism Essay Psychoanalytic ego psychology is distinguished by the priority that it assigns to the egos management of instinct-derivatives. Ego psychology had its foundations in Freuds writings of the 1920s, but first became a distinctive approach to psychoanalysis in the 1930s. In Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, Freud (1926a) listed ten manners by which the ego defends itself against dangerous thoughts: regression, reaction-formation, isolation, undoing, repression, introjection or identification, projection, turning against the self, reversal, and sublimation or displacement of instinctual aims. To this list of defenses, Anna Freud (1966) added identification with the aggressor (pp. 116-120). The list has since continued to grow. For Freud, das Ich, â€Å"the I, † was a metaphor that signified the part of the mind with which a person consciously identifies. In a loose sense, it was Freuds way of discussing the self. More technically, however, he defined the ego as the part of the mind that performs rational thinking, the type of thought that he considered a â€Å"secondary process.† Freuds (1923a, 1940b) concept of the ego did not include the defense mechanisms that Anna Freud (1966) attributed to it. Freud (1926a) explained: Symptom-formation†¦has two assets: one, hidden from view, brings about the alteration in the id in virtue of which the ego is removed from danger; the other, presented openly, shows what has been created in place of the instinctual process that has been affected-namely, the substitutive formation. It would, however, be more correct to ascribe to the defensive process what we have just said about symptom-formation and to use the latter term as synonymous with substitute-formation. (p. 145) : In this formulation, defense consists of (1) unconscious stimulus barriers, such as repression, that enlarge the dynamic unconscious repressed and so remove the ego from danger, and (2) the substitution of a fantasy for the repressed that manifests the repressed in symbolic fashion. The stimulus barriers are ego functions, and they alone are truly defensive. The substitute-formations are not ego functions; they are products of unconscious symbol-formation. Freud (1926a) explained them as pathological symptoms to which the ego makes an accommodation: It is†¦only natural that the ego should try to prevent symptoms from remaining isolated in one way or another, and to incorporate them into its organization†¦. The ego now proceeds to behave as though it recognized that the symptom had come to stay and that the only thing to do was to accept the situation in good part and draw as much advantage from it as possible. It makes an adaptation to the symptom-to this piece of the internal world which is alien to it-just as it normally does to the real external world. (pp. 98-99) Freuds (1926a) notion of defense mechanisms as â€Å"a kind of frontier-station with a mixed garrison† (p. 99) reflects the complexity of their origin. Every so-called defense mechanism combines a stimulus barrier, belonging to the ego, with a fantasy formation, of unconscious origin, to which the ego has adapted. Why does the ego accommodate selected pathological symptoms? Were the unconscious to be constantly producing new symptoms, the ego would be obliged to respond to them all, resulting in unwanted and frequent mood swings. Instituting selected symptoms as permanent structures does not lessen their irrationality. It has the advantage, however, of making the type of irrationality predictable. Because the predictability provides the ego with stability that is necessary for mood regulation, the automatization of selected symptoms may reasonably be regarded as a kind of defense. Unfortunately, Freud failed to distinguish clearly between stimulus barriers and the symptoms that the ego automatizes for its purposes of stability. The oversight led to the widespread neglect of the origin and nature of the automatized symptoms. Anna Freuds The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1966), first published in 1936, expressed an over-simplification that went unchallenged for half a century. Anna Freud (1966, 157) postulated â€Å"the egos primary antagonism to instinct-its dread of the strength of the instincts† (p. 157). She maintained her position throughout her life. â€Å"Many disputed it when I said it, and I still say that the ego as such is hostile rather than friendly and helpful to the instincts, because its against its nature to be friendly† (Sandler with Freud 1985, 494). Anna Freuds concept of defense flowed similarly from her failure to embrace the subtleties of her fathers formulation of psychic structure. Anna Freud wrote: The part played by the ego in the formation of those compromises which we call symptoms consists in the unvarying use of a special method of defense, when confronted with a particular instinctual demand, and the repetition of exactly the same procedure every time that demand recurs in its stereotyped form. (p. 34) In this presentation, defenses belong exclusively to the ego and are not themselves compromise formations. Symptoms and defenses are mutually exclusive; and it is symptoms that are compromise formations-between the instincts and the defenses! Anna Freuds account of defenses agreed with her fathers formulation