Defence Mechanisms: The Presenting Past
This essay was original submitted as an assignment for a ‘Psychodynamic Theory and Practice’ module of my Master’s degree program. We were tasked with assessing how early experiences in childhood impact on the development of defences in later adult life with specific reference to the presenting past and its focus on the centrality of the therapeutic relationship. Word Count: 3,253.
Chapter Contents
- Introduction
- Psyche Structuring and Defenses
- Splitting
- Ambivalence: Case Study
- Failing The Loss
- Centrality of Therapeutic Relationship
- Container-And-Contained
- Projective Identification: Past Presenting
- Object Relations: Resolution-And-Reparation
- Conclusion
- References
Introduction
In looking at how defences impact an adult’s life, this essay will advantageously frame how defenses are imbued in tandem with the psyche’s structuring process. Defences in themselves relate to a person’s emotional life and elucidate a quality of their relationships, both toward themselves and to others. Past and present contexts that have accumulated from early formative relationships, which further place strain upon the person, are usually communicated defensively and are rarely deployed consciously.
This essay will further explore how defences serve as a normal protective function to avoid anxiety, therefore respect for defenses will be advocated for. A case study will illustrate when a person cannot integrate these vestigial protective functions, they will work against that person’s best interest. For this reason a concluding focus of this essay will compare early developmental relating with the therapeutic relationship using Object Relations theory, where it will be advocated that a primary purpose of therapy is to attempt understanding and integrating these dynamic functions of the person’s inner and outer world for growth, change and repair.
Psyche Structuring and Defenses
Structuralization of the psyche/ego involves the integration, differentiation and maintenance of object relationships (Robbins, 1981). These processes refer to the organizing function by which the objects, drives, affects and interaction of cause-and-effect in the infant‘s subjective experience must be differentiated.
Johnson (1994) suggests that the ‘self’ and ‘defenses intrinsic to psychopathology’ are constellated from an infant’s idiosyncratic pattern of coping with environmental inhibitions of their natural organismic needs. Coping here refers to the extent that these organismic experiences are allowed, frustrated or resolved. This psychoanalytic-development model is a progression of the classical drive theory and the object relations model which infers psychical content as being interpersonally instantiated.
While useful, Johnson (1994) utilizes the term ‘self’ as an umbrella-term for character. Character further encapsulates the dimensionality of psychopathology for elaborating how a defence (in the traditional analytic use of the word) that manifests in adulthood is conceptualized as an outgrowth of early relational frustration between a caregiver and infant. A frustration is the occurrence of a caregiver not responding to the infant’s felt needs and peak-affective expressions for whatever reason. Whether using the terms ego or self with their respective connotations and dynamic processes, psychological structure in general denotes a stable, enduring pattern of mental functioning that functionally organizes their perceptions, behaviours and subjective experience (Clarkin, Yeomans & Kernberg, 2007).
The accumulation of overwhelming negative experiences without regulation from a caregiver thus engender a utilization of mental mechanisms to defend from further perceptions of intense negative affect. The infant’s specific resolution of this issue (based on their limited capacity, experience and agency) is fundamental to their subjective experience in that it configures an on-going resolution over a person’s lifespan. Specifically, it is posited that the infant’s primitive defenses of relational conflict have an establishing function on the psychical structuring process (Johnson, 1994. p.4).
The degree of impact the early environment has on the defenses in later life could be attributed to this inscription; Abram and Hinshelwood (2018. p.193) state that the parent’s psychical responses to every aspect of the infant’s dependency inscribes the growing sense of self. Therefore, everyone has their early environment encoded into their psychical structure; enduring patterns of mental functioning that organizes human perceptions, behaviours and subjective experience (Clarkin, Yeomans & Kernberg, 2007). Gradually these patterns become abstracted from the actual stimuli to panoplies of mental representations aroused within contexts of object-relating (Robbins, 1981).
Splitting
Consequently, defence mechanisms constitute fundamental ways our understanding and meaning of experiences can establish enduring ranges of behaviours that protect a person from painful information entering consciousness (e.g., Denial) or influence control over that pain such as projecting anger onto another. Defences can additionally function by preserving one’s self-esteem from vulnerability and shame, ensuring semblance of safety when threatened or abandoned (Gabbard, 2004; Trevithick, 2017).
Kernberg (1992) argues that repeated painful experiences incrementally facilitate the internalization of objects arranged along relational axes of an all-good rewarding object or an all-bad object aversive object. This split ingraining affective memory structure is defined by Melanie Klein as the ‘paranoid-schizoid position.’
