Defense Mechanisms
Defense Mechanisms
The nature of defense mechanisms
The concept of defense mechanisms was originally proposed by Freud to explain the origins of socially handicapping symptoms, such as unreasonable fears or unjustified anger. Freud pictured symptoms as “derivatives,” or indirect expressions, of impulses that cannot be expressed directly because they are incompatible either with other impulses or with one’s moral standards. The blocking of expression elicits the unpleasant experience of anxiety, which varies with the strength of the impulses and tends to increase progressively until the conflict is resolved. Defenses represent predilections for particular distortions of unacceptable impulses. Torn between his impulse to hurt his father and his guilt, a son may project his anger to someone else. The boy is consequently relieved of both guilt and anxiety. If he displaces his anger to a safer target, he develops irrational angers at the scapegoat and is again saved from the discomfort of guilt and anxiety, If he represses the anger, he forgets about it; if he isolates it, he is aware of the idea that he wants to hurt someone but does not experience the feeling. He can also cancel the results of previous aggression by employing defenses like undoing, reparation, and reversal, the meanings of which are conveyed by the terms themselves.
What was first a clinical construct proved to be so fruitful in clarifying a large variety of social phenomena, both normal and abnormal, that it can be regarded as one of the most revolutionary influences on twentieth-century thought. Freud himself employed the construct in discussing such different topics as the content of art, the meaning of dreams, slips of the tongue, sources of prejudice, psychotherapists’ errors, universal myths, the appeal of humor, religious ritual, and the child’s view of his world. His papers on such topics have provided the foundations for numerous professional specialties in the arts and humanities as well as in medicine and the social sciences. It is difficult to picture what the novel, the play, or the painting of the twentieth century would be like if creative artists had not been exposed to the concepts of conflict, unconscious motives, and defensive distortions.
The ubiquitous interest in defenses is a tribute to their usefulness in explaining otherwise incomprehensible behavior in terms of the resolution of conflict, particularly internal conflict from which the person cannot escape. The clinician typically observes patients torn between moral standards and either sexual or aggressive impulses. The antagonistic forces are intense and have approximately the same strength. The conflict often develops a stable equilibrium characterized by protracted indecision and mounting anxiety. The inclination to forego either impulse tends to strengthen that impulse, by emphasizing the impending frustration, and to weaken the antagonist, which seems less important once it can be gratified. Anxiety may become so great that it interferes with the objective appraisal of events. At such times one can resort to the defenses, which permit resolutions without awareness of the nature of the choice or even of the conflict.
Definition and identification
In the more than half a century since the concept of defense was proposed, it has been subjected to considerable scrutiny both by partisan clinician and rigorous experimenter. People who study defenses empirically are immediately faced with a paradox. To conduct research on a mechanism, they have to be clear about ways of identifying it.
The attempt to attain clarity often makes the average investigator skeptical about the widespread enthusiasm for the concept, an enthusiasm buttressed more by faith in clinical observation than by a substantial body of experimental data or even by a theoretical system. What is available is a group of loosely defined descriptive labels. There is little agreement either about the definition of the mechanism or about the ways in which it affects perception. The label has been applied to such different phenomena as scotoma to visual details, the inability to report material whose recall is manifested indirectly, and the reinterpretation of events.
Critics often object to the “explaining” of forgetting by the invoking of the mechanism of repression, a practice they correctly label as a reification of the term. Postman (1953) makes another cogent criticism when he objects to the presumed assumption of a “Judas eye, scanning incoming concepts in order to decide what shall be permitted in consciousness” and apparently acting as a trigger that releases mechanisms employed to distort the unacceptable concepts. [SeePerception, article Onunconscious perception.]
In the face of such phenomena as multiple personality, “forgotten” material that can be recovered under special conditions like hypnosis, and motivated errors in judgment, most skeptics concede that Freud was asking legitimate questions and that the perceptual system must often be split into subsystems, some of which are not accessible to awareness. But there is considerable disagreement about ways of describing such phenomena, and sympathetic critics often plead for hypotheses that are phrased in the language of the social scientist.
The vagueness of the concept of defense is suggested by Freud’s definition: “… all the techniques of which the ego makes use in the conflicts which potentially lead to neurosis” ([1926] 1936, p. 144). This definition provides little help in discriminating between defense and other reactions that occur during conflict and ignores much of what Freud himself observed about the connections between defenses and normal phenomena, such as creativity, thinking, and humor.