in so far as stimulus barriers were intended, but it misrepresented the circumstances of such defenses as regression, reaction-formation, undoing, introjection or identification, projection, turning against the self, and reversal. In her fathers view, these defenses were themselves pathological symptoms. Anna Freuds hypothesis of â€Å"the egos primary antagonism to instinct† was able to command the devotion of ego psychologists presumably because Freuds structural concepts of id and ego were understood, for clinical purposes, on the topographic model of the old systems Unconscious and Perception-Consciousness. Anna Freud stated that for many decades she and many other psychoanalysts used both the topographic and the structural models of the mind in alternation, depending on whether, for example, they were momentarily concerned with dreams or defense mechanisms. â€Å"I definitely belong to the people who feel free to fall back on the topographical aspects whenever convenient, and to leave them aside and to speak purely structurally when that is convenient† (Sandler with A. Freud 1985, 31). In similar fashions, Bertram D. Lewin (1952), Jacob A. Arlow and Charles Brenner (1964), and Heinz Kohut (1984) estimated that most of their contemporaries reverted to the topographi c hypothesis when conceptualizing dreams. Bernard Apfelbaum (1966) drew attention to the distinction I have emphasized between Freuds view of the ego as the secondary process and Anna Freuds expansion of the ego to include character defenses: A distinction must be drawn between two conceptions of the ego: what may be called the â€Å"reality ego† versus the â€Å"defence ego.† The â€Å"reality ego† emphasizes the egos temporizing, compromising function-as a busy mediator between the demands of reality and of the drives. The â€Å"defence ego† is a more active principle, having superordinate goals of its own, before which both reality and the drives must yield. (p. 462) Ego psychologys transformation of the ego from a â€Å"reality ego† that performs rational thought, into a â€Å"defense ego† that includes the â€Å"character armor† (Reich 1949) of irrational defenses, depended on equating the ego with the sense of self. This step, taken within American ego psychology, later served as a point of departure for Heinz Kohut (1971, 1977, 1984), whose system of self-psychology may be seen as both a valuable contribution and an inappropriate expansion of defense analysis into a complete program of psychotherapy. Continuing David Rapaports (1960, 1967) project of introducing academic methodology and systematizing within ego psychology, Roy Schafer (1968) took issue with the â€Å"traces of the machine analogy in the prevailing conception of defence mechanisms† (p. 52). There are no machines in the mind. There are only thoughts. The notion of a mechanism is either a fallacy or a metaphor that refers summarily to both â€Å"the instinctual act and the defence against it† (p. 54). Morris Eagle (1984) added that â€Å"the supposition that the intensity of the instincts is threatening to the ego† derives from a reification of the metaphor of psychic energy. It is a purely fictitious notion. â€Å"The idea that instinctual impulses, particularly those of great intensity, are inherently dangerous to the ego derives from an a priori tension-reduction model of human behavior and a conception of the nervous system as naturally and ideally quiescent, and disturbed, in varying degrees, by excitation† (p. 111). Because too much energy will shatter or burn out a machine, reifying the metaphors of psychic energy and psychic structures leads to the idea that the structures of the psychical apparatus are inherently and necessarily threatened by psychic energies. In â€Å"Analysis Terminable and Interminable, † Freud (1937) corrected his daughters formulation without naming her explicitly. He asserted that â€Å"id and ego are originally one† and â€Å"the psychical apparatus is intolerant of unpleasure†-implicitly, of unpleasure alone (pp. 240, 237). He also emphasized that defense mechanisms and symptoms are two ways of discussing the same psychic elements: The mechanisms of defence serve the purpose of keeping off dangers. It cannot be disputed that they are successful in this; and it is doubtful whether the ego could do without them altogether during its development. But it is also certain that they may become dangers themselves†¦these mechanisms are not relinquished after they have assisted the ego during the difficult years of its development. They become regular modes of reaction of his character, which are repeated throughout his life whenever a situation occurs that is similar to the original one. This turns them into infantilisms†¦. The adults ego, with its increased strength, continues to defend itself against dangers which no longer exist in reality; indeed, it finds itself compelled to seek out those situations in reality which can serve as an approximate substitute for the original danger, so as to be able to justify, in relation to them, its maintaining its habitual modes of reaction. Thus we can easily understand how the defensive mechanisms, by bringing about an ever more extensive alienation from the external world and a permanent weakening of the ego, pave the way for, and encourage, the outbreak of neurosis. (pp. 