DEFENCE MECHANISMS, a psychological term, refer ring to various devices unconsciously adopted by the human mind to escape attack or to avoid unpleasant experience. The same mental mechanisms of defence which are employed by normal minds, appear in extreme form in the mental processes of the insane.
Whenever a nor mal person anticipates attack from an antagonist so much stronger than himself that he thinks he will be defeated if the contest ever comes to a decisive issue, he immediately tends to act in a way calculated to prevent the conflict from occurring. Such responses are termed defensive reactions. They are of two general types: anticipatory attack upon the supposed opponent, and precau tionary withdrawal from the anticipated danger. Lies told by children to avoid incurring punishment and the displeasure of loved parents exemplify both types of defence mechanisms. Con cealment of the child's true actions represents withdrawal from threatened conflict with an antagonist (the parent) who is sure to win if the child tries to contest the case on its merits. The falsely imagined story constitutes an inducement response, wherein the child takes the initiative in an attempt to gain the approval and favour of the parent, thus preventing anticipated attack. Emotional irritability, active dislike of superiors, and blustering. pompous manners frequently represent aggressive defence mech anisms of normal people. Shyness, seclusiveness, timidity, and sometimes day-dreaming and forgetting the names of real people and things represent the passive type of defensive mechanism.
Whenever a person tries ultimately to conip/y with some unpleasant emotional situation instead of dominating it, the result is an abnormal state of mind. By permitting the conflicting emotions to remain in consciousness without getting rid of some, or harmonizing all, a number of abnormal states may result. The weaker emotion may be suppressed into a "repressed complex," causing the person to perform acts over which he has no control because he does not understand what emotion is causing the acts. Or each conflicting emotion may organize about itself a separate personality, result ing in "dissociation of personality," the afflicted individual un controllably changing from one personality to another at different times. Many psychiatrists (Hart) attribute somnambulism, ob sessions, hallucinations, and delusions to abnormal defence mech anisms similar to dissociation. Symbolization, stereotyped ac tions, rationalization, projection, where the patient believes other people are expressing toward him the very emotions from which he is suffering, and insane phantasy are attributed to repression.
(W. M. M.) See Hart, The Psychology of Insanity, 1925 ; Marston, The Emotions of No)mal People, 1928.