Enumeration and criteria
The mechanisms labeled by Freud include repression, regression, reaction formation, reversal, isolation, undoing, introjection, identification, sublimation, denial, projection, and turning against the self. Many other psychoanalysts have proposed lists of defenses, few of which agree with Freud’s in either content or length. The lack of consensus reflects some basic theoretical disagreements. Melanie Klein (1959), who founded her own psychoanalytic group, was very concerned with splitting and reparation, which are ignored by members of other groups. A more common reason for the lack of consensus is a casualness about definition of which Freud himself was often guilty. Later writers have been even less sensitive to the necessity of clear definition, extending the meaning of defense from a disposition to remotely related phenomena, such as neurotic symptoms; to stylistic trends, like resistance to change; and even to cultural products, like myths, which are neither defenses nor derivatives of impulses.
Anna Freud (1936) provided some useful criteria for definition when she noted that the “ego’s defensive operations” are unconscious and that they repudiate “the claims of instinct” by keeping “ideational representatives of repressed instincts” from becoming conscious and by “creating a transformation” in the associated emotions. She suggested the additional functions of regulating needs by appropriate substitutions, altering the inappropriate strengths of needs, and preventing the recognition of painful events over which there is no control.
Miller and Swanson (1960) propose a group of specific criteria for recognizing defenses. They think that the observer must first identify an event, usually an impulse, that the person in conflict cannot acknowledge because the awareness of it would create objective difficulties or anxiety. The observer identifies the event on the basis of such indirect evidence as the content of dreams, subliminal perception, and unpleasant emotional states, such as excessive anxiety or guilt. Second, he must locate the substitute for the original impulse. The type of defense is inferred from the substitute, particularly the nature of the discrepancy between wish and act. If a son is constantly aggressive and his father responds by being very helpful, he is viewed as reversing his aggressive impulses if he has dreams that symbolize a murder of the son. If the father replaces aggression by fears that the son will be killed in an accident, these are interpreted as projections of the father’s hostile wishes to auto drivers.
The nature of defense mechanisms
Of course the definition of terms is only a prelude to the raising of questions about the nature of defense mechanisms. How do the different defenses operate? Specifically, how does one project? Are there different kinds of projection? How does one repress? Do certain defenses have common characteristics? To what extent are different defenses learned? The literature on defense contains few deliberate attempts to answer such questions but many suggestive contributions.
Attempts at classification
Freud suggested a possible system of classification when he postulated that defenses are specific to particular pathologies: projection to paranoia, repression to conversion hysteria, turning against the self to depression. Such associations occur frequently but they are still not very strong. The same defense may be found in different pathologies; projection contributes to the irrational fear of the phobic, the obsessive’s overconcern with his potential condemnation by others, and the depressive’s feelings that he has lost all status in the eyes of others.
Another basis of classification was proposed by Anna Freud, who classified defenses with reference to eliciting conditions, such as anxiety, impulse, actual danger, forbidden emotion, and the pressure of conscience. Even though a single condition may sometimes elicit a large number of different defenses, there is some validity to the presumed association between the two. Turning against the self seems most appropriate to the distortion of aggressive impulses. Reversal, undoing, and reparation also seem appropriate to conflicts about aggression. Turning against the self seems inapplicable to anxiety, external threat, and sex. It seems more appropriate to think of denying anxiety and external threat or of repressing sexual impulses.
Employing a variety of criteria, Miller and Swanson (1960) propose two families of defense, differentiating them on the bases of complexity, distortion in derivatives, specificity to particular problems, and social effectiveness. The use of defenses in the first family, which is presumed to have developed early, leads to considerable distortion in the interpretation of events; they tend to be applicable to most problems; they are often socially handicapping; they are simple in that they require little previous learning. A defense like denial, for example, only requires that the person close his eyes and conjure up a wishful picture in his imagination. Common to such mechanisms is an obliteration of awareness and many kinds of information associated with it.
The use of defenses in the second family creates only minor distortions in the interpretation of events; they tend to be suited to particular problems; they are conducive to socially acceptable, even rewarded, behavior; they are relatively complex. A defense like projection requires that the person be able to recognize his impulses, that he have an awareness of self, and that he be able to apply a code of values.
Defenses in the second family have in common a displacement or shift on one or more dimensions of the forbidden impulse, such as the objects, affects, actions, agents, and goal states. When a boy who is angry at his father displaces his aggression to another object, he chooses something similar in certain respects to the original object. Sometimes the choice may be very remote as in the classical case of Freud’s little Hans, who shifted his problem from his father to white horses, both being large, light-skinned, and strong and having dark structures around the eyes (glasses and blinders) and a dark area around the mouth (beard and snout).
