[The ego--defense mechanisms and coping]

Abstract

If the aims of defense and coping are considered, it can be concluded that essentially the different kinds of defense should serve to cope with reality. They intend either to inhibit the pressure of the unconscious drives and emotions or to bring them in tracks which are better to overlook. Or they tend unconsciously to reduce the demands of the surroundings and/or to make it possible to use former patterns of coping, as e.g. in regression and transference, or to reduce the cognitive and emotional reception of it, as in autism. Whereas those defense mechanisms, which preponderantly serve to deal with the drives and emotions, may lead to a better coping with the given situation, those defense mechanisms, however, which mostly serve to a reduction of the perception of the environment or to a decrease of expectations of the surroundings, are not increasing the coping capacities with a really given situation. But also when defense is rigid or excessive, which can, if a certain genetic predisposition is given, also be visible in autoimmune-processes, the coping with reality is more difficult. Thereby it is, however, to consider that a rigid defense diminishes the danger of ego-fragmentation and, especially when a psychotherapy is done, leads with the time on this way to a better coping with the outside reality and the inner possibilities. In serious terminal diseases a defense, which permits an active life, seems to have a better prognosis than a resignated acceptation of the illness, which originates in the activity of the superego. Heavy pain-syndromes in diseases which are not life-menacing can apparently be dealt with the better the more the concerned people succeed to turn the anxiety which is little related to objects in object-related fear. With that potencies of the ego are free which otherwise would have to be invested in the defense of anxieties.