Negation: The Most Primitive Defense Mechanism.

The literature in psychoanalysis shows that the two concepts of ‘defense mechanism’ and ‘reconstruction’ are not of much relevance anymore. The reason- in my experience and opinion- is that analysts got distracted by the new psychoanalytic discoveries  of the sixties and the seventies like the schools and new flashy psychoanalytic stars. Psychoanalysts considered some, if not all, the basics of the early psychoanalysis, matters to sidestep. They let the new generated ideas and the newer issues overtook the center of psychoanalysis, and the past to be ignored. This is a wise idea when the issues at hand is science, theoretical reformulations or matters pertaining to methodology. But Psychoanalysis is an epistemology of the human subject, thus we could improve and make some changes to epistemology but not the human subject himself. Therefore, some old issues have to be revisited and improved, not neglected, or abolished.

As long as our work is ‘analyzing’ (interpreting),then reconstruction is not an old insignificant subject  to be ignored. Moreover, interpreting requires and demands that the analyst has to know  defense mechanisms; because whatever we analyze to reconstruct later is distorted by what was named (hastily) defense mechanism.  What Freud identified as defenses were simply modes of speech of patients who were struggling with implicit unconscious issues. Freud misunderstood those ‘other’ things implicit in regular speech’ as issues defended against. The purpose of this post is to show that proper reconstruction  comes from a proper understanding of the effect of defense mechanisms (implicit meanings) on the patients’ analyzable self.

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Defense mechanisms are always associated to the level of mental maturation of the individual. An infant does not react to mother’s impatience by projection, but maybe by somatization or identification (projection is partly self-identity). Thus, we should always consider  defense mechanisms are part of the subject’s psychological and mental endowment. Similarly, defense mechanisms relate to the subject’s basic personality, i.e.  they reflect the degree of psychical maturity the subject has reached, thus his ability to assimilate the new realties he will be facing. The question is: which decides the other: does defense mechanisms decide the nature of the individual’s personality, or does the basic personality engenders specific defense mechanisms according to the situation.   My answer is that emotional maturation decides the level of sophistication of the activated defense mechanism (Freud, S.E. vol.X1X, 235-242). The significant remark Freud made in that regard is that defense mechanisms are the way the ego determines the nature of the ‘reality’ managed by the subject. Negation, therefore, as a defense mechanism, negates the existence of the real and replaces it with a reality of his creation. The scary demon under the child’s bed is real because the temptation to masturbate is real. This is not projection because the child at that age of phobias does not have a sense of identity that creates the space that allows projection. Thus, reconstruction of the analyzed data requires identifying the defense mechanism that the patient is using. In supervision I noticed that candidates are spontaneously able to make those distinction or need just a hint to bring the issue in focus. raising it  in the subject is seeing in essence  that reality he has to recognize. No wonder that child psychoanalysis (which I knew very little about) would need a different way of reconstruction involving negate reality and the manners it shows the child real wish. The child’s wish is quite  essential in giving the child notions about his difficulties. The child’s wish is the reality he could  deal with. Grown-ups who deny reality make their wishes take the place of their real-life….they live a phantasy life.   

A warning: beware of the politicians’ political opium: Self Deception