Projection—an example
Research on the defense mechanisms has proliferated to such an extent as to require that a survey of the literature be restricted to one mechanism. Projection has been chosen because it has been the subject of the most fruitful investigations.
One problem that has plagued investigators is the variety of phenomena that have been labeled as projection. Freud recognized that, in addition to the unconscious attribution of traits, there is also a more “normal” kind of projection in which we “refer the cause of certain sensations to the external world instead of looking for them inside ourselves…” (1912–1913). As a result of his observations of psychotics, Federn (1953) identified still another type in which confusion about the body image leads a person to be uncertain about the location of either acceptable or unacceptable impulses, which might be attributed to self, another person, or some object in the intervening space. The literature contains references to still other phenomena that were called projection. [SeeBody image.]
In designing research, most investigators begin with a conception of ways in which the mechanism affects perception. The commonest conceptions attribute projection to the breakdown in discrimination caused by the loss of ego boundaries, to displacement of unacceptable impulses from self to outside world, to a combination of increased sensitivity to the forbidden impulses in self and other and a denial of the impulses in self, to a diminution of the seriousness of one’s problems by exaggerating them in others, and to displacements on dimensions of the agent of action. Some of these conceptions are compatible with one another; others are not. The version that attributes projection to poor discrimination is consistent with the version that explains it as a displacement of the experienced event from inside to outside the self. But one cannot postulate both an intact body image and a breakdown in its boundaries or explain the distortion as pathological and basic to all cognition.
Depending on their assumptions about the nature of projection, various investigators have become concerned with different problems. Assuming that the mechanism is learned during the child’s struggles with toilet training, a number of investigators have devoted their efforts to studying the associations between anality, projection, and aggression. Others have studied the social implications of the defense by observing its use in different societies. Among the Dobuans (Fortune 1932), whose members are very competitive, poisoning, witchcraft, and other types of treachery are frequent enough, even in relations between close kin, to elicit universal suspicion of one’s fellow man, and the person who does not project his aggression may not survive very long. Projection is also helpful to the Hopi (Goldfrank 1945), who have a highly organized cooperative economic system which could not function even in the presence of mild aggression. They project their anger to evil spirits. Although citizens of both communities favor the same defense, the difference in targets results in one group being homicidal and the other being exceptionally peaceful.
A concern with the social consequences of projection in American society has led a number of social scientists to study the vicious cycle that reinforces the paranoid’s projection of aggression. He initially has little evidence to justify his suspicions, but if his fear leads him to withdraw or to be hostile, others soon begin to shy away. On the second encounter they are more wary, which confirms his suspicions of their intentions and enhances his fear and hostility. Each encounter reinforces the elements in the cycle, which consists of increased alarm and self-protective hostility on his part followed by puzzled retreat and, finally, anger on the part of others.
Epidemiological research on the incidence of different psychoses provides indirect evidence about the learning of defenses. Paranoid psychoses occur more often in the poorer than in the more affluent areas of large cities (Faris & Dunham 1939). Some investigators reason that the hardships faced by the poor reinforce the tendency to project; others that people with paranoid tendencies are economically handicapped and their downward mobility finally forces them to live in poorer sections. The disagreement has not yet been resolved, but evidence that psychotics in poor areas have not generally drifted there from other sections casts doubt on the latter hypothesis. [SeeParanoid reactions.]
A relatively new field of investigation, which represents a merging of Freudian theory, the sociology of communication, and certain epistemo logical principles, starts with the assumption that projection is an inherent part of all perception. On observing an object, a man organizes his visual sensations into meaningful categories and adds additional meanings and values in terms of the implications of the incident for his condition and his goals. The more concerned he is with what an object is like or how it ought to be, the greater is the likelihood that he will view it within a particular rubric of meanings and that he will impose qualities on it that others may not see.
Projection has a prominent role in many studies of the development of moral standards. It is assumed that the child first resists parental demands, such as those prohibiting attacks on his siblings. He then conforms because of fear. But then, each time he is tempted to misbehave he anticipates how the mother will judge him by projecting to her the feeling he would have if he were in her place. He then identifies with the disapproving mother and gradually comes to inhibit his impulses or to punish himself just as she might have done.
Underlying this type of speculation is the premise that we can never know what is in another person’s mind on the basis of direct experience. We must project what we would feel if we were in his place in order to guess what he is experiencing. After we project, we usually test our resultant impression by comparing it with subsequent events. If these show the impression is wrong, we modify it and test the new one in turn. It is assumed that the paranoid projects no more than anyone else; he differs from other men in the inefficiency with which he tests the veridicality of his projections.
