MECHANISMS, Mental, are modes of thought obtaining both in the unconscious and in conscious mental activity, the most important of which are identification, com pensation, projection, introjection alid ra tionalization. In the earliest infancy the indi vidual gradually makes a distinction between self and external reality, tending to regard as himself those parts of his experience which give him pleasure and as external those parts which give him pain. He thus very early un consciously identifies himself with certain por tions of his environment. This unconscious habit of thought continues throughout life. All persons constantly identify themselves with persons and things surrounding them or which come within their mental purview. This has the very important result of making them re gard those external persons or things as having an influence over themselves and their acts and their emotions. Thus a man who defended the actions of a celebrated physician who was con demned and executed for murdering his wife was giving, in his defense, an illustration of identification of himself with the murderer, as was shown later to some extent by his con fession that he lived very unhappily with his wife and sympathized with the criminal who had succeeded in getting rid of his partner in that way. Two varieties of identification are distinguished, namely, the subjective form or introjection, and the objective or projection. In introjection the subject accepts an -idea which really has an external origin, and identi fies it with some portion of his own mind, as for instance when one reads a description of some disease and infers that nne has that dis ease oneself. This is a characteristic of im pressionable and hypersensitive natures who feel an excessive sympathy for other people. It leads to various forms of introversion in which the individual tends more and more to live a life within himself and to become more and more unable to achieve objective success in the world. Projection, on the other hand, is that objective form of identification which takes ark idea which has had actually an internal origin and believes that it has an external origin. Ex amples of this mechanism in an excessive degree are found in the mental malady known as para noia (q.v.), in which the suspicions of the indi vidual, having a purely subjective origin, are projected upon the external social environment. The paranoiac believes that he is a great man, taking his belief from the grandiose thoughts which occur to him as a compensation [see be low] for an unconscious feeling of inferiolity, and he views external reality more and more as conspiring against him to prevent the realiza tion of his wishes for superiority. It is true that all individuals give evidence in thought and act of both introjection and projection, but it is only when these mechanisms are unduly de veloped that the discrepancy between the un conscious wish and the actuality become such as to render the individual obnoxious. All nor mal adults identify themselves with parts of their environment to some extent, as with their possessions and with the members of their fam ily and of their social milieu, but such identi fication is productive of good both in action and in thought. It should not, however, be allowed to go too far, and a rigorous critique should be exercised by comparison with real things in order to prevent excess.
Compensation is that mechanism of the unconscious which secures an activity some times quite the opposite from that found to be the goal of the unconscious wish. For exam ple when a person shows an extraordinary in terest in antivivisectionism or the prevention of cruelty to children or to animals, it is fre quently upon analysis that this form of activity is a compensation for an unconscious sadism or desire to inflict cruelty. Lynch
ing, which ostensibly aims at the punishment of an offender, is in reality mediated through an unconscious desire to inflict cruelty or to see it inflicted. Much of the action of extravagant chivalry is also an illustration of an unconscious desire to indulge in acts of cruelty. This is an apparent contradiction, but numerous analyses have shown the truth of this statement. The fact that a conscious and an opposing uncon scious wish are satisfied both at the same time makes the compensation all the more ous. That is, the individual consciously lieves that he is satisfying only the wish to right a wrong, not being conscious of the fact that in taking especial pleasure in righting a wrong, he is unconsciously satisfying a wish to czcupy his mind with the wrong itself. It is not known to the militant suffragette that her conscious desire to arrogate to herself the privileges of men is a compensation for an un conscious desire to be dominated by a man. Compensation is a physiological mechanism, too, by virtue of which the function of one or gan, say the kidneys, is taken over at times by that of another, for instance the skin, in ex creting certain waste products. An aim is sought by nature and failing in attaining this aim through one avenue, she tries another. Similarly in the mental processes, the psyche is aiming constantly at the satisfaction of desire, and if it fails to get it consciously, it will get i; unconsciously by compensation, that is, the desire of which the individual is not aware, though it may be fundamental in his psyche, will nevertheless gain its satisfaction in some substitutive form, through something which symbolizes in conscious life the object of the unconscious craving. A very infantile partial trend (q.v.) of the libido, namely, the child's desire to be looked at, is gratified by the actor in a domestic performance where he may be ut terly unconscious of the fact that his primary desire is to exhibit his body but unconscious only of the fact that he wishes to represent a character for the edification of the public.
Rationalization is the constant tendency on the part of all people to give an ex post facto reason for
thought, or acts. This is why as man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still?' The term rationalization was in troduced into analytic psychology by Dr. Ernest Jones. If a person is hypnotized and during the 'hypnotic sleep is told by the hypnotizer to do something when he wakes up, such for in stance as putting a chair on a table, he will do so, and when he is asked to give a reason for this act, he will fabricate a wrong one, because he does not know the light The cause of his act was the hypnotic suggestion, and is perfectly well known to the hypnotizer. But to the hypnotized subject the cause is unknown as it is contained in his unconscious, and, having been given to him in his unconscious state, it does not emerge iniu consciousness. This is paralleled by almost every instance in which a reason is given for doing anything. The entire cause in the case of some persons is, as with the hypnotized person, in the tmconscious, while with the majority of people a large pro portion of the causes of all their actions is in their unconscious and is unknown to them. The reasons which people then give for their actions are termed rationalizations and the tendency of all persons to feel that they have to give reasons when they are asked for them is what is meant by rationalization. See also SYMBOLISM and consult Frink, H. W.,