Klein’s extension of splitting both object and ego functions denotes the mind’s capacity for separately containing these representations thereby keeping separate differing clusters of ego/object representations with their respective affect laden tones (Knox, 2003). Negative affects are incrementally organized (and separated from positive affects in the psyche) into drives associated with emerging relations such as aggression, hatred and the wish impulse to destroy what is perceived as harmful (Clarkin, Yeomans & Kernberg, 2007).
According to Klein, splitting serves a primitive logic for separately containing contradictory representations, preserving the good experiences from the ravages of the bad. These tandem dynamics of splitting and projection grant the child a means for simplifying and organizing complex situations by making parents either bad or good (Schraff, 1996; Jacobs, 2012. pp.71–73). The experience of having dissociated extremes protects from the stress of having an integrated understanding of ‘things as they are’ (Johnson, 1994. p.14). Fairbairn asserts that this experience of ambivalent relationships toward the mother and father are triggered during the reorganization of internal structure inherent to the oedipal phase (Schraff, 1996. p.8)
Ambivalence: Case Study
In psychoanalytic parlance, ambivalence denotes swings of opposing affects such as love and hate (Jacobs, 2012. p.71). Like Splitting, ambivalence exemplifies how relationships can be enacted and experienced through an ‘all-or-nothing’ dynamic, the contradictory reactions of which being difficult to reconcile.
Malan (1979, p.139) reiterates a tenet of psychodynamic symptomatology; the degree of the damaging effect from a traumatic event which a patient presents with, is itself a repetition of a similarly traumatic occurrence that happened in the patient’s past. Both this principle and ambivalence are present by Malan in a case of a grieving client. The client initially sought therapy due to the depression two years after the death of her fiancée, her grief had never been worked through and therefore is stated as being “miscarried” due to complications of ambivalence between loss and anger toward those she had lost (Malan, 1979. p142). It was later uncovered the client had previously experienced the death of her parents.
If this client’s ambivalence could’ve been tracked to earlier splitting, then Regression could be at play here also as the client seemed to be reverting her attitude “back to an earlier developmental period” (Jacobs, 2017. p.97). However, the signature “patterns of adopting child-like language and behaviour” (Trevithick, 2011) within regression hadn’t been reported by Malan
Much like this client, inability to come to terms with death may occasion many defences such as Rationalizing away the impact (e.g., “we all have to die sometime”), Reaction Formation where grief is replaced with indifference, Displacement; feelings of loss (toward her husband) are located toward another figure (her parents) or Denial in which the importance of the death is disavowed. Unless overused whereby reality is distorted sufficiently to limit an individual’s choices then these defences may not be necessarily problematic (Trevithick, 2011).
Failing The Loss
In this relational dyad Malan (1979. p.140) posits that if the therapist is to attempt helping the client illicit the grieving processes and guide her in passing through it, then he needs to share her ambivalence (i.e. her past that is presenting) in order to gently bring on the tears of her healing process. Thus, the therapist is seen here as a facilitator to move the patient from a state of dysregulation to a regulated state. It can be argued that a parallel role of the parent is provided by the therapist in whom a means of handling distress that affords regulation for the infant is given.
The caveat: the therapist must not succeed in becoming for the client what they have missed literally or symbolically. Rather, to help the client experience the ambivalent feelings surrounding the loss, toward an accepting state in which they do not have these losses satisfied nor replaced. Malan (1979.-p.163) further cautions that the therapist cannot make amends nor re-compensate for what the patient has missed, but to aid the patient into accepting the state in which they do not have these losses and misses satisfied or replaced.
Jacobs (2005, p.154) asserts that one of the most difficult aspects for therapists to master is the refusal to exercise the authority a client may imagine or hope the therapist will take up for them. Comparative to Freud’s proviso of abstinence for successful handling of the transference (Freud, 1915), Malan advises a similar abstinence function, though citing Winnicott, in which successful treatment that permits the regulator function for the patient is one in which the therapist permits only the repetition of failing to love the patient enough, thereby providing containment for the patient‘s feelings of this failure, in which a new resolution for this may be worked through and achieved (Malan, 1979. p.163).
With this resolution, an analogous developmental achievement of depressive position may be observed whereby the therapist, like a good-enough primary caregiver, has both met and failed the client’s needs inasmuch as the client realizes that the vicissitudes of love and hate within ambivalence may be comprehended within the same person (Malan, 1979. p.167).
Centrality of Therapeutic Relationship
The therapist, like the primary caregiver, despite the sufficiency of their soothing capacity cannot re-create the lost soothing of symbiotic fusion (Tolpin 1971. p.325), therefore best the therapist may do is repeat the primary caregiver’s ability to regulate ‘good enough’ (Malan, 1979).
