Defense mechanisms: A guide to brain functioning?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper draws on the writings of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, George Vaillant and other sources in an attempt to derive an exhaustive list of potential defense mechanisms, including some adaptive behaviors conventionally regarded as coping strategies. It then analyses them collectively as a set of well-evidenced patterns of human behavior that might be traceable to common mental operations. It organizes them by whether they modulate attention, affect or data and by whether they negate it or divert it externally or internally. From this, three distinct categories of defense are identified, each of which, it is hypothesized, operates to override a different (anoetic, noetic or autonoetic) layer of consciousness by effecting a mental enactment in substitution for a conditioned primary-process behavioral response associated with one of the negative basic emotions PANIC/GRIEF, FEAR and RAGE, or a diversion of one such behavioral response to another context. These, it is suggested, operate homeostatically to attempt to limit sensory intake (PANIC/GRIEF), modify hedonic valencing (FEAR), or fabricate causal data (RAGE) to reduce the prediction work of consciousness so that emotions remain within viable bounds and automaticity can be resumed. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications, including the potential for greater diagnostic precision and efficacy of treatment.