Experimental research on projection has helped to develop the outlines of a potential theory. Studies reveal, for example, that the incorrect attribution to others of unpleasant traits is a function of the situation as much as the predilections of the person. Bramel (1962) threatened his subjects by indicating that their homosexual tendencies were more marked than they had reported in their self-ratings. On obtaining his reports the subjects increased their ratings of the homosexual tendencies of people with whom they had been paired but whom they did not know very well. The more favorable were the original estimates, the greater was the tendency to see others more unfavorably. Posner (1940) asked a group of children to rate the attractiveness of pairs of toys, to give one of the pair to a friend, and then to guess which of the toys the friend would have given the subjects. They usually chose the preferred toy for themselves and projected the selfish choice to the friend. This projection was much less evident in a control group whose members did not have to give away one of the toys before estimating the friends’ choices.
In a study of the contents and targets of projection Zimmer (1955), like a number of investigators, found that subjects project their acceptable personality traits to liked people and unacceptable traits to disliked people. Moreover, the degree of projection is related to conflict about the trait. According to Harvey (1958), people feel positively about raters who agree with their self-rating but deprecate the raters when they disagree. The subjects also show poor recall of the ratings, the distortions increasing with the discrepancies from self-rating up to a critical point.
The results of some studies help to explain the conditions under which people project similar and complementary traits to others. At a party arranged by Murray (1933) preadolescent girls rated a group of pictures before and after a frightening game called “murder.” The maliciousness attributed to the people in the pictures increased markedly following the game. Similar rather than complementary projection was elicited by Bramel, whose study has been described above. A comparison of the two investigations suggests that subjects project complementary traits when they find their own qualities acceptable and similar traits when they dislike their qualities and need to de-emphasize them.
The projection of complementary attributes seems to require a particular cognitive style. Leventhal (1957) divided his subjects into two groups, depending on the number of different concepts they used in describing their friends. The complex perceivers used many concepts and typically reacted to others in terms of differences between them; simple perceivers used few concepts and were more prone to assume likenesses in others.
Still another determinant of the contents of projection is its appropriateness to the target. Menzies (1960) reports that nurses project irresponsible impulses to juniors and severe disciplinary attitudes to seniors. The resultant impressions tend to be accurate because they are consistent with the nurses’ roles. The “social defense system” of the nursing service enables the women to “project and reify” relevant elements of their psychic defense systems. Some features of the social system that help to defend nurses against their many anxieties include the splitting of tasks in a manner that prevents intensive contact with any one patient, the denial of the patients’ individuality by such practices as referring to them by number or by diagnostic category rather than by name, the encouragement of ritualistic performance of tasks, and the discouragement of discretion and initiative. Unless a new nurse can restructure her defenses in ways that are congruent with this social defense system, she has considerable difficulties in her professional relationships.
A number of recent papers have been devoted to the hypothesis that people with incompatible defenses have more difficulty getting work done than do people with less incompatible combinations. Cohen (1956) asked his subjects to work together on a task and to judge each other’s interpersonal ability. As anticipated, people inclined to favor projection were more negative and hostile in interacting with one another than when paired with other subjects.
Recent research on the defenses has been dominated by the assumption that the mechanisms represent predilections for particular styles of interpreting one’s environment. This cognitive viewpoint has led investigators to think of defenses as components of a general style of solving emotional problems. It has also concentrated people’s interest on the self as a focus for the kinds of problems that elicit various defenses. Finally, it has prompted investigators to think of the possibility that all defenses, and possibly much of the process of thinking, can be analyzed into certain basic components. Some of these that are common to the defenses listed in the psychoanalytic literature include the tendency to do or think something that is opposite in meaning to the unacceptable event, to obliterate one’s total awareness of a problem, and to displace awareness from one location on a dimension to another. Displacements from inside to outside the body may represent a special instance of oppositeness, other examples of which are reversal and denial of beliefs and undoing and reparation of action. It seems probable that within the next decade, research on defense mechanisms will permit close integration of the concept with theories of cognition and motivation.
Daniel r. miller
[For further general discussion of defense mechanisms, seeAnxiety; Prejudice; Psychoanalysis; and the biographies ofFreudandKlein. More specific treatment may be found inAesthetics; Dreams; Fantasy; Humor; Literature, article onthe psychology of literature; Myth and symbol; Religion.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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