The effect this work has on the centrality of the therapeutic relationship when applied well is what Malan describes as crucial process in which the patient may utilizetheir therapist’s own understanding and unconditional acceptance of their ambivalence or distress is a crucial resource for regulation through the experience of being loved well-enough (Malan, 1979. P.164). As therapists, through becoming a reliable hate object, we may demonstrate an ability to survive the negative projections within ambivalence and understand them without the expected or unconsciously sought retaliation (Trevithick, 2011).
Regarding the therapeutic relationship; when entering therapy, the intrapsychic equilibrium that keeps the client’s unpleasant emotions at bay is threatened, thus defence mechanisms are activated in therapy through Resistance; the extent a person may allow themselves to be understood by others through the task of rendering unconscious material conscious (Gabbard, 2004; Trevithick, 2011). Resistance is observable to the therapist, yet the specific mechanisms at play must be inferred (Gabbard, 2004). Additionally, the degree of wounding experienced is positively correlated with the level of defensiveness they are likely to exhibit, for this reason the defences intended to protect the person from harm, such as resistance, may consequently obstruct opportunities for helpful therapeutic engagement.
The re-emergence of unconscious relational material during adulthood guards the person from further harm. The elusive affect these defences place on recall may therefore distort our perception of reality (Trevithcik, 2011). For this reason, Jacobs (2017) suggests that a two-fold barrier to the work exists from the defence and what the anxiety underneath this defence yields to, such as the fear of ‘what happens’ when such a defended thought is expressed.
Malan’s case demonstrates how therapy can elucidate the reframing necessary for resolution and growth. Additionally, it highlights the importance of seeing the context of the client’s internalized object-relating, which helps the therapist to attenuate their own reactions for what is therapeutically useful, whether through negative countertransference or projective identification (Johnson, 1994. p.6)
Container-And-Contained
Concerning projective identification, I have previously written that Bion (1962) posits the mediation of growth can be understood as a relationship between whatever part of the analysand’s psyche is Projected into the ‘containing’ analyst. Which in due course is experienced to have been modified so as it can be re-introjected in a form that is tolerable for the analysand’s psyche; “projective identification is internalized to form an apparatus for regulation” (Bion, 1962. pp.90–91). Analogous to the therapeutic relationship, resilience for an infant/client’s distress is assumed to grow if the caregiver/therapist can take within them the full extent of the infant’s feelings in order to return said feelings to the child in a safer, tolerable form (Gomez, 2017. p.45).
The therapist’s task is to attune to the details of their countertransference — through the aspectual state of the therapist’s accommodating, yet evenly suspended attention (reverie) — enough in order to comprehend their client in the here-and-now of the transference relationship, regardless of how strange, affectionate or non-verbal some of their expressions might appear. If the client can experience being with a therapist that is either less terrifying or terrified than the client perceives themselves to be, they too may join the therapist and attend to their emergence of their feelings (Gomez, 2017.-p.63).
Projective Identification: Past Presenting
In a case study by Winnicott (2005/1971.-pp.99–100) it is demonstrated with a male client how the therapy setting is designed to facilitate the articulation and understanding of how early environmental patterns between mother and infant would arrange the client’s defenses in later life. Additionally, how these defenses re-emerged in the here-and-now with Winnicott and how the re-lived trauma may be contained and worked through.
During infancy, the male client’s mother saw and acted towards him as if he were a baby girl, thus as an infant he was compelled to fit into the mother’s idea that he ‘was a girl’. However, this fact was unknown to Winnicott until he had articulated an experience he was having of the client as he spoke, in which Winnicott had the impression that he was counterfactually listening to the male client as though he were a girl (Winnicott, 2005/1971).
While not explicitly stated in case example, the client’s Introjection might be inferred; in the normative process of identifying with the external environment, a symbolic incorporation of the mother’s dynamic to her child allowed for the internalization of that object, which inversely was Projected back out into Winnicott during the session. Again, this not explicitly elaborated upon in the case, albeit as a reader the grounds for inferring the primitive defence of Projective Identification is present as Winnicott ‘took on’ the characteristics of the client’s internal object relating that was unwittingly projected onto him via the unconscious communication (Gabbard, 2004).
The reproduction of the early environment/object in the present situation allowed Winnicott’s mutative interpretation of client’s experience of being sane (i.e. a boy) in a mad environment (i.e. with a mother who sees a girl). The communication of the client’s archaic mother object had been split off and repressed until it re-emerged via the transference of the here-and-now with Winnicott’s experience of himself taking on the mother’s “mad” identity. In the session, the client’s Regression to a state of dependence at time of environmental failure could be re-lived and worked through, allowing for a significant shift in the client’s analysis (Winnicott, 2005/1971; Abram & Hinshelwood, 2018.-p.81).
