In the last column, we began our discussion of Thesis #6. Just as a reminder, Thesis #6 states:
 
Thesis #6 – There are defense mechanisms in individual psychology, habitual patterns of mental schemes and individual behaviors aimed at defending against potentially threatening, anxiety-provoking  information. Each of these mechanisms may manifest itself in both creative and destructive forms.
 
In this column, we will focus on the last part of this thesis statement. Defense mechanisms, the stereotypical psychological strategies we employ every day to deceive ourselves, keeping unpleasant, negative, anxiety-provoking and threatening information from our conscious awareness, are myriad. Specialists have outlined at least fifty or sixty such defenses, and further categorized them into mature and immature defenses, neurotic and pathological defense, narcissistic defenses, and so on. This need not detain us here. I will only list a few of the most common “everyday” defense mechanisms, listed in the engaging Wikipedia article on the topic, that each of us clearly sees on a regular basis in our own lives and the lives around us.

Displacement: like sublimation, transforming (displacing) unacceptable energies and impulses into socially acceptable projects. For example, the murderous rage one might feel toward a particularly ecologically oblivious industrial leader is displaced into political activism aimed at passing laws forcing an industry to clean up its messes. Less nobly, one may kick his dog rather than the boss with whom one is actually angry.

Dissociation: simply ‘tuning out’ psychologically and emotionally in situations too intense and overwhelming to remain engaged.

Intellectualization: related to rationalization, this strategy focuses all attention on the intellectual aspects of a particularly anxiety-provoking situation, using exaggerated reasoning to block out truly threatening aspects of reality. A class I was teaching in Vienna, Austria, had opportunity to meet with and interview some NATO  arms negotiators at a particularly politically heated time in the early years of the Regan Administration. The students wanted to focus on their fears of nuclear war, while the negotiators only wanted to talk about Game Theory. You get the picture.

Projection: denying ones own negative impulses and motivations by accusing others of having them. Listen to almost any heated political discussion to see this mechanism on highlighted display.

Rationalization: finding all sorts of reasons on the conscious level to justify (excuse) negative feelings and behaviors on the part of oneself, but perhaps even more so on the part of others for whom it would be very uncomfortable or threatening to consciously acknowledge the selfish, aggressive or fallible nature of their feelings or actions.

Reaction formation: deflecting socially unacceptable feelings by acting out the exact opposite behavior – for example, acting especially friendly toward someone (especially one of higher status or power) with whom you are angry or enraged.

Denial: simply refusing to acknowledge the reality of a situation that is too threatening to accept – for example that one’s parent is alcoholic or one’s spouse is unfaithful. Therapists often call this “hiding the elephant in the room.”

Regression: returning to an earlier psychological and emotional stage in reaction to a current situation. Every young adult who has returned to sit at the family Thanksgiving table with mom, dad and the siblings knows this mechanism from the inside out.

Repression: hiding one’s true feelings and reactions because they are socially unacceptable. Good liberals are masters of this mechanism, and even have a name for the strategy in relation to the social issue ala mode – fake it till you make it – in other words, repress your feelings of racism, sexism, or  LGBTQIA+phobia until it finally disappears. That is a good thing – but it is a defense mechanism nonetheless.

Transference: applying an emotional reaction formed in relationship with one person or situation to another person or situation. This has a specialized role in some forms of therapy, in which the therapist expects to become the transference object of the client’s parental idealizations and frustrations. It is seen and experienced much more generally, however, for example in the way our reaction to authority figures (bosses, police, etc.) so often mirrors the reaction we had to authority figures in earlier stages of development.

Sublimation: symbolically transforming unacceptable behaviors and feelings into acceptable ones. For example, two married professors transform their mutual sexual energies away from an affair and toward a mutual project, such as writing a book together.

Suppression: purposely deciding to ‘delay’ dealing with an intense thought or emotion until a future time. This is often employed by emergency personnel in situations of disaster who must deal in the moment with extreme human suffering in an almost robotic fashion. If the situation goes on too long without relief, ‘temporary’ delay may become habitual, leading to what we have now recognized as Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Altruism: this is clearly a ‘mature’ defense mechanism, but deserve mention. It is a strategy transforming negative reactions, such as hostility, but also sorrow and grief, and possibly also feelings of ennui or nihilism, into constructive channels of service to others.

Humor: use of wit, comedy (often self-deprecation) and satire to “break the ice” in tense and unpleasant situations.

Identification: taking on the characteristics of an admired person, or incorporating as one’s own an ideal or concept.

This list could go on. The important thing to establish for our purposes is simply that these are ubiquitous strategies humans employ for keeping unpleasant, threatening and anxiety-provoking material largely out of immediate consciousness. These are strategies to ‘hide’ reality from ourselves, made necessary by the potentially immobilizing avalanche of anxiety-provoking information that inevitably accompanies the mental characteristic of the Reflective Symbolic Self. Each of these strategies have positive impacts in our lives (not least of which is that they allow normal daily living to go forward in the first place.) But each of these strategies also can have destructive impacts in our lives. Strategies that strongly facilitate mental survival in earlier circumstances (for example, the child who learns to dissociate in the presence of drunk, enraged and abusive parents) often become habitual and subsequently destructive when employed in very different circumstances (for example, mentally and emotionally ‘checking out’ at the first signal of anger on the part of a spouse, friend, boss or co-worker.)

The task of maturity is to learn our habitual, default patterns of employing defense mechanisms, why those patterns developed, and begin to take more conscious control of our defensive reactions. Each individual has their own habitual pattern of defenses, based largely on the contours of individual biography. It is important to note, however, that they most threatening and anxiety-provoking material of all, what we might call the (or at the very least one of a very few) root anxieties, from which others flow and in some ways are symbolizations of death, as we see clearly in literature, mythology, religion and other products of imaginative symbolization.

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