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Defenses, Psychological

Use of the term defense within psychology and counseling has a long and complex history beginning in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the revolutionary and, at the time, controversial theoretical contributions of Sigmund Freud. Freud is considered the founder of the psychoanalytic movement within psychology and psychiatry. As theoretical advances, modifications, and challenges to the metatheory of psychoanalysis emerged through the latter half of the 20th century, this central construct of Freudian thinking evolved and developed through the works of such seminal writers as Anna Freud, Carl Jung, Heinz Hartmann, Ronald Fairbairn, Melanie Klein, Jacques Lacan, D. W. Winnicott, Otto Kernberg, and a host of other contributors to, and critics of, psychoanalytic theory.

Basic Formulation

Psychoanalytic theory emerged onto the historical stage at the end of the Victorian era, a time that viewed human sexuality with both horror and fascination. When Freud advanced his theory of sexuality in 1905, his ideas were met with a storm of controversy, the echoes of which can still be heard today. Freud proposed that fundamental human behavior is organized largely by biological forces, chief among which is the sexual drive. Within the contemporary context of Victorian morals and mores that were predominant in Western Europe, the open expression of sexual feelings and desires was considered unacceptable in the social milieu of the time. Freud suggested that an internal war was being waged between the basic biological urge to express our sexual needs and the conservative nature of societal expectations to suppress them. Freud believed the mind generated internal psychological barriers to protect itself from the anxiety these dangerous and unacceptable sexual thoughts, images, and impulses would create if we were to become conscious of them. He called the psychological activity of building and maintaining such barriers the defense mechanism. In order for a defense mechanism to operate, two key functions must obtain: it must distort reality to some degree, and the psychological activity that accompanies this distortion will operate unconsciously. Freud's accompanying theory of the unconscious is perhaps his most distinctive, profound, and influential contribution to modern and postmodern thought. It is a contribution that has permeated virtually every level of philosophical, scientific, social, and popular culture.

Post-Freudian Development of the Construct

Anna Freud, nearly as famous as her father, Sigmund Freud, made her own significant and far-reaching contribution to psychoanalytic theory by exploring the second element of her father's tripartite theory of mind, the ego. The ego houses the conscious sense of self and shapes the power of will and choice in everyday life. Key to Anna Freud's conceptualization of the ego is her elaboration of a series of psychological activities she called ego defense mechanisms. Although Sigmund Freud had originated the idea of the defense mechanism, Anna Freud is generally credited with the full exploration and development of this central psychoanalytic idea. It is her work on the subject, published in 1937, which is commonly cited when referring to psychological defense.

Defense Mechanisms

Anna Freud's model of psychological defense includes the following specific mechanisms: regression, repression, reaction-formation, isolation, undoing, projection, introjection, turning against the self, and sublimation. Each mechanism operates in specific ways to protect the ego from unwanted and disturbing impulses, generally thought to reflect the basic biological drives and urges including sexuality and aggression. The name of each mechanism more or less describes the nature of its operation, and these terms are familiar to many readers outside psychology and related fields. Of these, sublimation is a less obvious term and refers to the transformation of unacceptable impulses into socially desirable inclinations and activities. Projection is one of the more complex defenses in that it attributes to others various thoughts, feelings, motives, and intentions that we find unacceptable in ourselves. We may then find ourselves reacting to those attributed personality characteristics as if they originated in the other person, who, in turn may begin to counterreact in specific ways to us. Thus, a complex exchange of problematic projections, reactions, and counterreactions is created and often encountered in the therapeutic relationship.

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