Psychological Defenses

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

All psychologists and psychotherapists talk about psychological defenses. But not all people understand that the defenses of our psyche are not only negative in color. But they also have a positive effect.

J. Laplanche defines the defense mechanisms of the psyche as: "A set of actions aimed at reducing or eliminating any change that threatens the integrity and stability of the biopsychological individual." Simply put, they are necessary for us and our psyche to maintain integrity, to adequately respond to what is happening and psychologically painless experience of the events that happen to us. We do not know how to forget the traumatic events of our past life, we have experienced the pain of trauma again and again in all its glory.

From the very beginning, we have to adapt to the world around us, and at the very beginning, a lot is stressful for us. Protections help us cope and survive. As we grow and develop, our psyche evolves and protects. Ideally, a person is able to apply different defenses at different times, but if he has only one (or a limited set) protection and cannot adapt flexibly, then we can talk about pathology.

Distinguish between primitive and mature defenses (defenses of the highest order).

Primitive defenses include: primitive isolation, denial, omnipotent control, primitive idealization (devaluation), projection, introjection, projective identification, splitting, dissociation.

Mature defenses include: repression (repression), regression, isolation, intellectualization, rationalization, annulment, turning against oneself, displacement, reactive education, identification, sublimation.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the definition of “protection” does not have a negative connotation, as it seems at first glance. This is just a historical definition that was introduced by Freud. Freud, in the difficult situation of the formation of psychoanalysis, was forced (and he himself preferred) to choose such a name because many were skeptical of psychoanalysis and Freud himself. In the beginning, Freud's attention was attracted by people with hysterical disorders, they tried in this way to prevent the repetition of past negative experiences (mostly negative experiences in childhood). This was almost always to the detriment of general interaction with the world. The best thing for them is to relive those feelings that are scary to face and give the opportunity to energy (which is spent on restraining feelings) to be released and then it can already be directed to improving life, creativity, work, personal life, etc. At some point, there was a failure in the communication of specialists and society with specialists, and the definition of "protection" acquired a negative character. Many began to believe that the defenses are inherently poorly adaptable (and this is absolutely not the case, in a healthy version of the defense they adapt to the situation, place and time). Protections have not only a negative connotation, but also have useful functions. If we talk about "protection" as a way to preserve the integrity of the psyche and protect it from destruction, then this name is justified.

I will describe the defenses themselves in the next part of the article.

If you have any questions, you can ask me, and I am ready to answer them.

Mikhail Ozhirinsky - psychoanalyst, group analyst.