Essays on Analytical Music Therapy by Priestley Mary;

Author:Priestley, Mary; [Priestley, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4617340
Publisher: Barcelona Publishers
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Essay Sixteen

Defence Mechanisms And Some Examples

Ego defences are part and parcel of one’s psychic life. They help to keep at bay some of the overwhelming anxiety that would otherwise be caused by the awareness of certain threatening feelings, thoughts, impulses and memories. They also help to master and canalise inner forces which might disrupt the function of the ego. In use, they could be likened to the stops on an organ which divert the outgoing air to create certain sounds and not others.

In the animal world different creatures have evolved their own particular defences. Some have surface protections, such as exoskeletons, spines, shells, armour or scales; others take defensive actions, such as death-feigning, rolling up, warning calls and signs, casting tails, flocking, camoulflage and burrowing; others use mimicry of weapons such as horns, teeth and claws, or flash colouration. The human ego endeavours to protect itself also in various ways from danger within and without. Love of life, and therefore anxiety about survival, is at the root of all this invention.

In 1926 Freud differentiated two types of human anxiety: traumatic anxiety, in which the ego is overwhelmed by stimuli; and signal anxiety, a more mature response, in which the ego is alerted to danger from either outside or from the super-ego or id. If signal anxiety is experienced, steps can be taken to protect oneself from external danger, and if there is fear of the breakthrough of what the individual fears will be uncontrollable sexual or aggressive instincts, or super-ego attacks, then the defence mechanisms come into action.

The use of a certain amount of ego defences is a normal and necessary part of psychic development. For example, denial and the projection of feelings that one is not yet able to accept as one’s own, allows one to observe them in others, and later to recognise and come to terms with them in oneself. Identification with admired objects (people) can help one to develop oneself in imitation of them and grow; introjection of such objects enables one eventually to leave their physical presence without feeling too bereft. Sublimation enables one to use some of the energy of the vital sexual and aggressive drives in a civilised, modified but nevertheless dynamic manner. Examples are: playing a musical instrument instead of indulging in sex indiscriminately, or playing games or sports instead of killing people. But, as in the animal world, too much energy put into defences weakens the person in other ways. Two examples are the dinosaurs who were said by some to have died out because of developing their size at the expense of their brains; or two fighting stags who get their antlers interlocked and starve to death because they cannot then eat.

Human beings who habitually use too many or too bizarre ego defences, have very little freely-circulating energy left to spend on the rest of their life-activities. They become emotionally crippled, devitalised people, sometimes colloquially described as “seized-up rigid,” “high-entropy” or “low-energy” types. For example: a boy who projected all

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