Ego defences

 Abstraction

Abstraction involves trying to ignore or suppress the source of anxiety so that it no longer seems to exist.

All the ego defences discussed in this section aim, or aim primarily, at abstraction.

1

Denial

Denial, probably the most basic of ego defences, is the simple refusal to admit to certain unacceptable or unmanageable aspects of reality, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

An example of denial is a physician who ignores the classic signs and symptoms of a heart attack—crushing central chest pain radiating into the left arm, associated with sweating, shortness of breath, and nausea—and casually carries on with his game of golf.

(...)

In her classic of 1969, On Death and Dying, the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross introduced a model of bereavement commonly referred to as the Five Stages of Grief. The model describes, in five discrete stages, a process by which people react to grief and tragedy, especially terminal illness or catastrophic loss.

The five stages are:

Denial

Anger

Bargaining

Depression (or grieving), and

Acceptance.

Just as people might move back and forth between the stages, often at speed, so they might get stuck in one of the earlier stages, failing to come to terms with their loss.

The model has been criticized on a number of grounds, but Kübler-Ross did emphasize that all five stages need not occur, or occur in the given order, and that reactions to illness, death, and loss are as diverse as the people experiencing them.(...)

It is none other than Sigmund Freud (d. 1939) who first formulated the concept of denial as an ego defence. His daughter Anna Freud (d. 1982) thought of it as an immature ego defence, first, because it is mostly used in childhood and adolescence, and, second, because its continued use into adulthood leads to unhealthy or unhelpful behaviours and a complete failure to engage or come to terms with reality.(...)

An ego defence that is closely related to denial is negative hallucination, which is the failure to register uncomfortable sensory stimuli, for instance, the failure to see something that ought to have been seen, hear something that ought to have been heard, or feel something—like crushing chest pain—that ought to have been felt. Thus, a common occurrence in conversation or in a social setting is for a person to ‘edit out’ a challenging or contradictory remark. The person momentarily goes blank, and then carries on as though the thing had never been said. The ability to hear, or at least register, painful truths is one of the many pre-requisites of being a good listener.

2

Repression

Repression can be thought of as ‘motivated forgetting’: the active but unconscious forgetting of unacceptable drives, emotions, ideas, or memories.

Unsurprisingly, repression is often confused with denial: but whereas denial relates to external stimuli, repression relates to internal, that is, mental, stimuli. Nonetheless, the two ego defences often work hand in hand, and may be difficult to disentangle—as in the following, harrowing case. (...)

Freud thought of repression as the basic ego defence, since it is only when repression is fragile or failing that other ego defences come into play to reinforce and rescue it. In other words, repression is an essential component or building block of the other ego defences. To understand this better, let’s look at an example of the ego defence of distortion, which is the reshaping of reality to suit one’s inner needs. A teen who got dumped by her boyfriend no longer recalls this episode (repression), and comes to believe that it was she who dumped him (distortion). As you can see, the distortion not only builds upon but also buttresses the repression.

Repressed material, though out of the conscious mind, is no less present, and can (and usually does) resurface in disturbing forms. Beyond an obvious lack of insight and understanding, the inability to process and come to terms with repressed material is associated with a range of psychological issues such as anxiety, irritability, insomnia, nightmares, and depression; maladaptive and destructive patterns of behaviour such as anger and aggression in the face of reminders—such as Tumbling Woman—of the repressed material; and any number of superimposed ego defences.

‘Neurosis’ is an old-fashioned term that describes the various forms in which repressed material can resurface (anxiety, irritability, and so on). In Studies on Hysteria (1895), Freud with his colleague Josef Breuer formulated the theory according to which neuroses have their origins in deeply traumatic and consequently repressed experiences..(...)

The mental operation of suppression is similar to repression but with one critical difference, namely, that the ‘forgetting’ is conscious rather than unconscious. Thus, suppression is the conscious and often rational decision to put an uncomfortable (although, clearly, not totally unacceptable) stimulus to one side, either to deal with it at a more opportune time or to abandon it altogether on the grounds that it is not worth dealing with.