Object Relations: Resolution and Reparation
Failures of the original love objects, which inevitably all caregivers succumb to, leads to frustration and aggression; Klein believed that through Play children demonstrate the aggression they fear would harm their objects. In phantasy, this aggressive attitude is as violent as actual aggression itself. Believing themselves responsible for these negative effects, the infant fears the internal loved object will be destroyed from this preoccupation of aggression. However, associated with this potential for mourning the object is the drive for atonement, otherwise known as reparation. The guilt inherent in this fear permits the regret of having caused this harm. The infant’s increasingly accurate perception of reality affords for their capacity to understand that the mother inversely experiences a difficult baby (Schraff, 1996. p.13; Abram & Hinshelwood, 2018).
This struggle of love interplaying with hate is referred to as the Depressive Position, whereby concern for the object is furthermore experienced through the capability of gratitude, atonement, and repair (Schraff, 1996. p.13). It was Klein’s understanding that the position of regret imbues the sense of concern for others from an early age throughout life. The guilt that is worked through the depressive position wills it’s punitiveness to reparation. The role of reparation in mental life is such that it undoes harm committed in phantasy of projected aggression for the purposes of reviving, restoring and preserving the object. Therefore, the sense of self-attacking Klein proposed as the rudimentary origins of the superego (Schraff, 1996; Abrams & Hinshelwood, 2018. p.191).
With maturing insight into the infant’s own psychic reality, their feelings of guilt contribute to the Sublimations that are further conducive to functioning mental health, satisfactory object relations and integration of the ego (Schraff, 1996. pp.122–150). The depressive position may be conceived as an important developmental state for infants whereby they come to realize their loved objects are never perfect. The maturational process (from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position) yields for the infant’s capacity of understanding that the primary-caregiver has to experience the difficult baby (Schraff, 1996. p.13). For Winnicott however, the infant’s gradual perception enables reflection of how their ruthlessness of need could not be differentiated from the damaging effects this need had on the mother/caregiver. Guilt as such has positive connotations intrinsic to the capacity of ‘concern’. This begs the question, can the apotheosis of mental achievement really be the capacity to bear depression and ambivalence?
Coping with the reality encroaching on the paranoid-schizoid position is conducive to the environment’s ability to continue nurturing through catastrophe, e.g., that the mother is not destroyed by the infant’s split projection of being all bad. The ravages of guilt may be ameliorated, albeit never completely. Abram and Hinshelwood (2018) state that the resolution of the depressive position is a lifelong task and the client on the couch always has their infant within, therefore the analytic setting parallels the caregiver’s capacity of holding the anxiety (Abram & Hinshelwood, 2018). With both Winnicott and Malan’s respective examples of holding and containing aforementioned, the therapist-as-caregiver’s refusal to return persecutory hostilities allows for an amelioration of anxieties into a mutated and less punitive form. Through a Kleinian lens, all adult relationships enact repetitions of original internalized objects that reified the personality structure and its idiosyncratic defenses in the first place. It is posited that until these internally represented objects are repaired and coping strategies for these defenses have matured, future relating will always be a repetition of the past (Johnson, 1994. p.15). The therapeutic relationship via analytic situations grants the client potential for experiencing the holding, in turn for emotional growth they were not permitted in their early psychic life (Abram & Hinshelwood, 2018. p.146) by re-introjecting a containing object who can deal with anxiety, this containment is the root of mental stability (Trevithick, 2011.-p.407).
Conclusion
This essay highlights how defence mechanisms constitute enduring patterns of mental functioning that protect a person from painful information entering consciousness, and further organizes human perceptions, behaviours and subjective experience in tandem with the psychical structuring process. Abstracted from the actual stimuli, the mental representations aroused within contexts of object-relating re-occur and re-emerge in the relational dyad of the therapeutic situation in many forms, most notable through Projective identification. Past contexts that have accumulated from distressing early formative relationships, are communicated defensively and usually deployed unconsciously. The Therapeutic situation affords reparation that was not permitted in early life from an internalized love object, albeit in a failed capacity, that potentiates the client’s growth.
An aspect of defences is that they serve as a normal protective function to avoid anxiety, respect for this function should be advocated for. However, when a person cannot integrate these vestigial protective functions they work against the person’s best interest, the primary purpose of therapy is to attempt understanding and integrating these dynamic functions of the person’s inner and outer world (Trevithick, 2001).
References
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