A Marriage Therapist's Blog

 

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Posts Tagged ‘defense’


Aug 12

Don’t be (too) Defensive!

By Jay Slupesky
4 Comments
Defense Mechanisms

I want to spend my next few posts writing about how defensive mechanisms manifest themselves in marriages.  Remember that defense mechanisms are adaptations we make to avoid anxiety and to maintain self-esteem. Sigmund Freud was the first to observe and describe defensive processes, but much has changed since Freud’s time.

Many people believe (as did Freud) that defensive processes are always maladaptive and should be weakened or broken down with therapy.  For example, a wife may call her husband “defensive” as if it’s a problem and something he should try to change. (He was probably defensive because she was criticizing him.  But I digress.)

Modern psychological thought has come to view some defense mechanisms as positive and important to the maintenance of good self-esteem.  In fact, severe mental illness (such as psychosis) is sometimes understood as resulting from insufficient defenses.

We all have our own preferred defenses that are vital to coping with the anxieties of life.  How do we come to prefer some defense mechanisms over others?  Trial and error, the stresses we dealt with as children, and the defensive mechanisms that our parents modeled for us can all inform our choice of defenses.

In my next post I’ll look at the defense mechanism of withdrawal.