As it is a conscious operation, suppression is not, strictly speaking, a form of self-deception, but rather the conscious analogue of repression. Needless to say, suppression is much more mature than repression, and, as with all conscious operations, tends to favour much more positive outcomes.

Let’s look at a concrete example of suppression. A pair of friends who are holidaying in a larger group start arguing, so ferociously that they fall out with each other. The next day, they put their differences to one side and behave as though nothing had happened so as not to cast a cloud over the group and ruin everyone’s holiday. That day, they share some good times and special moments, and, by evening, it has become safe enough to bring up the argument and put it behind them. By dealing with their argument in this way, the pair have deepened rather than undermined their friendship.

3

Dissociation

The basic form of dissociation, isolation of affect, involves a separation (or ‘dissociation’) of thoughts and feelings, with the feelings (the ‘affect’) then removed from conscious attention to leave only the thoughts.

Isolation of affect is probably most evident when someone refers to an emotionally loaded event or situation in a casual, matter-of-fact, or otherwise dispassionate way. This can be called for in certain circumstances, for example, in providing the distance and objectivity that a physician needs to make optimal decisions about the care of her patients. But too much detachment neither makes for a good physician, and, as with most psychological processes, detachment is best if it can be conscious and pragmatic rather than rigid and defensive.

Isolation of affect is very common. When I catch it in conversation, I often find myself interjecting with something like, ‘Wait, hang on, what did you just say?’ Other forms of dissociation, while much more dramatic, are also much less common, and can take one of several sometimes overlapping forms such as amnesia, possession trance, or stupor. These rarer forms are serious enough to count as mental disorders, and are referred to in diagnostic manuals as ‘dissociative disorders’. They are usually precipitated by a highly traumatic event, leading to a disruption in the normally integrated functions of consciousness, memory, and identity.

In dissociative amnesia, the person suffers a loss of memory, most commonly for the period surrounding the traumatic event. Dissociative amnesia, or something closely resembling it, has long been recognized.

Already in the first century, the naturalist Pliny the Elder remarked:

Nothing whatever, in man, is of so frail a nature as the memory; for it is affected by disease, by injuries, and even by fright; being sometimes partially lost, and at other times entirely so.

In possession trance, the person reacts to the traumatic event by entering into a dissociative state, in which her identity is replaced by that of another agency such as a ghost, spirit, or deity. In many cultures, certain forms of trance are recognized and even exalted as expressions of religious fervour or manifestations of the divine. Therefore, possession trance should only be seen as problematic, or potentially problematic, if it is not a normal feature of the person’s culture or sub-culture.

In dissociative stupor, the person reacts to the traumatic event by becoming mute (speechless) and stuporous (motionless), failing to respond to stimuli such as the human voice, bright lights, or extremes of hot and cold. Dissociative stupor—that is, stupor in reaction to a traumatic event—is but one form of stupor, and the medical team ought to consider and rule out other causes of stupor such as severe depression, schizophrenia, and organic brain disease.

A fourth kind or pattern of dissociative disorder is dissociative fugue, in which the person embarks on an unexpected journey that may last for up to several months. During this journey, there is memory loss and confusion about personal identity or even assumption of another, entirely different identity. When the fugue comes to an end and the person returns to her normal self, the memory of the journey is usually lost.

* * *

Denial is, of course, an important element of any dissociative disorder. Although often described in the psychiatric literature in terms of a ‘compartmentalization of experience’, dissociative disorders are, arguably, no more than an extreme form of denial. As our journey into self-deception has begun to reveal, ego defences do not, for the most part, exist in splendid isolation, but involve a great deal of overlap between mutually reinforcing ego defences. Ours is a very dirty business.

4

Intellectualization

Isolation of affect—the dissociation of thoughts and feelings, followed by the removal of the feelings from conscious attention—is closely related to intellectualization.

In intellectualization, the uncomfortable feelings associated with a problem are kept out of consciousness by thinking about the problem in cold, abstract, and esoteric terms.

