Defense mechanisms
A defense mechanism is a way the mind keeps a painful feeling at a distance: anxiety, shame, grief, or anger that feels too much to bear or even to know about. Everyone uses defenses, every day and mostly without noticing. They are not a flaw. A defense tends to become a problem when it is used rigidly, in place of other ways of coping, or when it distorts what is really happening.
In her book Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, Nancy McWilliams describes each character style partly by the defenses it relies on. These pages explain eight of them in plain words: what each one does, an everyday example, when it helps and what it can cost.
Primary defenses
Primary, or primitive, defenses deal with the border between the self and the outside world. They act on experience as a whole: what is felt, what is seen, and whose feeling is whose. Everyone has them, and they come forward most under heavy strain.
- Idealization and devaluationSomeone is seen as perfect, or as worthless, with little in between.
- ProjectionOne's own unwelcome feelings are seen in other people.
- IntrojectionOther people's views and judgments are taken in as one's own.
- SplittingPeople and feelings are sorted into all good or all bad.
- DissociationAttention moves away from what feels overwhelming.
Secondary defenses
Secondary, or higher-order, defenses work inside the person. They move a thought, a feeling or an impulse around, while the sense of what is real and of who is who stays in place. The line between the two groups is not sharp, and some defenses fit either.
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