237-38) Freud here took for granted his previous account of the origin of defense mechanisms as amalgams of stimulus barriers and symptoms. Defenses can alienate the secondary process from the external world only because symptoms are among their components. As flights from reality, symptoms are inconsistent with the reality principle of secondary process thought. Anna Freuds misunderstanding of her fathers theory of defense was one of several developments in the 1930s that collectively accomplished a paradigm shift in psychoanalytic theory and technique. Wilhelm Reichs Character Analysis (1948), first published in 1933, emphasized that differences in character types reflected differences among the defense mechanisms that individuals favored. Ernst Kris (1934) introduced the concept of â€Å"ego-directed regression, † or â€Å"regression in the service of the ego, † which permitted unconscious manifestations such as play and creativity to be diagnosed as whole-some, where their classical descriptions as â€Å"regression† had meant that they were pathological. Kriss revalorization of fantasy anticipated Anna Freuds revalorization of defense mechanisms. Her catalog of defenses, first published in 1936, supported the clinical technique of defense analysis, where interpretations are made of the defenses, and efforts to interpr et the unconscious drives are postponed until a later phase of the treatment. Heinz Hartmanns (1939) emphasis on the egos devotion to adaptation completed the basic paradigm of ego psychology. Where classical psychoanalysts thought of the benefits derived from symptoms as â€Å"secondary gains† of illness, ego psychologists construed defenses as positive adaptations and left unremarked their inherently fantastic and irrational nature. The idea of repression is perhaps one of the Freudian concepts that call for psychoanalytic treatment. Freud split the mind into three parts, the conscious, the subconscious and the unconscious. The conscious part of the mind is what is being used to read this paper at the moment. The subconscious contains information that is not in the conscious processing zone but could be very readily retrieved. For example, ones spouse, may not be present in consciousness but could quickly be prompted by just mentioning the name. The most important part in the field of psychoanalysis and in which the id and superego operate is the unconscious. The unconscious is that part of mind where so much information is stored but very hard to retrieve. Freud believed that the unconscious is a reservoir of human experiences forced to obscurity by the ego so that they protect the subject from unbearable pains if and when those experiences are remembered. Freud argued that when the ego fears the inability to balance between the ids sexual and aggressive needs and the proper way to attain it as the superego demands, the result is anxiety. In order to deal with this anxiety Freud proposed that the ego develops defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms reduce anxiety by reducing or redirecting anxiety in various ways, but always by distorting reality. Before listing the Freudian defense mechanism its prudent to highlight the defense mechanism categories as prescribed by Freud. First, reality anxieties which are fear of objects that can be physically escaped, for example, fear of a snake. Second, neurotic anxiety is a type of anxiety that comes from unconscious worries that the impulses of the ID will overpower the person, leading to impending punishment. Finally, this is fear of moral judgments or fear of violating moral values which result in guilt and shame. The defense mechanism of displacement involves the transfer of feelings or behaviors from a dangerous object to one that is less threatening. A person who is angry with the boss may maintain a discreet silence, then go home and shout at a family member. Or aggressive impulses may be unconsciously diverted from a frightening object to oneself, which may lead to self-inflicted injuries or even to suicide. Anxiety may also be displaced, as when a child who is victimized by abusive parents shies away from people in general. In contrast, the defense mechanism of projection conceals dangerous impulses by unconsciously attributing them to other people or things. For example, projected anger may lead to the belief that you are disliked, hated, or being persecuted by other people. In displacement, you know that you are angry and choose a safer target; in projection, you repress your anger and believe that other people are angry at you. Also, projection always operates unconsciously, whereas some displacements may be conscious. Although projection plays a significant role in the development of paranoid behavior, it is a normal way for very young children to deny their mistakes. Denial is often accompanied by another defense mechanism, fantasy, where unfulfilled needs are gratified in ones imagination. A child may deny weakness not only by playing with reassuring symbols of strength like toy guns or dolls, but also by daydreaming about being a famous general or worthy parent. Virtually everyone daydreams to some extent. As with denial, however, an excessive amount of fantasy prevents the ego from fulfilling its main function perceiving and dealing with reality.