A ambitious medical student once asked me whether she should take up a career in academic medicine, despite (or so it seemed) having already made up her mind on the matter. After raising some arguments in favour, I raised some arguments against, including that the vast majority of people engaged in medical research never go on to make a significant breakthrough. As she did not seem to be taking this argument on board, I asked her to name just one major breakthrough in psychiatric research in the past fifty years. Instead of naming one, or accepting that there had not been any, she resorted to questioning the definition of a breakthrough and even the value of making one—which may have been legitimate things to do, had she first accepted, or at least entertained the idea, that there had not been any.

Here’s another example of intellectualization. After being discharged from hospital, a middle-aged man who had almost died from a heart attack spent several hours a day on his computer researching the various risk factors for cardiovascular disease. He typed out long essays on each of these risk factors, printed them out, and filed them in a large binder with colour-coded dividers. After that, he became preoccupied with the vitamin and mineral contents of various kinds of food and devised a strict dietary regimen to ensure that he took in the recommended amounts of each and every micronutrient. Despite living on a shoestring budget, he spent a great deal of money on a high-end steamer on the basis that it could preserve vitamins through the cooking process. But not once did he consider cutting back on his much more harmful thirty-a-day smoking habit..

* * *

The focus on abstract notions, trivial footnotes, and peripheral digressions belies a sort of ‘flight into reason’. The emotionally loaded event or situation is thought of in terms of an interesting problem or puzzle, without any appreciation of its emotional content or personal implications. Instead of coming to terms with the problem, or just having a good cry, the person may split hairs over definitions; undermine reasonable assumptions, facts, and arguments; and cloud her mind with nebulous arguments and abstruse minutiæ. But by failing on purpose to see the bigger picture, she also fails to reach the appropriate conclusion or conclusions—which, as with our medical student or heart attack victim, may hit her very hard in five, ten, or thirty years’ time.

Intellectualization is typically associated with poor reasoning, especially informal fallacy. The person may, for example, raise irrelevant or trivial objections, reject an argument on the basis of a bad example or exceptional case, or use exact numbers to talk about inexact or abstract notions. I discuss formal and informal fallacies at much greater length in Hypersanity—but from our discussion here it is already clear that sound reasoning is not simply a matter of intelligence.

5

Rationalization

Intellectualization, with its barrage of pseudo-rational activity, is easy to confuse with rationalization, which is the use of feeble or far-fetched arguments to skirt over something that is difficult to accept, or to make it more palatable.

A person who has been rejected by a love interest convinces herself that he rejected her because he did not feel up to her standards, and, moreover, that the rejection is a blessing in disguise insofar as it has freed her to find a more suitable partner.

The first rationalization—that her love interest rejected her because he did not feel up to her standards—is a case of skirting over something that is difficult to accept, sometimes called ‘sour grapes’. The second rationalization—that the rejection has freed her to find a more suitable partner—is a case of making it more palatable, also called ‘sweet lemons’.

Here’s another example. A teenager who fails to secure a place at a leading university tells herself that the university is sexist (sour grapes), and that taking a gap year to re-apply is a precious opportunity to travel and see the world (sweet lemons).

The teenager uses these rationalizations to reduce the psychological discomfort of holding contradictory beliefs or thoughts (‘cognitions’), on the one hand the cognition that she is smart and ready enough to get into the university of her choice, and on the other hand the cognition that she failed to do so.

Alternatively, she could have reduced this so-called cognitive dissonance by revising her self-image (‘I am not so smart or prepared as I thought’), but, on the whole, finds it less disturbing to rationalize, that is, to undermine or discount, the cognition that is inconsistent with her self-image.

In When Prophecy Fails (1956), Leon Festinger, a social psychologist, discusses his experience of infiltrating a UFO doomsday cult whose leader had prophesied the end of the world. When the end of the world predictably failed to materialize, most of the cult members dealt with the dissonance that arose from the cognitions ‘the leader said that the world would end’ and ‘the world did not end’ not by ditching the cult or its leader, as you might expect, but by rationalizing that the world had been saved by the strength of their faith.

Smokers typically experience a high level of cognitive dissonance with respect to their habit. To decrease this tension, they might (1) quit smoking, or (2) deny the evidence that links smoking to life-threatening conditions such as emphysema and lung cancer, or (3) rationalize their smoking so as to make it compatible with competing cognitions such as ‘I want to live a long and healthy life’ or ‘I am a rational person who makes sound, evidence-based decisions’.

Here are some of the rationalizations that smokers commonly use:

Smoking’s my only way of coping.

There’s nothing else to do.

What’s the point of living if I can’t enjoy life?

Only heavy smokers are at any real risk.

That’s fine, everyone’s got to die someday.

Everyone’s got to die from something or other, so it might as well be this.

The first three rationalizations are instances of sour grapes, and the last three of sweet lemons.

* * *

For the story, ‘sour grapes’ derives from one of the fables attributed to Æsop (d. 564 BCE), The Fox and the Grapes.

One hot summer’s day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a bine which had been trained over a lofty branch. ‘Just the thing to quench my thirst,’ quoth he. Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the branch. Turning round with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success. Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: ‘I am sure they are sour.’

For the poor fox, the cognitive dissonance arises from the cognitions ‘I’m an agile and nimble fox’ and ‘I can’t reach the grapes on the branch’; and the rationalization—which is, of course, a form of sour grapes—is ‘I’m sure the grapes are sour’. Had the fox gone for sweet lemons instead of sour grapes, he might have said something like, ‘In any case, there are far juicier grapes in the farmer’s orchard.’

* * *

Rationalization is used to great comedic effect in Voltaire’s satirical masterpiece, Candide (1759). The novella is an attack on Leibniz’s philosophy that the world is the best of all possible worlds, embodied by Candide’s tutor Professor Pangloss, who rationalizes a succession of tragic events so that they are in keeping with Leibniz’s philosophical optimism.

In Chapter 4, Candide chances upon Pangloss, now reduced to the condition of a beggar. Pangloss, it turns out, contracted a venereal disease, leaving him covered in scabs and coughing violently.

Upon seeing his old tutor in so diminished a state, Candide ‘inquires into the cause and effect, as well as into the sufficing reason that had reduced [Pangloss] to so miserable a condition’.

P: Alas ... it was love; love, the comfort of the human species; love, the preserver of the universe; the soul of all sensible beings; love! Tender love!

C: Alas ... I have had some knowledge of love myself, this sovereign of hearts, this soul of souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. But how could this beautiful cause produce in you so hideous an effect? ...

P: Oh my dear Candide, you must remember Pacquette, that pretty wench, who waited on our noble Baroness; in her arms I tasted the pleasures of paradise, which produced these hell torments with which you see me devoured. She was infected with an ailment, and perhaps has since died of it; she received this present of a learned Franciscan, who derived it from the fountainhead; he was indebted for it to an old countess, who had it of a captain of horse, who had it of a marchioness, who had it of a page, the page had it of a Jesuit, who, during his novitiate, had it in a direct line from one of the fellow adventurers of Christopher Columbus...

C: O sage Pangloss ... what a strange genealogy is this! Is not the devil the root of it?

P: Not at all ... it was a thing unavoidable, a necessary ingredient in the best of worlds; for if Columbus had not caught in an island in America this disease, which contaminates the source of generation, and frequently impedes propagation itself, and is evidently opposed to the great end of nature, we should have had neither chocolate nor cochineal...

* * *

Human beings are not rational, but rationalizing animals. They find it frightening to think and painful to change, because thought and change threaten the beliefs that make up their sense of self.

Given this state of affairs, any tectonic shift in a person’s outlook, any major realignment with the truth, is only ever going to occur, if at all, by small increments.

A possible accelerator is, in fact, a deterioration in the person’s life circumstances, so severe that it overwhelms her ego defences and leaves her in the depressive or undefended position..

Hide and Seek

The Psychology of Self-Deception

Neel Burton